Long-time reader(s?) of this blog know how much I hate indirect consequentialism. God, how I loathe it. As such, I'm constantly alert for new ways to portray it in negative ways. It's kind of this thing that I do. I hope, someday, to get paid to do it, and to giggle at people who actually have to work for a living.
SO. There is this important distinction in knowledge. It's the "by acquaintance vs. by description" distinction. The idea is that you know some things by being in some kind of direct or relatively unmediated contact with them, while you know others simply via descriptions of them.
An example will illustrate. I remember my grandmother saying the following in conversation: "Oh, yes," she said, "the internet is a powerful tool, isn't it?" I was taken aback, as I knew quite well that my grandmother had no idea what she was talking about. Well, in a way, she did, because she'd read the recent TIME magazine cover article about the internet and how powerful it was. She had knowledge by description, but since it was not supplemented by any knowledge by acquaintance, it was a hollow, empty kind of knowledge.
The point generalizes. We don't think, really, that knowledge by description is a particularly robust or interesting kind of knowledge. It's the skeleton upon which we may hang the flesh of real acquaintance, but it's really only a skeleton.
Indirect consequentialists think that "goodness" is such that all of our knowledge of it is necessarily skeletal in this sense. They think that, for a bunch of reasons having to do with the paradox of hedonism and the cognitive limitations of human minds, that we ought to be generally content with merely characterizing the good as it relates to our everyday lives in various distant ways. We should not attempt to actually engage with the good, for in doing so we actually undermine the good.
There is no other area of philosophy that I can think of which would even dream of admitting a result like this about one of its central concepts.
If, for example, metaphysicians told us that we stand in the proper relation to "the real" or to "substance" or to "laws of nature" when we refrain from actually engaging with these concepts and remain content with descriptions of them, we'd think they were crazy. If I want to know about the real, I'm allowed to simply kick a stone. Any theory that claimed that kicking the stone distances me from the real would be seen as prima facie ludicrous.
Similarly, at least since Wittgenstein, it has (rightly) seemed crazy that we can say much about language in isolation from the actual practise of language-use. At the very least, engaging with the way people actually talk is not seen as something that hinders one's knowledge of the field. If anyone suggested otherwise, we might reasonably suspect that they just didn't know what language is.
Imagine a philosopher of aesthetics telling you that in order to really get art, you should stay away from the Louvre and read his purely descriptive book about the Louvre instead. You might stop to wonder if his conception of "art" was the problem: he sees art as intellectual enrichment, you know it's not just that, so you know not to stay away from the Louvre.
Yet, this is exactly what the indirect consequentialist tells us about our relation to the good. He claims that the good is such that to actually engage with it (that is, to incorporate it directly into our practical lives) is to undermine or destroy it. That as confused, cognitively limited beings we should just accept a philosopher's description of the good and live our lives without much thought for it. In other words, our best working knowledge of the good is exactly like my grandmother's working knowledge of the internet.
I hereby offer a challenge: If any indirect consequentialist will allow my grandmother to do his internet banking for one year, I will become an indirect consequentialist. Any takers?
SO. There is this important distinction in knowledge. It's the "by acquaintance vs. by description" distinction. The idea is that you know some things by being in some kind of direct or relatively unmediated contact with them, while you know others simply via descriptions of them.
An example will illustrate. I remember my grandmother saying the following in conversation: "Oh, yes," she said, "the internet is a powerful tool, isn't it?" I was taken aback, as I knew quite well that my grandmother had no idea what she was talking about. Well, in a way, she did, because she'd read the recent TIME magazine cover article about the internet and how powerful it was. She had knowledge by description, but since it was not supplemented by any knowledge by acquaintance, it was a hollow, empty kind of knowledge.
The point generalizes. We don't think, really, that knowledge by description is a particularly robust or interesting kind of knowledge. It's the skeleton upon which we may hang the flesh of real acquaintance, but it's really only a skeleton.
Indirect consequentialists think that "goodness" is such that all of our knowledge of it is necessarily skeletal in this sense. They think that, for a bunch of reasons having to do with the paradox of hedonism and the cognitive limitations of human minds, that we ought to be generally content with merely characterizing the good as it relates to our everyday lives in various distant ways. We should not attempt to actually engage with the good, for in doing so we actually undermine the good.
There is no other area of philosophy that I can think of which would even dream of admitting a result like this about one of its central concepts.
If, for example, metaphysicians told us that we stand in the proper relation to "the real" or to "substance" or to "laws of nature" when we refrain from actually engaging with these concepts and remain content with descriptions of them, we'd think they were crazy. If I want to know about the real, I'm allowed to simply kick a stone. Any theory that claimed that kicking the stone distances me from the real would be seen as prima facie ludicrous.
Similarly, at least since Wittgenstein, it has (rightly) seemed crazy that we can say much about language in isolation from the actual practise of language-use. At the very least, engaging with the way people actually talk is not seen as something that hinders one's knowledge of the field. If anyone suggested otherwise, we might reasonably suspect that they just didn't know what language is.
Imagine a philosopher of aesthetics telling you that in order to really get art, you should stay away from the Louvre and read his purely descriptive book about the Louvre instead. You might stop to wonder if his conception of "art" was the problem: he sees art as intellectual enrichment, you know it's not just that, so you know not to stay away from the Louvre.
Yet, this is exactly what the indirect consequentialist tells us about our relation to the good. He claims that the good is such that to actually engage with it (that is, to incorporate it directly into our practical lives) is to undermine or destroy it. That as confused, cognitively limited beings we should just accept a philosopher's description of the good and live our lives without much thought for it. In other words, our best working knowledge of the good is exactly like my grandmother's working knowledge of the internet.
I hereby offer a challenge: If any indirect consequentialist will allow my grandmother to do his internet banking for one year, I will become an indirect consequentialist. Any takers?
8 comments:
Hi.
I have a beef with the way in which you characterize the knowledge-by-acquaintance/knowledge-by-description distinction. You say:
"We don't think, really, that knowledge by description is a particularly robust or interesting kind of knowledge. It's the skeleton upon which we may hang the flesh of real acquaintance, but it's really only a skeleton."
Is it true that knowledge isn't all that interesting or that knowledge by acquaintance is somehow more basic? Consider our knowledge of the Big Bang. Surely our knowledge of this event, if it took place, is obtained by description and NOT acquaintance. Or, consider the wave function in quantum physics. Here we have a case of a VERY central concept in a discipline and yet clearly this is something of which we have only knowledge by acquaintance. Knowledge by acquaintance, when the distinction was introduced by Russell, was intended to be a very powerful form of knowledge.
Sure! I think you're right that knowledge by description can be interesting and perhaps it doesn't need to be portrayed in such a negative light here.
However, I don't think that anyone would say that it would be generally superior to knowledge by acquaintance in either of the cases you mentioned. We could learn extraordinary things about the big bang or the wave function collapse if we could become directly acquainted with them. Relative to this standard, knowledge by description is lacking in certain aspects (aspects that an empiricist like Russell would surely have recognized).
I suppose, though, that this post doesn't depend on saying that one form is superior or inferior to another. The point is sort of metaphilosophical: I want us to notice how bizarre it is to claim that actual engagement with a philosophical concept is somehow undesirable or wrong. I think thew natural move in this kind of case is to question the conception of the concept that leads to this strange result.
Yes, one would have to say that knowledge by description of the Big Bang and the Wave Function is superior to the other form, viz., knowledge by acquaintance, for the simple reason that we are utterly bereft of knowledge by acquaintance of said phenomena.
While I think that I agree with your metaphilosophical claim, employing the knowledge-by-acquaintance/knowledge-by-description distinction isn't much help, here--at least not in the way described. How about looking at paradigmatic examples of knowledge by description and asking whether goodness measures up.
I wonder if we have knowledge by acquaintance of ANY explanatory concepts. I'm tempted to conclude - boldly! - that we do not.
A couple concepts fundamental to explanation come to mind: numerical identity and causation. Hume argued - convincingly? - that we do not have knowledge by acquaintance of causation.
Similarly, I find it difficult to think of an experience of something that is metaphysically one - though maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. Experiences, it seems to me, are necessarily divisible spatially and temporally. Nevertheless, numerical identity is a really useful concept.
But to go one step further, I want to suggest that explanatory concepts are necessarily not known by acquaintance. When I observe a constant conjunction of two kinds of events I might explain it by positing that the first event brings about the other. But in order for the concept of causation to do explanatory work does it not need to contribute to my experience in some way? Does it not need to make sense of something that previously did not make sense? Insofar as a concept makes sense of the world rather than merely referring to my experiences, it cannot be known by acquaintance. If it were known by acquaintance the concept would merely refer.
You may think that 'the good' refers to something contained in your experience. But moral philosophers and metaethicists treat it as an explanatory concept. If it is an explanatory concept, how could it be known by acquaintance? If it is something our language refers to, how could it explain?
Hi Confused,
Do you think unversals are explanatory concepts? I think they are. I think that the fact that something is red explains why I was able to pick it out of a green background, or why it warms only to a certain temperature when a given amount of light shines on it.
In short, even arch-empiricists admit of universals in experience, insofar as two experiences can share the proprty of redness. And this property does explanatory work. So I don't think I accept your premise.
Furthermore, the acceptance of Hume's hard line on the concepts you mentioned is extremely destructive, insofar as reason itself begins to appear self-undermining. Hence the Pyrrhonian despair at the end of Book 1. I would suggest that in adopting Hume's method for the purposes of your argument you might end up chopping off the branch you sit on, because the whole idea of concepts being deployed to make sense of the world start to look awfully wobbly under a pure associationist-empiricism.
Finally, I am a little confused as to what you mean when you say that moral philosophers treat "good" as an explanatory concept. This seems downright false... even the utilitarian, for example, treats goodness as a primitive normative concept in terms of which right action is defined (not explained, big difference there).
Hi Nick,
I want to respond by noting two things.
First of all, universals are a strange example to use because they seem to be an obvious example of something we do not know by acquaintance. Of course, engaging with the literature on this subject will reveal, as in most things philosophical, that the correct answer is a matter of controversy. Nevertheless, I would put it to you that the explanatory power of universals is a result of stepping beyond the experience of particulars and categorizing them.
Secondly, you point to a useful distinction but seem to misapply it. You distinguish between defining and explaining. In fact, I think this distinction is best understood as threefold: one can identify, define, and explain.
Typically, one first identifies. This can be done by pointing to, by naming, by drawing, by distinguishing, etc. To identify is to make a hollow reference to a particular.
Defining follows identifying at least in terms of logical priority; however, the two acts are often simultaneous. A definition is a set of statements or conditions or attributes applied to an object or event identified. On one version of how universals come about, one does not identify universals, but defines particulars as belonging to groups. Universals refer to different groups. The universal red refers to the group of red things.
Lastly, explanation takes many forms. It can involve breaking something down, an event or object or category, into smaller parts. It can involve identifying a cause. It can involve identifying a theory that would predict. Here, too, we find that defining and explaining often happen simultaneously. The distinction, as with the distinction between identifying and defining, is often blurry.
You claim that "even the utilitarian" treats goodness as a primitive normative concept as if this ruled out the possibility that it could be explanatory. It's hard to know how you could be justifying this inference since by 'primitive' you presumably mean what everyone else means when talking about primitive concepts: that the concept is EXPLANATORILY primitive.
Of course, to break down right action in terms of some reference to goodness is to partially explain it.
Perhaps, like me, you are just confused.
Hi again Confused, and thanks for your ongoing (helpful) commentary.
Two things: you may indeed "put it to me" that universals do no explanatory work, but I still don't accept this. The function of a predicate is usually to introduce just such a universal into a sentence, and in doing so the predicate enables us to both individuate the particular (i.e. "the black car") and derive further facts about it ("the car that will get warmest in sunlight"). I see no reason to accept that universals play no role in exlpanations in general, and as such I can't accept the premise that your criticism is built on.
As for the explanation/definition distinction, I suppose I was trying to ask a simple question: how do you see ethicists and meta-ethicists using the concept "good" in order to explain anything? Perhaps intuitionist moral realists talk this way... is that the kind of explantion to which you're referring?
We are getting somewhere.
Your example about the explanatory power of universals is a good one. But I would simply ask you, or any one who would use this kind of example, to think about what is really doing the explanatory work. I am not denying that universals are explanatory. I am making a more subtle point.
I think the process of defining the colour black involved recognizing that the underlying cause of the appearance of black also causes heat absorption. Here I will emphasize what I neglected to emphasize previously: What is known about black by acquaintance is descriptive and plays a role at the level of identification. However, and this is the subtle point, what is explanatory about universals is NOT known by acquaintance. One can not know by acquaintance that black objects absorb more heat than objects of other colours. This may seem patently false but it goes back to the Humean point that one does not know causal relations by acquaintance.
As to your second point, you want to lump me into a category in which I do not belong. I see myself as strongly naturalistic. One, I think, straightforward example of using 'good' to explain is a possible consequentialist definition of right action. Moral good is explanatorily prior to moral right in consequentialist theories. Thus, a consequentialist can correctly define right action as the action, in any given, situation which promotes the greatest good for the greatest number. This is just one example of using 'good' to explain.
In fact, I'm quite surprised to be challenged on this point since the list of things which 'good' explains seems, to me, indefinitely long. As you pointed out, good is often treated as a primitive normative concept. This would seem to entail that good has an explanatory role for most normative concepts. Why else would it be primitive?
To give another example, moral reasons must appeal to 'the good' to be justified. Otherwise what would give them moral character and what would make them valid reasons?
Looking over my last post I realize it was very unclear. I am sorry about that. I hope this post is better.
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