Nathan Biebel's August Paper & Talk

Hi all, 

After reading Daniel's paper and realizing that I also have a paper not yet published on the same topic, it seemed fitting to take the second spot for the talks on the 20th this month. As such, I have attached it here and will (very briefly) present it to you all. However, since it is a read-ahead thing for which you will already have the paper, I won't spend very much time presenting it so that we can have more time for discussion. 

I will be using the same link as Daniel, so no fresh link here! 

If you have the time and inclination then please do send comments to [email protected]

See you all then! 

Nathan

Download Reasonable Standards and Moral Ignorance - anon Copy

Abstract:

It is widely agreed that ignorance of fact exculpates, but does moral ignorance exculpate? If so, does it exculpate in the same way as non-moral ignorance? In this paper I will argue that on one family of views explaining exculpating non-moral ignorance also explains exculpating moral ignorance. The view can be loosely stated in the following way: ignorance counts as an excuse only if it is the result of a failure to meet some applicable reasonable standard—call this the Reasonable Standards Thesis and call views that accept some version of this principle reasonable standards views. I argue that any plausible reasonable standards view ought to allow that moral ignorance exculpates, at least sometimes, and defend such views against the charge that they are susceptible to clear counterexamples.

Comments

[Alessandro Fiorello]

Buonasera, Nathan

It was a really good idea to pair your paper with Daniel as it really provides a nice framing for the topic.

So that we avoid misunderstandings your paper seeks to establish what you call the Reasonable Standards View (p. 1), which is the thesis that there is a symmetry between ignorance excusing blame for non-moral facts and ignorance excusing blame for moral facts. Or to put it another way: we let people off the hook in certain situations when they are ignorant of non-moral facts and this standard applies to ignorance of moral facts, at least sometimes. The thesis is presented as a family of views in the form of the principle (p.4) you give which says ignorance is not exculpating only if that ignorance is the result of a failure to meet an applicable reasonable standard.

I am not clear though on how strong that principle is and in just what way moral ignorance does and does not get someone off the hook. Take the example of Sally the slaveholder that I think is in Daniel's paper. Sally lives in a society where slavery is accepted as an acceptable practice. Let us say she is mean to her slaves and so she can she they protest to their enslavement but she brushes it off. Sally's culture socializes an immoral practice and so it the standard of reasonable includes holding slaves. Is Sally blameworthy for her culturally conditioned moral ignorance on the Reasonable Standard View?

I love the discussion of Wolf. You briefly discuss tracing (p.12). You say you are dubious of the relevance of teenage Jeff's decision to blaming adult Jeff for his jerk like behavior. I wondered if you want to side step the debate over tracing and just say we have reasons independent of tracing to blame Jeff? Or is this view anti-tracing or dubious of the relevance of tracing?

Great paper and I look forward to Saturday.

Ciao,
Alessandro

[Nathan Biebel]

Thanks for your questions Alessandro!

To make one small clarification to the way you depict my main thesis: the idea is whatever explanation you give for why regular non-moral ignorance exculpates that is the explanation you should also offer for cases of moral ignorance. My main aim here is not to adjudicate between any particular difficult borderline case. The question at issue is whether moral ignorance EVER exculpates - not whether it exculpates in any particular case or another.

So, answering whether that slave owner meets the applicable reasonable standard depends on two things - your favorite fine grained view of what counts as reasonable coupled with the empirical facts at the time. Gideon Rosen (from whom that case was taken originally) says she is excused because it would not be reasonable to expect otherwise. Others deny that, but denying it does not require that one go so far as to say that such a case shows moral ignorance simply cannot ever exculpate. It merely requires that one deny that the empirical facts make it reasonable for her to continue on in such a false belief. For my part, I take that latter route as recent evidence suggests that slavery has pretty much always been opposed in some fashion so I find the claim that she is reasonable in continuing to believe it's morally acceptable rather dubious, but again, it will depend on what was true at the time. But again, my argument is just that if you hold a reasonable standards view you should be willing to admit that there is such a thing as a reasonable but false moral belief, and such moral beliefs ought to exculpate. We can quibble about the harder, more fuzzy cases, but that will not take away from the fact that some cases obviously do not exculpate and so no reasonable standard would ever say it does, and there are other cases where it is clear that the belief is not unreasonable and in such cases that person ought to be excused.

Though, for my money, I think most people in our western society today would treat the salve owner case like they would treat JoJo - there's not no way a reasonable person could genuinely hold such a belief. However you explain that: it is unjustified, the result of epistemic vice, she negligently fails to improve her cognitive position, etc. That said, I wasn't around in the time period in which we are meant to be thinking of Sally within - so we think of her that way, but that is because we have trouble even parsing a case like that. How could ANYONE believe something so obviously false?! (like JoJo). But I believe I have a footnote even in discussing JoJo that this is more about how we think than it is about the truth of the case - perhaps JoJo (or Sally) just is so different from us in her epistemic circumstances that we can't rightly judge the case. That will be an empirical matter, and I think Rosen oversteps in being so adamant that the salve owner "couldn't know better" - we don't know that because we don't know what evidence and opposition existed at the time.

Re: Jeff the Jerk
I don't want to side-step the tracing issue per se. I know Vargas originally gave the case as a counterexample to tracing, which is why he claims it is unreasonable to expect Jeff to foresee how his teenage behavior would effect him later in life (and this is the claim Fischer and Tognazzini respond to by saying 'no, actually it is perfectly reasonable to expect that').

For my part, I don't think tracing needs to be invoked in that case at all. We can explain Jeff's blameworthiness as a straightforward case of knowing wrongdoing since, assuming he is a competent rational adult, we can therefore assume he is aware of minimal epistemic standards of self-reflection. In other words Jeff KNOWS he ought to give some thought to his behavior, but he doesn't, and if he doesn't know that then he really isn't a competent rational adult capable of taking part in ordinary social interaction. It's not part of the case, but if you think about what it would mean to say he doesn't know that it becomes evident. Imagine that someone did not know you ought to reflect on your behavior - that would mean he can never, ever say of another person that they should "think before they act!" or "stop and think about what you are doing!" or protest when other people treat him poorly. He couldn't protest that because the norm upon which such protestations are built is the very ordinary norm that people ought to be reflective. Such a person would be so unusually odd that I have trouble even describing him!

So, back to your question: I don't think it is a non-tracing case at all. We don't need to trace Jeff's ignorance back to some prior failure that gave rise to it at all. It's just a straightforward instance of knowing wrongdoing.

(Cards on the table: I think the same thing is true of all of Vargas' cases. None of them are genuinely non-tracing cases. He's just mistaking what we would need to "trace" things back TO. Which is the same thing I would say about nearly every non-tracing type case. But that's another topic for another time! We can discuss that one over email if you like.)

[Mikayla]

Hi Nathan,

I found your paper to be such a smooth and clear read! I also found it largely persuasive. I have a couple friendly questions/suggestions, and then I have one flatfooted worry.

1. I am wondering what you think the relationship is between the reasonable standard that governs non-moral ignorance exculpation and the reasonable standard that governs moral ignorance exculpation. My thought is that they might work in importantly and interestingly different ways. For example, here is a thought: for (pretty much) any non-moral proposition, someone sufficiently like us might come to a reasonable but false view about it; but there are a number of moral propositions which someone sufficiently like us could not possibly come to a reasonable but false view about. For the latter, I am thinking of basic moral truths like that murdering innocent children is wrong. This is just a suggestion for how this notion of reasonable standard might differ when it comes to moral/non-moral propositions; even if it fails, there may be other interesting differences worth exploring further.

2. I was wondering how you think moral encroachment interacts with your view. One thing I thought is that you might get a tension between the non-moral reasonable standard thesis and the moral reasonable standard thesis in these cases. I am thinking of cases where someone has very good but misleading evidence for some non-moral belief p and then harms someone else on the basis of p. There are also very good moral reasons against having the belief p that were clearly available to the person but which they did not see. Should we think that this person’s combined moral and non-moral ignorance is exculpating? Well, according to the reasonable standard thesis, the moral ignorance is not exculpating but the non-moral ignorance is exculpating. So what’s the final verdict here? I see this comment as relating to my first about how these two reasonable standards interact with one another.

3. Finally, I agree with your discussion of Harman’s examples. But it also seems like a very strong claim to say that it is *impossible* for someone sufficiently like us to come to a reasonably formed but false moral belief that they then act on in a blameworthy way. The Reasonable Standard Thesis is committed to this strong claim, but I was not convinced of it; I can’t shake the feeling that we could “thread the needle” and come up with such an example. I realize this is a flatfooted worry and more should be said to motivate it, but that’s the basic thought.

Unfortunately, I cannot make it to the talks on Saturday but I hope they are helpful.

Mikayla

[Nathan Biebel]

Mikayla, thanks so much for your comments! Let me just offer some brief responses:

Re (1): Actually what you've articulated here is basically my view. Any reasonable standard must be such that there are things which nobody sufficiently like us (e.g. nobody to which the standard applies) could possibly believe. This is true of non-moral beliefs (e.g. the Earth is flat is not a reasonable belief for someone sufficiently like us, and if your standard allows that it is then there's something wrong with your standard). My claim is that this is true of moral beliefs as well - so yes there will be beliefs (like JoJo's belief that torturing innocent citizens on a whim is permissible) that are just not going to be reasonable for anyone sufficiently like us - so if your standard allows it to count as reasonable something is wrong with your standard. So I think my account largely agrees with you.

Re (2):
Well, I really don't know what to make of the claim that there are 'moral reasons to believe' that are not also just epistemic reasons. Is the thought that it might do moral harm if I discover the truth so there is a moral reason not to believe X but epistemic reasons to believe it? I know people make such a claim but I admit I have trouble understanding it. Most of the time the reasons speaking against "believing X" tend to be reasons to avoid looking into X, not reasons that speak directly against the belief itself - so, suppose a very loyal and loving Mother's son is in trouble and being tried for murder. He tells her that he didn't do it and begs her to believe him. It might be that she is morally motivated to believe him and so she does. But this moral reason to believe him is just a reason not to look into it any further, e.g. it's a moral reason not to gather more evidence because one's moral commitment dictates that his word is good enough. I don't know what to say about such cases, but I think pragmatic encroachment is true so I'm happy to admit that how much evidence one is required to gather depends deeply on one's contexts and commitments, so we can build that right into the reasonable standard. Does this answer your question?

Re (3):
I don't claim that it is impossible for someone sufficiently like us to come to a reasonable but false moral belief. Indeed, I claim the opposite. I is totally possible. One of either James and Jane has exactly that: a reasonably held but false moral belief! Did that not come through?

[Mikayla]

Re (3): the suggestion was I find it hard to believe that it is impossible for someone sufficiently like us to come to a reasonable but false moral belief *that they are then blameworthy for acting on*. I think that's was the Reasonable Standard Thesis implies?

Thanks for your other responses!