Doxazo Theos

Boomerang Arguments

A boomerang argument, according to Robert Van Gulick,

reaches across to the epistemic/cognitive/conceptual domain of facts about our representation of the world, and then swings back to reach a conclusion in the metaphysical/ontological/factual domain about the nature of reality itself. It moves from the facts about how we represent or conceptualize the world to suppose results about the necessary nature of the world itself. More specifically, boomerangs often move from supposed gaps or lacks of links in our representations or concepts of the world to conclusion about objects gaps within the world itself and ontological distinctions between the real things in it.¹

Boomerang arguments have a long and detailed history. Among the more classic examples are ontological arguments for God’s existence and various arguments for dualism. More contemporary examples include Jackson’s Mary,² Nagel’s bat,³ and Chalmers’ zombie.⁴ (I want very badly to see a paper entitled “A Zombie Bat Named Mary,” or maybe just an article about a Mary with a pet zombie bat, or a zombie named Mary with a pet bat?) One might also include indispensability arguments in mathematics. According to Mitchell O. Stokes,⁵ two of the most influential indispensability arguments, Quine and Putnam’s⁶ and van Inwagen’s,⁷ incorporate something like the following normative principle (NP):

(NP) We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence, even if only in principle

The crucial thing to be worked out in (NP) is the idea of adequate replacement. Reductive paraphrases are a dime a dozen and can be offered for almost anything. However, this fact should not be taken to mean that they are at all adequate or preferable to the original expression. To show a paraphrase is inadequate, you could either (1) provide a counterexample to it that demonstrates the reduction or elimination is not successful, or (2) argue that it is counterintuitive, or at least more counterintuitive than the original. (2) is at odds with (IP). If (2) is true, then even if a paraphrase is coherent or available in principle, it still might be that one shouldn’t accept the paraphrase. (2) would not likely sway reductionists, but I think it’s a strategy that could, if employed correctly, permit rational assent to the original expression and possibly even give a burden of proof to the reductionist.

That said, here is another possible boomerang argument that utilizes (IP). Call it an indispensability argument for objective morality:

(1) Many of the nonphilosophical propositions we believe can be expressed – or imply propositions that can be expressed – by there being moral facts (that is, the proposition that there are moral facts, or equivalently, that moral facts exist)

(2) We cannot reasonably give up all of the nonphilosophical beliefs which are expressed in ways that imply the existence of moral facts

(3) We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence

(4) Of those nonphilosophical beliefs that are expressed by sentences which refer to moral facts, we cannot plausibly argue that all of them can be adequately expressed by sentences that do not refer to moral facts; reference to moral facts is indispensable.

(5) If (1), (2), (3), and (4) are true then we should believe in moral facts

(6) We should believe in moral facts

And, of course, if this boomerang argument is sound, you can then throw an argument from objective morality that has a theistic spin.
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1.	Van Gulick, Robert, “So Many Ways of Saying ‘No’ to Mary” in In Peter Ludlow, Yujin Nagasawa & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), There’s Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument (MIT, 2004). Originally coined in Van Gulick, Robert, “Maps, gaps and traps,” in Quentin Smith & A. Jokic (eds.) New Essays on Consciousness (Oxford, 2003).
2.	Frank Jackson, “What Mary Didn’t Know.” Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986), pp. 291-295.
3.	Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” Philosophical Review 83 (1974), pp. 435-456.
4.	David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford, 1996).
5.	Mitchell O. Stokes, “Van Inwagen and the Quine-Putnam indispensability Argument” Erkenntnis 67:3 (2007), pp. 439-453. The argument form follows the outline of Stokes’ “detailed generic indispensability argument that captures the single form” of both Inwagen’s and Wuine and Putnam’s indispensability arguments.
6.	The “Quine-Putnam indispensability argument” is more or less Quine’s and Putnam’s. See Mark Cloyvan’s discussion of the argument and references in his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics” (2008).
7.	Peter van Inwagen, “A theory of properties,” in Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics (Oxford, 2004), pp. 107–138.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Arguments for God's Existence, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

12 Responses to “Boomerang Arguments”

Vagon Says:
July 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm
What makes a moral a “fact”?
Chad McIntosh Says:
July 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 am
I am assuming the standard, non-philosophical notion of “fact.” I.e., a proposition that corresponds to objective reality.
Vagon Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:33 am
Thanks Chad, by what standard does the moral become fact?
Vagon Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:35 am
I realise that might seem non-sensical. What I mean is how can you tell a moral is an objective fact?
Chad McIntosh Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:46 am
Good question. but first let me point out a couple things. Your first question seems really different from your second, given that you indicate the second is closer to what you intend to ask, I’ll focus on it and bypass the first.

I take your phrase “how we can tell” to concern our having justified knowledge of moral facts. As such, your question is an epistemological one, not an ontological one. That means even if I couldn’t answer it, neither the argument in this post nor the argument’s conclusion (that there are objective moral facts) would be in question. Note also that one’s moral epistemology may describe how one can tell what is a moral fact, but that theory need not itself be a/the standard that turns the moral into the factual (so your first and second questions are quite different).

Although I am open to all sorts to theories in moral epistemology that could get at your question, here are a couple suggestions I find to be plausible.

The first would be to maintain that beliefs in moral facts are perceived or intuited in the proper circumstances, just as our sensory beliefs about the external world are. This would make moral beliefs basic beliefs. This isn’t “cherry picking” a mechanism in moral epistemology, ether. This is simply how informed ethicists practice moral analysis. According to Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, a recent critic of moral arguments for theism, “the common way to choose among moral theories is to test how well they cohere with our intuitions or considered moral judgments about what is morally right or wrong, about the nature and ideal of a person, and about the purposes of morality.” (“An Argument for Consequentialism,” Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics [1993], pp. 399-421). This line of thought is developed somewhat by William Lad Sessions in his “Coherence, Proper Basicality and Moral Arguments for Theism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 22 (1987), pp. 119-137 and reflected in the works of Paul Copan and Mark Linville.

The second comes from the nature of normativity. Terrence Cuneo in his book The Normative Web (Oxford, 2007) and Ralph Wedgwood in his The Nature of Normativity (Oxford, 2007) both rigorously argue that there are certain irreducible epistemic normative facts that entail moral normative facts, which in turn would not only entail moral realism (objectivity) but also provide direct justification for belief in those moral facts.

Hope this helps!
Chad McIntosh Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Perhaps an even more direct way to answer your question is the post itself. If the argument I layed out in the post is sound, then we are justified in believing in those moral values which are indispensable to our expressions.
Vagon Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Thanks Chad, some good thoughts.

What I’m driving at is this, your indispensability argument indicates that there exists an objective moral framework, but it seems as though the position you put forward from Sinnot-Armstrong relies on commonsense: “they cohere with our intuitions or considered moral judgments”.

I have two problems with this.

1. Commonsense is an appeal to popular belief by its very definition. Morality is no longer objective, but subjective.

2. Commonsense is cultural. For example in tribal societies it is accepted as perfectly moral (almost universally) for a tribal leader to be polygamous. There are numerous other examples of things that seem at best non-commonsensical and at worst immoral from other cultures.

Perhaps you could provide an example of an objective moral fact to support premise 1?
Chad McIntosh Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Thanks again, Vagon.

Your problems don’t take into account the first qualification I made in my previous comments. Namely, that moral epistemology is separate from moral ontology. Even if I couldn’t answer “how we can tell” what the moral facts are, this in no way cuts against the argument’s conclusion (that there are objective moral facts) any more than my not being able to tell the answer to a math problem means there is no correct answer.

But your problems aren’t persuasive on their own. You pigeon-hole the quote by Sinnott-Armstrong by reducing our “intuitions or considered moral judgments” to “commonsense.” What Sinnott-Armstrong is appealing to are two widely-accepted and philosophically developed methods of moral analysis, unlike commonsense—a notion you rightly criticize as unhelpful. I encourage you to pick up any standard book on ethics, and I’ll bet you a steak dinner that in the first couple of chapters these two methods will be introduced as foundational for the rest of the text. Moreover, your concerns don’t touch either the claim that moral beliefs are properly basic or that they are delineable from epistemic facts. Regarding the former, unless you’re prepared to be just as skeptical about our knowledge of the external world and physical objects, that intuition is a largely-reliable faculty for producing such beliefs is indisputable.

Anything that utilizes a moral ideal will be an example supporting premise 1; e.g., any statements including notions of wrong and right, good and bad, vice and virtue, praise and blame, etc. Now, there’s no doubt we employ such terms daily. My question to you is how would you get rid of them without losing either meaning or function?
Vagon Says:
July 26th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Thanks Chad.

Sorry if it seems like I’m not taking into account your qualifications.

Intuition and I suspect “considered” moral analysis are not the same as our basic sensory perception of the world. As you rightly mention we are forced to accept senses at a basic level or accept absurdity. But we also have tools for the extension of these perceptions that allow us to distinguish facts more readily or accurately. Thus intuition is not as valuable as say probability.

To use considered moral analysis to classify morals as fact seems amazingly odd to me, but perhaps it is the “considered” or “analysis” notion he is emphasising. To save me buying a subscription to a journal, perhaps you could summarise it for me?

Either way I think the conflict stems from my arguing that morals are not objective fact, but subjective thought processes. More on this later.

To answer your question around moral statements I would suggest it no more supports premise 1 than a non-objective foundation. In fact the subjective nature of intuition reinforces a subjective foundation. What could you replace them with? You could remove the terms right and wrong and replace them easily with say cost and benefit.

In fact this is exactly what we see when people incur damage to areas of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than making emotionally charge “normal” moral judgments the people become quite logical and calculating in their morality. For example they will sacrifice one for the sake of many where others would not.

Now if a very specific part of the brain controls what we see to be “moral” and we know that the size of the brain components change with at least evolution, does it not stand that morality changes?
Chad McIntosh Says:
August 5th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Vagon,

Thanks again for your comment.

Intuition and I suspect “considered” moral analysis are not the same as our basic sensory perception of the world. As you rightly mention we are forced to accept senses at a basic level or accept absurdity. But we also have tools for the extension of these perceptions that allow us to distinguish facts more readily or accurately. Thus intuition is not as valuable as say probability.

I never claimed moral belief-forming faculties are the same as basic sensory perception; but I am claiming they are parallel. If they are indeed parallel, this means that if we are justified in believing that there really are red and cold things on the basis of our basic senses, we are equally justified in believing that there really are right and wrong things on the basis of intuition and experience. You cannot simply assert they are disanalogous; I need to see an argument to that effect.

I should also add that the kind of beliefs we form on the basis of our sense-faculties are considered to be much more certain than the result of some probabilistic calculation. This is because most of our beliefs formed via the senses are basic and unanalyzable, unlike beliefs we may come to via probabilistic calculations. “It seems that the creduelty principle is appropriate with regard to both our sense perceptions and out moral intuitions/perceptions: both are innocent until proven guilty” (Paul Copan, “The Moral Argument” in Copan and Paul Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism [Routeledge, 2004], p. 152).

To use considered moral analysis to classify morals as fact seems amazingly odd to me, but perhaps it is the “considered” or “analysis” notion he is emphasising. To save me buying a subscription to a journal, perhaps you could summarise it for me?

There are two distinct but complimentary modus operandi at work here: moral intuition (perception, awareness, etc.) and considered moral judgments. To start with the latter, so-called considered moral judgments are akin to what John Rawls called reflective equilibrium:

Now, as already suggested, [considered judgments] enter as those judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely displayed without distortion. Thus in deciding which of our judgments to take into account we may reasonably select some and exclude others. For example, we may discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence. Similarly, those given when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain one way or the other can be left aside. All these judgments are likely to be erroneous or to be influenced by an excessive attention to our own interests. Considered judgments are simply those rendered under conditions favorable to the exercise of the sense of justice, and therefore in circumstances where the more common excuses and explanations for making the judgment is presumed, then, to have the ability, opportunity, and the desire to reach a correct decision (or at least, not the desire not to). Moreover, the criteria that identify these judgments are not arbitrary. They are, in fact, similar to those that single out considered judgments of any kind. (A theory of Justice [Harvard, ed. 1999], p. 42)

More concise is Lewis Vaughn, Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (W. W. Norton & Co, 2008), a standard ethics textbook:

In the field of ethics, most philosophers agree that carefully made moral judgments about cases and issues are generally reliable data that we should take very seriously. Such opinions are called considered moral judgments because they are formed after careful deliberation that is as free of bias as possible. (p. 66)

…there are plausible criteria that we can use to evaluate the adequacy of moral theories (our own and those of others), standards that moral philosophers and others have used to appraise even the most complex theories of morality. There are what we may call the moral criteria of adequacy. (p. 70)

After pointing out that before a theory can be eligible for meeting such criteria it must be coherent, fruitful, and not conflict with our general background knowledge of the world, Vaughn proceeds to explain the moral criteria of adequacy, the first two (of three) are:

Criterion 1: Consistency with Considered Moral Judgments
Recall considered moral judgments are views that form after careful deliberation under conditions that minimize bias and error. They are therefore thought to have considerable weight as reasons or evidence in moral matters…A moral theory that is inconsistent with trustworthy judgments is at least dubious and likely to be false, in need of drastic overhaul or rejection. There is something seriously wrong, for example, with a theory that approves of the murder of innocent people, the wanton torture of children, or the enslavement of millions of men and women.…inconsistency with considered judgments can be the undoing of even the most influential and attractive moral theories. (pp. 71-72)

Criterion 2: Consistency with Our Moral Experiences
…a plausible moral theory should be consistent with moral background knowledge—with what we take to be fundamental facts of our moral experience….As is the case with theories that conflict with considered moral judgments, a theory in conflict with these experiences is at least dubious and probably false. A moral theory is inconsistent with the moral life if it implies that we do not have one or more of these basic moral experiences….like our considered moral judgments, our commonsense moral experience carries weight as evidence—good evidence that the moral life is, for the most part, as we think it is. We therefore are entitled to accept this evidence as trustworthy unless we have good reason to think otherwise. (pp. 72-73)

These two criteria are parallel those to which I appealed in my initial response. With respect to these standard criteria, I’m suggesting a theory which countenances moral facts far outstrips a theory which does not.

To answer your question around moral statements I would suggest it no more supports premise 1 than a non-objective foundation. In fact the subjective nature of intuition reinforces a subjective foundation.

Be careful not to confuse the subjective nature of a faculty with the knowledge it can deliver. My individual perception of a tree outside may be subjective in a sense, but that does nothing to undermine either the objective existence of the tree or the justification of my belief that the tree I’m perceiving exists.

Moreover, I think you seriously underappreciate the nature and role of intuition in philosophy in general and ethics in particular. The great majority of philosophers are prepared to defend the claim that intuition provides prima facie evidence regarding the natures of real things in the world and not merely our concepts. A very valuable book on the general nature and uses of intuition is Michael DePaul and William Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). For the use of intuition in ethics in particular, see Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism (Oxford, 2003), in which David McNaughton notes that “Both parties to this debate [about the existence and nature of fundamental moral principles] were taken to agree than an ethical theory rests on intuition, by which was meant no more than that the most basic ethical principles, since they could not be inferred by more basic ones, must be self-evident” (“An Unconnected Heap of Duties” [p. 76]. I should also add that, pace McNaughton here, it is plausible to think basic ethical principles can be inferred by more basic ones. On this, see op. cit. Lad Sessions “Coherence, Proper Basicality and Moral Arguments for Theism”). See also McNaughton, “Intuitions” in Hugh LaFoollette (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 268-287; Robert Audi, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (Oxford, 1997), pp. 32-65; David Copp, “Intuitions in Moral Inquiry” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford, 2005). From the lattermost:

There is a methodological element that claims that moral inquiry ought to be guided, in a way to be specified, by our intuitions; there are epistemological elements, for example, the claim that some moral propositions are self-evident or that moral intuitions are certain, and there are structural theses, for example, that the only general moral truths concern prima facie duties. We should then recognize that the intuitionists have had plenty of company when it comes to the core methodological element of their view…. Intuitions are not merely a disused artifact from the history of moral thought. Contemporary moral debates, particularly in applied ethics, are chock full of them. (pp. 595-596)

In response to my question of what could possibly replace moral terms, you suggest:

You could remove the terms right and wrong and replace them easily with say cost and benefit.

So you’re suggesting that the statement “Torturing the innocent for fun is wrong” is, all things considered, equivalent to something like “Torturing the innocent for fun is cost-inneffective”?

In fact this is exactly what we see when people incur damage to areas of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than making emotionally charge “normal” moral judgments the people become quite logical and calculating in their morality. For example they will sacrifice one for the sake of many where others would not.

Now if a very specific part of the brain controls what we see to be “moral” and we know that the size of the brain components change with at least evolution, does it not stand that morality changes?

Although there may be perfectly correct naturalistic explanations for why people hold the moral beliefs they do, such explanations furnish no basis for claiming they are true or false. Suppose a boxer, after a few too many punches to the head, starts to believe 1s are really 2s and 3s are really 4s, and so forth. Does it follow that because the boxer adds 1 + 1 and gets 4 that it is no longer the case that 2 + 2 = 4? Suppose the world collectively took Soma and believed the dream world was real and the real world was a dream. Does it follow that the real world is a dream? Again, this is just to reiterate the fact that particular epistemic beliefs, including moral ones, are defeasible. I may take a drug or be injured so as to make me prone to believe certain things under unreliable or abnormal conditions, but this does nothing to undermine either the objective existence of, or my belief in, those things under reliable or normal conditions. Besides, it is doubtful that any “science” could ever cash in a robust theory of adequately explaining and predicting genuine moral phenomena. Robert Audi in “Ethical Naturalism and the Explanatory Power of Moral Concepts, (Steven Wagner and Richard Warner (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal [Notre Dame, 1993]) makes this point:

There is much reason to think…that the issue of moral realism should not be cast wholly in terms of the comparison with scientific models. It simply may not be assumed that only causal or nomic properties are real, or that moral knowledge is possible only if it is causally or nomically grounded in the natural world. Our moral beliefs often concern particular persons or acts; they are responsive to observations; and, together with our wants, they explain our behavior. But this does not require that moral properties are natural, and it allows that general moral knowledge is a priori. (p. 111).

Finally, I noticed you have not criticized the other possibilities for justifying beliefs in moral facts that I mentioned, such as those developed by Cuneo and Wedgwood. I’d be more than willing to explore the details of those with you as well. You might find them more compelling.

Best,

Chad
Vagon Says:
August 17th, 2009 at 3:07 am
Cheers Chad, I’ve just gotten back from a brief holiday overseas and it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me!

Will respond in length once I have some time to frame something worthy.
Chad McIntosh Says:
August 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’m right, so a detailed, time-consuming response might not be in order

I don’t especially enjoy online tête-à-têtes, but take your time. I hope you had a swell vacation.

(1)	Many of the nonphilosophical propositions we believe can be expressed – or imply propositions that can be expressed – by there being moral facts (that is, the proposition that there are moral facts, or equivalently, that moral facts exist)
(2)	We cannot reasonably give up all of the nonphilosophical beliefs which are expressed in ways that imply the existence of moral facts
(3)	We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence
(4)	Of those nonphilosophical beliefs that are expressed by sentences which refer to moral facts, we cannot plausibly argue that all of them can be adequately expressed by sentences that do not refer to moral facts; reference to moral facts is indispensable.
(5)	If (1), (2), (3), and (4) are true then we should believe in moral facts
(6)	We should believe in moral facts

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