Comments on: Cohen on facts and principles

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 13:40:58 +0000

Yes, in the real world, we go back and forth between levels of abstraction. If successful in reaching (or moving toward) reflective equilibrium, we wind up with a complicated structure of more general and more specific commitments. If Cohen’s point concerns the logical structure of deduction within that structure, we have exactly the Achilles/tortoise case. If his point is about what justifies what, we need to determine where our most secure commitments lie. And these need not be the most abstract commitments. (For those keeping score, note that I’m here moving beyond the limits of a political conception of justice and relying on my own (partially) comprehensive doctrine about the structure of practical reason.)

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 07:37:48 +0000

Jon rightly points out that justification can proceed in both directions, as it were. But I don’t think that Cohen need deny this, and indeed he may affirm it, if by “justification” is meant the real-world process by which we acquire and clarify our moral beliefs. Cohen’s focus, if I understand him aright, is on the post-justificatory (in the sense I’ve just used it) structure than our beliefs must have.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 06:43:36 +0000

I’ve got a feeling that the discussion of the status of functional explanations in KM’sToH might illuminate this article, or be illuminated by it.

By: Shai

Shai — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 04:50:07 +0000

Nevermind, I think I understand at least the basic difference now. Sorry for throwing up on this comments thread.

By: Shai

Shai — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 04:30:06 +0000

Actually, I suppose he illustrates the difference in his fourth note. He disagrees with the position Sen takes in a 1967 paper; I’ll have to look through some of Sen’s newer books to see if he’s said anything else on this. Does anyone know if Cohen expands on this in his book “If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?”. I’m still wondering… he disagrees with Sen on the stringency of his criteria for basicness and yet seems to take the position to its logical conclusion? Anyone want to comment?

By: Shai

Shai — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 03:45:03 +0000

Apparently I’m not sophisticated enough to understand the argument in Cohen’s article yet. What Chris quotes looks very much like Amartya Sen on “basicness”, and in fact Cohen does cite him (for a simple summary of Sen on this—perhaps too simple—see this specifically, pages 11-14). Can someone describe to me the difference between the two positions? I thought I understood Sen’s argument, but I wonder now that I’m having trouble with Cohen’s (I’m a second year compsci undergrad if that helps—but I do have a 4.0 gpa so it doesn’t have to be dumbed down too much, I hope).

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:57:59 +0000

Now are the claims “we have to distinguish premises from inference rules” and “we have to believe in inference rules” themselves premises? Or are they inference rules? Neither – they’re conclusions :)

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:27:10 +0000

As I’ll explain in a post I’ll put up a little later, I don’t think Rawls (or Rawlsians) need to make any concessions to Cohen – Rawls just doesn’t hold the thesis that Cohen attributes to him. I think Cohen’s point is, in fact, very close to the Achilles/tortoise argument. Cohen certainly overstates his case when he says that his first premise “does not say anything like what Lewis Carroll’s tortoise said to Achilles.” One lesson from that argument is that it is possible to codify inferences with inference rules. But if these inference rules do nothing but make the inferences explicit, by themselves, they do not add any justificatory weight. Cohen seems to assume that justification can only procede by appealling to more abstract principles – in particular, the ones that codify an inference from a fact to a principle. But if this more abstract principle is only codifying the inferences we already make, by itself, it adds no justificatory weight. Of course, appeal to more abstract principles is one way that justification can go (when those principles can be defended), but the idea of reflective equilibrium suggests that justification can also go in the opposite direction, as well.

By: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 00:58:02 +0000

>>we have to distinguish premises from inference rules, and we have to believe in inference rules.< < Now are the claims “we have to distinguish premises from inference rules” and “we have to believe in inference rules” themselves premises? Or are they inference rules?

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 22:52:25 +0000

On Loren’s post: I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re driving at, or, at least, how it is germane to Cohen’s argument, but two possible replies spring to mind. 1) Would be to point to Cohen’s remarks concerning ought implies can at pp. 230-31 and to include (perhaps tacitly) in the proper formulation of all ultimate fact-insensitive principles a conditional clause to the effect that one should phi if one is in a world where phi-ing is the kind of thing that is possible. 2) Would be to worry about what is driving your “a universe in which agents of a certain sort have evolved” formulation. I take it that if we turned out to be caused by a demiurge we’d face the same practical problems as if we have (as I believe we have) evolved from the slime. So our particular causal history can’t be all that important to the issues of ethical principle. But maybe I’m missing the point here.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 22:38:58 +0000

On Achilles and the tortoise, best to let Cohen speak for himself: bq. “…that [first] premise does not say anything like what Lewis Carroll’s tortoise said to Achilles. That misguided tortoise said that an inference is valid only if the principle that validates it is stated as a further premise of the inference. An unmanageable infinite regress ensues, and the take-home lesson is that principles of inferential validity do not function as premises in the arguments that they validate….[My] first premise concerns not inference and what makes them valid but justifying grounds and what makes them justify….When someone claims that a fact grounds a principle, she affirms a grounding relation, not one of deductive inference. And I do not say, no, that fact doesn’t ground that principle unless we add…; I simply ask, non-rhetorically, why the fact supports the principle, and I claim that a satisfactory answer will always feature a further principle, P1: that is, precisely, a (correct!) claim, mnot a move demanded by logic. And unlike the sequence generated by the tortoise, the sequence that my claim generates is finite: it comes to an end with the statement of a principle that is fact-insensitive and, therefore, one to which my sequence-generating question (‘Why does this fact support this principle?’) does not apply.” (Facts and Principles, p. 220)

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:29:48 +0000

That probably wasn’t as clear as I intended. I (following a ton of people) take the point of Carroll’s paper to be that we have to distinguish premises from inference rules, and we have to believe in inference rules. Are Cohen’s fact-dependent principles and fact-independent principles analogous to premises and inference rules? I think so, but it’s a very hard question. (By the way, I hope my verbosity doesn’t cut off a conversation about Loren’s very interesting post.)

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:24:05 +0000

Two points on Achilles and Cohen. First the geek point – the paper was published under the name ‘Lewis Carroll’. It’s not entirely clear why this is, since Dodgson published other things in logic under his own name. (Geek trivia question: Apart from the joke issues, have there been any other papers published in Mind under a pseudonym? For that matter, what was the last (serious) philosophy paper published under a pseudonym?) Serious point: it isn’t clear that Cohen’s making the same point as Carroll. Here’s the kind of thing you’d have to believe that their conclusions are at base the same: (a) That the ultimate, fact-independent, principles that Cohen is reaching for are conceptual truths; and (b) The role of conceptual truths in arguments is more akin to inference rules than to premises. (Or you could replace ‘conceptual truths’ in both (a) and (b) for same effect, but I think you’d be making both less plausible.) Anyway, I believe both (a) and (b), so I’m with Brad, and D^2 in a previous thread, in thinking these really are similar points. But both of those are very contentious claims, to say the least. In any case, I think they are making different arguments since Carroll was talking about arguments and Cohen is talking about explanations. I still think the conclusions are similar, but they are different routes.

By: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:06:11 +0000

There is a paper by Charles L. Dodgson, "Achilles and the Tortoise," which points out you only have to acknowledge the force of: [(P->Q) & (P)] -> Q if you believe that: [[(P->Q) & (P)] -> Q] So the argument is only watertight if you formulate it as: [[[(P->Q) & (P)] -> Q] & (P->Q) & (P)] -> Q but then you only have to acknowledge the force of this statement above if you believe that: [[[[(P->Q) & (P)] -> Q] & (P->Q) & (P)] -> Q] Is Cohen's argument any different, at bottom?

By: Loren

Loren — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:00:43 +0000

Brian, Chris: interesting posts. Offhand, here's a possible way in which Gerald Cohen might be forced to take sides in at least some of the metaethical disputes he is at pains to avoid (which in turn might make is "facts and principles" paper more directly relevant to debates about naturalism and ethics).. Imagine an exuberant evolutionary naturalist. Her exuberance is evidenced by the zeal with which she wields the weak anthropic principle. She says to Cohen:

"I take no sides on a range of debates about truth, knowledge, normativity, the nature of reality, etc. I merely make the simple point that such debates could only take place in a universe in which agents of a certain sort have evolved. This ontological dependence constitutes an ultimate factual grounding relation. To be clear, I am not explaining or deducing anything about the sources of our moral intuitions or deepest convictions. I merely make a claim about how normative principles are ultimately grounded in facts about the universe, namely that it is the sort of universe in which conscious beings could evolve in such ways that normative principles are required. Nor need I provide a comprehensive demonstration of my anthropic argument. The burden is on my opponents in this debate to show an example where my argument does not hold -- that is, a case of a normative principle that is affirmed independent of facts, including the facts cited by my anthropic argument, i.e. the fact that the universe is such that beings of a certain sort have evolved and can affirm said normative principle."

Now Cohen might see this sort of claim as analogous to his example of the holist who argues that our moral beliefs are ultimately related to the facts of some far distant galaxy. But I don't think the evolutionary naturalist can be dismissed so easily, because her arsenal of facts, and the evolutionary logic they impose on forms of life, may well be brought to bear on moral claims in ways that Cohen has to answer explicitly ("no, that sort of grounding relation is not relevant here, because ...")

It occurs to me that Cohen can only exempt such substantively interesting grounding relations ("interesting" and substantive compared to, say, the claim about distant galaxies as grounding facts) by making some explicit claims about the nature of truth, the substance of acceptable grounding relations, the sources of normative judgements, and probably some other points that seem, well, unabashedly metaethical.

And when Cohen takes some meaty metaethical positions to answer folks like the exuberant evolutionary naturalist, I suspect that it might become clear(er?) that his real beef with Rawls is that justice is, for Cohen, ultimately metaphysical, not political.