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Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (Aristotelian Society Series) by WIGGINS
This collection of essays passes to and fro between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of logic and language. Conspicious among the various problems attempted is the controversial question of cognitivism in ethics. From the many projects and themes that run through the essays the following emerge most the elucidation of the ideas of truth, objectivity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity; the scope and limits of the attribution of the status of plain truth among the judgements of morals, politics and aesthetics; the part played in the fixation of the sense of evaluative language by the antecedent possibility of agreement in judgements and in sentiments; the irreplaceability and irreducibility for practical or valuational thinking of such ideas as those of need, self and metaphysical freedom. The collection comprises ten pieces altogether, including a new postscript and three previously unpublished essays. Essays already published have been edited and revised, and in some cases extended.
- GenresPhilosophy
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
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David Wiggins
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July 5, 2022
This is a collection of early Wiggins' essays on needs, truth, values, and incommensurability. There is also an essay on weakness of the will and one on Aristotelian notion of deliberation and practical reason. Included also an essay on survival in personal identity. Many of the essays are dense with nuances of ideas which take the reader some work to get through.
This work begins with an original essay on the notion of need. Wiggins' working notion of need is the idea of a "vital interest" without which a person would experience harm. A person needs x iff, whatever morally, socially acceptable variation, it is possible to envisage occurring within a relevant time span t, he will be harmed if he goes without x. This notion of the need of an individual is to be protected against the overreach of public interest. When an individual's need is considered in a society, it requires a social morality that (i) places explicit limitations on social goals that burden the individuals more than they can endure normally (ii) sustain rights under the rule of law and (iii) should uphold the right to be in agreement with individuals for making necessities attainable to them. A need is sui genesis and not the same as rights, which can be considered in three phases. The first phase is just the justice as rights level. The second phase is where needs appear. It is about justice as the limit of aggregative reasoning and arbitrator of rights, and counter-rights, those things that do not attain the status of rights but to be considered in conjunction with rights such as needs. The phase three is justice as coordination of meeting human needs. In such coordination, Wiggins offers a Principle of Limitation that arbitrate between rights and counter rights according to which the vital interests of the few, especially the disadvantaged, are not to be sacrificed for lesser needs of however many others. This latter principle is very similar to Rawls Difference Principle. This essay on need is helpful to understand where needs stands with respect to rights in a theory of justice.
Included in this collection of essays are several essays that addresses the relation between morality and truth. In "Universalizability, Impartiality, Truth", Wiggins addresses the Kantian project of finding a universalizability maxim to guide an agent in his action from an impartial moral point of view. This project requires reconciling a divergence of attitudes, preferences, and, desires from different moral outlooks. Such reconciliation maybe ad hoc if they are based on other considerations such as some utilitarian criterion of greatest happiness or satisfaction of desires produced. Any reconciliation that points to a standard of objectivity would be proprietary to truth. That notion of truth would relates objectivity to subjectivity/intersubjectivity in the sense of pertaining to "conscious subjects". In that case it seems the notion of truth would have a naturalistic normativity. That is, a normativity that bears on the facts in the world. This seems to suggest a standard of reconciliation or arbitration contingent upon the laws of nature.
In "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life", it is a long and difficult essay that suggests the meaning of life does lead into to the question of truth. Wiggins offers an in depth look into the differences between cognitive and non-cognitive theory on the meaning of life. A non-cognitive account is an account based on the intellect as kept separate from the insider perspective. The intellect supplies uncontaminated factual perception, deduction, and reasoning. Life's meaning is perceived only from an insider perspective while a cognitive account is based on some notion of objectivity without such separation of outer objectivity from inner perspective with no self-reflective objectivity.
Wiggins thinks the non-cognitive account of inside/outside distinction is based on a confusion of subjective/objective distinction as anthropocentic/non-anthropocentic distinction. Wiggins overcomes this confusion by reworking a non-cognitive account into a metaethical analysis based on a meta-language and moral language as object language distinction. The approach is to provide assertibility condition of moral sentences S of moral language L to be paired with assertion condition P to satisfy metaethical theorem: s is assertible if and only if P. The assertibility condition pertains to meaning , not truth. On this approach, the theorist analysing at the formal meta linguistic should interpret with an understanding of beliefs, concerns, and conceptions of what is rational at the object language L level. Wiggins thinks the satisfaction of assertion condition with respect to meaning does not necessarily reach truth condition in judgement in this redeployed non-cognitive approach. This is because sentences S in different systems of L maybe jointly assertable. The issue of relativism from evaluative judgment prevents finding an agreement in truth. The coincidence between assertibility and truth becomes a parochial issue. A related issue to truth and assertibility is rationality. Relativism would suggest what is rational contingent upon the nature of the form of life to which each L corresponds. The non-cognitivist would suggest there is no a priori rationality objective from the outside to evaluate the worth of the meaning of life for each form of life. Wiggins calls this non-cognitivist theory "the doctrine of cognitive underdetermination. However, rarely practical judgement about life's meaning attains truth simpliciter, we have no reasons to deny all objectivity to practical judgment as the cognitivist would insist. Even if there are more than one answers to practical judgment, it does not mean good or bad answers are not objectively indistinguishable.
In "Truth, and Truth as Predicated of Moral Judgement", Wiggins addresses the question of whether truth can be predicated of moral judgment. He approaches it by looking at the Fregean and Tarskian accounts of how truth can be predicated of any sentences, namely a sentence s about p in Language L is true in L iff p. The result from this effort is 5 marks of truth. First if x is true, x passes muster of being the sort of thing x is. Second if x is true, x commands convergence by virtue of being the actual truth of x or the denial of x to be inconsistent or not an option. Third if x is true and has content, then x being true cannot just be a matter of being a belief. Fourth if x1 is true and x2 is true, the conjunction of them is also truth. About condition two on convergence, the best way to approach that is to use an analogy from mathematical truth to be applied to moral judgement, namely, the denial of mathematical truths is not an option.A most obvious way to find convergence in such manner is Kant's universality of moral maxim. A strong moral cognitivist would hold the view that convergence of moral judgement is expected of there being no contestibility of agent A performing action x under condition C if one really understands from the agent A perspective facing C and the rationale he used to arrive at a certain moral judgment. Again, as in the essay on truth and the meaning of life, the issue of cognitive underdetermination can arise. Morals interests and concerns are indefinitely various and heterogeneous in a world of diverse economic
and political complexity as well as conflicts of personality and preference. It is unlikely any single judgement can be assured out of all moral/practical alternatives in any situation. Wiggins thinks such convergence is expected only because of assuming the universalizability of the maxim of moral judgment as a logical thesis, which Wiggins does not accept. In this case, I suppose he sees the analogy approach of finding moral convergence using mathematical truth is unsuccessful since logical truths are like mathematical truths. Therefore one cannot predicate truth to moral judgment as truth to mathematical or logical statements.
In "A Sensible Subjectivism?", Wiggins develops a subjectivism based on pairing a subject's response to a property. Something is considered as having the property of "funny" if it generates the response of amusement or laughter in the subject. This pair can have clarity of the property improved by the community of people that experience that property and their responses. The response is corrigible by fine tuning the answer to the question what the criterion for the property to be present is and various supplementary considerations. The "response", e.g. laughter to the property is actually a susceptibility to make certain judgment about whether something has that property. The response is not a convergence in agreement about whether something x objectively has that property. Further, the response to the property is not guaranteed from all people and culture. Perhaps property P can be different to different people and culture as what is funny often is. It seems then this version of subjectivism has to be relativised to anthropocentic complexity. A collection of matrix is bound by the conditions and internal nuances of the subject.
This work begins with an original essay on the notion of need. Wiggins' working notion of need is the idea of a "vital interest" without which a person would experience harm. A person needs x iff, whatever morally, socially acceptable variation, it is possible to envisage occurring within a relevant time span t, he will be harmed if he goes without x. This notion of the need of an individual is to be protected against the overreach of public interest. When an individual's need is considered in a society, it requires a social morality that (i) places explicit limitations on social goals that burden the individuals more than they can endure normally (ii) sustain rights under the rule of law and (iii) should uphold the right to be in agreement with individuals for making necessities attainable to them. A need is sui genesis and not the same as rights, which can be considered in three phases. The first phase is just the justice as rights level. The second phase is where needs appear. It is about justice as the limit of aggregative reasoning and arbitrator of rights, and counter-rights, those things that do not attain the status of rights but to be considered in conjunction with rights such as needs. The phase three is justice as coordination of meeting human needs. In such coordination, Wiggins offers a Principle of Limitation that arbitrate between rights and counter rights according to which the vital interests of the few, especially the disadvantaged, are not to be sacrificed for lesser needs of however many others. This latter principle is very similar to Rawls Difference Principle. This essay on need is helpful to understand where needs stands with respect to rights in a theory of justice.
Included in this collection of essays are several essays that addresses the relation between morality and truth. In "Universalizability, Impartiality, Truth", Wiggins addresses the Kantian project of finding a universalizability maxim to guide an agent in his action from an impartial moral point of view. This project requires reconciling a divergence of attitudes, preferences, and, desires from different moral outlooks. Such reconciliation maybe ad hoc if they are based on other considerations such as some utilitarian criterion of greatest happiness or satisfaction of desires produced. Any reconciliation that points to a standard of objectivity would be proprietary to truth. That notion of truth would relates objectivity to subjectivity/intersubjectivity in the sense of pertaining to "conscious subjects". In that case it seems the notion of truth would have a naturalistic normativity. That is, a normativity that bears on the facts in the world. This seems to suggest a standard of reconciliation or arbitration contingent upon the laws of nature.
In "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life", it is a long and difficult essay that suggests the meaning of life does lead into to the question of truth. Wiggins offers an in depth look into the differences between cognitive and non-cognitive theory on the meaning of life. A non-cognitive account is an account based on the intellect as kept separate from the insider perspective. The intellect supplies uncontaminated factual perception, deduction, and reasoning. Life's meaning is perceived only from an insider perspective while a cognitive account is based on some notion of objectivity without such separation of outer objectivity from inner perspective with no self-reflective objectivity.
Wiggins thinks the non-cognitive account of inside/outside distinction is based on a confusion of subjective/objective distinction as anthropocentic/non-anthropocentic distinction. Wiggins overcomes this confusion by reworking a non-cognitive account into a metaethical analysis based on a meta-language and moral language as object language distinction. The approach is to provide assertibility condition of moral sentences S of moral language L to be paired with assertion condition P to satisfy metaethical theorem: s is assertible if and only if P. The assertibility condition pertains to meaning , not truth. On this approach, the theorist analysing at the formal meta linguistic should interpret with an understanding of beliefs, concerns, and conceptions of what is rational at the object language L level. Wiggins thinks the satisfaction of assertion condition with respect to meaning does not necessarily reach truth condition in judgement in this redeployed non-cognitive approach. This is because sentences S in different systems of L maybe jointly assertable. The issue of relativism from evaluative judgment prevents finding an agreement in truth. The coincidence between assertibility and truth becomes a parochial issue. A related issue to truth and assertibility is rationality. Relativism would suggest what is rational contingent upon the nature of the form of life to which each L corresponds. The non-cognitivist would suggest there is no a priori rationality objective from the outside to evaluate the worth of the meaning of life for each form of life. Wiggins calls this non-cognitivist theory "the doctrine of cognitive underdetermination. However, rarely practical judgement about life's meaning attains truth simpliciter, we have no reasons to deny all objectivity to practical judgment as the cognitivist would insist. Even if there are more than one answers to practical judgment, it does not mean good or bad answers are not objectively indistinguishable.
In "Truth, and Truth as Predicated of Moral Judgement", Wiggins addresses the question of whether truth can be predicated of moral judgment. He approaches it by looking at the Fregean and Tarskian accounts of how truth can be predicated of any sentences, namely a sentence s about p in Language L is true in L iff p. The result from this effort is 5 marks of truth. First if x is true, x passes muster of being the sort of thing x is. Second if x is true, x commands convergence by virtue of being the actual truth of x or the denial of x to be inconsistent or not an option. Third if x is true and has content, then x being true cannot just be a matter of being a belief. Fourth if x1 is true and x2 is true, the conjunction of them is also truth. About condition two on convergence, the best way to approach that is to use an analogy from mathematical truth to be applied to moral judgement, namely, the denial of mathematical truths is not an option.A most obvious way to find convergence in such manner is Kant's universality of moral maxim. A strong moral cognitivist would hold the view that convergence of moral judgement is expected of there being no contestibility of agent A performing action x under condition C if one really understands from the agent A perspective facing C and the rationale he used to arrive at a certain moral judgment. Again, as in the essay on truth and the meaning of life, the issue of cognitive underdetermination can arise. Morals interests and concerns are indefinitely various and heterogeneous in a world of diverse economic
and political complexity as well as conflicts of personality and preference. It is unlikely any single judgement can be assured out of all moral/practical alternatives in any situation. Wiggins thinks such convergence is expected only because of assuming the universalizability of the maxim of moral judgment as a logical thesis, which Wiggins does not accept. In this case, I suppose he sees the analogy approach of finding moral convergence using mathematical truth is unsuccessful since logical truths are like mathematical truths. Therefore one cannot predicate truth to moral judgment as truth to mathematical or logical statements.
In "A Sensible Subjectivism?", Wiggins develops a subjectivism based on pairing a subject's response to a property. Something is considered as having the property of "funny" if it generates the response of amusement or laughter in the subject. This pair can have clarity of the property improved by the community of people that experience that property and their responses. The response is corrigible by fine tuning the answer to the question what the criterion for the property to be present is and various supplementary considerations. The "response", e.g. laughter to the property is actually a susceptibility to make certain judgment about whether something has that property. The response is not a convergence in agreement about whether something x objectively has that property. Further, the response to the property is not guaranteed from all people and culture. Perhaps property P can be different to different people and culture as what is funny often is. It seems then this version of subjectivism has to be relativised to anthropocentic complexity. A collection of matrix is bound by the conditions and internal nuances of the subject.
August 5, 2007
I don't think Wiggins's "Sensible Subjectivism" is really as sensible as he thinks it is.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews