I'm not sure how much we really disagree here. Your comments about physics suggest that you're thinking about "primitives" in a different sense from what I'm trying to get at.
I have pretty deflationary instincts here, and try to stress in the paper that I take my view to be compatible with reasons fundamentalism, for example (in contrast to those who think there are really deep questions about priority to answer here).
My goals are more pragmatic. Moral philosophers use various concepts in their theorizing, and may differ in which they *treat* as fundamental, or determinative of substantive (vs merely verbal) disagreement. (If you disagree in your application of a fundamental concept, then you have a substantive disagreement. If you disagree in applying merely derivative concepts, the disagreement may be merely verbal.) Different concepts are more or less illuminating, or more or less likely to lead them astray. I argue that fittingness is the best concept for moral philosophers to *treat as fundamental* when expressing their theories and disagreements with one another. Why?
Well, in short, the two main alternatives have simple flaws.
Value primitivism leads philosophers like Toby Ord to think that "Global Consequentialism" is importantly distinct from (and superior to) Act Consequentialism. As I argue in the paper, it isn't.
Reasons fundamentalism invites the "wrong kind of reasons problem". Way too much ink has been spilled on this pseudo-problem.
Fittingness avoids both these problems, and doesn't introduce any new ones. So the Fittingness framework is better.
I agree that we're talking about primitives in a different sense. However, I think mine is the more reasonable definition -- I take mine to be the question that's asked on the phil papers survey, for example. Examples like physics show that the primitive concept is the most basic irreducible concept -- I take that to be value (or maybe something else like importance). If we accept the value primitivism can give an account of fittingness, which can give an account of the rest of our normative concepts, then it seems like we have reason to be value primitivists in the sense that I mean.
I haven't thought too much about global consequentialism, but what you say sounds plausible. I think I also agree with what you say about reasons fundamentalism.
One point that's worth making is that taking fitness to be reducible to value means that we only have to posit one fundamental normative concept, while non-consequentialists (or people who think we have reasons that don't stem from value) have to posit multiple that are distinct. This thus favors consequentialism.
I'm skeptical that fittingness can be reduced to value. Three problems:
(1) You suggested an account of fitting desire and of fitting belief, but not of fittingness per se.
(2) Worse, you define 'epistemic value' as "the facts that give us epistemic reasons", so aren't you really taking (fitting) reasons as conceptually more fundamental here?
(3) It seems you'll need to proliferate types of "value" for all the other types of fitting attitudes (e.g. emotions). All of which raises messy questions about why we should regard these things as truly "values" at all, and (if they are really valuable) why consequentialists shouldn't be concerned to maximize them. (Is it a good deal to kill one person to save five true beliefs?)
Note that answering (1) seems likely to make (2) worse. Consider the following candidate analysis: "fittingness in general is a matter of having an attitude whose object has the right kind of value. What kind of value is that? The kind of value that makes that kind of attitude towards that object fitting."
That doesn't sound like value. That sounds like a stipulative redefinition of 'value' that really bottoms out in reasons of fittingness.
Of course, I agree that it's the reason-giving facts that *do the normative work*, and so are *normatively* fundamental. But that's a separate matter from *conceptual* priority.
(1) I think that for anything you use fittingness to explain, we can find a prior account in terms of either value or some other things -- I'll return to this more in point 3.
(2) I don't think there's a fact of the matter about which is conceptually more fundamental. It's not a definition -- it's a substantive property -- pleasure is valuable which entails having the substantive properties of giving us reasons to pursue it.
(3) I'd give a reductionist account of fitting emotions. An emotion is fitting if it is accurate -- so for example, it's fitting to be scared about existential risks because they are dangerous. The account may be more complex than that -- it would depend on the concept.
I wasn't intending to define value -- I was intending to describe a necessary property of it. Sord've like if we have most reason to pursue x, then we ought to pursue x. In this case, the reasons ground the ought claims, even though it will never be the case that we ought to do things which we have no reason to do.
I think we maybe agree that fittingness is conceptually fundamental, in that they are plausibly the most useful (maybe reasons are more useful -- I'll have to think more about it, though as you say, the views are compatible).
At this point, I'm not quite sure we're disagreeing, except about whether values are what give rise to fittingness in normative domains/
Maybe the true normative primitive is evolutionary fitness — or more precisely, the set of moral desires evolution gifted us because it expected them to maximize our evolutionary fitness.
While that might explain our moral beliefs, I don't think it's the sole normative primitive. Evolution similarly explains our scientific beliefs, but evolutionary fitness isn't the primitive concept in physics, biology, or mathematics. Rather, the question would be what the most primitive normative concept imbued in us by evolution would be.
On an unrelated note, I cited the website electionbettingodds of you and Stossel in high school debate.
On another unrelated note, I wrote out a previous comment and thought I'd replied, but it seems to have disappeared, but if you see two comments, that explains why.
I'm not sure how much we really disagree here. Your comments about physics suggest that you're thinking about "primitives" in a different sense from what I'm trying to get at.
I have pretty deflationary instincts here, and try to stress in the paper that I take my view to be compatible with reasons fundamentalism, for example (in contrast to those who think there are really deep questions about priority to answer here).
My goals are more pragmatic. Moral philosophers use various concepts in their theorizing, and may differ in which they *treat* as fundamental, or determinative of substantive (vs merely verbal) disagreement. (If you disagree in your application of a fundamental concept, then you have a substantive disagreement. If you disagree in applying merely derivative concepts, the disagreement may be merely verbal.) Different concepts are more or less illuminating, or more or less likely to lead them astray. I argue that fittingness is the best concept for moral philosophers to *treat as fundamental* when expressing their theories and disagreements with one another. Why?
Well, in short, the two main alternatives have simple flaws.
Value primitivism leads philosophers like Toby Ord to think that "Global Consequentialism" is importantly distinct from (and superior to) Act Consequentialism. As I argue in the paper, it isn't.
Reasons fundamentalism invites the "wrong kind of reasons problem". Way too much ink has been spilled on this pseudo-problem.
Fittingness avoids both these problems, and doesn't introduce any new ones. So the Fittingness framework is better.
Do you disagree with that?
Thanks for the response.
I agree that we're talking about primitives in a different sense. However, I think mine is the more reasonable definition -- I take mine to be the question that's asked on the phil papers survey, for example. Examples like physics show that the primitive concept is the most basic irreducible concept -- I take that to be value (or maybe something else like importance). If we accept the value primitivism can give an account of fittingness, which can give an account of the rest of our normative concepts, then it seems like we have reason to be value primitivists in the sense that I mean.
I haven't thought too much about global consequentialism, but what you say sounds plausible. I think I also agree with what you say about reasons fundamentalism.
One point that's worth making is that taking fitness to be reducible to value means that we only have to posit one fundamental normative concept, while non-consequentialists (or people who think we have reasons that don't stem from value) have to posit multiple that are distinct. This thus favors consequentialism.
I'm skeptical that fittingness can be reduced to value. Three problems:
(1) You suggested an account of fitting desire and of fitting belief, but not of fittingness per se.
(2) Worse, you define 'epistemic value' as "the facts that give us epistemic reasons", so aren't you really taking (fitting) reasons as conceptually more fundamental here?
(3) It seems you'll need to proliferate types of "value" for all the other types of fitting attitudes (e.g. emotions). All of which raises messy questions about why we should regard these things as truly "values" at all, and (if they are really valuable) why consequentialists shouldn't be concerned to maximize them. (Is it a good deal to kill one person to save five true beliefs?)
Note that answering (1) seems likely to make (2) worse. Consider the following candidate analysis: "fittingness in general is a matter of having an attitude whose object has the right kind of value. What kind of value is that? The kind of value that makes that kind of attitude towards that object fitting."
That doesn't sound like value. That sounds like a stipulative redefinition of 'value' that really bottoms out in reasons of fittingness.
Of course, I agree that it's the reason-giving facts that *do the normative work*, and so are *normatively* fundamental. But that's a separate matter from *conceptual* priority.
(1) I think that for anything you use fittingness to explain, we can find a prior account in terms of either value or some other things -- I'll return to this more in point 3.
(2) I don't think there's a fact of the matter about which is conceptually more fundamental. It's not a definition -- it's a substantive property -- pleasure is valuable which entails having the substantive properties of giving us reasons to pursue it.
(3) I'd give a reductionist account of fitting emotions. An emotion is fitting if it is accurate -- so for example, it's fitting to be scared about existential risks because they are dangerous. The account may be more complex than that -- it would depend on the concept.
I wasn't intending to define value -- I was intending to describe a necessary property of it. Sord've like if we have most reason to pursue x, then we ought to pursue x. In this case, the reasons ground the ought claims, even though it will never be the case that we ought to do things which we have no reason to do.
I think we maybe agree that fittingness is conceptually fundamental, in that they are plausibly the most useful (maybe reasons are more useful -- I'll have to think more about it, though as you say, the views are compatible).
At this point, I'm not quite sure we're disagreeing, except about whether values are what give rise to fittingness in normative domains/
Well, I disagree with both of you lmao
#reasonsfundamentalismgang
Maybe the true normative primitive is evolutionary fitness — or more precisely, the set of moral desires evolution gifted us because it expected them to maximize our evolutionary fitness.
While that might explain our moral beliefs, I don't think it's the sole normative primitive. Evolution similarly explains our scientific beliefs, but evolutionary fitness isn't the primitive concept in physics, biology, or mathematics. Rather, the question would be what the most primitive normative concept imbued in us by evolution would be.
On an unrelated note, I cited the website electionbettingodds of you and Stossel in high school debate.
On another unrelated note, I wrote out a previous comment and thought I'd replied, but it seems to have disappeared, but if you see two comments, that explains why.
Thank you! Yes, agreed: “the question would be what the most primitive normative concept imbued in us by evolution would be.”