Abstract
I argue that our acts of moral appraisal should be communicative. Praise and blame should communicate, to the appraised, information about their status and competences as moral agents; that they are recognised by the appraiser as a competent moral agent, and thus a legitimate candidate for appraisal. I argue for this thesis by drawing on empirical data about factors that can affect motivation. On the basis of such data, I formulate a constraint, and argue that two prominent models of moral appraisal – a consequentialist model and Wallace’s ‘evaluative response’ model – violate this constraint. The model that I propose – the communicative conception of appraisal – does not violate this constraint. This conception, I argue, can provide a fuller picture of the role of appraisals in deepening agents’ commitment to moral norms. On this model, praise and blame has not only an evaluative component, but also communicates to the agent competence affirming information.
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Notes
Deci and Ryan (1987) talk of the agent who displays this motivational patter as lacking “intrinsic motivation.”. This terminology is misleading: it is easily misinterpreted as ‘being motivated to do x for its own sake’ (as opposed to for some further, extrinsic end). This is not what is at issue. I talk rather in terms of ‘subsequent’ or ‘later’ motivation to avoid this confusion. The ‘measure’ of motivation – being more or less motivated – is based on observation and self-reports of levels of interest and willingness to engage in the prescribed behaviours.
Lacking such information, feedback was found to function as evaluations did, in decreasing subsequent motivation.
What might explain this phenomenon? It seems that factors experienced as manipulating or pressuring (reward/threat of sanction/evaluation) decrease agent’s subsequent motivation. In these cases, the “perceived locus of causality” (Deci and Ryan 2000, p.8–9) is external to the agent. Importantly, we should not think of this in terms of the agent’s conscious beliefs about the reasons for which they are acting: the de-motivating effects were present in young children exposed to the relevant features. It is implausible to suppose they had well formulated beliefs about their reasons for acting.
One might think that motivation does not decrease because agents have successfully internalised moral values. Deci and Ryan address the issue of internalisation citing evidence that effective internalisation requires the absence of the same features identified as having a negative impact on motivation. If moral values are internalised on the basis of moral appraisal, and moral appraisal has features that decrease motivation, then we would expect poor internalisation (“introjection” (2000: 236–237)). But often internalisation is effective. Moreover it should be. An account of moral appraisal should account for how appraisal can play a role in the effective (non-introjected) internalisation of values. This question deserves to be addressed, but I here focus on the issue of motivation (much of what I say will also apply to the success of internalisation, but it cannot be made explicit here).
See Parfit (1987, p24–28).
Smart writes of an action performed with a good motive: “it is worth our while to strengthen such a desire. Not only should we praise the action ... but we should perhaps give the man a medal, thus encouraging others to emulate it. Indeed, praise comes to have some of the function of medal giving ... we come to like praise for its own sake, and are thus influenced by the possibility of being given it.”. (Smart and Williams 1973, p.49).
On the standard picture blame is accorded to actions that are wrong, to deterrent effect. Some consequentialists – Mill (1861), for example – hold that blame is prior to wrongness: ‘We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures’ (1998, pg 93). My arguments are primarily against the standard picture (although non-standard consequentialists might nonetheless accept (CA)).
My target here is not the claim that praise and blame is justified because it brings about the best outcome. Rather, it is the claim that the best outcome is brought about by praise and blame which is a system of rewards/threats. The former claim can be retained, whereas I suggest we should reject the latter.
That moral appraisal should not be characterised as a reward does not mean that it cannot be experienced as rewarding. Many things that are not intended as rewards – that is, as providing an incentive – are nonetheless rewarding, e.g. the joys of friendship.
I focus here on blame because, according to (ER), “Praise does not seem to have the central, defining role that blame and moral sanction occupy in our practice of assigning moral responsibility” (Wallace 1994: 61).
See Duff (1986 esp. pp39–73) for an alternative view of blame as communicative. His claim is that in moral criticism, one engages in moral dialogue with the appraised, in an attempt to get her to recognise the reasons for which her action was wrong, and so to modify her future behaviour. Whilst having the communicative element in common, Duff’s view differs from my account: whereas Duff holds that this communication is a way of respecting the agent’s moral status, my account holds that what is communicated is, in effect, that one respects the agent as a moral agent, and views her as having moral status.
One might think that there are contexts in which agents evaluate themselves, having successfully internalised moral norms. This seems to me plausible. But see footnote 5 for mention of the parallel issues that arise in making sense of effective internalisation.
References
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks, for questions and comments, to: Jimmy Lenman, Jenny Saul, Chris Bennett, Bob Stern and Sean Cordell; Richard Holton, for allowing me to sit in on his moral psychology course, at which an early version of this was presented; audiences at the University of Sheffield, and the British Society for Ethical Theory Annual Conference, Southampton University 2006, and an anonymous referee for the latter. I am also grateful to the AHRC for funding.
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 On Drawing Conclusions from the Empirical Data
In the following, I consider the following concerns that one might have with my use of the empirical data to ground discussion of conceptions of moral appraisal:
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(a)
The experiments might fail standards of ecological validity; the experimental context might be so distant from natural contexts as to preclude generalisations to the ‘real world’
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(b)
The experiments may be conceptually irrelevant; the conceptions operationalized in the empirical work may not correspond to the related conceptions figuring [in the theories discussed] (Doris and Stich 2005: 122–123)
1.2 Ecological Validity
One might think that the experimental conditions in which the motivational tendencies of the subjects were assessed are unlike the conditions under which individuals are subject to moral appraisal. For example, one might object that in the experimental conditions, subjects were encouraged to engage in certain behaviours with the expectation of task contingent rewards. But such rewards would not ordinarily be expected for such behaviours, and it was clear that after the experiments, no such rewards could be expected.
This appears to be a point of crucial disanalogy that prevents generalisation from the empirical data to the theoretical models of moral appraisal. Contexts of moral evaluation are ongoing, and expectations of moral evaluation may persist even in the absence of an appraiser.
This concern does not mean that the empirical data has no import for ‘real world’ scenarios. Firstly, concerns about generalisations to the real world should be allayed by attention to the breadth of contexts in which such empirical data were collected (which go beyond laboratory settings, and include studies of the motivation of residential patients to adhere to health care plans, motivational tendencies of students to complete homework projects, motivation of workers to take on overtime, and so on).
What these concerns do indicate, however, is that whilst we might suppose subjects of moral appraisal to suffer decreased motivational tendency to comply with moral norms were the evaluative contexts to be removed, we in fact need not concern ourselves with this: the evaluative context is omnipresent, when it comes to moral appraisal. As such we need not concern ourselves with the potential diminishment of motivation to act well. This would affect my claims at premise (2) of my argument against (CA) – we should not expect there to be fewer moral actions if agents are motivated to act morally solely in contexts where rewards and sanctions are present. This is because all contexts are such contexts.
By way of response, I offer the following: if by ‘context of evaluation’ the objector means that the subject will be subject to evaluation for her action, clearly all contexts are not contexts of evaluation. Not all good acts are praised, and not all moral wrongs are blamed. Alternatively, the objector might mean that contexts of evaluation are contexts in which the subject expects to be evaluated for her action, or (weaker) believes there is a possibility that she will be so evaluated.Footnote 14 I accept that if ‘context of evaluation’ is understood in this way, then there may well be a wide range of circumstances in which we need not concern ourselves with subsequent decreases in motivation: the evaluative contexts will remain, and motivation will be sustained. Even so, there presumably will still remain a perhaps small number of contexts that do not count as evaluative contexts – contexts in which the subject can be sure that there will be no evaluation made (perhaps because no one else will ever know of the action performed).
These are the contexts in which we should expect subsequent decreased motivation. Should one accept premise (1) of the anti-consequentialist argument, then the presence of such scenarios is sufficient for the argument to run. An objector is committed to the claim that there are never any contexts in which an agent does not expect to be evaluated, by others or by herself, and this claim does not seem to be a plausible one.
Having defended against this concern, however, I do concede that this objection might lead to the conclusion that we rarely need to worry about the potential diminishment of subjects’ motivation. This does not, however, detract from my claim that the possibility of such diminishment, in these albeit rare circumstances, is not one that should arise in an adequate conception of moral appraisal.
1.3 Conceptual Irrelevance
A more pressing concern is whether the empirical data can be generalised to the realm of moral appraisal and moral motivation. The concepts used in the inquiries might be subtly, but crucially, different from the concepts at use by theorists of moral responsibility. If one believes that moral motivation is sui generis, then one will not accept that conclusions can be drawn from these empirical studies which do not incorporate data on specifically moral motivation (and one might be concerned about the ethics involved in experiments that potentially decrease subjects’ moral motivational tendencies).
I cannot here address the complex issues surrounding the nature of moral motivation, and whether or not such motives share the relevant features with our non-moral motives. I do, however, sketch a line of thought that an objector might propose: that there is a distinction between conventional and moral motivation, and the experiments are concerned with the former. As a result generalisations to claims about moral motivation are unwarranted.
Such an objection might take the following form: the experimental contexts concern only motivation to avoid sanction for conventional transgressions (e.g. disobedience to the commands, or failure to meet the expectations of, the authoritative figure involved in the inquiry). There is reason to believe that subjects distinguish between conventional and moral norms (Nichols 2002, 2004). There might be reason to believe, then, that whilst individuals experience diminished subsequent motivation to comply with conventional norms (no conventional authority; no compliance) this need not be the case when it comes to motivation to adhere to moral norms. More importantly, if all the data we have is concerned with adherence to conventional norms, no conclusions can be drawn out with regards motivation to adhere to moral norms.
A fully adequate response to this concern would need to be grounded in further inquiry concerning the relevant similarities and differences between motivation in moral and conventional realms. I cannot address such issues here. Hopefully the following partial response might allay some concerns.
We should reject the supposition that the empirical data concerns solely motivation to adhere to conventional norms. Some of the experimental contexts can plausibly be understood as being governed by conventional norms – for example, contexts in which experimenters gave task-contingent rewards for completing maths puzzles – the convention in play being one of compliance with the demands of authority figures.
However, in other contexts it is less plausible to cast the norms governing the subjects’ behaviour as solely conventional. Inquiries into motivation to adhere to health care plans, for example, seem to address motivational tendencies to act on the basis of norms that go beyond norms of compliance with authority figures. This is not to say that there are moral norms in play (although Kantian duties of self-perfection might cast adherence to such norms as a moral matter) – it is merely to suggest that the empirical data can extend beyond the motivational tendencies of subjects to comply with conventional norms; perhaps to warrant generalisation to the realm of moral motivation, and to inform our models of moral appraisal.
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Holroyd, J. A Communicative Conception of Moral Appraisal. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 10, 267–278 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9067-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9067-5