Following the Rules This page intentionally left blank Following the Rules Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint joseph heath 1 2008 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2008 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heath, Joseph, 1967– Following the rules : practical reasoning and deontic constraint / Joseph Heath. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-19-537029-4 1. Deontic logic. 2. Practical reason. 3. Ethics. 4. Duty. I. Title. BC145.H43 2008 128'.4—dc22 2007052440 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Acknowledgments My thanks to those who have helped me with this book over the years, along with those who have read and commented on it. Special thanks to Joel Anderson, Benoît Dubreuil, Benoit Hardy-Vallée, Vida Panitch, Patrick Turmel, Scott Woodcock, and Sergio Tenenbaum. Thanks also to my colleague Ronald De Sousa, along with Peter Ohlin and Peter Momtchiloff, both of Oxford University Press, for giving the entire project a boost when it most needed it. This book incorporates, in revised form, ideas that have been presented in journal articles over the years. My thanks to the editors and referees at these journals, along with all those who helped me with these papers. The formulation of my arguments in this work should be taken to supersede those presented in “Foundationalism and Practical Reason,” Mind 106, 3 (1997): 452–73; “The Structure of Normative Control,” Law and Philosophy 17, 4 (1998): 419–42; “Brandom et les sources de la normativité,” Philosophiques 28 (2001): 27–46; “Rational Choice with Deontic Constraint,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31, 3 (2001): 361–88; “Practical Irrationality and the Structure of Decision Theory,” in Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet, eds., Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003); and “The Transcendental Necessity of Morality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2003): 378–95. This book covers a lot of ground. I would like to thank those who, at cru- cial junctures, have introduced me to ideas and bodies of work to which I might otherwise have been oblivious, but which subsequently proved central in the development of my views. These include Thomas McCarthy, James Johnson, Stephen Toulmin, David Davies, Michael Williams, Paul Thompson, and Ronald De Sousa. vi Acknowledgments I would also like to acknowledge the generous support I have received, over the years, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs Program, along with the Departments of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal. Contents Introduction, 3 1. Instrumental Rationality, 12 2. Social Order, 42 3. Deontic Constraint, 65 4. Intentional States, 99 5. Preference Noncognitivism, 132 6. A Naturalistic Perspective, 166 7. Transcendental Necessity, 202 8. Weakness of Will, 226 9. Normative Ethics, 258 Conclusion, 286 Notes, 293 Index, 331 This page intentionally left blank Following the Rules This page intentionally left blank Introduction There are many aspects of morality that are puzzling. Perhaps the most puzzling is that it often requires us to act in ways that are contrary to our self-interest. We may fi nd ourselves wanting something, but feeling that morality prohibits us from doing what is necessary to obtain it. Morality therefore presents itself to us in the form of a duty to refrain from the pursuit of individual advantage, or to use the more technical term, in the form of a deontic constraint. It is not diffi cult to see how this aspect of morality could come to seem paradoxical. What is our “self- interest,” if not the set of goals that we have good reason to pursue? And if our self-interest is the set of goals that we have good reason to pursue, then any con- straint on the pursuit of self-interest would seem to be, by defi nition, irrational. These sorts of considerations have led many philosophers to deny the phe- nomenon, and to suggest that any confl ict between morality and self-interest must be merely apparent. After all, it is not just morality that presents itself to us with the appearance of a constraint. We also fi nd ourselves subject to prudential constraints in our practical deliberations. There is often something that we would like to do, but feel that we should restrain ourselves from doing because of the long-term consequences of the act. In this case, it seems clear that while “prudence” seems to express itself as a constraint on the pursuit of self-interest, this is merely an appearance. The illusion is dissolved as soon as one sees that the confl ict is not really between a prudential constraint and self- interest, but merely between one’s short-term interests and one’s long-term interests. Prudence therefore turns out to be not really a constraint, but rather an expression of one’s self-interest, correctly understood. Many philosophers have felt that moral constraints, insofar as they are jus- tifi able, must have an analogous structure. Morality often expresses itself as a 3 4 Introduction duty to perform an action that advances the interests of another, to the detri- ment of one’s own. However, moral actions usually do not occur in isolation, but rather as part of a generalized system of reciprocity (one that stands at the core of the social order in every human society). This system of reciprocity generates benefi ts for everyone involved (benefi ts that include many intangibles, such as freedom from worry about certain depredations). If compliance with one’s own duties represents the price of admission into this generalized system of reciproc- ity, then it seems clear that respecting moral constraints also generates benefi ts. The primary difference between morality and prudence is simply that, in the lat- ter case, the long-term benefi ts are secured through one’s own agency, whereas in the former case, they are mediated through the agency of another, namely, the person whose reciprocity is secured thanks to one’s compliance with the moral law. Thus moral philosophers have labored long and hard to show that morality is also a component of self-interest, correctly understood. Such an argument, were it to be carried through successfully, would not only solve one of the central puzzles in our understanding of morality but would also constitute a decisive refutation of moral skepticism, since it would provide a reason for acting mor- ally that, in principle, any rational person should be obliged to acknowledge. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to develop this argument in a thor- oughly convincing way. When the idea is sketched out at a high level of abstrac- tion, it seems enormously plausible. Certainly it cannot be a coincidence that, on the one hand, people feel obliged to respect moral obligations, and on the other hand, very signifi cant cooperative benefi ts are realized when everyone respects such obligations. But whenever anyone has tried to work out the details in a rig- orous manner—to show how you get from one hand to the other—the argument always seems to require some philosophical prestidigitation at a key point. Furthermore, no matter how ingenious the argumentation strategy, the phenomenology of moral life remains stubbornly resistant to this sort of reduc- tion. Many people fi nd Immanuel Kant’s analysis of common-sense morality, in the fi rst part of the Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals, intuitively correct.1 Morality imposes duties, in the form of actions that must be performed for their own sake, and not for the sake of some anticipated reward. If morality were just some indirect way of advancing one’s personal interests, then it wouldn’t really be morality any more. Thus the phenomenology of moral life—the way that moral obligations are experienced by the individual, at the point of action— remains resolutely deontic. And yet if one takes this phenomenology seriously, then the puzzle about deontic constraint imposes itself with renewed force: How is it possible that, even though it may not be in one’s interest to act morally, it is still rational to do so? Much as this may seem like a timeless and eternal question, there have been a number of recent theoretical developments that promise to make it more trac- table. The term “self-interest” has always tended to be vague. It is possible to offer a much sharper characterization of the phenomenon of deontic constraint by distinguishing a concern over the character of an action from a concern over its consequences. When Kant distinguished a categorical imperative (“do x”) from Introduction 5 a hypothetical imperative (“if you want y, do x”), what he set up in effect was an opposition between actions valued for their own sake, or for their intrinsic properties, and actions valued for their consequences.