4. GIBBARD'S NORM-EXPRESSIVISM

     "Human life is not well integrated into [the Galilean] core, at least yet", Gibbard writes (123). We must develop non-normative concepts whereby we can explain psychological and sociological phenomena.

     But to explain these, we need psychic and social facts to figure into our explanation: "We must explain our Galilean judgments as responsive to the kinds of facts that figure in them, or we lose our grounds for making the judgments." If we believed, for example, that biologists accept the theory of evolution merely because doing so provides social advantages for them, then we would have no reason to believe in evolution; facts about evolution didn't figure into their judgment.

     It wouldn't do, though, to explain facts about the mechanics of thought, belief, and social interaction regarding the tricky subject matter of morality, say, by appealing to some special realm of moral (or otherwise normative) facts rather than to the non-normative psychic and social facts our explanation concerns. Whatever explanation we do reach, it must be independent of normative facts.

     In the realm of psychic and social facts from which Gibbard wants to develop a Galilean account there are two general facts that seem to dominate human normative behavior. The first of these is that, when we think a judgment is rational, the fundamental component of that thought is endorsement of the judgment. We think the judgment makes sense. The second is that feelings are at the core of human morality. Let's consider these in roughly reverse order.

     Ultimately, Gibbard tells us, morality consists in norms for moral sentiments (277). When does it make sense for us to feel guilty or angry about the actions of ourselves or others? Gibbard despairs of a definitive answer to this question, but hopes that learning about the origins and nature of our moral sentiments, and the processes by which we share and modify them, will help us refine those processes themselves.

     Gibbard wants to distinguish between animal emotions we happen to share and peculiarly human feelings such as guilt and shame (136). While the latter are attributed to the brain's ancient limbic system, Gibbard suspects that "human emotionality may consist of more than mere variations of animal emotion with language tacked on." Instead, the complexity of human emotions likely is made possible by our larger neocortex, the left hemisphere of which is specialized, in part, for language, and the right seems to be implicated in emotions related to abstract concepts not available to the beasts (137): "Guilt, we might say, normally involves a consciousness of having done wrong, and shame a consciousness of some personal inadequacy."

     One result of this architectural arrangement is that we experience conflicts between an animal control system and a human linguistically infused normative control system.

     As humans evolved, Gibbard theorizes, our nature as social beings with an emerging linguistic capacity made it natural for us to develop a linguistically infused normative control system. The benefits of mutually coordinating our feelings, beliefs, actions, and expectations would have provided a significant survival and reproductive advantage for our species (68, 72).

     We coordinate these feelings, beliefs, actions, and expectations by discussing which of them "make sense" -- are warranted by the present circumstances. From this discussion emerge normative judgments (and, frequently, consensus) about what the "rational" feeling, belief, action, or expectation for the occasion would be. The influence such discussion has in guiding individual behavior is normative governance (72), a tendency to conform to a norm or system of norms. During discussion we take positions, avowing certain norms; those norms we sincerely and consistently avow, and which govern our actions, are norms we accept. Accepting a norm is distinguished from merely internalizing it (having a tendency to act and feel as it prescribes -- a tendency available to other animals) and from being in the grip of a norm (being governed by it despite accepting an opposing norm).

     Gibbard chooses the word 'rational' as the standard by which we measure our moral sentiments. When we say something is 'rational', he says we mean it "makes sense" or it "is warranted", and the chief point of calling something 'rational' is to endorse it (6, 10). What Gibbard counts as the most promising opposing views -- purely descriptive interpretations of rationality such as the instrumental rationality (treating rationality as a means for attaining our ends, but not for choosing them) explored by David Hume and Frank Ramsey (10-18) and the full information analysis ("rationality is somehow a matter of full awareness of the facts") offered by Brandt (18-22) -- fail to account adequately for this endorsement.

     Norm-expressivism, then, is not intended to tell us what rationality is, but to explain what we mean when we use the term. In this, it is supposed to be superior to competing views because it preserves the expressive aspect of meaning, the endorsement we intend when calling something 'rational'.

     Gibbard's norm-expressivism experiences a number of incarnations. He begins with a tentative one: (i) that we call an action 'rational' if we accept norms permitting that action (7). He revises this to require (ii) acceptance of a system of norms permitting the action (91-92). Next, to accommodate a normative logic, he says that (iii) someone voicing a complicated normative thought "expresses a set of factual-normative worlds" (102) -- possible worlds in which norms and the facts surrounding them either allow or disallow the behavior, feeling, or belief contemplated (according to whether or not endorsement of it is part of the normative thought). "Better, I could say he expresses his ruling out certain combinations of factual possibilities with norms. Best, though, I can say this: he expresses a thought that gets its meaning from its logical ties to other statements, and through them not only to sense experience, but also to normative governance."

     Gibbard argues for some fundamental components of a system of norms (177-183), such that higher-order norms prescribe conditions for accepting lower-order norms; some norms are matters of existential commitment (166-168) -- e.g., what kind of person to be, or what ideals to adopt -- rather than reasoned acceptance; and fundamental norms are accepted as self-evident (not accepted because they are self-evident, but their self-evidence consisting in being unquestioningly accepted). Higher-order norms accord authority to one's own normative judgments (past, future, and hypothetical as well as present ones) and to those of other people (for our own normative authority derives largely from the influence of others). This prompts another revision (179) of norm-expressivism: (iv) "I express my acceptance of a higher-order norm that accords authority to my own normative judgments."

     Finally, in response to critics of his book, Gibbard (1993, pp. 317-318) now takes as explanatorily basic (v) the state of mind of "accepting a normative directive that applies to oneself right now," and he explains the many states of mind related to normative statements that don't directly express acceptance of some normative directive "by their inferential relations to this explanatorily basic kind of state of mind".

     The chief challenge for Gibbard's view is the claim of objectivity implicit in ordinary normative talk. When we say something is good or rational, we mean it is objectively so -- that it would still be good or rational if we believed otherwise. As Gibbard acknowledges (153), "Any account of language that ignores this claim must be defective."

     This claim of objectivity is not a response to normative facts⁵ in the world, Gibbard insists (117-122). Factual judgments about our surroundings, based on ordinary sensory perception, naturally represent material facts in the world. Such judgments naturally represent their content. Physicists' beliefs (about atoms, say) artificially represent their content. "Normative facts, if there were any, would be the facts of the special kind represented, naturally or artificially, by normative judgments."

     Gibbard considers another possibility: that matters of fact, concerning the adaptive value of the kinds of normative judgments humans tend to make, might be what is naturally represented by those kinds of judgments in us. But, he argues, "even if a normative judgment does naturally represent the fact that it adaptively fits the circumstances judged, it does not naturally represent its content."

     According to Gibbard, then, our normativity is mixed up in a world of psychic and social facts, and our judgments here -- "thick" judgments blending factual and normative claims -- fail to naturally or artificially represent their content. It's not likely that we can avoid this factual-normative blending of claims in our daily living, but a separation of the elements is possible in principle if we adopt a language he proposes (124):

It uses the terms of the Galilean core plus one explicitly normative term, 'it makes sense to'. What we can ask about everyday personal judgments, then, is whether we could interpret their claims in this normative-Galilean language -- a language that does make a neat fact-norm distinction. If we can, that will not mean we should ditch our everyday ways of thinking. It will mean that no great mystery remains about the place of personal facts among norms and Galilean facts.

     Having ruled out normative facts, Gibbard accounts for our claim of normative objectivity by denying primacy to any individual's perspective. We take the truth of our normative judgments to be standpoint-independent. Given the possibility of normative error (due, say, to mistaken norms or the passion of the moment), we are wise to coordinate with others, gaining the benefit of other perspectives through normative discussion.

     How does normative discussion serve us? We begin (230) with tentative individual judgments about what to accept, and other tentative individual judgments about whom to accord normative authority, and why. We make conversational demands on one another -- not merely in advancing our opinions, but in adhering to shared norms for discussion -- e.g., respect for facts and consistency.

     "What can we seek in discussion, then," Gibbard asks (231), "besides such things as consistency, the facts, mental exercise, and suggestions for ways of thinking? What more we can seek is to influence and to be influenced."

     Presumably, such mutual influence can improve each individual's normative judgment and lead ultimately to a normative consensus. As a result (249), "These socio-psychic mechanisms combine, at times, to make norms as interpersonal as trees."

     Normative discussion exposes claims to epistemic challenge (192-194): How do you know?

A speaker should be embarrassed if he has no reply. That means that if conversational demands are to count as legitimate and ideally coherent, they must be backed by an epistemic story. The speaker must accept higher order norms that tell the hearer to accept what he is saying. These higher order norms form his story of why he is in a position to judge, of why his audience should accord him the authority he claims.

     The right sort of epistemic story will define good conditions for normative judgment, so that acceptance of a normative claim under those conditions tends to warrant that normative claim (181).

     Gibbard notes another important difficulty for assessing claims to normative authority: we can't always be guided by what seems like an indispensable norm for objectivity (195).

Qualifications for good normative judgment, we might want to say, cannot be doctored to give particular substantive results. Without this restriction, after all, a speaker can play dirty tricks. He can take anything he accepts and entrench it, simply by disparaging all those who fail to accept it.

     Yet Gibbard decides he can't insist on content-neutral qualifications in this vein (196-197). He explains this by the example of Caligula, who admires, endorses, and delights in gratuitous cruelty.

Caligula, it might turn out, is superb as a normative judge by every content-neutral test. If his judgments are monstrous, though, we shall not give them weight. If only content-fixed qualifications will rule Caligula out, then we cannot renounce them. We shall dismiss normative judgments if, in various substantive ways, they are egregious.

     This stance risks normative dogmatism, but being dogmatic toward someone comes at the price of being willing to dispense with him as a normative discussant. Gibbard thinks we will avoid paying that price whenever possible, but there are times when the need to exclude someone outweighs the need to include him (199) -- for the conversational pressures of normative discussion "may lead us in normative directions we are sure it makes no sense to take."

     Hypothetically, at least, Gibbard needs to exclude other discussants (202). Perhaps all our best normative judges agree on a particular judgment, yet "somewhere, far away, some rational being is so constructed that if he were in ideal epistemic circumstances he would judge otherwise. Should we leave our judgments hostage to the normative sensibility of beings in a far galaxy?"

     That leaves us with parochial judgments -- judgments demanded of all members of some group smaller than that composed of all conceivable rational beings, and thus parochial to that group. Gibbard would like us to extend our parish to include all of humanity, but doubts it is possible. Circumstances routinely restrict the orbit of normative discussants to smaller communities.

     Parochialism, accepted as a fact of life, leads pragmatically to some form of relativism when considering multiple groups (211-216). My rationale for being parochial -- the appreciation of advantages that accrue to me when I do so -- applies also to some member of a different group. Gibbard thinks we must accord importance to norms of rationale as well as to those epistemic norms of warrant defining the limits of one's parish, and allow challenges to both the rationale and the judgment supporting a normative position. We should accept a distinction (222) "between what it makes sense to believe and what it makes sense to want to believe."

     Conceding such importance to rationales requires Gibbard, almost apologetically, to accept a limited pragmatism. After all, our rationales promote pragmatic benefits. It is the fact that certain beliefs or norms or behaviors tend to promote success -- are systematically apt (221) -- that argues for their credibility. It's an evolutionary implication (223):

We should expect, then, that in fact the judgments that emerge from normative discussion will be responsive to pragmatic considerations: to the sorts of things that tended, among our ancestors, toward reproductive success. If we were to reject all such influences as distorting, we would have to reject all our normative judgments as products of distorting influences.

     The pragmatism Gibbard accepts differs from the popular conception of pragmatism as pursuing narrow self-interest (and skewing normative judgment). It's a pragmatism of legitimate influence (224) based on our evolutionary history -- and therefore one that bears on human life broadly. Sometimes, Gibbard concludes (225-226), pragmatic considerations both influence us and improve our normative judgment.

     How do we tell whether pragmatic support is legitimate or distorting? Plausibility (or better, its extreme, self-evidence) is Gibbard's standard (227): "When ways of thinking with pragmatic support seem absurd, we shall reject pragmatic accounts of how it makes sense to think."

     Still, Gibbard's account offers some reasons "for thinking that advantage and plausibility might coincide fairly well" (229-230):

If they do, that can be no evolutionary surprise. Our normative propensities constitute rough heuristics for promoting biological fitness, and our notion of benefit coincides roughly with biological fitness -- through no accident.

     Gibbard's story of the origins and nature of our normative concerns and behaviors, then, is quite impressionistic -- dashing daubs of normative objectivity, normative discussion, uncertain qualifications for normative authority, conversational demands, and epistemic and pragmatic influence onto the canvas in hopes that the resulting picture will deepen our understanding of his fundamental thesis: that normative discussion can both influence us and improve us as normative judges, yielding benefits of coordination that gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage.

     Evolution has endowed us with broadly moral sentiments -- particularly benevolence (255) and reciprocity (261) -- that guide our moral choices ... though perhaps not directly. Maybe our norms for anger and guilt were shaped in response to these broadly moral sentiments.

     How can we put these theories to use in moral inquiry? We need a bridge from psychology to morals (254). "Once we have a messy story of why in fact we do care about morality, how shall we get from there to a good normative story, a story of why to care?"

     The generic answer is that morality motivates, and when it does so effectively, it improves the outcomes of action -- reducing or avoiding harm and increasing or obtaining benefit. But is morality an objective or subjective matter? As generally defined (42), "an act is wrong in the objective sense if it is wrong in light of all the facts, knowable and unknowable, whereas it is wrong in the subjective sense if it is wrong in light of what the agent had good reason to believe."

     Gibbard argues in favor of subjective standards (43).

In short, then, for an agent who knows he is ignorant, standards for objective rightness are useless; what he needs is standards for subjective rightness; whereas for the agent with full knowledge, standards for objective rightness are superfluous so long as he has standards for rightness in the subjective sense.

     Because ignorant agents are not fully responsible, what we need is a standard of blameworthiness connected to acts that are subjectively wrong (45).

Standards for wrongness, then, are the standards such that an agent is prima facie blameworthy if he does not use them to rule out acts that violate them. The reason the blameworthiness is only prima facie is that facts about the person's motivational state may be extenuating.

     This formulation now connects nicely to Gibbard's key contention that morality is a matter of norms for determining when our narrowly moral sentiments (guilt and anger in particular) are rational: blameworthiness makes it rational for the agent to feel guilty and for others to resent him.

     Our job as moral agents, then, is to assess which feelings to take as guides and then follow them. For Gibbard, those will be the ones which contribute the best gains from coordination, or contribute to a life worth leading -- unless we decide they aren't (279-283).

     This view clearly needs further explanation. Gibbard says we need a two-pronged approach to assessing feelings. The first is pragmatic in the ways just discussed, bearing on gains and costs, broadly understood (284).

The other we might call loosely intuitionistic: take up the inquiry, think through the examples, discuss together, confront puzzles and inconsistencies. Then see directly which norms for feelings strike us as plausible. We do not think we can peer into a special realm of normative fact, but we can act as if we thought we could.

     This two-pronged approach is especially important when consistency conflicts with intuition. Norms for consistency (like the norm for content-neutrality discussed earlier) are useful in assessing the acumen of discussants, in reaching consensus, etc. -- but are dispensable if they lead to unacceptable results (285). "Rigorous demands for consistency can have far-reaching consequences. ... If we hold ourselves to consistency, it seems, we can be led from clear and obvious premises to disturbing conclusions." Gibbard's suggestion is that perhaps specialists (say, philosophers) might be enlisted (291)

to press demands for consistency in normative discussion with special rigor. The specialist's goal should be not to attain consistency at the expense of everything else, but to work especially hard and effectively at seeing how far extreme consistency can be reconciled with other things worth wanting.

     Demands for consistency, like demands for objectivity, lie at the core of philosophers' attempts to establish moral systems. Though Gibbard recognizes the value of such demands in contributing to normative discussion, he thinks the prospects for moral system "can look grim if our moral concern rests on the hodgepodge I have sketched, on impulses pushing in so many ways" (322). Our best hope for dealing with central controversies, for puzzling out the bearing of good on right and wrong, and for making sense of our moral feelings and the roles they should play in our lives, he thinks, is to apply his norm-expressivist analysis to the purely hypothetical case of ideal moral inquiry (314).

Take our initial views of what constitutes trustworthy moral inquiry. Add our best theory of the influences that shape moral inquiry, the things that help determine which moral norms will strike us as plausible. Then ask where these influences would lead in ideal conditions.

     This completes my synopsis of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Next, I propose to examine how the concerns, standards, and pitfalls I raised in my lengthy preamble relate to features of Gibbard's project.