PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES IN

Editors:

WILFRID S ELLARS, University o[Pittsburgh

K EI T H LEHRER, University ofArizona

Board of Consulting Editors:

J 0 NA T HA N BENNETT, University of British Co/umbia

A LA N GIB BA R D, University of Pittsburgh

ROBER T ST A LN AKER, Cornell University

ROBERT G. TVRNBVLL,OhioStateUniversity

VOLUMEI3 VALUES AND MORALS VALDES AND MORALS Essays in Honor of Wil/iam Frankena, Char/es Stevenson, and

Edited by

ALVIN I. GOLDMAN and JAEGWON KIM The

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Values and morals. (Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. 13) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Frankena, William K. - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Stevenson, Charles Leslie, 1908- Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Brandt, Richard B. - Addresses, essays, lectures. 1. Frankena, William K. II. Stevenson, Charles Leslie, 1908- III. Brandt, Richard B. IV. Goldman, Alvin 1.,1938- V. Kim, Jaegwon. BJlOI2.V34 170 78-16409 ISBN 978-90-481-8352-4 ISBN 978-94-015-7634-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7634-5

Ali Rights Reserved Copyright © 1978 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Orgina1ly published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1978 and copyrightholders as specified on appropriate pages within No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner T ABLE OF CONTENTS

A R T H UR W. B U R KS / Preface vii

DA V I D L Y 0 N S / Mill's Theory of Justice I I The Irrterest in Liberty on the Scales 21 W. V. QUINE/ On the Nature ofMoral Values 37 J 0 H N RA wL s I The Basic Structure as 4 7 R. M. HARE / Relevance 73 ALL AN GIBBAR D I Act-Utilitarian Agreements 91 RODERICK M. CHISHOLM / lntrinsic Value 121 J. o. URMSON I The Goals of Action 131 GILBE R T HA R MAN/ What is Moral Relativism? 143 MONROE C. BEARDSLEY/Intending 163 H 0 L LY s. Go L DM AN I Doing the Best One Can 185 R 0 DER I c K F IR T H I Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts? 215 KURT BA I ER / Moral Reasons and Reasons To Be Moral 231 WARREN S. Q U IN N / Moral and Other Realisms: Some Initial Difficulties 257 WI L LI AM P. ALSTON / Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology 275 RICHARD WASSERSTROM / Some Problems in the Definition and Justification of Punishment 299

BIBLIOGRAPHIES William K. Frankena 317 Charles L. Stevensan 323 Richard B. Brandt 325

INDEX OF NAMES 329 CHARLES STEVENSO

RICHARD BRANDT PREFACE

This Festschrift seeks to honor three highly distinguished scholars in the Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan: William K. Frankena, Charles L. Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt. Each has made significant con• tributions to the philosophic literature, particularly in the field of ethics. Michigan has been fortunate in having three such original and productive moral philosophers serving ob its faculty simultaneously. Yet they stand in a long tradition of excellence, both within the Department and in the University. Let us trace that tradition briefly. The University of Michigan opened in 184l.lts Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts at first resembled a typical American college ofthat period, with religious and ethical indoctrination playing a central role in course offerings. But when Henry Tappan, a Presbyterian clergyman and Professor of philosophy, became President in 1852, he succeeded in shifting the emphasis from indoctrination to inquiry and scholarship. Though he was dismissed for his policies in 1863, Tappan's efforts to establish a broad and liberal curriculum prevailed. Michigan was to take its place among the leading educational institutions in this country, and to achieve an international reputation as a research center. Several past philosophers are worthy of mention here. George Sylvester Morris, an absolute idealist, joined the Department in 1881, having served from 1870 as Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. He assumed the Chairmanship of Philosophy in 1884. Morris had taught the fall terms at Johns Hopkins from 1881 until1884, and there one of his students was John Dewey, who was strongly influenced by Morris' Hegelianism. When Dewey completed his doctorate in 1884, Morris brought him to Michigan, where he taught psychology before becom• ing interested in ethics, social philosophy, and education. John Dewey became Chairman in 1889 and hired James H. Tufts and George Herbert Mead, both of whom, like Dewey, were to become prag• matists. By 1894, all three had been attracted to the newly established University of Chicago. Upon Dewey's departure, Robert Mark Wenley, an absolute idealist trained under Edward Caird at Glasgow University, was made Chairman. He added

vii viü AR THUR W. BURKS

two young philosophers to the staff, both of whom were destined to dis• tinguish themselves: Roy Wood Sellars, in 1905, and DeWitt H. Parker, in 1908. Sellars, a particularly prolific writer, was a critical realist and evolutionary naturalist. Parker was a panpsychist and voluntarist in meta-physics; in particular, he applied voluntarism to both ethics and . DeWitt Parker became Chairman in 1929, after Wenley's death, and served until 1947. Interestingly, Parker chose C. H. Langford, coauthor of the pioneering Symbolic Logic with C. I. Lewis (1932), to replace Wenley. Thus the Department's last absolute idealist was replaced by a mathematical logician. Of the three philosophers honored in this volume, was first to join the Department, in 1937, having taken his Ph.D. at Harvard. Earlier, DeWitt Parker, Roy Wood Sellars, and C. H. Langford had all taught him as a graduate student at Michigan. Frankena was especially interested in Parker's naturalistic ethics, in which the good was defined as that which satisfies desire. Parker worked out the implications ofthis definitioninHuman Values (1931). Much later, Frankena was to edit Parker's The Philosophy of Value for posthumaus publication (1957). William Frankena was Chairman of the Department of Philosophy from 1947 until 1961, years that saw an already distinguished department of six grow to an even more widely recognized department of twelve. In 1946, Charles Stevensou was welcomed to Michigan, having earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1935 and having taught both there and at Yale, his under• graduate alma mater. Richard Brandt succeeded Frankenaas Chairman in 1964. He had received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1936, and had taught at Swarthmore College for twenty-seven years, during nineteen of which he had held the departmental chairmanship. The administrative skills he brought to his new post served the University and the Department well for thirteen years. * The biographies of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brandt have much in common, including their entry into the world at roughly the same time. Frankena and Stevensan were born only six days apart, on June 21 and June 27, respectively, in 1908; Brandt wasbornon October 17, 1910. All three graduated from college in 1930, studied at Cambridge University for varying lengths of time before completing their doctorates in this country, PREFACE ix and commenced their teaching careers in the mid-thirties. The Michigan Department of Philosophy is also losing their services at about the same time: Stevenson retired in 1977; Frankena in 1978; and Brandt will retire in 1981. Needless to say, all three are still actively engaged in philosophic research at this writing. Each in his own style has excelled in teaching, at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels, bringing remarkable freshness and ingenuity to the classroom. Together, they have contributed in many and varied fashions to the intellectual, cultural, administrative, and social life of the institutions where they have taught. Frankena, Stevenson, and Brandt have also been similarly recognized for their professional accomplishments. All received Guggenheim Fellowships, were Fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, received the Distinguished Achievement Award from The University of Michigan, and were elected to the Presidency of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division. Let us turn now to a more detailed sketch of each of these men, in order of age as weil as of joining the faculty of The University of Michigan. With the reader's indulgence, I shall refer to them henceforth, on occasion, as Bill, Steve, and Dick, as they are affectionately known to their colleagues and their many friends outside the Department. * * William Klaas Frankena was born in 1908 in Montana, of parents who had emigrated from the Netherlands. Soon thereafter, the family settled in Zeeland, Michigan. Bill graduated from Calvin College in 1930, majoring in English Iiterature and philosophy. He entered the Graduate School of The University of Michigan that same year, and in 1933 passed the preliminary examinations. At this juncture, he decided to transfer his doctoral studies to Harvard: the depression was in its depths, openings in philosophy were extremely scarce, and he saw an opportunity to broaden his intellectual base. Charles Stevenson also enrolled at Harvard in 19~3, and a close friendship soon developed between the two couples, Bill and Sadie Frankena and Charles and Louise Stevenson. Frankena studied at Harvard with C. I. Lewis, R. B. Perry, and A. N. Whitehead. He spent the year 1935-36 at Cambridge University, where he studied with G. E. Moore and C. D. Broad. He wrote his thesis on intuition• ism in ethics, receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1937. From that thesis X AR THUR W. BURKS came his highly regarded article, 'The Naturalistic Fallacy ,' published in in 1939, in which he refuted Moore's claim that every naturalistic definition of good is fallacious. Bill retumed to Michigan as an Instructor in 1937, coincidentally with the arrival of another outstanding expositor, Paul Henle. Paul and Bill were to become close colleagues, as weil as fast personal friends. Together they under• took to improve and expand the curriculum. In particular, their new intro• ductory course, Phil. 34, not only achieved fame on campus, but set a pattem that was followed for years to come. It was organized around a core of selected readings from Plato, Lucretius, Descartes, Berkeley, and James; whereas beginning philosophy at Michigan at that time was taught as a survey of problems,_utilizing a single textbook. Frankena and Hen1e were perfect complements for a joint offering of a large lecture course: the one, tall, lean, quiet, studious, determined; the other, smaller, aggressive, quick, ready to take any side of a question for the sheer pleasure of debate. They worked their students hard, but the students responded readily to the original materials and to the enthusiasm and skill of ~e lecturers. It was a special treat to attend one of the Frankena-Henle sessions in which they took opposite sides of some basic philosophic issues. Paul relished assuming an extreme position and defending it to the hilt, with clever and prickly argumentative twists; while Bill systematically and decisively exposed its defects, to the pleasure and enlightenment of everyone. During his long career, William Frankena has published many articles in theoretical ethics, applied ethics, and the philosophy of education. The most important of those in ethics have been collected in Perspectives on Morality• Essays by William K. Frankena, 1976, edited by his former graduate student, Kenneth E. Goodpastor. Frankena's Ethics appeared in 1963. In just one hundred pages, he pre• sented a rigorous, balanced, and critical review of the central issues of the whole subject. A second edition appeared in 1973. It has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. Bill's influence on philosophy students at Michigan has been enormous. For many years he taught a course in the history of ethics, taken by most graduate students. They invariably acclaimed this course for the assiduousness and fair-mindness with which the positions and contributions of each thinker were formulated and expounded. Even as his retirement commences, Bill is busy writing a history of ethics that is certain to become the definitive work in the field. PREFACE xi

Frankena's interest in the philosophy of education is of long standing, and he has frequently offered courses in it. His Three Historical of Education: Aristotle, Kant, Dewey appeared in 1965; in that same year, Frankena was elected to the National Academy of Education. William Frankena has been a visiting professor at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Tokyo. In 1974, he was designated Carus Lecturer of the American Philosophical Association, and was also named to the Roy WoodSeilars Chair in Philosophy at Michigan. When he retired in 1978, he had served the Department for forty-one years. While on retirement furlough, he was appointed Distinguished Faculty Lecturer in the College of Uterature, Science and the _Arts at The University of Michigan; the first to be singled out for this newly-established honorary lectureship. No tribute to William Frankena would be complete without special men• tion of the contribution he and Sadie made, over those forty-one years, to the University community through their gracious hospitality. At recent retire• ment functions for them, it came out repeatedly that the first people new• comers to the Department had met were the Frankenas; orthat it was at the Frankenas' that members of the Department had met certain others from out• side the Department; or that the Frankenas had consistently welcomed the office staff, graduate students, and visiting faculty into their home and helped them and their families to find their way in unfamiliar surroundings. Together, they made countless lives easier, and happier. * * * Charles Leslie Stevenson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1908. He studied at Yale, where he majored in English literature, completing his B.A. in 1930. He then went to Cambridge University to continue his study of literature, only to be attracted to philosophy by G. E. Moore and . He earned a Cambridge B.A. in philosophy in 1933, and a Harvard Ph.D. in· 1935. At Cambridge, Steve had attended most of Wittgenstein's courses and dis• cussion seminars, and he and Louise had entertained Wittgenstein socially on several occasions. I once asked Steve if he had experienced any difficulty over Wittgenstein's well-known sensitivity concerning the publication, by his students or associates, of ideas he feit had originated with him. Steve replied that he had not, and that his ethics had actually been influenced by Wittgenstein only in a very general way. "Indeed," he added with charac• teristic airiness and pungency, "one reason I chose to write on ethics was xii ARTHUR W. BURKS precisely because I did not know what Wittgenstein thought about the subject." After finishing at Harvard, Stevensan stayed on for a few years and taught. In that period, three essays on his emotive theory appeared in Mind: 'The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms' (1937), 'Ethical Judgments and Avoid• ability' (1938), and 'Persuasive Definitions' (1938). Charles Stevensan joined the faculty of Yale as an Assistant Professor in 1939. He remairred there for seven years, after which he was let go, largely owing to his philosophic views. Steve had published Ethics and Language, the definitive statement of his emotive theory of ethics, in 1944. At that time, positivism was unpopular among most traditional American philosophers, including some of Steve's senior colleagues at Yale. Positivism in ethics was especially unpalatable to the traditionalists. Some even feit that Steve's ethics could corrupt morality by removing its objective basis. One declared that Stevensan had "committed positivism"! All of this occurred despite the fact that Stevenson's emotive theory was a meta-ethics, not a normative ethics. Moreover, he was always at pains to point out that his theory had no direct implications for ethical norms. On the final page of Ethics and Language he wrote, "The most significant moral issues, then, begin at the point where our study must end." lt is regrettable that Steve's positivistic ethical position led to his discharge at Yale. The Michigan Department of Philosophy, on the other hand, was delighted to learn that Stevensan was available. No one shared Yale's view that any moral implications of a philosopher's meta-ethics, however radical, should constitute a reason for not hiring him. Thus, he joined the Michigan faculty in 1946, as an Associate Professor, and stayed for thirty-one years, teaching and writing with equal vigor and success. The University and the Department were most fortunate. Charles Stevenson's articles and books have been widely read, bothin this country and abroad, especially in England. Overall, they have had an immense impact on the philosophic world. Ethics and Language went through many printings and was ultimately translated into ltalian, Spanish, and Japanese. Discussions of and rejoinders to emotive ethics still appear in the literature. In 1963, Steve published Facts and Values, a collection of nearly all his papers in ethics. In one ofthese, he explains his indebtedness to John Dewey, a predecessor of his at Michigan. The volume concludes with a new essay entitled, 'Retrospective Comments.' Charles Stevensan is clearly one of the most important and influential PREFACE xiii moral philosophers of the century. His Ethics and Language is perhaps the mostoriginal work in meta-ethics since G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica. In recent years, Steve had continued to refine his emotive ethics, has developed a parallel theory of aesthetic evaluation, and has delved into such diverse disciplines as the logic of subjunctives and the relation of poetry to music. lt seems fitting here to remark upon Charles Stevenson's profound and abiding interest in music; indeed, upon his entire family's devotion to music and the world of musicians. The piano and the cello have con• stituted an essential element of his daily life. I recall the afternoon, years ago, when my wife and I dropped in on him and Louise and found parts of one of their two grand pianos systematically distributed over the floor. Steve was experimenting with tuning and repair! He and his wife Nora, whom he married after Louise's death, have continued to reach out to the musical community and have been active participants in a number of ensembles, as weil as informal, often spontaneous, musical gatherings. Let us conclude with a story Steve used to teil his undergraduate classes. lt is typical of the pedagogical techniques that gave his lectures their clarity and appeal. Imagine a neurosurgeon whose expertise on the human brain and whose knowledge of daily events are such that he can, with probes, dictate a sub• ject's experiences. After he has implanted electrodes in the brain of a certain male volunteer, the surgeon causes him to experience the removal of the probes, although they are still in place; then to experience going home through the rain, spending the night with his wife, receiving a call from the surgeon in the morning asking him to return to the laboratory, and returning - all this while he is, in fact, still on the operating table. The next day, the surgeon does actually remove the electrodes and sends the subject home, whereupon his wife inquires indignantly, "Where were you last night?" "Right here with you," the man replies. "Oh, no, you weren't," she rejoins, "and I can prove it. I had the whole neighborhood out searching for you." Then the enlightened husband smiles and says, "Ah, now I see. That surgeon fooled me. He made me think I came home. But I was on the operating table the whole time." His smile quickly fades, however, never to return, because from that point forward the poor fellow can never be certain he is not still on the operating table. xiv ARTHUR W. BURKS

Steve would close a lecture with this story. In the next session, he would introduce the concept of Cartesian skepticism. * * * * Richard Booker Brandt was bom in Wilmington, Ohio, in 1910. He graduated from Denison University in 1930, with majors in both philosophy and classical studies, after which he entered Cambridge University. There he com• pleted a second B.A. in 1933, in the philosophy of religion, and then stayed on for an additional year of study. At Cambridge, he worked with F. R. Tennant, theologian and philosopher of religion, and began the research on Schleiermacher that was to form the substance of his doctoral dissertation and his first major publication, The Philosophy o[ Friedrich Schleiermacher, which appeared in 1941. That work remains the best study in English of Protestantism's great nineteenth-century systematic theologian. Dick spent the year 1934-35 at the University of Tübingen, after which he returned to this country and Yale, where he received his Ph.D. in 1936. Given the scarcity of jobs at that time, he remained at Yale for another year, on fellowship, devoting hirnself primarily to the study of logical positivism; his first article, criticizing positivism, was published in 1938. In 1937, Richard Brandt began his long association with Swarthmore College, which proved an ideal milieu for further expansion of his philosophic interests; indeed, for expansion into several outside disciplines and inter• disciplinary pursuits. Swarthmore was a small and wealthy college of such high academic stand• ing that it not only attracted superior scholars to its staff, but enjoyed a steady stream of prominent visitors. Moreover, in an undergraduate college, one was inevitably drawn into the teaching of a wide variety of courses, as weil as into close intellectual contact with colleagues in other departments. A third factor that affected Dick was the disruption in academia caused by World War II. Thus, in his first year at Swarthmore, he was called upon to teach both philosophy of religion and philosophy of science, in the latter of which he developed an interest that persisted through the war years, when he found hirnself immersed in mathematics and physics. His interest in epistemology, on which he has written a number of influential papers, also arose from a teaching assignment, in 1946. It was during those early years at Swarthmore, too, that ethics came tobe PREFACE XV the focus of Brandt's research; henceforth, his concern over the good and the right was to be central to his philosophic thought. The two main areas outside philosophy that appealed to him were psychology and anthropology. Psychology at Swarthmore was extremely strong, particularly in the area of perception. The psychological theories of attitudes and of motivation, as they relate to values, have played a large role in the long-range development of Brandt's ethical position. Wolfgang Köhler was one of many psychologists who influenced Brandt. Köhler, whose own interests embraced several disciplines, taught at Swarthmore from 1935 until 1957; he and Brandt exchanged ideas frequently, and together they offered a seminar on the mind-body problem. Anthropology similarly intrigued Brandt, and, again, he was concerned with the place of ethical values. He devoted his Guggenheim fellowship in 1945-46 to an exploration of that problem; later, his Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis (1954), based upon actual research among the Hopis of Arizona, combined his empirical and ethical views. lt has been a Iandmark in the use of anthropological data to examine fundamental philosophic issues. I would like at this point to inject a personal note, since I first came to know Dick Brandt during the war, when I lived in Philadelphia. Those were unusual times, of course, and untypical for philosophy in many ways. Yet, philosophers in the Swarthmore-Bryn Mawr-Haverford• Penn region kept in touch, through monthly meetings of the Fullerton Club and through informal social events. No one was warmer and more solicitous than Dick and Betty Brandtin that stressful period. Brandt's Ethical Theory was published in 1959. lt is a comprehensive and systematic treatise covering both normative ethics and meta-ethics. His own position as set forthin this volume, a form of rule-utilitarianism, has been the object of considerable debate. Ethical Theory has been reprinted several tim es, having become a primary source in moral philosophy. Overall, Brandt has produced not only several noteworthy books, but many sound articles. Since coming to Michigan in 1964, he has published a number ofnormative discussions of current topics, including war, suicide, and abortion. His crowning achievement in ethics, a work entitled A Theory of the Good and the Right, is in press at this writing. In this book, Brandt addresses two traditional ethical questions: What is worth wanting? What is morally right? To analyze and answer these questions, he employs certain untraditional types of evidence and modes of reasoning. He draws important implications, xvi ARTHUR W. BURKS not only for personal decision-making, but for the moral appraisal of individ• ual and societal actions. In addition to his research accomplishments, Brandt has been a superb teacher: at Swarthmore and at Michigan, he has trained many students who are now recognized philosophers. Needless to say, he has been an excellent administrator, as weil, serving the two institutions most ably for a combined total of some thirty years! Among other honors, Richard Brandt was chosen to give the John Locke lectures at Oxford in 1974; and he hasservedas President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. His has been and continues to be a distinguished career, marked by breadth of philosophic outlook. Moreover, the very qualities that stimulated his broad outlook have also constituted his basic approach, whether to administration, to teaching, to writing, or to the arena of scholars. That is to say, thorough acquaintance with the field - his knowledge of philosophers, past and present, is extraordinary- coupled with careful nurturing of that acquaintance. Steadfastness and thoroughness are indeed his hallmark.

* * * * *

William K. Frankena, Charles L. Stevenson, and Richard Brandt have contri• buted beyond measure to the intellectuallife of The University ofMichigan. Each of them has shouldered more than one professor's share of responsi• bility for the growth and quality of the Department of Philosophy and for representing both the Department and the University throughout the world. Each has ungrudgingly joined in the search for likely candidates to fill vacancies, has affered stimulating papers at departmental colloquia, and, perhaps most valuably of all, has given freely of his time to colleagues and students in quest of new solutions and new approaches to philosophic prob• lems. In addition, each has made important contributions in areas outside philosophy proper. Tagether, these three have made the Michigan philosophy department exciting, congenial, and conducive to hard, but rewarding, work. Lastly, they and their wives have generously opened their homes to all, in a manner that was not the pattern in an earlier era and that has become all but impossible in today's complex academic environment. PREFACE xvii

We at Michigan and scholars everywhere are in their debt. lt is in a spirit of gratitude and esteem, then, that the editors and authors of this Festschrift tender these essays.

The University of Michigan ARTHUR W. BURKS