§1.INTRODUCTION:INTERPRETING JAMES’S ETHICS
Much like James’s metaphysics, James’s ethics aims to give us a full account of our moral relations, motivations, and obligations, without referring to anything other than experience. This chapter aims to present James’s ethics in this light, with particular attention to James’s notion of “demand”, and to why James asserts that each demand carries with it an obligation to be met.
This chapter will mainly focus on “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (1891), the paper in which James most clearly presents his ethical position. Explicating this position fully, though, will require drawing from other works, most notably his
Principles of Psychology (1890), some of his other early papers published in Will to Believe and Other Essays (1897), and some of James’s lectures from Talks to Teachers and Students
(1899).
James’s attempt to provide an account of ethics which appeals only to experience often leads him to make subjectivist sounding expressions. I’ll mostly let this apparent subjectivism go unchallenged in this chapter, but in the next we’ll see not only that James feels the need for objectivity within his account, but that as his career progresses, he makes more and more attempts to capture this objectivity. As it is my contention that the best way to account for this objectivity in James’s ethics is by appeal to his radical
empiricism, in this chapter and especially the next I’ll draw parallels between his ethics and his metaphysics.1
The chapter starts with an overview of James’s ethics and two other common interpretations of it (§1). We’ll move on to speculating about what James means by “ideals” and “demands” (§2), and the role that attention plays in the formation of reality and the self (§3). We’ll examine the strange claim by James that willing x and believing x are essentially the same mental event (§4), before examining the claim that “good” is the satisfaction of “demand” (§5). We’ll then look at the importance of James’s notion of “effort” (§6), before finally turning to James’s notion of obligation (§7).
This first section aims to give a brief overview of the ethical position which James presents in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (1891), as well as two common interpretations of this position. I will argue that both interpretations are insufficient, and will go on in later sections to argue for my own interpretation. The first section focuses on presenting James’s position in outline (§1.1); the second focuses on the utilitarian interpretation of James (§1.2); and the third section explores a recent suggestion that James does not, in fact, present an ethical theory at all (§1.3).
§1.1AN OUTLINE OF JAMESIAN ETHICS IN “THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER”
In “The Moral Philosopher”, James aims to present an account of ethics which rejects any possibility of a priori ethical theorising, or any account of ethics in which we can appeal to external standards of validity for determining what is good, right, or obligatory. Instead, James wants to present an account in which the meaning of these notions and the validity of our various claims is determined within the experience of moral agents, and within the ongoing experience of the human race as we inquire into ethical matters.
James separates three different ethical questions. The first is what he calls the
psychological question, and concerns the origin of moral intuitions. The second is the metaphysical question, and concern the meaning of terms such as “good” and “obligation”.
1 In this chapter, we’ll be dealing mostly with James’s notion of the self, and the things which are felt to be significant in people’s individual lived worlds. In the language presented in Chapter II, this counts as “firstness”. We will also see that, for James, obligation is a matter of an inter- personal connection between people, rather than adherence to an external standard. This is a clear case of the “ethical secondness” which we saw lacking in Peirce. In the next chapter, we’ll see the role such inter-personal interactions play in our ongoing moral inquiry (secondness), and how objectivity in moral inquiry can be reached on James’s view (thirdness).
The third is the casuistic question, and concerns the possibility of finding general rules and principles prescribing right action.
In answering the psychological question, James denies that there is any common origin or content to the various things that human beings consider to be “good”. James rejects evolutionary accounts and utilitarian accounts on the grounds that they try to reduce complex moral experience to just one aspect. He maintains that many of our moral and aesthetic judgements of value cannot be reduced to what is evolutionarily advantageous, socially useful, or pleasurable (1891, WB: 144-5). We’ll look at this more closely when we look at James’s rejection of utilitarianism (§1.2).
Concerning the metaphysical question, James first rejects reductive naturalism. According to James, “good” and “obligation” are not terms which can find any meaning in a purely “inorganic” world. One solely physical world cannot be considered better than any other, unless we are surreptitiously bringing into the evaluation the judgement of some living thing. “Goodness, badness, and obligation”, James tells us, “must be
realized somewhere in order to really exist”, and the only place which they can be realised
is in the consciousness of some organism (1891, WB: 145). Just like in his later metaphysics, James suggests that the esse of these notions is percipi (1891, WB: 147). Goods and obligations, then, are ontologically dependent on living and experiencing organisms.2 James switches between subjectivist vocabulary, which places goods “in”
the subjective consciousness of some organism, and relational vocabulary, in which the goods are realised in these organisms’ relation to their environment. However, when we consider James’s later radical empiricism, the distinction between these options seems less obvious. Under radical empiricism, consciousness is a relation between an organism and its environment.3 With this in mind, I think we should interpret James’s statements
that a good has status “in” the consciousness of some sentient being, as the statement that goods are relational, and are realised in a being’s interaction with its environment. This is clearer when we think of James’s statement that “good” is the satisfaction of some “demand” which we place on our environment (§5).
In a world in which only one sentient being exists, a situation which James calls a “moral solitude”, that being is the sole arbiter of what is good. By feeling something to be right or good, it makes it right or good, as it is the “sole creator of values in that universe”
2 It is worth clarifying that goods being ontologically dependent on living beings does not necessarily commit James to moral anti-realism in the sense we are interested in in this thesis, as many interpreters, for instance Slater (2009: 75-76), seem to assume. It does, however, exclude a
type of moral realism, in which moral properties are real because ontologically independent of
living beings.
3 Consciousness, in radical empiricism, is a relation between two portions of experience: “Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special stuff or way of being” (1903, ERE: 14). See Chapter IV.
(1891, WB: 146). Once again, this seems like a very subjective statement. But, as we’ll see, even in a moral solitude this sole organism is constrained by facts about its nature, facts about its environment, relations various ideals can have to one another, and properties of the experiences it has (such as the felt urgency of some features of it) (§7.2). Distinguished from this moral solitude, a world in which there are multiple beings making claims on each other is a world in which “obligation” emerges. The notion of “good” depends on a relation of one organism to its environment, and the notion of “obligation” depends on more than one organism making demands on each other (1891, WB: 147).4 Exactly what this notion of obligation amounts to is something it will take
most of this chapter to articulate (§7).
In neither the case of “good” nor the case of “obligation” does James refer to an external standard which grounds the validity of our claims about goodness and obligation. A being judges something to be good, therefore it is good (for it). A being makes a personal demand on its environment or on another being, therefore there is a (prima facie) obligation to meet that demand. Whether we meet the demand depends on our own personal responsiveness to this demand (1891, WB; 149). The validity of these goods and obligations is not decided by appeal to some standard external to our experience, but can only be decided in the long run of the experience of the race as a whole, over the course of generations, through conversation and experiments (1891, WB: 157). Validity, inquiry, and objectivity will be the topic of the next chapter.
The third, “casuistic”, question concerns the possibility of finding a general rule or principle for determining the right thing to do in particular situations. Such a principle would be easy to find if there were some common content to what was generally demanded, or considered good. But James argues that no such commonality can be found, leading him to the conclusion that the only possible general principle is the most general principle: that the “essence of good is to satisfy demand”. These demands have no common content, they can be for “anything under the sun”, and so we cannot appeal to any “single abstract principle” to determine what is right (1891, WB: 153).
The desire for a principle to govern our moral lives is not merely abstract, of course, but practical. Were we to live in an ideal world, every demand would be satisfied. But this is impossible. Many demands are incompatible, and so we need at least some guiding principle for helping us in concrete situations. Seeing as every demand carries an obligation to be met, James’s suggestion is that the only guiding principle that we can appeal to is one of inclusivity, of trying to create a world in which as many demands as possible are satisfied (1891, WB: 155). There is only one “unconditional commandment”,
4 Later in “The Moral Philosopher”, James reneges on his statement that obligation only emerges between different organisms, suggesting that even in a moral solitude, the self of one day would make demands on the self of another, and that some of these demands would be more imperative than others (1891, WB: 159) (§7.2).
James tells us, and this is “that we should seek incessantly […] so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see”. In a real sense, though, abstract principles cannot help us in particular situations. Each situation is unique, and the world we create by deciding on which demands to meet and which to ignore is also unique (1891, WB: 158; see VII.2.1).
The outcome of James’s paper is that it is not possible to produce absolute moral concepts and principles a priori. Rather “just like physical science”, ethics must “bide its time, and be ready to revise its conclusions day to day” (1891, WB: 157). We generate concepts and principles through empirical moral inquiry, not through pure reason. And it is humanity as a whole, not just philosophers, who are involved in this inquiry. Through discourse, argument, observation, and living according to certain ideals, people are deciding “through actual experiment” what is actually good, and by “by what sort of conduct the maximum amount of good can be gained and kept in this world” (1891, WB: 157). In each situation, we are deciding which ideals to keep, which to reject, and how various ideals can co-exist and interact. These decisions are made through conversation, and through the “aid of the experience of other [people]” (1891, WB: 158).
§1.2THE REJECTION OF UTILITARIANISM
Given this account of ethics, many commentators have suggested that James is a kind of utilitarian. James’s free use of the word “desire” in the place of “demand”, for instance, gives the impression that he equates the two, which leads to the idea that he is some form of desire-satisfaction utilitarian. Or we might understand “demand” as being synonymous with “preference”, and so interpret James as a kind of preference utilitarian. I think we have reason to reject seeing James as any kind of utilitarian, not least because of James’s explicit repudiation of this position.5
5 Perry (1935) is usually seen as the first to defend a utilitarian interpretation of James’s moral theory (1935, 2: 263-6). More recently, Gale’s influential interpretation equates “demand” with “desire”, and sees James as a kind of desire-satisfaction utilitarian (1999: 35-4; 2005: 21). Talisse and Aikin (2011) appear to follow this interpretation, though they also observe that the resulting utilitarianism conflicts with James pluralism (2011: 4-5). Other theorists postulate different kinds of utilitarianism. Madden (1979) suggests that James is a need-satisfaction utilitarian (1979: xxx- xxxiii). Myers (1986) agrees that James rejects hedonic utilitarianism, but suggests that he holds a version of utilitarianism which “declares the moral act as that which maximises the good, which consists in satisfying the maximum number of moral beliefs” (Myers, 1986: 586n29). See below for a comment on this. Slater (2009; 2011) suggests that James is some kind of utilitarian, but remains neutral on whether he is a desire-satisfaction utilitarian or an ideal-satisfaction utilitarian, calling him a “demand-satisfaction utilitarian” without clarifying the nature of
These utilitarian accounts generally make two claims. Firstly, they assume that “demand” covers a single measurement of value, be it pleasure, desire, or preference. In this way, James’s claim that good is the satisfaction of demand is interpreted as a claim about all goods sharing some common content. Secondly, they assume that our sole ethical obligation is to maximise this content. I think we have reasons to deny both claims.
One good reason to reject the first claim is that James clearly rejects the idea that there is
any single measure of value. This is the primary reason James rejects traditional
hedonistic accounts of utilitarianism. They attempt to reduce the complexity of our moral lives to pleasure:
[T]he Benthams, the Mills, and the Bains have done a lasting service in taking so many of our human ideals and showing how they must have arisen from the association with acts of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs from pain. Association with many remote pleasures will unquestionably make a thing significant of goodness in our minds […] But it is surely impossible to explain all our sentiments and preferences in this simple way (1891, WB: 143).
Association with pleasure, or utility, can be usefully thought of as marks that something is valuable and good, but they cannot adequately explain why a thing is valuable and good.6 Pain and pleasure can certainly play a role in our moral lives, but our moral lives
cannot be reduced to pleasure maximisation.
As an example of moral facts which are not reducible to pleasure or utility, James introduces the notion of “brain born intuitions”. Brain born intuitions regard “directly felt fitnesses between things”, which “often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of utility”. Certain pleasures, such as artistic contemplation,
“demands” (2009: 80; see 2011: 80). Perhaps most sensibly, Cooper (2003) rejects any claims that James is a utilitarian, but holds that he is a “modest consequentialist”, in the “unpresumptuous sense that morality is about making things go better” (2003: 412; see 2002: 225; 233). The melioristic ethics which James presents is clearly consequentialist in this modest sense, but even this claim is complicated by James’s frequent appeals to deontological sounding intuitions (VI.2.4). Finally, Putnam and Putnam (1990) connect James’s theory with utilitarianism in the sense that he connects the rightness of some act with the opinion of the majority. However, they correctly point out that James avoids the arbitrariness of such a connection by utilising the pragmatist theory of truth, in which, through “strenuous moral inquiry […] conducted through democratic debate and practical testing in the social arena”, the opinion of the majority indicates the objective desirability of some act (1990: 226). Utilitarianism in any conventional sense, however, would conflict with James’s anti-reductionism and pluralism, as Ruth Anna Putnam makes clear (1997: 271).
6 We see a similar move in James’s “Sentiment of Rationality” in which he suggests that fluidity is a mark of the rationality of some conception, but does not suggest that it is constitutive of that rationality (1882, WB: 57-8).
cannot be reduced to utility. Certain judgements, such as something being vulgar or
mean, cannot be explained by appealing to consequences (1891, WB: 143-144). Though
pleasure might accompany the satisfaction of our various demands, purposes, and intentions, this in no way means that pleasure is our sole motivation (1890, PP 2: 1156).7
We will examine the nature and role of these spontaneous intuitions in the next chapter (VI.2.4).
James’s resistance to our moral experience being reduced to any one type of value or motivation is precisely why he makes his definition of “demand” deliberately ambiguous:
[A] demand may be for anything under the sun. There is really no more ground for supposing that all our demands can be accounted for by one universal underlying kind of motive than there is ground for supposing that all physical phenomena are cases of a single law. The elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as those of physics are. The various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals (1891, WB: 153).8
The satisfaction of demand may be good, but “demands” have no common content. Just like James’s notion of “experience” in his metaphysics, his notion of “demand” is meant to be content-neutral. We’ll see later that the neutrality of “demand” even extends to a neutrality between belief and desire (§4).
7 Myer’s quotes the following from James’s unpublished notebooks:
A man loses no sense of worth if he misses a pleasure; he does if he fails in his duty. Utilitarianism may explain how certain things come more than others to pertain to the sphere of conscience, but the psychological question is: What is the origin and the meaning of the particular quality of feeling which we call conscience?
James here is clearly criticising the utilitarian or consequentialist position for being unable to account for the origin of a notion of obligation or duty. We will be returning to James’s notion of obligation in this (§7) and the following chapters (VII.2.2; 2.4). Myers points out the notebook where this entry is found is dated from 1869-1890, so it is hard to date this particular passage, but thinks it likely that it was written closer to 1890 (Myers, 1986: 587n41). Gale comments on the tension between James’s deontological intuitions regarding duty and obligation, and his utilitarian comments about maximising desire, calling this the “maximising-deontological aporia” (Gale, 1999: 48). I suspect this “aporia” emerges out of Gale’s determination to interpret James as a desire-satisfaction utilitarian, rather than from a genuine tension in James’s text. As we shall see, James has room for a notion of obligation which does not conflict with the rest of his ethics.
8 Note that James appears to use “demands” and “ideals” interchangeably in this passage, and that neither are considered as having common content. See §2.2.
We might consider there to be more evidence for the “maximisation” claim. James tells