intuitions of disagreement. Consider the following:86
Drinks
Cody: Let’s get a coffee.
Sally: No, let’s get a beer.
Cody: No, let’s get a coffee.
Sally: We disagree.
Cody: I don’t think we disagree.
Cody’s conciliatory claim seems inappropriate. Sally and Cody seem to be in a robust disagreement, and it might be a non-cognitive one, for the parties do not (in the initial disagreement about what to get) express disagreeing beliefs. Indeed it is not absolutely clear that our intuition of disagreement is explained our attributing disagreeing thoughts
85 Ridge describes a variation on Stevenson’s restaurant case (as a counterexample to
Stevenson’s conditions for disagreement in attitude, as Ridge interprets them) in which ‘[t]he two people hate each other, but have to eat together.’ Partly out of spite, each party X wants the other party Y to go Y’s dispreferred restaurant. Neither will acquiesce to the other’s wishes. Ridge thinks that this is a case of disagreement: ‘It hardly seems plausible that simply adding to Stevenson’s story that the two parties hate each other should explain their not disagreeing after all; indeed it seems perverse.’ (Impassioned Belief, 170-71). I find this case difficult to imagine without knowing why the parties have to eat together, but it is not obvious to me that the parties disagree. As our responses to the blackmail cases suggest, hostility can undermine rather than intensify disagreement; it can turn potential disagreers into mere antagonists.
86 The first two lines of this example are from Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe, ‘Moral
64
to them at all. Perhaps—though the idea seems far-fetched—this is a merely linguistic disagreement, which simply consists in the utterance of imperative sentences with what we take to be mutually unsatisfiable contents, or the performance of conflicting speech acts. Sally and Cody might not be in a state of disagreement at all; they might merely be engaged in the activity of disagreement.87
Since the disagreement between Sally and Cody is robust, since it might be non- cognitive, and since the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis lays down necessary conditions for robust non-cognitive disagreement, the case might be a counterexample to that hypothesis. A counterexample of this sort would not trouble me too much, for, given my metaethical ambitions, I am most concerned to identify sufficient conditions for robust non-cognitive disagreement. But if there were a kind of robust non-cognitive disagreement whose sufficient conditions differed from those stated by the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis, I would certainly wish to explore it, for it might reveal new and better options for a non-cognitivist moral psychology.
In what follows I shall argue that we do not have good reason to think that intuitions of robust disagreement elicited by cases in which different speakers utter conflicting imperatives (henceforth ‘prima facie imperative disagreements’) are, or are explained by, intuitions about a kind of non-cognitive disagreement that is not comprehended by the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis. Intuitions of robust disagreement elicited by prima facie imperative disagreement only seem to exist where the parties’ utterances are plausibly explained by their having disagreeing thoughts of a (by now) familiar kind—conflicting descriptive beliefs, conflicting normative beliefs, or conflicting voiceable preferences. Admittedly my argument is far from conclusive because I only have the space to consider a limited range of cases. Part of my argument relies on a promissory note, namely, that the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis can explain our intuitions about third-party non-cognitive disagreements—disagreements between two people about the choices of a third party. I make good on this promise in Chapter 2.
The first thing I want to establish is that we might be able to explain our intuitions about Imperative Disagreement by hypothesizing that we assume that the speakers (i) share entrusted concern relationships, and (ii) are making demands of each other qua
87 However, if we took Sally and Cody to be merely engaged in the activity of disagreement, we
might perhaps find it infelicitous to say that the two disagree, rather than that they were
disagreeing. On the state/activity distinction see Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne,
65 parties to those relationships. On this view, our natural interpretation of the case is very similar to that which I suggested we give to Restaurant. We assume that the speakers share two entrusted concern relationships, each giving one party a voice in the other’s decisions as to whether or not he will consent to go where the first party wants to go, and hence drink her preferred kind of drink. The parties make their demands by uttering imperatives instead of explicitly voicing preferences, but it is their opposing preferences that put them in disagreement. This explanation is at least apparently available. So we may now ask, can it be ruled out? Or if it can’t, is a better explanation nonetheless available?
One way to rule out an Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis-style explanation would be to present a version of the case in which the parties could not plausibly be thought to share the required trust relationships, but which nonetheless elicited an intuition of robust disagreement. But this is unpromising as a method for undermining the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis’s explanation for our judgements about Imperative Disagreement, and, more generally, for undermining the hypothesis’s explanation for our judgements about similar cases in which two people are enjoining each other to do different things together. This is because, as a general matter, the very fact that two people are enjoining each other to do different things together is evidence that they share some sort of understanding, some joint project, or some amicable relationship, in the context of which it would not be surprising if each expected the other to be somewhat responsive to her wishes.
There are exceptions to this generalization—cases in which people have reason to jointly coordinate their actions despite apparently lacking any connection that could be construed as an entrusted concern relationship. I will discuss three cases which fit this description, and in which parties are in prima facie imperative disagreement. I consider whether they are counterexamples to the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis.
First, there are cases like the blackmail case that I considered in 1.2.4, in which wholly antagonistic parties have a motive to do something together. Indeed Restaurant (Blackmail I) is, I think, a prima facie imperative disagreement of just this sort. However, we are not inclined to think that the situation of Cody and Sally is of this sort; we would need to be given some new information about their context before it would even occur to us that their relationship was antagonistic. If we did interpret Drinks in this way, I presume that we would feel hesitant about supposing the parties to be in disagreement, as we are when we are presented with Restaurant (Blackmail I).
66
Second, suppose that a man has fallen into the sea, and sharks are closing in on him. Two perfect strangers see this, and have the following exchange.
Rescue
A: Let’s row out in that boat and rescue him.
B: No, let’s look for a rope or a lifebuoy and throw it to him.
This case is not at all puzzling, and the parties seem to disagree, even though we have reason to doubt that they share any special entrusted concern relationships. But now it is hard to rule out a different explanation which, like the Entrusted Concerns Hypothesis, does not require us to posit a distinctive kind of non-cognitive disagreement. To wit, it is hard to rule out the hypothesis that we intuit disagreement merely because we take the parties’ conflicting imperatives to be explained by disagreeing beliefs—specifically, judgements about which course of action would achieve the greatest expected preservation of life and limb.
A third exception: five trapped people will be crushed by a speeding trolley if two bystanders don’t cooperate to push a very large man into its path, killing the large man but saving the five. The bystanders, who are perfect strangers, have the following exchange:
Trolley
A: Let’s shove that big guy in front of the trolley before it kills them.
B: No, let’s not push him to his death.
Again this sounds natural, and sounds like a disagreement, notwithstanding the presumable lack of entrusted concern relationships between the speakers. But our intuition of disagreement here is plausibly explained by an assumption that the parties have conflicting moral judgements. Strangers seem to be willing to cooperate in pursuit of moral ends without having to form entrusted concern relationships (this, of course, is part of the explanation for the naturalness of the previous case too). This provides us with an explanation for A and B’s ‘mutual enjoinings’ that does not (obviously) attribute any entrusted concern relationships to them, but it also suggests an explanation for their disagreement that does not make it (obviously) non-cognitive, viz., the parties are in moral disagreement.
Prima facie imperative disagreements like Drinks, in which two people enjoin each other to do different things together, seem quite reliably to elicit intuitions of robust disagreement. But I am unable to think of one in which we cannot naturally
67 attribute a descriptive disagreement, normative disagreement, or disagreement in voiceable preferences to the speakers. Antagonistic cases like Restaurant (Blackmail I) are an exception: the parties in such cases do not seem to be in one of these familiar sorts of disagreements, but neither do they clearly disagree.
What about other kinds of imperative disagreement though? If we can find prima facie imperative disagreements of another kind which fail to elicit intuitions of robust disagreement when the disagreement cannot be explained as an intuition about a disagreement in normative judgements, descriptive beliefs, or voiceable preferences, this would cast serious doubt on the idea that prima facie imperative disagreements ever amount to non-cognitive disagreements of a distinctive kind. There are no natural- seeming prima facie imperative disagreements which consist simply in one person resisting the demand of another (as John does, on my stipulative sense of ‘demand’, in Football (Mother and Son)). A person does not resist another’s command by giving a contrary command to herself. And I take it that an imperative disagreement requires the utterance of two or more mutually unsatisfiable imperatives. The only other kind of prima facie imperative disagreement that I am aware of is one in which two people give mutually unsatisfiable commands to a third party, i.e. prima facie third-partyimperative disagreements.
Disagreements of this sort that fail to elicit intuitions of robust disagreement are easy to come by. Suppose that rival hostesses Mrs. A and Mrs. B encounter Mr. Toff at the same time, and that the following discourse ensues:
Rival Hostesses (Imperatives)
Mrs A: [To Mr. Toff] Come to my party!
Mrs B: [To Mr. Toff] No, come to my party!
As in the earlier rival hostesses case, this seems to be a case of mere rivalry without disagreement. There is not plausibly any disagreement in moral judgements, descriptive beliefs, or voiceable preferences between Mrs. A and Mrs. B. And in the absence of such a disagreement they do not seem to disagree at all.
It might be thought that Mrs. A and Mrs. B do not seem to disagree because, as a general matter, prima facie third-partyimperative disagreements do not elicit intuitions of disagreement, or at least not unless they indicate a moral disagreement or a disagreement in descriptive belief. If so, our intuitions about Hostesses (Imperatives) do not support the view that our intuitions about Drinks must be explained by our tacit
68
attribution of a clash of voiceable preferences to the speakers. But I don’t think this is right. Imagine that a young woman, Penny, is deciding whether to marry the well- connected Mr. Toff, or Mr. Lloyd, a man from a family that has shared a long alliance and friendship with Penny’s family. A marriage to Toff will improve the social standing of Penny’s family, but disappoint the Lloyds and weaken somewhat the ties between the families. Penny’s mother wants her family to rise in society; Penny’s aunt cares most about honouring and cementing their ties to the Lloyds. They address Penny thus:
Marriage (Imperatives)
Mother: [To Penny] Marry Mr. Toff!
Aunt: [To Penny] No, marry Mr. Lloyd!
Penny’s mother and aunt do seem to disagree here. And this seems to be explained by the relationships between the parties, and their reasons for their injunctions. They are making demands in the service of ends that Penny and her mother and aunt presumably all have in common, even if they care about them to differing degrees. These features of the case support the thesis that the mother and aunt have a third-party disagreement in voiceable preferences, according to the theories concerning third-party non-cognitive disagreement and networks of trust relationships that I develop in Chapters 2 and 3.88 (I discuss this case specifically in Appendix D.)
It might be conceded that, absent normative or descriptive disagreement, intuitions of robust disagreement elicited by prima facie imperative disagreements only occur where my conditions for disagreement in voiceable preferences are met. But why think that these intuitions are explained by a clash of preferences in the right social conditions rather than an opposition of imperatives in the right social conditions? Perhaps all apparent robust disagreements in preference are fundamentally disagreements in imperative. Reports of wishes often have the illocutionary force of commands—perhaps voicing preferences in the relevant circumstances is just a polite or mild way of giving orders.
The main problem with this idea is that intuitions of disagreement elicited by cases like Football (Mother and Son) cannot be interpreted as disagreements in
88 There is, I concede, a kind of normative disagreement between Penny’s aunt and mother here:
they disagree about what Penny should do. (As I argue in 2.1, all robust third-party non- cognitive disagreements are or involve normative disagreements.) But I contend that this is a special kind of normative disagreement that only members of Penny’s family can participate in, and that is best explained by the postulation of special familial entrusted concern relationships among those involved.
69 imperative because, as I have already observed, one party to the disagreement fails to utter any imperative, or make any preference report that could be construed as an imperative. John merely says that he prefers to play football. What kind of command might this be? If we hypothesize that mutually unsatisfiable voiceable preferences (absent yielding etc.) suffice for robust non-cognitive disagreement, we can seemingly explain all intuitive cases of robust non-cognitive disagreement; whereas if we hypothesize that mutually unsatisfiable imperatives in certain social conditions suffice for robust non-cognitive disagreement, we cannot. Explaining all robust non-cognitive disagreement as disagreement in voiceable preferences is economical and gets the facts right.89
89 I also find it intuitively very plausible that parties to robust non-cognitive disagreements have
disagreeing thoughts—that they are in a psychological state of disagreement; and that the hypothesis that robust non-cognitive disagreement is always disagreement in voiceable preferences, and never merely imperative disagreement, should be preferred because it explains this. But I won’t defend this intuition.
70
2
Third-Party Non-cognitive Disagreement
Two people S and T may be in moral disagreement with each other, not just about what S or T ought to do, but also about what a third party U ought to do. They can have moral disagreements about U’s actions, ones that do not boil down to mere disagreements about what they themselves should try and get U to do. In my terminology, they can have third-party disagreements. My non-cognitivist theory of moral psychology ought to predict this; it thus requires that people should be capable of having (robust) third- party non-cognitive disagreements.Happily, such disagreements do seem to be possible. I have already argued that the intuition of disagreement elicited by Marriage (Imperatives) is explained by our assumption of an underlying disagreement in preferences. For a clearer example, consider a variation on Stevenson’s football case in which John’s father makes an appearance.
Football (Parents I)
Mother: John’s thinking about quitting the football team.
Father: But playing for St. Matthew’s is a family tradition!
Mother: I’d rather he quit. Football is dangerous. He could get injured.
Father: Well I’d rather he didn’t quit.
John’s parents seem to disagree. But while this appearance is encouraging, it at best shows that (absent yielding) moralists with opposing preferences might disagree, whereas my theory needs to predict that they would. I need to identify at least sufficient conditions for third-party non-cognitive disagreement, and these must be conditions such that I can credibly postulate that they obtain in moral contexts.
My aim in this chapter is to give a plausible account of the conditions for third- party non-cognitive disagreement. Explaining why, given this account, we expect these
71 conditions to be satisfied in intuitive non-moral cases of third-party-disagreement will turn out to be a very large task, and I will not address it until Chapter 3. In the present chapter 1 will proceed as follows. In Section 2.1, I will say a bit more about the phenomenon I aim to give an account of, to distinguish it from other apparently similar phenomena. In Section 2.2 I present my theory of third-party disagreement.