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Moral Desirability and Rational Decision

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Abstract

Being a formal and general as well as the most widely accepted approach to practical rationality, rational decision theory should be crucial for justifying rational morals. In particular, acting morally should also (nearly always) be rational in decision theoretic terms. After defending this thesis, in the critical part of the paper two strategies to develop morals following this insight are criticized: game theoretical ethics of cooperation and ethical intuitionism. The central structural objections to ethics of cooperation are that they too directly aim at the rationality of moral action and that they to do not encompass moral values or a moral desirability function. The constructive half of the paper takes up these criticisms by developing a two-part strategy to bring rationality and morals in line. The first part is to define ‘moral desirability’. This is done, using multi-attribute utility theory, by equating several adequate components of an individual’s comprehensive (rational) utility function with the moral desirability function. The second part is to introduce mechanisms, institutions, in particular socially valid moral norms, that provide further motivation for acting in accordance with morals.

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Notes

  1. For a more precise version of these adequacy conditions and an extensive justification see: Lumer <2000>/2009, 30–46.

  2. Motivational effectiveness is a special kind of internalism. However, because of the many uses of “internalism” the label “motivational effectiveness” is preferred here.

  3. It is mundane at least compared to Kant’s “higher” rationalism of pure reason, which tries to guarantee autonomy by backing decisions on a priori reasons.

  4. Rational decision theory has been frequently contested since the 1970s. Most of these criticisms, though, attack its use as a true model of empirical decisions (e.g. Kahneman and Tversky 1979). This kind of critique is irrelevant in the present context, which speaks of rational justification.

  5. Many authors have developed their own game theoretic justifications of an ethic of cooperation, e.g.: Binmore 2005; Hoerster 2003; Narveson <1988>/2001; Stemmer 2000. Because the present paper mainly develops a positive alternative, there is no room for doing justice to all these models. Instead Gauthier’s theory, which probably is the best known model, will be used here as a representative paradigm case.

  6. For a more detailed critique of cooperation ethics see: Lumer <2000>/2009, 102–116.

  7. “Supra-personal” here roughly means: with an authority above that of a singular person. This may e.g. be the authority of a valuation that reflects everybody’s interests or the authority of objective values that are independent of any value subject.

  8. For the general role of valuations and appraisals for emotion see e.g.: Lazarus 1991; Solomon <1976>/1993, 209–212; Lumer <2000>/2009, 456–474; Zeelenberg et al. 2008. For moral emotions being based on moral appraisals see e.g.: Izard 1991, 361. (Many ethicists think moral emotions are based on moral appraisals, e.g. C. D. Broad, Richard M. Hare, John Rawls, Ernst Tugendhat.) Particular moral emotions and their underlying appraisals are analyzed e.g. by the following authors: guilt: Lazarus and Lazarus 1994, 55–59; Montada 1993, 262–266; Solomon <1976>/1993, 258–263; indignation: Montada 1993, 266; Solomon <1976>/1993, 270–272; resentment: Solomon <1976>/1993, 290–295.

  9. This kind of cooperation differes from the type aimed at in ethics of cooperation. It is a cooperation for realizing a supra-personal project; it is not a cooperation where I buy your cooperation for my personal advantage.

  10. David Gauthier, personal communication (12 December 1994).

  11. Important foundational contributions to multi-attribute utility theory are: Krantz et al. 1971; Keeney and Raiffa <1976>/1993. Comprehensive overviews are provided in: Clemen and Reilly 2001; French 1986; Raiffa 1968; Watson and Buede 1987. A simple method is presented by: Edwards 1977. For recent developments see: Figueira et al. 2005.

  12. Determination of desirability functions on the basis of (really) holistic preferences over options with complex consequences is questionable anyway. If such complex holistic preferences have to be taken as the uncriticized basis of the desirability determination why can’t we immediately take preferences over the present options as part of the preference basis on which the desirability is calculated? But if we already dispose of the preferences over the options in question (and have no way of criticizing or altering them) then the whole undertaking of determining the options’ desirabilities is superfluous. (Lumer 1998, pp. 33–37) Therefore, only a synthetic determination of the available options’ values makes sense. And the straightforward way to do so is the use of multi-attribute utility theory.

  13. Margolis (1982) distinguishes the selfish and the altruistic component of one’s comprehensive option utilities. However, he does so in a quite different framework, specifically for determining the game theoretically adequate weights of the two components from an evolutionary perspective.

  14. How does this approach relate to other approaches? Some other uses of a decision theoretic framework in ethics can be understood as an application of multi-attribute utility theory as well, though as a quite different application. Every additive social welfare function of the form U mor (p) := Σ i w i ∙U morg (U i (p))—where w i is the moral weight attributed to person i’s welfare stemming from p and U morg is a dimensional moral value function of a person’s utility of p—can be interpreted as a multi-attribute utility function with the various individuals’ utilities being the attributes of the object p to be valued (this is an extension of: Keeney and Raiffa <1976>/1993, 515–547). The simplest welfare function of this kind is utilitarianism, which assumes w i  = w j for all i and j and U morg (x) = x; in prioritarianism e.g. U morg is concave. Another example of the ethical use of multi-attribute utility theory is extended preferences (cf. Arrow (<1951>/1963), Harsanyi (<1955>/1976; 1977) and Sen (<1970>/1984, ch. 9).

    Although multi-attribute utility theory is used (or could be used) in these theoretical approaches the way it is used is quite different from its application in the present approach. First, the just mentioned approaches try to formalise only soical welfare functions, i.e. a special type of moral desirability functions; they do not try to capture the comprehensive (moral plus amoral) desirability of options from the point of view of a given subject – as is done in the present approach. So they consider (at best) the sub-dimensions of one dimension (or even sub-sub-dimensions of a sub-dimension) of the option, namely of its moral dimension, but they do not consider and compare the other main dimensions of that option. Second, the theoretical framework of these approaches is judgemental intuitionism: they try to provide a specification of intuitive moral judgements (or to derive moral maxims from intuitive moral axioms); Harsany, for example, calls the extended preferences “ethical preferences” (Harsanyi <1955>/1976, 13 f.). Judgemental intuitionism does not make sure that these preferences have any motivational force at all, and even less does it use multi-attribute utility theory for resolving the problem of rational motivation to act morally (by exploiting the dynamics between moral and amoral dimensions of our comprehensive desirability) – as the present approach tries to do.

  15. In the literature many more specific notions of ‘ethical intuitionism’ are used (e.g. by Audi, Dancy, Huemer, McCann, Stratton-Lake). The general notion of ‘ethical intuitionism’ just defined includes nearly all of them. Here I do not use one of these more specific notions for not unnecessarily restricting the range of my argument.

  16. The quotations are explanations given by recognized rescuers of Jews during the Third Reich when they were later asked, why they had taken the risk to help the Jews.

  17. Though Rawls does not call his method “intuitionistic”, reflective equilibrium is intuitionistic in the general sense explained above: even if this method does not simply accept initial moral judgements but requires to make them coherent by a critical reflection, which among others has to consider the relevant facts, the resulting considered judgements are not supposed to rely on a justification or any other controllable and reliable process. Rather they are taken as the theory’s basis iff the subject, after the critical reflection, accepts them, period. Thus the considered judgements are taken as primitive and not as something that ethics can or must further analyse, explain or justify.

  18. Some of the following criticisms have been advanced by Mackie (1977, sects. 5.1 and 5.5). A more extensive critique is developed in: Lumer <2000>/2009, 77–89.

  19. An earlier study of mine (Lumer 2002) provides the psychological material for the present and the following section as well as a rough analysis of which motive may have which function for morals and its justification. The ethical utilisation of this material for the multi-attribute utility approach is new.

  20. J. C. Flügel (1925) conducted a psychological study, in which the subjects (N = 9) kept an emotion diary for a period of 30 days, inserting type, intensity (rating from -3 to +3) and duration (in minutes) of their emotions. This led to nearly 10,000 entries altogether (mean: 33 entries per person per day). From these data the extents (absolute intensity integrals, i.e. absolute value of the intensity multiplied by the respective duration) of the various kinds of emotions can be calculated, representing something like the actual importance of these types of emotions or, in the terminology of multi-attribute value theory, the relative weight of the emotional dimension. The mean (mean of the subjects) extent of positive self-feelings made up 3.14% of the extent of the positive emotions or 2.11% of the extent of all emotions; the mean extent of negative self-feelings made up 4.05% of the negative and 1.33% of the extent of all emotions; finally, pity made up 0.04% of the negative and 0.014% of the extent of all emotions; positive sympathy and respect were not mentioned. (Flügel 1925, 345 f.) Though moral self-esteem makes up only a part of “self-feelings” this part probably is still much more important than sympathy.

  21. These and many other considerations have been discussed in the debate about the limits of morals (cf. e.g. Scheffler <1982>/1994; Williams 1973).

  22. Psychological hedonists have contested that improving another person’s well-being can be the content of an intrinsic desire. However psychologists have shown that subjects experiencing sympathy help the commiserated person even when the subjects believe they will not receive any hedonic gain from their helping (Batson et al. 1983).—For a general model of hedonic as well as non-hedonic emotion-induced intrinsic desires see: Lumer 1997; <2000>/2009, 477–493.

  23. The moral desirability function based on sympathy optimizing has been determined much more exactly and quantified: Lumer <2000>/2009, sects. 7.2–7.3 (= pp. 589–632).

  24. At a first glance, implementation theory (e.g. Baliga and Sjöström 2008; Corchón 2007) may seem to provide the desired solution because its aim is to design mechanisms that implement a social choice rule (which result shall be realised from a social point of view in which situation?) in such a way that even the non-cooperative strategies of the players via carefully designed institutions (incentives, taxes, warranty for contracts etc.) and game theoretic equilibria lead to the corresponding social state designated by the social choice rule. More carefully considered, however, implementation theory does not provide the desired game-theoretical reconstruction of establishing morally good social norms: Implementation theory is a device for designing social institutions from the standpoint of a social planner; as such it presupposes the social choice rule and the mighty social planner and, thereby, the main parts of the solution to the norm installation problem, namely the problem to get a sufficient number of people engaged in putting through the same morally ambitious norm in a coordinated manner.

  25. I would like to thank three anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

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  1. Università degli Studi di Siena, Dipartimento di Filosofia, Via Roma, 47, I-53100, Siena, Italy

    Christoph Lumer

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Lumer, C. Moral Desirability and Rational Decision. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 13, 561–584 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9227-x

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