Rorty on Sellars and Blameworthiness

This summer I'm house-sitting for a professor, and this has given me access to quite a few books that I haven't (but should have) read.  The other day, as I was enjoying a cold one on the balcony, I thumbed through Sellar's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, and the following quote from Richard Rorty's introduction caught my attention.

Knowledge is inseparable from a practice--the practice of justifying one's assertions to one's fellow humans. It is not presupposed by this practice, but comes into being with it" (4).

Not being an epistemologist, I'm not really in a position to evaluate the merits of Rorty's claim, but I have recently begun to think that something parallel must be true with respect to blameworthiness.  Replacing "knowledge" with "being blameworthy" and "assertions" with "actions" yields:

Being blameworthy is inseparable from a social practice--the practice of justifying one's actions to one's fellow humans. It is not presupposed by this practice, but comes into being along with it.

Now this seems fairly plausible to me, but I suspect it's pretty controversial.  However, if it is true, then it suggests that blameworthiness doesn't have priority (explanatory or otherwise) over the practices of blaming.  I'm wondering (a) whether other Garderners find this claim plausible (and if not, why not), and (b) what, if any, implications would it have for how we theorize about the nature and conditions of moral responsibility (e.g. if true, maybe we have to pay more attention to the exact nature and character of the practices of holding responsible)?

Comments

[Eddy Nahmias]

Justin, just so people are on the same page as you when they respond, can you clarify if you see your Rortyesque formulation about blameworthiness as different from Peter Strawson's view, and if so, how?

[Justin Coates]

Eddy, you're right to make the connection to Strawson.

If a "Strawsonian" theory is committed to the reactive attitudes being essential to our practice of blaming, praising, etc., then I think the Rortyesque point is too general to count as Strawsonian, as it is not committed to a particular theory of holding responsible.

If a theory counts as "Strawsonian" simply because it recognizes that the practices--whatever those turn out to involve--should be foundational in our theorizing about moral responsibility, then the Rortyesque point is Strawsonian. However, it does not commit one to Strawson's account of those practices. For instance, Scanlon's new account of blame would count as "Strawsonian" in this sense, even though he explicitly denies that the reactive attitudes are essential to blame.

Obviously, whether we chose the former or latter sense of "Strawsonian" is a terminological matter, but I prefer the more inclusive (i.e., the latter), and I saw the Rorty quote as giving me a nice way of articulating a key feature of this view.

[brandon w.]

This application of Rorty's point to blameworthiness is clearly reminiscent of a broadly Strawsonian point: that being morally responsible cannot be understood without attending to our practices of holding morally responsible. They are conceptually inseparable. But to point out this connection does not entail anything further: for example, whether there is an arrow of explanation or in what direction(s) such an arrow might run.

[George Ortega]

Justin,

Rorty's statement about knowledge is clearly wrong. It is quite common for individuals to have a certain knowledge that they would prefer to not tell anyone anything about, let alone justify it to others as an assertion.

A similar explanation applies to your corollary to blameworthiness. We can hold ourselves blameworthy of some actions without considering other human beings as the arbitrators of our moral actions.

Your statement "blameworthiness doesn't have priority (explanatory or otherwise) over the practices of blaming" is correct, but not for the reason you give. The pervasive human habit of assuming the reality of free will and then blaming ourselves and each other for actions completely determined by the causal past is evidence enough of the truth in your statement.

[adrian woods]

Rorty thinks that Knowledge is contingent upon agreement of a particular group. This is why he requires one to justify beliefs to others - essentially being an internalist. This is clearly false - I can have a belief, the belief be true, and I can be justified in that belief (Gettier aside) and therefore have knowledge of P while the group disagrees with me (the group thus being wrong).

That said, Richard Foley and Robert Brandom make some great arguments of why it is good to move to an internalist position where feasible and possible.

[Andrei Buckareff]

Adrian,

I'm not sure I know what you mean by referring to the position you ascribe to Rorty as "internalist," but there is nothing about internalism (broadly characterized) that includes justifying one's beliefs to others as a condition for epistemic justification. (Besides this, what sort of justification are we talking about--doxastic or propositional justification?) I won't get into debates over epistemic justification, but many prominent internalists would not include the condition you ascribe to Rorty as necessary for one to be justified in believing that p (e.g., Conee, Feldman, Pryor, BonJour, Fumerton--in fact, I don't think that Foley would say that justifying beliefs to others is a necessary condition for one to be justified in believing p).

[Ben M-Y]

Justin,

You note in response to Eddy Nahmias' comment that we can take a narrower or broader line on what counts as Strawsonian, depending on whether or not we buy Strawson's commitment to the reactive attitudes. I wonder whether your view also admits of a broader and narrower interpretation, depending on whether we buy into the appeal to justification.

Scanlon's account, for example, is dependent on the practice of justification at a number of levels (e.g., his formulation of what it is for an act to be wrong, his account of how wrongness and blame can come apart). But it seems to me that we could give an account that is similar to his, in that it takes blame to be (essentially) a judgment of an impaired relationship, without this account depending (specifically) on justification. For instance, we could give an account that would still be practice-dependent, but instead of appealing to our practice of justifying our deliberative stances towards others, for instance, we could instead appeal to our practice of finding certain deliberative stances desirable. The appeal to desire need not be an attempt at justification, but rather it might be an appeal to some concern that we find ourselves with in virtue of our humanity, a concern we cannot give up without giving up a recognizably human form of life (There are echoes of Strawson here). This need not be an attempt at justification, because we might consistently hold that justification is a practice that appeals to reasons and desires do not give (or ground) reasons.

If there is space for some such view (even if not the one I gesture at here), then I wonder what effect (if any) this might have on the purported connection between an analysis of moral responsibility and an analysis of knowledge. A quick note: it clearly need not sever the connection, but perhaps weaken it. Instead of there being an analogy between the two of the sort that admits of substituting terms (as above), perhaps there is an analogy at some deeper level (e.g., the appeal to an essentially human practice--one that is essential in the course of a recognizably human life). In any case, this is an interesting line of inquiry you're onto here.

[adrian woods]

Andrei,

Internalism is characterized as, Knowing how you know. For Rorty, this is epitomized when belief and reasons are brought before the tribunal of the community. If the group then affirms, "yes this is true," then, for Rorty, this is knowledge.

[Justin Coates]

Brandon,

I took what I saying to suggest that if there is an explanatory dependence between being and holding responsible, it doesn't go exclusively from being responsible to holding responsible. So maybe we're largely in agreement?

George,

I'm not sure how that's a counterexample to Rorty's claim (or my Rortyesque claim). I think Rorty would reject the idea that you can give an exhaustive, reductive analysis of knowledge because such an analysis would fail to capture the significance of knowledge to our lives. So he's not saying that for me to know that p I must defend p to others. He's making the claim that if you're interested in understanding the importance of knowledge, you have to appeal to its role in our practices.

That's pretty rough, but it's about all I can say in a blog comment.

Adrian,

I don't know what other views Rorty accepts, having read very little of his work, but I don't think this quote (which was an attempt to elucidate a Sellarsian point) commits him to the view that you attribute to him--i.e., that unless your community agrees with you about p, you can't know that p. That view, it should go without saying, is false.

Ben,

I'm already out of my league talking about epistemology, and here you come asking me ethics questions. I'll have to think about it some more, but off the cuff, I'd say that you're right to push me about the "justification of actions" business. As I am increasingly interested in the connections between the practices of assertion and holding responsible, I'm currently thinking there is some connection between knowledge and being responsible, although, as your comment makes clear, clarifying this connection is difficult.

[Andrei Buckareff]

I don't want to debate the meaning of terms in epistemology here. But I can't help it. Adrian, your definition of internalism is idiosyncratic. You treat it as an account of knowledge. Epistemic internalism is (broadly) a theory of justification. Of course, if you are simply referring to what you or Rorty mean by 'internalism', then that's cool. But I don't know anyone who would endorse such a view. Better, no prominent internalist epistemologist defends such a definition. If you can think of someone, please, just email me. Let's keep this as a blog devoted to matters of agency and action.

[George Ortega]

Justin,

You write; "So he's not saying that for me to know that p I must defend p to others. He's making the claim that if you're interested in understanding the importance of knowledge, you have to appeal to its role in our practices."

As you phrased his statement, he was saying that knowledge is "practice-dependant" in a way that specifically includes others. I was simply refuting that assertion.

However, that was not the main point. You seem to be asserting that blameworthiness is dependant upon our social practice. But how is that a defense for blameworthiness? You could, using your same rationale, claim that our world is completely still, and not hurtling around our Sun at over 660,000 mph, simply because our personal and social experience holds it to be still.

Or, you could argue that women are not capable of assuming the voting responsibilities of citizens based on the historical practice of denying women the right to vote. My point is that social practice can be, and often is, based on irrational and erroneous premises, and should therefore not be considered an accurate guidepost to truth, especially in light of an overabundance of logical and scientific evidence.

and in addressing Ben, you write; "As I am increasingly interested in the connections between the practices of assertion and holding responsible, I'm currently thinking there is some connection between knowledge and being responsible, although, as your comment makes clear, clarifying this connection is difficult."

There is an inexorable connection between knowledge and responsibility. In fact, responsibility is completely knowledge-dependant. One simple description of this connection is that a person cannot be justly held responsible for that about which he is not knowledgeable. More specifically, if one has never been taught, or has never learned, that stealing is wrong, it would be unjust to hold him responsible for stealing.

[Ben M-Y]

George,

I want to defend Justin against what you take his claim to be. No one is making the claim that just because we happen to have a practice that might be thought a defense of some judgment that the judgment is thereby sound. Your example of women's suffrage is a great counterexample to that claim. But since it is a claim no one is making, the example is no objection to what anyone has said.

What, I think, Justin wants to say is that our practices themselves have norms, and insofar as some judgment is dependent on some practice, it is also subject (in the right way, which is difficult to articulate) to the norms of that practice. Now, since the practice of justification, on this view, has norms, there are better and worse applications of the practice. So there are better and worse justifications. But Justin is not committed to the claim that just any justification can be invoked as a defense of a judgment of moral responsibility, even though he is committed to the claim that judgments of moral responsibility are dependent on the practice of justification. So giving examples of 'erroneous' or 'irrational' justifications does not undermine Justin's claim.

[meetingimages icons]

Yes, really. All above told the truth. We can communicate on this theme.

P.S. Please review our icons for Windows 8