Pulling hedonic utilitarianism out of ethical emotivism

AKA emotivist utilitarianism

Ethical emotivism is a non-realist moral theory¹ which says that there is nothing more to moral statements than exclamations of emotion. For instance, saying “murder is bad” is just the same as saying “boo murder”, or expressing that you get a “bad feeling” when you consider murder, but there’s nothing more to it than that.

This is attractive if you start from a position of non-realism: You look around the universe, see no particular reason for moral facts to exist, except that people walk around saying “that’s bad”, “that’s wrong”, “leave that poor pigeon alone”. Furthermore, you yourself feel things subjectively that cause you to say “that’s bad” and so on.

The ethical emotivist takes the minimum possible step: these things are just expressions of emotion, which is just another way of saying “you yourself feel things subjectively that cause you to say “that’s bad” and so on”. It’s not even really a moral theory, it’s just adding emotions and the exclamations they generate into the set of phenomena in the universe. There are electrons, and they make other electrons move in the opposite direction. There are stars, and they make planets orbit around them. And there are emotions, and they make you say “that’s bad” and other moral statements.

Quasi-realism

There is a school of emotivism² called “quasi-realism”, which aims to apply some concept of consistency on top of ethical emotivism. For instance, if someone proclaims “murder is wrong” and “lying is wrong”, then it is also “legitimate” in some way to infer (at least for that person) that “murdering someone and lying about it is wrong”, without them having to say it.

Here is a longer quote from a (as it happens, disparaging) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article (SEP) on the topic, making this point:

Such a view may hold that although the underlying logical structure of the sentence “Stealing is wrong” is nothing more than “Stealing: Boo!”, it is still legitimate for ordinary speakers to use such language as “Fred believes that stealing is wrong,” “If stealing is wrong, then so is borrowing without permission,” “Stealing would remain wrong regardless of what anyone thought of it,” “The sentence ‘Stealing is wrong’ is true,” and even, perhaps, “The property of wrongness is instantiated by stealing.” Blackburn³ (1993a: 184-6)

A component of this view is projectivism, the idea that emotions are “projected” into the real world as judgements or statements. “Projectivism is best thought of as a causal account of moral experience” (SEP), i.e. it’s not a moral theory in itself, but a logical connecting-together of sensory inputs to emotions to moral behaviour. For instance:

1. Sensory input: See a murder on TV news

2. Emotion: Feel disapproval

3. Projection back into the real world: Say “oh that’s dreadful”, or “murder is wrong”, or take up activism to reduce crime, or otherwise change your behaviour⁴

Quasi-realism is still argued as a non-realist theory. Put together it says:

1. Emotions exist

2. Emotions can be projected into the physical world, including as statements. But these statements are not facts, they don’t have truth-value in the same way as “grass is green”

3. It is legitimate to treat these statements as if they have truth-value, and connect them together via pseudo- reasoning and logic. For instance “If stealing is wrong, then so is borrowing without permission” (SEP)

This is attractive if you start from a position of ethical emotivism (having started from a position of non-realism). At the very least, just as naive ethical emotivism gives a causal account of “reactive” moral behaviour (sees murder -> “murder is bad”), quasi-realism gives a causal account of “rich” moral behaviour (many people agree murder is bad, discuss with each other -> politicians are elected who are tough on crime -> murder rate decreases).

Logic

At the base of logic are statements like “if P then Q; P, therefore Q” (modus ponens). Per the laws of logic, this is a true statement, it holds for any P and Q. But what is to stop you from simply denying that it’s true? “No, even if P, I don’t think Q”, “But... I just said ‘if P then Q’”, “I just don’t think that’s right”. There is a step from “it seems obviously true” to “it is true” that is hard to cross.

With a much more complex logical statement, like “if (if A then B) then (if not B then not A)”, you are well within your rights to say “I’m not sure”, “it could be true, it could not be”. Now, as it happens this is also true, per the laws of logic. But at some point a statement seems so blindingly obvious that you just have to accept it, but it’s hard to explain what causes you to cross the boundary.

This gap between “this seems obviously true” and “this is true” is what ailed Descartes in his Meditations (of “I think therefore I am” fame). He tried to work out what could still be known if his senses were being deceived by a demon:

I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some demon not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity.

He concluded that there were tiers to what can be known and what can be doubted:

1. Survives everything, even the demon: “I think therefore I am”. I.e. as long as there is doubt, there must be a doubter.

2. Survives dreaming, but NOT the demon: Statements like (his examples) “2 + 3 = 5”, “a square can never have more than four sides”.

3. Doesn’t even survive dreaming: “I have hands,” “there’s a table in front of me”.

He then argues for the existence of God, and uses this to rescue category 2 from the demon. He concludes that “whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true”.

I don’t agree with this step, but it’s clear that category 2 does need to be rescued from the demon. Statements like “2 + 3 = 5”, and “if P then Q; P, therefore Q” just feel like they have to be true, and completely beyond doubt. A modern way to rescue them is to say “well if you don’t accept these basic facts, then you can’t reason your way to anything useful”. This has some persuasive power but is ultimately circular, like every other explanation.

The reason I add “if P then Q; P, therefore Q” is because, once accepted, along a small number of cousins, you unlock the rich and powerful world of logic and reasoning. If you accept a few more distant cousins, like “the outside world exists”, “the scientific method”, probabilistic reasoning, you get the modern scientific-rationalist worldview.

Once you have this worldview, arrived at in part by taking the leap across this gap from “this seems obviously true” to “this is true”, you can start to re-examine preconceived notions humanity had before adopting it. Some hold up, yes the folk wisdom to “not overwork the soil” does correspond to an argument from scientific principles. Some fall away, for instance that a rain dance brings the rain.

Connection to utilitarianism

Ethical emotivists say that the stubbing your toe reliably generates the feeling of bad-ness, and expressions like “ow”, “that hurt”, “that was bad”, but the most you can assert about it is “this seems obviously bad”, not “this is bad”. Descartes says that observing the statement “2 + 3 = 5” creates the ‘clear and distinct perception of truth’, i.e. “this seems obviously true”, but that this alone is not enough to say that it is true.

In the world of logic and reasoning, most people are not shy about taking this final leap, and don’t even think of it as a leap per se. The same is true for the whole world of “is”. People are happy to say “2 + 3 = 5”, “if P then Q; P, therefore Q”, “grass is green”. They are happy to connect together and build up these clearly true statements, logical or probabilistic steps between them, hard empirical evidence, and their own common sense about the world. If pressed, they may say “ah yes, but it could all be a dream” or “we may be living in a simulation”, but this is quickly put to the back of the mind and forgotten.

In the world of “ought”, quasi-realists are shy about crossing this boundary. They say “emotions can be projected into the physical world as statements”, but that these statements don’t have truth-value in the same way as “factual statements”.

My claim is this: The leap by which we arrive at clearly-true factual statements (”2 + 3 = 5”), is approximately the same leap by which we arrive at clearly-true moral statements (”stubbing your toe is unpleasant”). There is a level of “clear and distinct”-ness to the feeling of “this is true” or “this is (un)pleasant” that it seems undeniable. Ultimately, the factual statements are arrived at via a feeling just as much as the moral statements.

In the land of “is”, a few more leaps get you to the scientific-rationalist worldview. In the land of “ought”, I claim that a similar process leads to hedonic utilitarianism. Once you have “stubbing your toe is unpleasant”, it’s a small leap to “stubbing your toe twice is twice as unpleasant”, “two people stubbing their toes is just as bad as one person stubbing their toe twice”, and so on.

Why not other moral theories? I claim that other theories fail the “clear and distinct”-ness condition. I can imagine stripping away all the other aspects of the experience, just having the pain of stubbing my toe for one second, and feel that this is undeniably slightly morally bad. This is enough to ladder up to a coherent hedonic utilitarian moral view.

Under virtue ethics, I can’t devise a “clear and distinct” example of “the virtue of courage”, or “the virtue of generosity”. I.e. a simple scenario with everything stripped away, where it is undeniable that the virtue of courage is or is not being upheld. Similarly for deontology, I can’t devise a scenario where a duty is “clearly and distinctly” required.

If you want a name for this, you can call it emotivist utilitarianism.

This post was written in one day for Inkhaven, as such it may be a little rough. Also: I do find this line of reasoning persuasive, though it is stated more strongly here than I actually believe.

1. “Non-cognitivist meta-ethical theory”. “Non-cognitivist” == “non-realist”, i.e. moral statements aren’t factual. “meta-ethical theory” == “in the same category as virtue ethics, deontology, etc”.

2. Though they may take issue with being called a “school of emotivism”

3. Simon Blackburn, the developer and main proponent of quasi-realism

4. I think a projectivist would also say that merely forming a moral judgement counts as a projection. I prefer to count it only when there is some in-principle measurable effect on the world