9 Street (1)

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Mount Holyoke College *

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101

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Philosophy

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Oct 30, 2023

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29

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Does anything really matter? Maybe we just evolved to think so.
Sharon Street
Biography Born in 1973 Went to Amherst, sadly, for undergraduate, and Harvard for graduate school. Currently at NYU. Interested in how there can be a difference between moral right and wrong if the world is correctly described by physics and other sciences. I can’t find any juicy gossip about her. She seems to be pretty quiet.
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A little background Even if we differ about specific examples, we all think that some things are right, and some things are wrong. So, for example, you might think that in a particular case, it would be wrong to break a promise, or tell a lie, or allow something to happen that makes someone suffer
What Street is worried about When we say that something is moral, we’re obviously preferring that state over the immoral one. But what happens when we do this? Are we saying one thing is true ( X is immoral, Y is better)? Or are we having a sort of emotional reaction?
Meta-Ethics The preference – lying is worse than telling the truth – is a moral issue. It’s deciding that one thing is right and another wrong. But the question “What happens when we make moral judgments?” doesn’t have, as an answer, “Well X is right and Y is wrong”. It’s a question about what right and wrong are . It’s called ‘Meta-Ethics’.
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Sharon Street’s conclusion Appears quite late, page 911: ...a mind independent conception of value is false Put differently: thinking that value X is right and value Y is wrong is not like thinking that belief X is true and belief Y is false. Moral values are not objective (as Kant thought).
What does she mean by ‘objective’? (page 906) A subjective value is something we prefer because we value it. e.g. chocolate is delicious (not all values are moral) An objective value is something we ought to prefer, because it is valuable whether we prefer it or not
(an analogy) A subjective value is like knowing a convention: A convention is known is because people accept it. e.g. correct side of the road to drive on. An objective value is like knowing an objective fact: An objective fact is known because it is justified independently of whether anyone accepts it.
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The independence of justification For objective things, there’s some other source of justification that’s independent of whether we think something is justified. For subjective things, the justification depends upon whether or not we think it’s justified.
The heart of the argument We only have a preference for the things we prefer because we are caused by evolution to value them. That is, they are subjective . We prefer them because we’re built to value them. There’s nothing that shows why we ought to value them independently of this.
Evolution Some “reminders” from Sam
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Evolutionary explanations Evolution explains why organisms possess some properties (“traits”) and not others Many more offspring are produced than can survive to reproduce Different offspring vary in the properties they have. Some properties cause better survival Some of these properties are passed down to the next offspring
What’s supposed to happen At one time, only a few members of the population had the property. Their offspring survived/reproduced better than the others. So more of the population had the property … and that’s why the property is so common today in the population!
Be Careful It is not enough to show that the property might have caused survival You must give a reason for thinking that it actually did cause survival, over others without the property… In the actual history of the organism. Otherwise, you get too many bullshit “explanations”. You can’t just guess that sheep are gray because they look like rocks, or that woodpeckers are green to hide in the foliage.
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Be Careful 2 Lots of things get carried along because something else is causing more reproductive success. And some things happen entirely by accident . There isn’t an evolutionary reason for them. Otherwise, you get too many bullshit “explanations”. The human chin probably is a by-product of bipedal development. There’s probably no reason our eyes have whites.
Street’s argument
Discovering the cause of a belief sometimes undermines it An example (not Street’s): Once, many people believed that eggs, milk and meat were good for you. That is, that they were healthier than alternative foods.
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But... ...it turns out that the diet advice from the government was produced by the food industry. This led to some skepticism.
When should the cause of a belief lead to doubt? When the cause of the belief is unrelated to the truth or falsehood of the belief ...and only then. When the cause of the belief might also cause the truth of the belief, no doubt is appropriate. For example, an experiment that one sees, or the word of someone we have evidence is an expert, doesn’t produce doubt.
So what is the cause of our moral beliefs? Street says that some of our moral beliefs would likely make us better at surviving e.g. it is morally wrong not to take care of children, or to expose them to risks We ought to admire and imitate cooperative and altruistic people Cheating ought not to be rewarded.
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By contrast... If we had had other moral beliefs, these would probably not have helped us survive: Children ought to be neglected and ignored. We should admire and imitate selfish and uncooperative people Cheating ought to be rewarded.
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So, probably... “there are innate predispositions in the direction of some values rather than others” page 908. This doesn’t mean there can’t be variations between cultures, or that there can’t be exceptions
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Why does that matter? Well, evolution only cares about how many offspring survive to reproduce – that’s what causes the properties it explains Does that have anything at all to do with the difference between right and wrong? Well no. It suggests that we just prefer some things, because our ancestors had more babies that way
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So... It looks like the only reason we prefer (e.g.) kindness to cruelty is that we had more surviving babies by doing so Not that there is anything independent of human minds that causes the preference So “...a mind-independent conception of value is false...” p.911
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What do you think?
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A reason this is included Well first, it’s interesting, and fairly easy to understand. Second, to show you that philosophy is going on now, and that people around you are contributing to it.
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Katia Vavova
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Quick advice for the quiz Look at the past exams. See if you can do them. Then look at the answers. Some things have changed, but not much. This is what to expect.
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