On the Nature of Intellectual Vice

Philosophy

Vice epistemology, as Quassim Cassam understands it, is the study of the nature, identity, and significance of the epistemic vices. But what makes an intellectual vice a vice? Cassam calls his own view âObstructivismâ â intellectual vices are those traits, thinking styles, or attitudes that systematically obstruct the acquisition, retention, and transmission of knowledge.

          I shall argue that Cassamâs account is an improvement upon virtue-reliabilism, and that it fares better against what I call Montmarquetâs objection than its immediate rivals. Nevertheless, I contend that it does not go far enough â Montmarquetâs objection stands.

          I conclude that either the objection needs to be answered in some other way, or else proponents of Obstructivism need to explain why their account of the nature of the intellectual vices does not have the counterintuitive consequences it appears to have. Alternatively, another account of the nature of the intellectual vices needs to be sought.

http://social-epistemology.com ISSN: 2471-9560 On the Nature of Intellectual Vice Brent Madison, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, UAE –––––––––––––––––– Madison, Brent. "On the Nature of Intellectual Vice." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6, no. 12 (2017): 1-6. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3R1 (provided by WordPress) 1 Vol. 6, no. 12 (2017): 1-6 https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3R1 Vice epistemology, as Quassim Cassam understands it, is the study of the nature, identity, and significance of the epistemic vices (see Cassam 2015; Cassam 2016; Cassam 2017; Cassam Forthcoming). An intellectual vice is a human defect. Paradigmatic examples of intellectual vices include: dogmatism, carelessness, and gullibility (Cassam 2016: 159). A fuller account of putative intellectual vices might also include: "intellectual pride, negligence, idleness, cowardice, conformity, carelessness, rigidity, prejudice, wishful thinking, closedmindedness, insensitivity to detail, obtuseness, and lack of thoroughness" (Zagzebski 1996: 152). A fundamental question, which many projects in vice epistemology presuppose an answer to, is this: what makes an intellectual vice a vice? For instance, in this journal, Cassam asks why some vices are included on the above lists, and other vices are not. (2017: 20) Also what, if anything, unifies these lists? In a similar sprit of taxonomy, Kidd (2017) explores the notion of "capital vices", partly in the service of proposing how vices might be grouped and ordered, understanding which vices are dependent on others, and so on. Before considering such a grouping and ordering, however, it would be good to have an account of what makes an intellectual vice a vice in the first place. In this paper I shall begin by briefly sketching one popular answer to the question of what makes a vice a vice, namely that offered by the virtue reliabilist. Drawing on other work, I shall introduce a fundamental objection to such approaches, which I call Montmarquet's objection. This will give us the opportunity to examine Cassam's own proposal of what makes an intellectual vice a vice, a view he names Obstructivism, which is motivated in part by the aim of avoiding a version of this objection. I shall argue that Cassam's account is an improvement upon virtue-reliabilism, and that it fares better against Montmarquet's objection than its immediate rivals. Nevertheless, I contend that it does not go far enough -Montmarquet 's objection stands. I conclude that either the objection needs to be answered in some other way, or else proponents of Obstructivism need to explain why their account of the nature of the intellectual vices does not have the counterintuitive consequences it appears to have. Alternatively, another account of the nature of the intellectual vices needs to be sought. Virtue-Reliabilism and Montmarquet's Objection So, what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue, and a vice a vice? According to a popular and influential view known as virtue-reliabilism, what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue is that the trait is truth-conducive (e.g. Sosa 1991; Sosa 2007; Greco 2010). According to the most basic form of virtue-reliabilism, virtues are stable and robust dispositions to form more true beliefs than false ones; understanding vices along these lines insists that a trait is an intellectual vice because beliefs formed through their exercise are more likely to be false than true. While the view need not require truth or falsity-conduciveness in all possible worlds, it does require truth-conduciveness in a broad range of conditions that need to be specified (e.g. Sosa, 1991: 275; Sosa 2007: 83-4). B. Madison 2 The simplest and most straightforward version of virtue-reliabilism holds that traits are virtues or vices depending on their truth-conduciveness in the actual world1. Besides its theoretical parsimony, another advantage of this view is that it aims to give a clear and straightforward account of the value of the virtues and the vices: truth is valuable, and the virtues are instrumentally valuable ways of acquiring truths. Conversely, the vices are instrumentally of disvalue since their exercise results in acquiring falsehoods. Notice, however, that whether a trait produces true beliefs depends largely in part on the environment a subject finds herself in (e.g. Carter and Gordon 2014)2. For example, while being intellectually virtuous might lead to more true beliefs than false beliefs in favorable environments, if owing to factors like extremely bad luck of different sorts, it could transpire that being virtuous would result in systematically false beliefs. Similarly, the environment and other extrinsic elements could conspire to ensure that being dogmatic, careless, and gullible would lead to more true beliefs over false beliefs. So the connection between the virtues and truth seems highly contingent at best. To make this vivid, consider the following thought experiment, proposed by James Montmarquet. Montmarquet writes, Let us assume that a Cartesian 'evil demon' has, unbeknownst to us, made our world such that truth is best attained by thoroughly exemplifying what, on our best crafted accounts, qualify as intellectual vices. Presumably, we would not therefore conclude that these apparent vices are and have always been virtues. (1987: 482) Montmarquet offers the case of Galileo and his lazy, intellectually uncurious brother Schmalileo. On the face of it, Galileo is a person of intellectual virtue, and his brother is one of intellectual vice. But suppose further that an evil demon sees to it that Galileo's openmindedness, insight, intellectual courage, and so on, result in false beliefs, whereas Schmalileo's dogmatism, gullibility, and intellectual laziness always results in true beliefs. Does this make any difference to who possess intellectual virtues, and to what extent? Should we say that Galileo is intellectually vicious, and Schmalileo is the one who possesses and exercises intellectual virtue? That would be absurd. Intuitively, Galileo is the intellectually virtuous one, and his brother the intellectually vicious one, and this remains unaffected by whether the demon is manipulating the truthconduciveness of their belief forming processes. The argument concludes, therefore, that truth-conduciveness is not necessary for a trait to be a virtue3. Montmarquet's objection makes salient the following questions: could an evil demon really see to it that open- 1 For a recent defense of this form of virtue-reliabilism, focusing on the key virtue of open-mindedness, see Kwong 2017. For discussion of Kwong's view, and the more general question of the connection between open-mindedness and truth-conduciveness, see Madison 2017b. 2 This is the key motivation underlying Carter and Gordon 2014 – their worry is to explain how it is that openmindedness is a virtue, given its tenuous connection with truth. For a reply to Carter and Gordon that openmindedness is truth-conducive, see Kwong 2017; for discussion, see Madison 2017b. 3 For more on Montmarquet's objection, and for a discussion of Linda Zagzebski's reply to it in defense of a reliability condition on the virtues, see Madison 2017b, especially pp. 9-11. 3 Vol. 6, no. 12 (2017): 1-6 https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3R1 mindedness and intellectual courage, for example, are vices by making the beliefs formed through their exercise false? Is it also possible that character traits like dogmatism and gullibility could be virtues, as long as the demon ensured that forming beliefs in that way happened always to be true? Cassam's Obstructivism Cassam understands intellectual vices as bad character traits (e.g. closed-mindedness), thinking styles (e.g. wishful thinking), or attitudes / judgments (e.g. prejudice) (2015: 20-21). They amount to vices because of their negative impact on inquiry. Following Christopher Hookway, Cassam understands inquiry as "the attempt 'to find things out, to extend our knowledge by carrying out investigations directed at answering questions, and to refine our knowledge by considering questions about things we currently hold true." (Ibid.) Inquiry is a goal directed activity, and Cassam takes that goal to be knowledge. An effective inquiry, Cassam says, is knowledge-conducive. The vices, therefore, are taken to impede effective inquiry, whereas the intellectual virtues facilitate it. This is why Cassam calls his view "Obstructivism" – intellectual vices are those traits, thinking styles, or attitudes that systematically obstruct the acquisition, retention, and transmission of knowledge. Cassam is an epistemologist who is sensitive to the problems raised by Montmarquet's objection. In the course of motivating and developing Obstructivism, he aims to avoid the problem of the possibility of a demon being able to turn a vice into a virtue. This can be solved, according to Cassam, by departing from the form of virtue-reliabilism discussed above. Cassam's view is also a form of epistemic consequentialism, insofar as it is the consequences alone of the traits that determine if they are virtues or vices. Obstructivism differs from standard virtue reliabilism, however, since the relevant consequences are considered in terms of being obstructive to knowledge, not just truth. While knowledge entails truth, there is more to knowing than merely believing truly. In addition, believing responsibly or reasonably seems to be required. So on Cassam's account, a trait is a vice because of impeding two things: effective inquiry, which is held to be knowledge conducive, and responsible inquiry. Responsible inquiry, in turn, is taken to be something like justified or rational inquiry. Crucially, both conditions are taken to characterize what makes a trait a vice. Along these lines, virtues are traits that are conducive to effective and responsible inquiry (Cassam 2016: 164-166). With the elements of this account to hand, Cassam replies to Montmarquet's objections as follows: consider a demon world inhabited by Galileo's intellectually vicious brother Schmalielo, who unlike Galileo, is closed-minded, lazy, and negligent. The demon sees to it that his intellectual vices are nevertheless truth-conducive. Cassam argues that Schmalileo still exhibits vices in the demon world, however, even if reliable, since he is being epistemically irresponsible. Schmalielo is an ineffective inquirer not because his beliefs are false (since the demon sees to it that they are true), but because they are unjustified (Cassam 2016: 166-167). So the demon cannot make vices into virtues by manipulating the environment and the truth-conduciveness of Schmalielo's belief forming methods. B. Madison 4 Offering an account of the vices that does not allow for the possibility of an evil demon turning the vices into virtues is an improvement over standard virtue-reliabilism. But does it go far enough? In particular, what does it imply about Galileo's beliefs? In the demon world, he is not an effective inquirer on Cassam's account, since he has beliefs that do not amount to knowledge because they are false, not because they are unjustified. So on Cassam's view, he is committed to saying that Galileo is no longer intellectually virtuous in the demon world, despite exhibiting open-mindedness, insight, creativity, intellectual courage, and so. His beliefs in the demon world are not formed in a way that is knowledge conducive, since false, though they are responsibly formed. So the worry is this: on Cassam's virtues-as-knowledge-conducive traits, the demon cannot make vices into virtues, but the demon can make virtues into vices (by ensuring falsity and falsityconduciveness of the belief forming methods used). If Cassam's account of the vices is correct, why should this asymmetry exist? What makes a normative theory consequentialist is the contention that normative properties depend only on consequences. The relevant consequences here are taken to be knowledge related. It seems odd that an evil demon is unable to turn vices into virtues, but could make virtues into vices. Given the demon's power, one might expect that he should be able to equally make traits either virtues or vices, or lack the power to affect either one. Given his epistemic consequentialism, Cassam's commitment to this asymmetry is puzzling, and so requires explanation. How might an advocate of Obstructivism respond to the objection that an evil demon should not be able to turn a virtue into a vice by making its exercise falsity conducive? Here I shall briefly consider two possibilities. Cassam hints at one possibility in terms of normality. Immediately after defining intellectual vices as those qualities that impede effective inquiry, he suggests in a footnote, "It might be necessary to insert 'normally' before 'impede' to allow for unusual cases in which an intellectual vice abets effective inquiry." (2015: 21) So the suggestion is that vices normally obstruct knowledge (and conversely, virtues are normally knowledge conducive). One might hold that an evil demon manipulating things so that, for example, open-mindedness always leads to falsity, constitutes an abnormal situation. What Is Normal Anyway? But what does 'normality' amount to? It cannot be statistically normality, of course, since an evil demon could see to it that open-mindedness and the other virtues always lead to falsity. In such worlds its metaphysically impossible for the exercise of such traits to lead to truth, and so to knowledge. Even so, in light of Montmarquet's objection, one might hold that these qualities are nevertheless virtues, despite not being knowledge conducive. For this possible solution to amount to more than a promissory note, Obstructivists owe us an account of the relevant sense of normality. A second possible response is to hold that being intellectually virtuous is not all or nothing. While in the demon world Galileo is not as virtuous as he would be if he had knowledge as 5 Vol. 6, no. 12 (2017): 1-6 https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3R1 the result of his intellectual character, he is still somewhat virtuous, and to be sure, he is not vicious. In a demon world Galileo has the virtue of employing methods that are knowledgeconducive in our world even if, in the demon world, his belief are always false4. This response moves from requiring knowledge conduciveness in the subject's own world to being knowledge conducive in other worlds, for example in our actual world, assuming that this is a demon-free world and the exercise of our virtues tends to result in knowledge. While some form of this response may be workable, an immediate obstacle arises in accounting for the value of the virtues (and the disvalue of the vices). Recall that an advantage of simple virtue-reliabilism was that it had a clear explanation of the value of the virtues: they are instrumentally valuable insofar as they tend to get truth in the worlds they are exercised in. A consequentialist account in terms of knowledgeconduciveness would have the same advantage: knowledge is also valuable, and the virtues are instrumentally valuable ways of acquiring knowledge. And a related account could be given for the disvalue of the intellectual vices. But if we move from requiring actual knowledge-conduciveness, but only requiring it in some other privileged set of worlds, then the axiology becomes far less straightforward. Holding on to one's consequentialism, one would be committed to holding that a virtue is valuable in a world because it is instrumental to knowledge in other circumstances, even ones that might never obtain. But does instrumental value relativize to other worlds in that way5? To take one example, a medicine is instrumentally valuable because of the diseases it is able to cure. It there are no diseases at all it can cure, it is very odd to claim that the medicine is still nevertheless instrumentally valuable, since there are some far off worlds (which may never obtain) where there are diseases that the medicine could cure. As this example shows, outside of the right environments, instrumental value disappears. We ought to judge that Galileo has intellectual virtues, and that these virtues are valuable in the world he finds himself in, and not because of what these traits might lead to in radically different circumstances. Arguably for a character trait to be a virtue, having it should contribute to making its possessor a good person. So in the case of the intellectual virtues, having them should contribute to making one an intellectually good person6. And it seems that Galileo is an intellectually good person, even when in demon worlds. Having the character traits, thinking styles, and attitudes he does contributes to making him 4 Cassam suggested this possible line of response in personal correspondence. 5 For an argument that instrumental value does not work counterfactually in the way this proposal would require, see Madison 2017a. In that paper I argue that the value of epistemic justification is not exhausted by its instrumental value, and that plausibly, justification is valuable for its own sake. In addition, I argue against Sosastyle indexical-reliabilism (i.e. justification need not actually be reliably produced in a world, but it should be reliable in something like the normal world). I argue that these kinds of proposals cannot explain the value of epistemic justification. 6 For the suggestion linking a character trait being a virtue with its thereby being a good making feature of the person who possesses it, see Baehr 2011: ch. 6. B. Madison 6 an intellectually good person – and these seem to be good-making features of Galileo and his character, despite not being knowledge-conducive. If one judges that these traits are valuable, and Galileo is an intellectually good person in virtue of having them, it is puzzling to hold that something is valuable then and there, because of what it might lead to, if remote possibilities were to obtain (and which by hypothesis, can never obtain). These are not meant to be knockdown arguments against Obstructivism. Its account of the nature of the vices (and virtues) is an improvement upon virtue-reliabilism, especially insofar as it fares better against Montmarquet's objection than its immediate rivals. Nevertheless, I contend that it does not go far enough: without a fuller account of either how to block the possibility of an evil demon making putative virtues into vices, or else provide an explanation of why this is not an untoward result, Montmarquet's objection still stands. Until then, it remains an open question exactly what it is that makes an intellectual vice a vice7. Contact details: firstname.lastname@example.com References Baehr, Jason. The Inquiring Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Carter, J. Adam and Gordon, Emma C. "Openmindedness and Truth." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (2014): 207-224. Cassam, Quassim. "Stealthy Vices." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4, No. 10 (2015): 19-25. Cassam, Quassim. "Vice Epistemology." The Monist 99 (2016): 159-180. Cassam, Quassim. "Vice Ontology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6, no. 11 (2017): 20-27. Cassam, Quassim. Vices of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Forthcoming. Greco, John. Achieving Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Kidd, I. "Capital Epistemic Vices." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6, no. 8 (2017): 11-17. Kwong, J.M.C. "Is Open-Mindedness Conducive to Truth?" Synthese 194 (2017): 1613-1626. Madison, B.J.C. "Epistemic Value and the New Evil Demon." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (2017a): 89–107. Madison, B.J.C. "Is Open-Mindedness Truth-Conducive?" Synthese (2017b): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1571-0. Montmarquet, James. "Epistemic Virtue." Mind 96 (1987): 482-497. Sosa, Ernest. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Sosa, Ernest. A Virtue Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Zagzebski, Linda. Virtues of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 7 Thanks to Quassim Cassam and Rhiannon James for helpful comments.


Taking God Seriously, but Not Too Seriously: The Divine Command Theory and William James' 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Lifeâ

Philosophy

While some scholars neglect the theological component to William Jamesâs ethical views in âThe Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,â Michael Cantrell reads it as promoting a divine command theory (DCT) of the foundations of moral obligation. While Cantrellâs interpretation is to be commended for taking God
          seriously, he goes a little too far in the right direction. Although
          Jamesâs view amounts to what could be called (and what Cantrell
          does call) a DCT because on it Godâs demands are necessary and sufficient for the highest obligations, this is a view with characteristics unusual for a DCT. It only holds for some obligations; on it moral obligation does not derive from Godâs authority; it is not obvious that James believes the God required by it even exists; we do not know what Godâs demands are; and, finally, since we do not know them, we cannot act on them.

          (Lest there be any confusion, the titular phrase "taking God seriously, but not too seriously" describes William James' view of God and morality, not my own view.)

William James Studies 2013, Vol. 10, pp. 1-20 TAKING GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY: THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND WILLIAM JAMES'S 'THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE MORAL LIFE'1 MARK BOONE ABSTRACT While some scholars neglect the theological component to William James's ethical views in "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," Michael Cantrell reads it as promoting a divine command theory (DCT) of the foundations of moral obligation. While Cantrell's interpretation is to be commended for taking God seriously, he goes a little too far in the right direction. Although James's view amounts to what could be called (and what Cantrell does call) a DCT because on it God's demands are necessary and sufficient for the highest obligations, this is a view with characteristics unusual for a DCT. It only holds for some obligations; on it moral obligation does not derive from God's authority; it is not obvious that James believes the God required by it even exists; we do not know what God's demands are; and, finally, since we do not know them, we cannot act on them. __________________ William James's "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" (hereafter "MPML") is a subtle work, and its interpretation requires subtlety. Scholars tend to focus on the text's relationship to utilitarianism, most taking the view that it does not commit James to any conventional version of utilitarianism.2 While this topic is important, a thorough account of James's ethics in "MPML" requires careful analysis of its theological component, which scholars sometimes overlook or even denigrate.3 David E. Schrader thinks James's appeal to religion is "hard to maintain" because religion has often been a force for oppression and prejudice.4 In a recent edition of William James Studies focusing MARK BOONE: Page 2 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 on "MPML," Harvey Cormier, Scott F. Aikin, and Robert B. Talisse seem to agree on little more than that God must not have any significant role in a pragmatic ethic.5 Yet there remains a strong theological component in "MPML." Opposite Schrader's discomfort with religion, Michael Cantrell has offered an original interpretation, saying "MPML" promotes a kind of divine command theory (hereafter DCT) of the foundations of moral obligation.6 Cantrell's interpretation is a useful corrective to the occasional neglect of the vital role of religion in James's ethics, for he takes James seriously when James takes God seriously. Yet Cantrell goes a little too far in the right direction, for he overstates God's role in James's ethics. While his thesis is largely correct, such DCT as "MPML" uses is heavily restricted in fact, knowledge, and practicality. James promotes a sort of DCT regarding some but not all obligations, and DCT is a poor description of James's theory even where it does hold. In what follows I shall examine and critique Cantrell's thesis in order to uncover James's understanding of divine commands and their relation to moral obligation and cast new light on the religious component of James's ethics. In Part I, I shall briefly summarize "MPML." In moral experience we find a multiplicity of demands and moral ideals that only God can integrate. The ideal God promotes is the obligation that overrides all others. As Cantrell says and as I shall explain in Part II, this ensures that the command of God is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of this highest possible obligation. Although this amounts to a kind of DCT, it is a very unusual one, having several features not traditionally associated with DCT. I shall describe these unique parameters of a Jamesian DCT in Parts III through V. First, a Jamesian DCT does not hold for some genuine obligations. Second, that God's moral outlook is binding is the source of God's moral authority, not vice versa. Third, James may not believe that a God who commands these obligations exists yet, so there may be no obligation for which DCT holds. Fourth, we have no access to God's perspective, and so the highest possible obligation is unknown to us. Fifth, to obey God's commands is not the highest obligation we do know and can act on; that obligation is simply to find out what God's commands are. These five limitations on a Jamesian DCT fall into three categories. The first three limitations are factual, and I shall discuss them in Part III; the fourth is a limitation on our knowledge of divine commands, and I shall discuss it in Part IV; the fifth is a practical limitation of a Jamesian DCT, and I shall discuss it in Part V. These considerations will leave us with a somewhat dubious link between James and DCT. Therefore, in Part VI, I shall attempt to bring things to an orderly conclusion, first by TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 3 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 suggesting a more detailed definition of DCT which excludes James's position and clarifies the differences between it and traditional DCTs; and, second, by remarking on the prospects for Jamesian support for a more traditional DCT. I. OUR MORAL LIFE For James morality is grounded in subjectivity. Any person with his own perspective and desires grounds a moral fact; what a person feels is good is, simply because he feels it, good. If that person should desire something of another person, the desiring is a demand which constitutes a moral obligation for that other person. The demand of a subject is necessary and sufficient for moral qualities to exist in the universe. It is necessary because "no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply"; moral qualities only exist in "a mind which feels them."7 While the world is not limited to mere physical facts,8 James resists Platonizing abstractions as well as materialistic reductionism. A lifeless supernatural entity cannot ground morality; even if ultimate obligation is rooted in a divine being, it is that being's perspective and wishes that give its moral demands their legitimacy. In short, "nothing can be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right."9 The demand and wishes of any subject are also sufficient to ground a moral obligation: "Take any demand, however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sole sake, to be satisfied?"10 We are obligated to satisfy the demand of any sentient being. Unfortunately, different people have different wishes, and so there are different ideals. We have different conceptions of the best world. A myriad of demands cry out for satisfaction. Thus there are a plurality of ideals to be realized, and a plurality of oughts. This presents a challenge for the moral philosopher, whose goal is to provide "an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view."11 The moral philosopher needs to see the moral world as consistent and unified, to behold a coherent moral universe. This seems an insurmountable challenge since our demands are distinct and sometimes conflict. When one politician wants virtually unrestricted access to abortion and another wants abortion all but abolished, it is difficult to imagine a solution mutually palatable. Again, one philosopher may think all human beings should be treated equally as ends in themselves, while another may think educated Greek males superior. MARK BOONE: Page 4 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 How can we achieve a coherent moral universe when conflicting goals have equal status? A coherent system of moral obligations would make possible a maximum satisfaction of demands. For among all possible ideals there is a set of ideals that is the largest set of mutually consistent, and hence concurrently satisfiable, ideals. The task of the moral philosopher is to identify that set of ideals, the set of ideals which the most number of people either do, or could, desire to see satisfied. Only divine wisdom could know what this set of ideals is; only God is able to know which ideals among all our competing ideals are a part of this moral system; so only God is able to desire this set of ideals; so God is necessary for this set of possible ideals to be actually desired. These are the ideals of God. If God exists, he wants us to satisfy this maximal set of consistent ideals, and our obligation to do what God wants overrides all others. Hence positing the existence of this set of ideals is tantamount to positing the existence of God, who alone can know what the maximal set of mutually satisfiable ideals is. For the present, since this set of ideals is not that which is currently sought by sentient creatures, God desires that we sentient creatures learn to seek them, that our imperfect world may eventually become that best possible world in which this set of ideals is satisfied. Such a world contains the only coherent moral universe, the one which the moral philosopher strives to achieve. For this reason the moral philosopher must take a keen interest in God and "pray for the victory of the religious cause."12 For he must seek a coherent set of moral principles; to seek it he must believe that it exists and can be discovered; he must therefore believe that God exists. II. A DIVINE COMMAND THEORY? Cantrell observes that "MPML" promotes a kind of DCT. Cantrell lists four components of a divine command theory: first, that divine commands be sufficient for moral obligation; second, that they be necessary for moral obligation; third, that there be moral obligations which override all others; and, fourth, that they be objective "in the sense that we humans can be mistaken about them."13 It is clear that James's theory meets the first, third, and fourth conditions. Divine commands are sufficient for the highest obligation because it is God's perspective and desire that make maximal obligation possible; the set of maximally realizable ideals, by definition, overrules all others; and it possible for us to err by seeking to realize lesser ideals. But divine commands are also necessary for the maximal set of mutually satisfiable ideals. God's demand that this set of TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 5 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 ideals be satisfied is necessary to make this exact set of ideals an obligation for us; without God, there simply cannot be a set of ideals so comprehensive. So God's perspective is necessary and sufficient for maximal obligation; in this sense, James does have a kind of DCT as regards one component of moral reality, namely maximal obligation, those highest obligations that override all others. Of course, we are not necessarily talking about explicit commands when we say "commands." We do not have to know what God's commands are in order for them to exist.14 DCT, in its generic form, does not require this, though some versions of DCT may posit explicit commands from God. Cantrell does well to identify a connection between DCT and James's metaethics, correcting the God-resistant tendency in some scholarship. He has also uncovered a Jamesian reason to believe in God which others have missed. Todd Lekan analyzes three reasons in "MPML" for believing in God, rejecting two as unconvincing and accepting the third only in some cases 15 Cantrell shows there is another reason: That the moral philosopher as such must believe in God in order to believe in the possibility of a genuine moral universe and work towards understanding it.16 Cantrell also avoids the subtle misunderstanding of D. Micah Hester, who attributes the highest ethical status to any desire that does not seem to conflict with any other.17 This is clearly not what James has in mind; the highest ethical status is that of obligations which override all others, not those which merely do not appear to conflict. Such obligations are the demands of God. In short, Cantrell does well to take God seriously in interpreting James, but perhaps he takes God a little too seriously, for there are significant limitations of the Jamesian DCT. In the next three sections I shall explain these limitations, and in light of them I shall, in the final section, propose a definition of DCT which clarifies the differences between James's view and traditional DCTs. III. FACTUAL LIMITATIONS ON THE JAMESIAN DCT Such DCT as James promotes is limited in fact, for the moral facts of the universe, the metaethical realities James describes, are poorly captured by DCT. First, DCT fails to account for the vast majority of genuine obligations. Second, DCT fails to describe the source of obligation, which, even for the highest of obligations, is not God. Third, there is a good chance that these obligations do not yet exist for the reason that a God who demands them does not yet exist! I am not saying that Cantrell's contention MARK BOONE: Page 6 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 that James has a DCT is incorrect. DCT, as Cantrell defines it, is an accurate description of a real or possible component of moral reality as described by James. But it is an inadequate description. A. DCT Only Holds for Some Obligations First, although Cantrell's criteria for DCT properly describe James's view of the conditions for a very important class of moral obligations (the most important, in fact), they make up a tiny minority of moral obligations. God's perspective and wish are necessary and sufficient only for those obligations that override all others; for the demand of any person is sufficient for moral, but non-maximal, obligation. Each of these myriad obligations is binding on us. Of course, they often conflict; each moral agent is morally required to both perform and not perform certain actions. To perform one duty is to neglect another; yet each is obligatory, so we neglect our duty either way. The moral philosopher must hope that God can lead us out of this tangle of obligations, and the moral agent may hope to one day learn which obligations are best obeyed and which best flouted. Until then, however, we moral agents are guilty of breaking moral laws which have a lesser, but nevertheless moral, force. B. DCT Does Not Describe the Source of Even the Highest Obligation Second, on a typical DCT, the source of moral obligation would be God, but this is not what we find in James. Thus DCT poorly captures James's understanding of the metaethical grounding of obligation, which is the subjective preference of all sentient beings, not of God as such. We have seen that this is true of lesser obligations. Yet even the highest obligations do not derive their overriding status from God, but from the fact that they do the best job of reconciling the subjective preferences of all sentient beings. God's desiring certain ideals is a necessary and sufficient condition for their being the highest of obligations; but God desires them because they are good, not vice versa. That they override all other obligations does not derive from God's preferring them, but from their ability to reconcile a maximal amount of these other obligations. Cantrell is, thus, mistaken when he comments on these words of James: If there be such a [divine] consciousness, then its demands carry the most of obligation simply because they are the greatest in amount. But it is even then not abstractly right that we should respect TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 7 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 them. It is only concretely right--or right after the fact, and by virtue of the fact, that they are actually made.18 Cantrell contrasts the two sides of a version of Plato's ancient Euthyphro dilemma: "does God command what is right because it is (antecedently) right, or is what is right right because God commands it?"19 He concludes that James's view is the latter.20 But this is not so. The Euthyphro dilemma Cantrell has in mind would contrast two conceptions of obligation, the idea that obligations are binding independently of God's authority and the idea that obligations are binding because of God's authority. James is not considering this contrast, but another: between, on the one hand, the idea that divine commands are binding in the abstract, independent of the divine personality; and, on the other hand, that divine commands are binding as a result of their grounding in personal desires. God's wishes carry weight because God is "a living personal God."21 Dispensing with the abstract theory of the origins of divine commands does not mean that they are only binding because God wills them. On the contrary: God's demands overrule others "simply because they are the greatest in amount." In other words, that these obligations override all others is a result of the fact that they are the best possible set of binding obligations independently of God. God commands them because they are right. His command activates what would otherwise be merely possible obligations, giving them a moral force; however, their ability to override all other obligations is not a result of the divine command, willed by God from above. The ability of the divine commands to override all other obligations is built from the ground up, a result of the myriad obliging wishes that unite in the divine wish.22 In short, James denies an abstract moral order, saying instead that moral order is essentially personal. In doing so he does not attribute to God the privilege of a moral authority qualitatively different from that of any other person; the difference is quantitative. God is no moral legislator for the universe. God is more like an executive for moral legislation. The legislature consisting of all sentient beings below sends to his divine desk a huge, disorganized pile of laws. He proceeds to ratify the most comprehensive moral order than can possibly be made out of them-but he vetoes the handful that cannot be integrated. Thus, God does not command and create obligation out of his own authority. Rather, God discovers that set of obligations which would, on its own merits, be sublime; through loving it, he wishes into existence the obligation that we work to make the world satisfying it a reality. Indeed, a better word for the divine commands might be "wishes" or "desires," for the word MARK BOONE: Page 8 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 "command" connotes authority, and on James's view God simply does not make things right by virtue of his infinite authority. This, by the way, allows us to return to Schrader's concern with James's appeal to religion. Schrader notes that religion has often been mixed with prejudice, saying that "People are notoriously prone to imputing their own blindness and deafness to God as well."23 Schrader fails to engage James's own reason for appealing to God, which specifically precludes any attempt to harness God to the narrow agenda of any single ideal. James's idea of God is the idea of the God who cares more about all our ideals than the most loving of human beings is able. C. DCT May Not Obtain of Any Actual Obligations Third, God, who wishes for a world that satisfies maximally consistent obligations, may not exist yet; therefore DCT may not obtain for any existing obligations, but merely for certain possible obligations. In order to explain this, let us consider two plausible interpretations of James's idea of divinity. On one of these interpretations God does not yet exist, for which reason maximal obligations do not exist and DCT does not hold in the real world. I will not try to give a comprehensive summary of the possible interpretations of James's view of God, nor to determine which is the correct interpretation. I only aim to show that it matters what sort of God we are talking about. It is hard to tell what kind of God James believes in-or, rather, which divine realities are worthy of being called "God." After outlining two such notions of the divine in James's thought, I will comment on the implications of this ambiguity for DCT in James. For the character of God determines whether God is able to issue divine commands, thus grounding the highest obligations. So what kind of God might James believe in? On the one hand, there is the idea of a finite God, a God who is the central character in what I like to call Almost Classical Theism (ACT). Despite staying close to classical theism in several respects, ACT is not bound to the specific content of any religious scriptures; it is at best uninterested in the simplicity of God; although God is allknowing or near enough,24 it concedes that God cannot be both allknowing and all-powerful at the same time;25 it insists that God interacts closely with the world to achieve his ends;26 and, at this latter point, implicitly gives up the notion of God's timelessness and impassibility. Still, as concerns the relationship of God and obligation, ACT is pretty traditional: God exists, is entirely good, and currently has the best perspective on the moral universe; he already knows what a unity of ideals looks like, and, in wishing that a world satisfying it come to be, has already created the TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 9 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 coherent set of moral obligations for which the moral philosopher longs. Accordingly, maximal obligation is presently binding on us; we just don't know what it is, and for the time being we have the duty of finding out. God's orders precede our moral activity in order of time and priority: God's requirements are issued before we have a chance to act on them; and our deeds are moral to the degree they measure up to God's standards. On the other hand, James might endorse what I call Extreme Process Theology (EPT), the belief that God is still in the making. God simply is the eventual stability of ideals, or in Dewey's words God is "the union of all ideal ends."27 On EPT, a stability of ideals has yet to be achieved, even in theory. Since we have yet to achieve the unity of ideals a complete God has yet to emerge. In fact, the moral philosopher has a hand in the construction of God. To further distinguish ACT from EPT, consider James's most dramatic example of the necessity of belief. When I have to jump across a huge chasm to save my life, my belief that I can make the jump will help me to succeed; this belief is a factor in, and condition for, its own truth.28 It interacts with its own object, effecting a new alignment between belief and world by changing the latter to fit the former. What if, as James suggests in "The Will to Believe," religious belief also interacts with its own object?29 On ACT, since God already exists, he has only to shape a world of maximal ideal satisfaction-to realize the happy eschatological state. Belief in God interacts with its eschatological component; the belief that the eschaton is on its way, that God exists and will ultimately triumph, helps to assure that ultimate triumph.30 But on EPT religious belief interacts with its object on a much grander scale; it helps to ensure God's existence and to shape his ultimate character, not merely guaranty his triumph over evil; for the process of achieving the best possible world shapes the ideals that are identified with God. It is not just that we don't yet know what the ideals (or God) will look like; our interaction with them helps to determine what they will ultimately look like.31 Although I think the idea of God at play in "MPML" is probably closer to ACT than to EPT, I will not argue this here. My point is simply that EPT is a plausible reading of James's theology in "MPML"; and, since it is plausible that James holds to EPT, it is possible that the divine commands which constitute maximal obligations do not exist yet. MARK BOONE: Page 10 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 IV. LIMITATIONS ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE COMMANDS We must now turn to the epistemic limitations of the Jamesian DCT; following that we will explore the concomitant practical limitations. Cantrell acknowledges the epistemic and the practical limitations, observing that "God's thoughts are hidden from us" and that a DCT "fails as a measure of conduct."32 I explore these limitations for two reasons, one of which is simply to be thorough in uncovering the limitations of the Jamesian DCT. The other, more important reason is to let James's outlook speak for itself. As we shall see when all is said and done, James's underlying Pragmatism speaks strongly against the propriety of using the language of DCT to describe his view. After explaining the epistemic limitations of the Jamesian DCT in this section, in the next section I shall explain the practical limitations; at the end of the next section I shall explain why Cantrell's acknowledgement of these limitations does not go far enough. On the Jamesian DCT, we have no knowledge of the divine commands. Even if there is a God somewhere wishing certain highest obligations on us, we do not know what they are; "exactly what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence."33 We simply don't have access to God's perspective. In time, we can at least approximate knowledge of it; the moral philosopher can hope to eventually approach an understanding of this set of ideals. Understanding what this set of ideals is will take some doing. Since ideals are rooted in subjective perspectives, the largest set of mutually consistent ideals exists in a world containing the largest set of mutually consistent personal demands. As things stand now, too many people have too many irreconcilable demands. Accordingly, the highest obligation which is known to us is not to obey the divine commands, but to discover them.34 It will take a little time to figure out how to satisfy the most number of ideals. It will also take political action. The moral philosopher is also the political philosopher.35 He begins with the ideals that exist in human society (those of Republicans and Democrats, of libertarians and socialists, of Kant, Aristotle, and Mill) and tries to reconcile them in practice as much as in theory. The philosopher and his community will have to work together. Since it is unclear how to reconcile some of the distinct ideals that can be realized simultaneously, political and philosophical practice will take a great deal of creativity. Also, some ideals will have to be sacrificed in order for the most ideals to be realized. Most importantly, in the process the moral philosopher and the rest of us will have to learn to tolerate and embrace the demands of others as TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 11 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 much as possible, to make the ideals of others our own.36 In this respect our ideals will come to resemble the ideals of God, whose ideal is precisely that the greatest possible harmony of ideals comes to be.37 This, by the way, solves a problem scholars have raised with James's ethics. Aikin and Talisse lament the supposed absence of an ideal of tolerance in James. They fear the consequences of validating contradictory obligations, especially the obligations forged from ideals that are based in the desire to dominate or destroy others.38 Talisse and Aikin fail to see how God brings about the very tolerance they seek. On James's view, God's ideals are precisely those that best tolerate and reconcile the ideals of others.39 The process of reconciling our competing ideals will, as James says,40 necessarily involve eliminating some ideals. Every person's ideal is an obligation, but not every obligation is overriding. The ideals of the Nazis, for example, are technically obligations on James's scheme; but they conflict with the ideals of the rest of us, not to mention the ideals of their victims; accordingly, they would be among the very first ideals to go.41 We need not even wait for clarity from God on this point; that Nazi ideals must be eliminated to form a moral universe should be clear to any moral philosopher worth his salt. While this may sound like a version of utilitarianism, it is at least not a typical one. James's strategy is to satisfy the greatest possible number of demands, but this is no ordinary utilitarianism: Demands ought to be satisfied only because they ground ideals. Classical utilitarianism itself is wedded to a certain ideal, the ideal that happiness or pleasure is the greatest good. Utilitarianism proper would sacrifice some desires so that others can be satisfied because that would bring the most pleasure and so maximize its own ideal. James's philosophy would sacrifice some desires on behalf of others in order to maximize the satisfaction of ideals. If James's philosophy is utilitarianism, then, I think it is a utilitarianism of ideals; it seeks the satisfaction of as many ideals as possible, not the satisfaction of the ideal sought by utilitarianism.42 In sum, divine commands, while necessary and sufficient to ground maximal obligation, are unknown to us even if they do exist. So the Jamesian DCT, though it correctly describes these highest of obligations, fails to describe any obligations we human beings know about. It is a theory of the conditions for sublime, yet unknown, moral principles. In the next section I will explain why this epistemic limitation of the DCT leads to a serious practical limitation. MARK BOONE: Page 12 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 V. PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS OF A JAMESIAN DCT We have already seen how DCT is a poor, though an accurate, description of some of the ethical realities James discusses. But what really matters to James is not simply the accuracy of a theory in describing some component of reality. James is a Pragmatist; what matters to him is the difference a moral theory makes in practice. The Jamesian DCT is only a part of James's overall moral theory, a part which is useful as an inspiration, but nevertheless fails to describe anything useful since the moral obligations to which it applies are unknown to us. According to James's moral theory as a whole, we must mediate between competing ideals in order to achieve a world in which the most ideals can be satisfied. We must learn about divine commands so as to enact them. The process of learning them is no less than the common ethics of an entire society (if not the world); there is enough work to keep moral philosophers and politicians busy for several lifetimes devising and implementing common solutions to diverging ideals. This is all very practical; however, our present ignorance of divine commands ensures that they themselves are useless. In other words, while the Jamesian idea of moral obligation is useful, the portion of it which describes the highest obligations, and which I have been calling a DCT, fails to announce any of these obligations to us, and so these obligations remain useless. Even the portion of James's moral theory which can be called a DCT is only useful as an inspiration. While DCT is technically true of some real or possible component of moral reality as James understands it, we cannot act on the overriding obligations wished by God. We can only work towards understanding them. Those divine commands which shimmer beyond the veil of our ignorance do not give us practical rules for moral practice, but inspire us to discover the best rules for moral practice. The obligations explained by the DCT are useless, but not the supremely useful dream of learning what they are. The Jamesian DCT inspires us to find what is good without telling us what is good. So the theory itself is useful; but that of which it is a theory, supreme moral obligation, is useless to us. The divine wishes do nothing to guide future experience, solve no concrete problems, and fail to direct the moral philosopher or the politician. The idea of the divine wishes has value in experience as an inspiration that we strive to realize the divine wishes. This is why James says that "our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood."43 It is not that God is in fact only an inspiration to our vigorous pursuit of a TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 13 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 moral universe; Cantrell is quite right that the living God, if there is one, matters to James, as the supporter of the highest obligations.44 Nevertheless, our idea of God, held in ignorance of the divine fact that may (or may not) presently be out there, is only an inspiration. For James the truth lies somewhere between Cantrell's view and that espoused by Deborah Boyle: "What matters for James is not whether God actually exists, but whether we believe that God exists."45 Boyle's is an apt description of God's immediate relevance to known obligation, as long as we remain ignorant of the divine wishes. However, as Cantrell says, the actual existence of God matters a great deal, albeit in the long term. This amounts to a serious objection to the propriety of using DCT to describe James's views. He is pragmatic to the core. What is useless has no value. The unknown obligations described by the Jamesian DCT are useless to us. The DCT itself is useful, but less so than the overall moral theory of which it is only a part and which does succeed in giving moral rules to guide practice. Pragmatically, then, DCT as Cantrell defines it succeeds in being an accurate description of a portion of James's moral theory, but a inadequate description of that portion and of the moral theory as a whole. VI. CONCLUSION: THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND WILLIAM JAMES The proponent of DCT may find James's theory an attenuated version of DCT, hardly worthy of the name. Although DCT and James's metaethics have much in common, the five differences I have articulated hold the two views rather far apart. I shall conclude, first, by suggesting a better definition of DCT which distinguishes the views. Then I shall show how some of James's ideas could support a more traditional DCT. For DCT and James's ideas, if not quite the same, are nonetheless related ideas with significant connections. James's ideas call for a reexamination of what constitutes DCT. Cantrell suggests that a DCT has four parts: divine commands are necessary for moral obligations, they are sufficient, there are moral obligations which override all others, and these overriding obligations are objective such that we can be mistaken about them. As we have seen, this definition of DCT correctly describes one component of moral reality as James understands it. But as we have also seen, it describes only one small component; it also fails to describe the ultimate source of obligation even in that component, which may exist only in possibility and not in reality, which is unknown to us even if it does exist, and which fails to MARK BOONE: Page 14 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 give us any practical ethical guidance. The last of these problems is the deepest for the Jamesian, but the second is the deepest for the proponent of a traditional DCT. On a robust DCT God's wish should be the source of the highest moral obligation, not just a truth condition for it. What shall we conclude, then, with respect to William James and the divine command theory? We could, as I have done so far in this article, call James's theory a DCT, albeit an unusual one with theoretical and practical limitations. However, I think it would be better to refine Cantrell's definition of DCT by adding a fifth part to his definition: that divine authority be the only possible ground of obligations, that the highest moral obligations have no source of moral authority save the God who commands them. Better yet, we can simply replace the first two parts of Cantrell's definition, for this fifth part entails the first two; for, if divine authority is the only possible source of moral obligation, then it is both necessary and sufficient for moral obligation. So, though Cantrell's definition of DCT describes a component of James's view of moral reality, I think a better definition of DCT will not describe James's view. However, his theory is a sort of corollary to a more traditional DCT, and shares key elements with it. With this in mind, I shall now suggest a quasi-Jamesian strategy for promoting a more traditional DCT. We must make a distinction between a raw examination of experience and what James calls in The Varieties of Religious Experience "over-beliefs," those beliefs that are abstracted from experience.46 James prefers his over-beliefs to extrapolate as little as possible from experience.47 But a proponent of DCT may have different preferences. He is free to accept James's moral intuition that, all else being equal, the demand of any person "ought . . . , for its own sole sake, to be satisfied" and to agree with James that there is a desperate need for divine help in piecing together a moral universe. But he is also free to insert his own over-beliefs to the effect that God already exists, has already constructed the moral universe, and has subordinated the ideals of some creatures to his own, by his authority making them nonmoral obligations. Although a theory of this sort goes beyond a mere analysis of James's thought, I see no reason why James's ideas could not be developed in this manner. I have tried to keep my own views from getting in the way of articulating what I think James is saying and determining how DCT interacts with his thought. I close, however, by stating my opinion on an aspect of James that I think must surely be correct. However James thinks of God, and whatever understanding of God we may wish to bring to James, the impetus of "MPML" is to learn how to, in the phrase attributed to Johannes Kepler, "think God's TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 15 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 thoughts after him." We must learn to predicate as morally obligatory what God predicates as morally obligatory, desire what God desires, and love what God loves. In short, we must conform our minds to the mind of God. When James recommends this, for what little my view is worth, I believe he is correct. Forman Christian College firstname.lastname@example.com WORKS CITED Aikin, Scott F. and Robert B. Talisse. "Three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics" and "Replies to Our Critics." William James Studies 6 (2011). Boyle, Deborah. "William James's Ethical Symphony." Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 34.4 (Fall 1998). Cantrell, Michael. "William James's Transcendental Theological Voluntarism: A Reading of 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life'." William James Studies 10 (2014). Cooper, Wesley. The Unity of William James's Thought. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. Cormier, Harvey. "Comment on Talisse and Aikin." William James Studies 6 (2011). Dewey, John. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale, 1934. Gale, Richard M. The Divided Selves of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Hester, Michael D. "The Possibility for Tragic Obligations." Streams of William James 1.3 (Winter 2000). James, William. A Pluralistic Universe, volume 4 of The Works of William James. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. 19 volumes. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988. –––. The Varieties of Religious Experience, volume 15 of The Works of William James. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. 19 volumes. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988. –––. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, volume 6 of The Works of William James. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. 19 volumes. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988. MARK BOONE: Page 16 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 Lamberth, David C. "Interpreting the Universe after a Social Analogy: Intimacy, Panpsychism, and a Finite God in a Pluralistic Universe" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, edited by Ruth Anna Putnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Lekan, Todd. "Strenuous Moral Living." William James Studies 2.1 (2007). O'Connell, Robert J. "'The Will to Believe' and James's 'Deontological Streak'." Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 28.4 (Fall 1992). –––. William James on the Courage to Believe. Bronx: Fordham University Press, 1997. Putnam, Hilary. "James's Theory of Truth" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, edited by Ruth Anna Putnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Putnam, Ruth Anna. "Response to Talisse and Aikin, 'Three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics'." William James Studies 6 (2011). –––. "Some of Life's Ideals" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, edited by Ruth Anna Putnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Schrader, David E. "Simonizing James: Taking Demand Seriously." Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 34.4 (Fall 1998). Slater, Michael R. "Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief in 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.'" William James Studies 2.1 (2007). –––. William James on Ethics and Faith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. NOTES 1I wish to thank Michael Cantrell for his insightful and provocative essay on "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life"; Stuart Rosenbaum for teaching me so much about William James and for encouraging me to respond to Cantrell's thesis; and my student worker at Berry College, Haley Athens, for reading through an earlier draft of this essay. 2 Graham H. Bird says James sees inadequacies in several major ethical theories, including utilitarianism; Ruth Anna Putnam describes James as "a consequentialist," but "not a hedonist, nor any other kind of reductive utilitarian"; David E. Schrader points out that James himself dismisses his connection with utilitarianism as trivial; Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse say James rejects utilitarianism both for its hedonism and for its thesis that "all goods are commensurable"; and Robert J. O'Connell thinks James's ethics manifest "a deontological streak." On the other hand, Michael R. Slater identifies "MPML" as promoting "a TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 17 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 version of utilitarianism." Richard Gale analyzes James's view as a version of desire-satisfaction utilitarianism. Recently, Wesley Cooper objects to Gale, describing James's view as "an ideal-maximizing consensualism." Graham H. Bird, "Moral Philosophy and the Development of Morality" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 261-262. Ruth Anna Putnam, "Some of Life's Ideals" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 285. David E. Schrader, "Simonizing James: Taking Demand Seriously," Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 34.4 (Fall 1998), 1014. Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, "Three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics," William James Studies 6 (2011). O'Connell, William James on the Courage to Believe (Bronx: Fordham University Press, 1997) and "'The Will to Believe' and James' 'Deontological Streak'," Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 28.4 (Fall 1992), especially pages 816-22. Slater, William James on Ethics and Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 70. Gale, The Divided Selves of William James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chapter 2. Cooper, The Unity of William James's Thought (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), chapter 12, especially page 225. 3Three studies which do investigate the religious aspect of "MPML" are Todd Lekan, "Strenuous Moral Living," William James Studies 2.1 (2007); Michael R. Slater, "Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief in 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life'," William James Studies 2.1 (2007); and Michael Slater, William James on Ethics and Faith, chapter 3. Slater notes that "Very few interpreters . . . have dealt with the religious aspect" of "MPML" (William James on Ethics and Faith), 70-71. 4 Schrader, 1025-1026. 5 Harvey Cormier, "Comment on Talisse and Aikin," William James Studies 6 (2011); Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, "Replies to Our Critics," William James Studies 6 (2011). 6Michael Cantrell, "William James's Transcendental Theological Voluntarism: A Reading of 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life'," William James Studies 10 (2013). 7 William James, "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, vol. 6 of The Works of William James, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis; 19 volumes (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988), 145. Hereafter "MPML." 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 147. 10 Ibid., 149. 11 Ibid., 141. Ruth Anna Putnam's language is slightly misleading when she says that "for James morality presupposes that we have" made "the ends of others our own." The reality of moral standards MARK BOONE: Page 18 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 requires no more than that one sentient being want something from another; making others' ends our own is a requirement for something grander than mere morality, namely the establishment of a moral universe, a coherent system of morals. Putnam, "Some of Life's Ideals," 284. 12 "MPML," 161. 13 Cantrell, 2. 14 Ibid., 8. 15 "Strenuous Moral Living." 16 On this see Slater, "Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief," 42-4. 17 D. Micah Hester, "The Possibility for Tragic Obligations" in Streams of William James 1.3 (Winter 2000, 15). 18 "MPML," 149. 19 Cantrell, 5. 20 Ibid. 21 "MPML," 149. 22 Also consider: "ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well" ("MPML," 150). The highest of obligations grow out of these myriad lesser obligations, deriving their overriding character from the fact that they are the best possible integration of them. I think James's later view as Gale describes it-"it is because God's demands and desires are good that we are obligated to comply with them"-is at least implicit in "MPML" (Gale, 44). Also Cooper: "Without roots in human motivation, a theistic moral code would have no moral weight" (235). Also Slater: God's values are not "intrinsically good or right"; God's "ideal moral universe would be the maximally inclusive one" (William James on Ethics and Faith, 90). 23 Schrader, 1025. 24 "MPML" describes God as "the infinite thinker" (161). 25 William James, A Pluralistic Universe, vol. 4 of The Works of William James ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis; 19 volumes (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988), 141. 26 Ibid., 56. 27 John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 42. 28 William James, "The Sentiment of Rationality" in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 80. For a thorough examination of James's understanding of truth, see Hilary Putnam, "James' Theory of Truth" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Putnam addresses this aspect of James's understanding of truth on pages 167-171. 29 "The Will to Believe" in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 31-32. On the development of James's idea of comprehending the universe under the analogy of social relationships, those very things said in "The Will to Believe" to be realities which our TAKINK GOD SERIOUSLY, BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY Page 19 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 beliefs can change, see David C. Lamberth, "Interpreting the Universe after a Social Analogy: Intimacy, Panpsychism, and a Finite God in a Pluralistic Universe" in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 30 This theme also appears in "The Sentiment of Rationality," 8489, and "Is Life Worth Living?," 53-56, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. 31 Cooper's comments help to elucidate this aspect of Jamesian religion (6, 20-21, 147-148). 32 Cantrell, 8. 33 "MPML," 161. 34 Of course, God desires that we find these overriding obligations, so to do so is to obey a divine command; but the command that we find the highest obligations is not itself the highest obligations. 35 James: "His function is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day" ("MPML," 159). 36 Ruth Anna Putnam, "Some of Life's Ideals." 37 Deborah Boyle explains how James's God seeks an inclusiveness of ideals; see her "William James' Ethical Symphony," Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 34.4 (Fall 1998). 38 "Three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics," 7-9. Telling is their remark that "Jamesian pluralism entails that James's ethics cannot support a muscular commitment to tolerance," 33. 39 Harvey Cormier misunderstands James on this point as well. He correctly points out that tolerance is built right into the process of constructing the largest possible set of consistent ideals, but implies that God has no part in it; to the contrary, James says that God is at the heart of this endeavor; "Comment on Talisse and Aikin," 13-14. 40 "MPML," 156. 41 In fact, they have already gone, as social and political progress have ruled out a number of ideals that are too exclusive of other ideals. Cooper makes this clear in his discussion of sadism (227-231). 42 On the question of James's utilitarianism, I favor the language Cooper uses to describe James's ethics; Cantrell seems to side with Gale. See above, footnote 2. Cantrell, 8. 43 "MPML," 161. 44 Slater misunderstands James: "if God exists, then any claims that God makes on us are binding only insofar as we respond to those claims" ("Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief," 18; also see William James on Ethics and Faith, 77). In the passage to which Slater refers ("MPML," 149), James says that our response to God's demands is a necessary condition, not for making a way of life moral, but for making us walk in it. Gale is helpful in describing Section V of "MPML" as pertaining to the "existential . . . dimension of the ethical life," describing the human motivation to live ethically-not the necessary and sufficient conditions for a way of living being ethical. Gale, 40-4. 45 "William James' Ethical Symphony," 985. 46 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, vol. 15 of The Works of William James, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson MARK BOONE: Page 20 of 20 William James Studies: Vol. 10 Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis; 19 volumes (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1975-1988), Lecture XVIII, 341. 47 Cooper, 147.


Philosophy

http://social-epistemology.com ISSN: 2471-9560 Public Reason Liberalism and the Certification of Scientific Claims Jason Tyndal, College of Southern Nevada, email@example.com __________________ Tyndal, Jason. 2019. "Public Reason Liberalism and the Certification of Scientific Claims." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (11): 8-14. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4Du. 8 8 (11): 8-14. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4Du In "What Facts Should be Treated as 'Fixed' in Public Justification?" (2019), Andrew Reid examines the issue of when scientific claims ought to be regarded as beyond reasonable disagreement (i.e., as "fixed" facts). According to one common line of thinking, scientific claim S is beyond dispute whenever there is a scientific consensus on S. However, Reid aims to demonstrate that this criterion is underdeveloped and, as a result, permits some citizens to be deemed "unreasonable" even when they do not have sufficient reason to regard S as a fixed fact. Reid is explicit that his focus is restricted to Rawls, and his article illustrates how the matter of determining which scientific claims ought to be regarded as fixed represents an unresolved complication for Rawlsian public reason liberals. However, public reason liberalism, while greatly indebted to Rawls for his extensive development, has blossomed into a theory with a number of competing versions. Moreover, the problem that Reid addresses applies to public reason liberalism broadly construed. In light of this, I will situate the considerations highlighted by Reid within a broader context of public reason liberalism. I will begin with a brief overview of public reason liberalism and then provide a short description of some of the theoretical tools commonly employed by public reason liberals. Each of these tools will be referenced in the ensuing discussion. Public Reason Liberalism At the core of public reason liberalism sits a principle of public justification. While this principle is framed and articulated in various ways by different public reason liberals, what is common amongst the various formulations is the requirement that some principled set of coercive laws be justifiable to all citizens who will be accountable to such laws. Depending on the particular account, such a requirement may apply to only constitutional matters or it may be extended to cover all coercive laws, from constitutional matters down to matters of everyday legislation. Whatever the scope of a principle of public justification, the issue of whether a particular law is justifiable to a particular citizen is determined by inquiring whether the citizen in question has sufficient reason to accept the law.1 If all citizens who are answerable to law L have sufficient reason to accept it, then L is considered "publicly justified" and, hence, legitimate. In theory, then, all accounts of public reason liberalism incorporate a unanimity requirement.2 This is a direct consequence of asserting that a law that falls within the scope of a principle of public justification is not publicly justified unless each and every citizen accountable to the law has sufficient reason to agree to it. Of course, unanimity requirements have not traditionally been popular amongst political theorists since, among other reasons, it is difficult to imagine how citizens afflicted with moral and epistemic shortcomings could 1 The question of whether a citizen has sufficient reason to accept a law is sometimes presented as inquiring whether the citizen could reasonably reject the law (Scanlon 1998). 2 Here is Rawls' principle of public justification with a built in unanimity requirement: "our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free equal may reasonable be expected to endorse in light of the principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason" (emphasis added, Rawls 1996, 137). J. Tyndal 9 come to unanimously agree on anything (Schwartzberg 2014, 71-72). It is for this reason that public reason liberals are faced with the possibility that no laws whatsoever will get publicly justified. The Public Reason Liberal's Toolkit Not to be deterred by the worry that public justification is unattainable, public reason liberals utilize a variety of theoretical devices in an effort to plausibly maintain that at least some laws will get publicly justified. Here are four such prominent devices: 1. Moral and/or Epistemic Idealization. When public reason liberals ask whether a citizen has sufficient reason to accept some proposed law L, they are not asking whether the actual citizen – as he or she really is – has reason to accept L. Rather, they are asking whether that citizen's idealized counterpart – one who is hypothetically cleansed of the actual citizen's basic moral and/or epistemic defects – would have reason to accept L. Idealization is a way of preventing shortcomings in reasoning, and even moral beliefs, from undermining public justification. 2. Public-Reasons-Only (PRO) Restriction. Public reason liberals who incorporate a PRO restriction place limits on the types of reasons that citizens can appeal to in order to support or defeat a proposed law. Advocates of the PRO restriction demand that citizens ultimately appeal to only "public reasons" and not to non-public reasons.3 Public reasons, sometimes referred to as "shared" reasons, are reasons acceptable to all no matter what personal comprehensive moral, philosophical, or religious doctrines one endorses. This has sparked a divide amongst public reason liberals, with consensus theorists endorsing the PRO restriction and convergence theorists rejecting it. 3. Scope and Evaluation Restrictions. As already alluded to, public reason liberals must specify which laws ought to be publicly justified, if not all of them. Rawls believed that it is only constitutional essentials and other matters of basic justice that require public justification. Other public reason liberals might hold that all laws should get justified, not just the constitutional essentials. However, there is also the related issue of what the appropriate item of evaluation should be. Are we to justify individual laws, packages of laws, constitutional articles, or whole constitutions? One dubious way to increase the likelihood that at least some laws will be agreed upon is to offer up arbitrarily-constructed packages of items in an effort to secure agreement (Gaus 2010, 198). 4. Restrictions on the constituency of public reason. A common way amongst public reason liberals to implement this device is by dividing up the general public into two categories: the reasonable persons and the unreasonable persons. A 3 Some consensus theorists follow Rawls and allow for non-public reasons to be introduced into public political discussion so long as, in due course, "we give properly public reason to support the principles and policies our comprehensive doctrine is said to support" (Rawls 1999, 144). 10 8 (11): 8-14. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4Du less abrasive version of this is to simply distinguish between reasonable views and unreasonable views. Those deemed unreasonable are excluded from the constituency of public reason – the group of persons whom a proposed law has to be justified to. As a result, when considering whether law L is publicly justified, public reason liberals do not always ask whether all citizens accountable to L have sufficient reason to accept it; rather, they sometimes only ask whether all citizens who comprise the constituency of public reason, with respect to L, have sufficient reason to accept L. By doing this, those pesky unreasonable people do not undercut attempts at public justification. There are of course worries about abuse here. We should avoid manufacturing public justification by groundlessly tossing all dissenters into the unreasonable category. The aim of public reason liberalism is not to fabricate agreement whatever the cost, but to identify the most appropriate normative structure to regulate the justification of coercive laws in light of the fact of reasonable pluralism among free and equal persons. As such, we should avoid deploying the tools of public reason liberalism for the purpose of merely securing agreement – doing so betrays the aim of public reason liberalism. Unsurprisingly then, debates within public reason liberalism often center on how these tools should be utilized. This is also true of Reid's article in which the notion of a constituency of public reason (device #4) is central to the discussion. The Problem of Certification Reid maintains that Rawls was an advocate of the idea that some facts should be treated as beyond reasonable disagreement (i.e., as "fixed"4). While Rawls may not have used the phrase "fixed facts," he did employ various similar-sounding phrases, such as "settled convictions," "fixed points," and "basic facts" to convey the idea that certain claims should not be open to dispute (1996, 8, 124). For Rawls, these are things which we accept provisionally, but with confidence. As a political constructivist, Rawls thought that certain moral claims ought to be regarded as settled convictions or basic facts, such as "slavery is unjust" and "exploitation is unjust" (1996, 124). On his view, for such statements to be regarded as reasonable, they need not be grounded in further moral argument. It is enough for Rawls that slavery, for example, would violate principles which he believes all people would agree to in the original position.5 To reject such a "settled conviction" is to be unreasonable. Rawls invokes these various phrasings when conveying the idea that certain types of moral convictions should be treated as basic. This raises the question of when Rawls would regard a scientific claim as achieving a status, similar to that of a settled moral conviction or basic moral fact, such that anyone who rejects the scientific claim would be considered unreasonable. It is well-known that Rawls asserts that "in discussing constitutional essentials 4 To say that a fact is "fixed" is not to say that it is no longer open to dispute or somehow immune to challenge. A fixed fact is treated as true until reason surfaces that is sufficient to cause us to think otherwise. 5 The original position is the hypothetical position in which deliberators are placed behind a "veil of ignorance" that deprives of them of knowledge of certain things about themselves, such as their position in society, their strengths and weaknesses, what they value, etc. (Rawls 1971, 12) J. Tyndal 11 and matters of basic justice we are not to appeal to comprehensive religious and philosophical doctrines..." (1996, 224-225). What are we to appeal to then? According to Rawls, "we are to appeal only to presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense, and the methods and conclusions of science when these are not controversial" (1996, 224). As Reid explains, "[t]he latter is the body of knowledge that is the subject of an overwhelming and on-going consensus amongst scientists, and which has not been debunked using the scientific method" (2019, 493-494). Reid's complaint is that, on the Rawlsian view, the existence of a consensus amongst experts is regarded as sufficient for treating a scientific claim as a fixed fact. But if this is an accurate depiction of the Rawlsian stance, it would, as Reid remarks, elicit the following corollary: "to invoke a fact that contradicts this scientific consensus whilst justifying a policy would be 'unreasonable'" (2019, 491). But since those holding views deemed unreasonable may be excluded to some extent from the constituency of public reason, there exists the potential for unjustifiable exclusion. It would be wrong to exclude someone from public deliberation on the basis that their political propositions are underpinned by a denial of facts that we can have no reasonable expectation for them to accept (emphasis added, Reid 2019, 493). On Reid's view, the Rawlsian criterion is inadequate to the extent that it permits one's rejection of a scientific claim to be treated as unreasonable even in cases where one does not have sufficient reason to accept the claim. Reid's proposed solution is to shore up the criterion for fixed facts. In using terminology borrowed from Philip Kitcher, this is the problem of certification. Certification is "the phase of inquiry in which new findings are accepted or rejected as part of public knowledge" (Kitcher 2011, 12). Reid is specifically concerned with the certification of scientific claims. What are the circumstances in which a scientific claim ought to be certified such that it becomes part of the shared information base (public knowledge) and, as such, is unreasonable for anyone to reject? If the certification process is too broad (i.e., it allows claims to be treated as fixed facts when they should not), it runs the risk of abusing the fourth device in the public reason liberal's toolkit. One way the fourth device is abused is when citizens' views are improperly labelled as unreasonable and the "offending" citizens are consequently excluded from the constituency of public reason. It is this worry that prompts Reid to propose an additional condition on what qualifies as a fixed fact. According to Reid, simply having a consensus in the relevant expert community is necessary, but not sufficient for characterizing a scientific claim as a fixed fact.6 In cases where the general public is in disagreement, despite the presence of an expert consensus, Reid argues that scientific facts should be regarded as beyond reasonable dispute only when "a consensus exists amongst all reasonable citizens that there is reason to defer to experts in these cases" (2019, p. 491). To arrive at this consensus all reasonable citizens will need to partake in a second-order assessment of the debate. Reid understands this second-order assessment as consisting in (1) an evaluation of the credentials of the experts who are making factual 6 I am setting aside the issue of how to determine when a scientific consensus has actually been achieved. 12 8 (11): 8-14. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4Du claims; and (2) an evaluation of the process by which a community of experts arrived at a consensus. Item (2) is important given that the judgments of scientific communities are not infallible. Like the rest of us, scientists are prone to cognitive biases and other errors of reasoning that sometimes lead to the endorsement of false claims. While working together as a community can often help to deflect some of these missteps, it provides no assurances against error. As such, just because a community of experts has reached a consensus, it does not follow that we should uncritically accept their claim(s). Rather, if a scientific consensus has been reached on scientific claim S, then while that gives us a strong reason to accept S, it is a reason that must be weighed against any other reasons we may have to reject S. In other words, at this early stage, our reason for accepting S is open to being defeated. Once a scientific consensus on a claim is reached, the establishment of that claim, amongst laypeople, comes via an exchange between experts and non-experts. Non-experts may make inquiries about "the process by which the specific experts in the field came to believe what they did" (Reid 2019, 496). Scientists have a responsibility to listen and respond to questions and objections formulated by those outside the specialist community. If they cannot do this or are unwilling to do this, then we have reason to reject their claims. We must then distinguish between a community of scientists reaching a scientific consensus and the general public being epistemically obligated to accept the claims comprising the consensus (or, at the very least, conceding that there is no good reasons to reject the claims). That scientists have simply reached a consensus is not sufficient to accomplish the latter. Elizabeth Anderson argues that a layperson's second-order assessment of the trustworthiness of those making scientific claims consists in assessments of expertise, honesty, and epistemic responsibility (2011, 145-146). Regarding assessments of epistemic responsibility, Anderson says that: one must be able to judge whether testifiers are responsive to evidence, reasoning, and arguments others raise against their beliefs. This third criterion is needed to ensure that testifiers are basing their beliefs on a responsible exercise of their skills... The mark of epistemic responsibility is responsive accountability to the community of inquirers. One's claims are suspect if one fails to hold oneself accountable to the demands for justification made by the community of inquirers (146). Some worries surely arise. It is frustrating to witness scientists carefully explain the process by which they arrived at a claim, answer questions, and respond patiently to objections, only to have a portion of the general public refuse to accept the claim on the basis of their own cognitive biases and other errors in reasoning. Public reason liberals might attempt to deal with this reality through idealization. If epistemic shortcomings prevent citizen C from recognizing that his or her objections are ill-formed and that scientists have adequately defended the claim, then public reason liberals may be warranted in claiming that C's J. Tyndal 13 idealized counterpart would recognize this and, and such, C has good reason to accept the claim. As is often the case though, things are not so simple. The problem of certification is especially pronounced for public reason liberals when it is the case that the relevant scientific community has discharged its responsibility to the general public and, yet, there remains a discrepancy between what the scientific consensus is and what the idealized counterparts of citizens could be said to have reason to believe. In an effort to achieve resolution, one may be tempted to apply progressively greater degrees of idealization to the citizenry. But public reason liberals should resist engaging in too much idealization for, if one over-idealizes, then the idealized counterparts of citizens will be so far removed from actual citizens that the idealized counterparts will affirm a set of reasons that we cannot reasonably expect actual citizens to arrive at (Gaus 2011). Over-idealization runs the risk of violating a key tenet of public reason liberalism insofar as we cannot be said to justify an action to a citizen if we are attributing non-reasonablyaccessible reasons to them. This amounts to abusing another device in the public reason liberal's toolkit (device #1). Still, some idealization is needed to prevent superficial epistemic shortcomings from disrupting the process of public justification. A citizen should not be able to obstruct public justification when his or her objection constitutes, for example, an obvious straw man fallacy or is based on beliefs that are clearly false (such as the belief that the world is flat). To put this in the language of Reid's article, too much idealization would deprive citizens of epistemic autonomy, but too little idealization would allow citizens to fail to defer when deference is warranted. Beyond Rawls While Reid's focus is on Rawls, it is perhaps the case that Rawls is less exposed to the problem of certification than many other public reason liberals. This is because Rawls holds a narrow view regarding the scope of public reason (device #3). For Rawls, the scope of public reason is restricted to "constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice" (Rawls 1996, 214; 1999, 133; 2001, 91 fn. 13). The principle of public justification does not apply to matters that are neither constitutional essentials nor questions of basic justice. The prominence of the problem of certification within the Rawlsian framework is contingent on the extent to which scientific claims figure into the highly-abstract level at which Rawls operates. Whatever the result for Rawls, it is plausibly the case that the problem becomes more pronounced as we consider other less-abstract legislative matters in addition to constitutional matters. This is not to argue that Rawls is immune to considerations for the problem of certification, but rather to emphasize that if such considerations are relevant to the Rawlsian account, they are arguably more pressing for those public reason liberals who expand the scope of the public justification requirement. In speaking on non-Rawlsian public reason liberals, Reid remarks that "convergence theorists, I think, object to the idea of fixed facts, or at least not see them as important for their theory" (2019, p. 499). It is important to recognize, however, that what fundamentally distinguishes convergence models of public reason from consensus models is that convergence approaches reject the public-reasons-only restriction (device #2). Because of this, convergence theorists permit non-public reasons (i.e., those based in one's personal 14 8 (11): 8-14. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4Du comprehensive doctrines) to enter into the justificatory domain and ground the acceptance of proposed laws. Another common, but non-fundamental, difference between consensus theorists and convergence theorists is that consensus theorists have tended to adopt an accessibility requirement which places some shared evaluative standards (i.e., agent-neutral rules of inference and evidence) on which reasons can enter into the justificatory domain. Rawls referred to such standards as "guidelines of inquiry" – the "principles of reasoning and rules of evidence ..." (Rawls 1996, 223-224). While the earliest convergence theorists have rejected the accessibility requirement in favor of other alternatives (such as the lessrestrictive intelligibility requirement), there is nothing about the convergence approach that necessitates such a rejection (Tyndal 2019). The issue is further complicated by the possibility that the conditions that must be met in order to defeat a proposal may diverge from the conditions that must be met to merely accept a proposal. Nevertheless, whether one adopts the consensus or convergence approach, it is true that as soon as one leans on the notion of shared evaluative standards, Reid's notion of fixed facts becomes salient and the problem of certification surfaces. References Anderson, Elizabeth. 2011. "Democracy, Public Policy, and Lay Assessments of Scientific Testimony." Episteme 8 (2): 144-164. Gaus, Gerald. 2010. "On Two Critics of Justificatory Liberalism: A Response to Wall and Lister." Politics, Philosophy & Economics 9 (2): 177-212. Gaus, Gerald. 2011. The Order of Public Reason. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kitcher, Philip. 2011. Science in a Democratic Society. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Rawls, John. 1996. Political Liberalism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Reid, Andrew. 2019. "What Facts Should be Treated as 'Fixed' in Public Justification?" Social Epistemology 33 (6): 491-502. Scanlon, T.M. 1998. What we Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwartzberg, Melissa. 2014. Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Tyndal, Jason. 2019. "Public Reason, Non-Public Reasons, and the Accessibility Requirement," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (8): 1062-1082.