6. APPLYING GENERAL STANDARDS FOR GALILEAN EXPLANATION

     The foregoing concerns about possible and plausible paths through Design Space, as well as those about the need to comport with (or explicitly dispute) the prevailing theory of large-scale neuroanatomy, are also concerns about general standards of Galilean explanation -- about coherence with the Galilean core of beliefs and correspondence to empirical evidence. We'll turn now to other problems of generic Galilean standards.

6.1 'That' vs. 'How' Explanations

     Let's consider next whether Gibbard met his objective. It was rather modest -- merely to make it easier for us to understand our normative practices, and perhaps engage in them more profitably.

     If Gibbard succeeded at all in this first aspiration, it is because he brought people to the Galilean table. He convinced them to consider an evolutionary account of human normativity. But what does his account consist of?

     It is a great step to bring non-Galileans to consider the possibility of biological causes for modern human behavior. That isn't a component of Galilean explanation, however; it is the point of departure. The claim that human normativity has its explanation in evolutionary theory is the default assumption for Galilean inquiry. The view that the normative practices of our ancestors paid reproductive and survival dividends thanks to improved coordination of human expectations, efforts, feelings, and beliefs is less an explanation of how these practices developed than why they persisted. It will come as no surprise to any Galilean that adaptive human norms for coordination pay dividends via improved coordination. It will be even less illuminating to claim that those dividends consist in survival and reproductive benefits -- just as all other biological adaptations have, according to evolutionary theory.

     Galileans lust after explanations of how human behaviors are produced -- evolutionary accounts (Dennett's "cranes") of the development and nature of specific neuropsychological mechanisms that have adapted to perform specific functions for us, and of the presumably complex interactions among these mechanisms. When we know what apparatus produces a particular normative judgment, and what evolutionary role that apparatus has served our ancestors, we will know something important about the nature of the judgment itself. This is not the variety of explanation Gibbard offers us.

6.2 A Hijacked Rationality

     Part of Gibbard's task is to dispose of serious objections (extant or anticipated) to the key features of his position. His greatest effort in this regard goes toward debunking competitors to his view of rationality.

     Gibbard provides a valuable discussion of what he counts as the leading descriptivist theories of rationality opposing his view, Brandt's full information analysis and the instrumental rationality of Hume and Ramsey. That discussion doesn't apply to the variety of modern descriptivism I promote -- for, where I presume that value is an objective quality explainable in Galilean terms, Hume and Ramsey are just as fully committed to a subjectivist view of value as is Gibbard. Indeed, I claim it is the objectivity of value that allows it to be completely accounted for by physical processes.

     Gibbard's conclusion, that descriptivists fail to capture the expressive element of endorsement when someone calls something 'rational', is true enough. Some of his critics²⁸ rightly worry about the fact/norm semantic dualism that norm-expressivism presupposes. In the psychological theory I have begun to outline, this dualism is simply the result of conflict between the descriptive activities associated with the left hemisphere and the evaluative activities of the right hemisphere/limbic coalition²⁹ -- two mechanisms of judgment squabbling over which meanings will be primary for the terms in our language.³⁰

     The most curious thing about Gibbard's discussion of rationality is that it isn't precisely rationality with which he's concerned. He wants to defend and exploit a concept, it makes sense to, which he had initially presented as 'is rational'. Admitting that 'rational' is perhaps (even probably) the wrong word³¹, he nonetheless proceeds to attack theories concerning the ordinary meaning of the term.

     It was both astounding and disheartening to me that I found no criticism of the way he expropriated this important term. Let me make it very clear: the primary definition of 'rational' in all the dictionaries I checked was consistent with this one from the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary: "Having the faculty of reasoning; endowed with reason."

     The typical secondary meaning was "Exercising (or able to exercise) one's reason in a proper manner" -- clearly derived from the first. The best match to Gibbard's intended meaning appears to be "sensible, sane," or "of sound mind." This deals with being in possession of one's faculties; but the primary meaning makes it clear which faculty is the standard by which things are judged 'rational' in this way: reason . I have already offered an evolutionary explanation for why these different definitions would appeal differentially to people, according to their relative facility with (and trust of) the judging mechanisms available to them.

     Gibbard pays tribute to reason (48-50), but he fails to separate reason from intuition -- two separate functions produced by two distinct functional mechanisms (quite possibly opposite hemispheres of the brain), each specialized for its respective duties. He claims the capacity for normative control fits a traditional conception of the faculty of reason (80), and admits that a limited governance of action and emotion "may be what psychologists sometimes call 'rational control'." But he won't claim reason as the faculty of normative control -- which, strictly speaking, is correct (if I'm right about there being multiple, competing faculties of normative control). But that leads him unfortunately to presume that reason isn't a faculty of normative control.

     Gibbard acknowledges the primary sense of 'rationality' in an off-handed manner (49): "In another sense, a person is rational only if he tends to be guided by reasoning that is good. This sense is normative, and so, I would claim, not straightforwardly naturalistic." My response may sound strange, but it is a mistake to presume that 'good' is strictly a normative term in any way that entails endorsement. The parts of a pistol can have a good fit, meaning that they mesh in ways facilitating the pistol's function -- even if one would never endorse that function, or even the existence of the pistol. Making a descriptively good fit, on this view, can be normatively bad. This descriptive use of an ostensibly endorsing term illustrates a fundamental psychological conflict that can lead, quite destructively, to a quagmire of equivocation.

     The semantic dualism at the heart of norm-expressivism is not a precious part of human nature to be accommodated at every turn, but rather an endemic confusion resulting from a mistaken belief that our evaluations and factual judgments are produced by the same mechanism.

6.3 Galilean Gaps in Gibbard's Psychology

     I have already complained at length about discrepancies between Gibbard's treatment of possible neuropsychological implications for human normativity and the compelling functional model that derives from MacLean's theory. But perhaps the most devastating flaw in Gibbard's speculative psychology is the lack of any sensible account of how the fundamental psychological states he depends on arose through evolution. Where did accepting a norm , or self-evidence, or existential commitmentcome from?

     Like it or not, these are intuitive judgments for which Gibbard has no evolutionary explanation. Though he explicitly relies on an intuitionist element in his psychology, he goes to some lengths to separate himself from intuitionist philosophers (107). He finds a meaningful distinction in whether one reports or expresses a private mental state (84). The pertinent question is which functional mechanisms make our judgments for us -- pure evaluation from the limbic system, the intuition or heuristics produced by the right hemisphere/limbic complex, or the careful reasonings of the left hemisphere. Gibbard doesn't draw this distinction.

     For Gibbard, the highest order norms are self-evident (227). I await any sensible account that can treat self-evidence as other than intuitive in nature. Even existential commitment, another higher order norm for Gibbard, rests on justification by intuition (or must be held without justification) -- for if we think it makes sense for us to adhere to an existential commitment, an intuition that it is sensible is our only appeal.

     Ultimately, Gibbard must rely on intuition for normative governance -- at least in difficult cases, such as when a course of action that seems unquestionably reasonable also seems monstrous, as in his Caligula example. Then the intuitive fork of Gibbard's two-pronged approach (283-284) for assessing feelings is supposed to hold sway.

     But intuition governs even the most pedestrian cases if Gibbard is right about the role of accepting norms. After all, how do we accept them? What mode of judgment is used? No answer but 'intuition' fits. Gibbard (318) notes that self-evidence is an inescapable part of accepting norms, and I have argued that self-evidence is intuitive in nature. Other possibilities fail.

     Our acceptance of a norm doesn't consist in direct apprehension that it is correct (for Gibbard divorces himself from this Platonic view). Nor is it a matter of conscious, methodical reasoning, using logic and objective standards of judgment. We accept norms because it makes sense for us to do so -- because our intuition judges them to be correct (or right, to capture a bit more of the evaluative flavor of intuitive judgment).

     If such intuitive normative practices fit Gibbard's evolutionary account, then presumably our intuition has a claim to reliability because it has been adaptive -- but there is no explanation offered as to how. Nor is there an explanation as to why our adaptive, reasoned judgments should be trumped by adaptive intuitive judgments.

     The entire intuitive fork of Gibbard's two-pronged approach to normative judgment and discussion -- and worse, all of normativity, if it depends on accepting norms in the way Gibbard relates -- is suspended by a gigantic skyhook.