Jeff McMahan on the State of Normative Ethics

Once again, an excerpt from an interview in Normative Ethics:  5 Questions, this time with Jeff McMahan (Rutgers):

I am highly optimistic about the prospects for progress in normative ethics.  It is evident to me that great progress has already been made since I entered the field in the early 1980s.  Unlike many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, which in recent years were seduced by bad French philosophy into a lot of silly "post-modern" theorizing that hs exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance, analytic philosophy is flourishing.  Part of the reason why analytic philosophy generally is in such a healthy state is that, as Jerry Fodor observed in a recent book review, philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies.  We no longer devote our lives to developing comprehensive philosophical or ethical systems.  We are individually narrower and more specialized, which enables us to focus more carefully and minutely on the problems we study, and as a consequence to produce work that is more rigorous and detailed.  The result is that philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor than it was in the past, in the sense that different people are focusing selectively on problems that are elements or aspects of larger problems.  When the results of individual efforts are combined, we may achieve a collective product that exceeds in depth, intricacy, and sophistication what any individual could have produced by working on the larger problem in isolation.

I agree that some parts of the humanities have been "seduced by bad French philosophy" that has "exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance"; I agree that "philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies"; and I agree that "philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor."  But I disagree with everything else here, especially in the case of normative ethics (what would be the evidence, e.g., for its "relevance"?).  I am curious, though, what other philosophers think about McMahan's assessment.  (I would also be happy to hear from those who disagree with the claims of McMahan with which I agree as well.)  Signed comments are preferred; post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

Comments

[Matthew Seligman]

The sheer volume of philosophy that is produced more or less necessitates that one specialize, because of the impossibility of keeping up woth the details of everything. This may be the inevitable byproduct of a maturing discipline, but it certainly has downsides.

I have in mind the fact that there are virtues to "systematic" philosophy. On the one hand, it is indeed a danger that a particular philosopher will cling to his "system" when faced with a problem. But philosophy aims, or at least I hope it aims, at more than an unconnected series of solutions to puzzles. The virtue of systematic philosophy is that it aims to give a coherent overall philosophical understanding of the world.

One might reasonably wonder whether such coherent overall philosophical understandings are best or most likely to be produced by single philophers developing a system, or by the sort of collaborative effort McMahan aludes to. I don't know the answer to this, because we don't have much historical precedent. And perhaps a figure parallel to Kant is no longer possible, given the realities of contemporary philosophy. But I think it would be a mistake to assume that un-self-conscious collaboration could produce a system analogous to Kant's.

[Manyul Im]

Brian,

Not having read Fodor's book to which McMahan refers, I'm not sure what special meaning "having philosophies" has when he denies that philosophers have them. But I'm pretty sure that most philosophers I know hold to certain sorts of programmatic constraints in their theorizing and in the sorts of arguments they think are worth paying attention to. In particular, normative ethics seems to be a specialization in which people clearly "have philosophies." People tend to be consequentialists, Kantians, social contract theorists, virtue theorists, neo-Aristotelians, particularists, etc. in approach, even when they disagree with others who share the same approach. Why isn't that having a philosophy? So, I'm surprised that someone would think normative ethics "has made progress" because people don't "hold philosophies." If anything, since the 1980s much has been done to sharpen particular normative "philosophies," if we take that to refer to broad approaches to ethical theory. If a broad approach isn't "a philosophy" I don't know what is.

I agree with you that relevance is a difficult thing to find evidence for with respect to normative ethics. I would add that "progress" in normative theory is highly ambiguous. McMahan might mean we've gotten closer to the truth in normative ethics or that we've attained some broad consensus of theory. Those are highly problematic claims. Or he might mean that people have progressed within certain types of theory to iron out problems that the first proponents of such theories left unresolved--more sophisticated forms of consequentialism than Bentham's or Mills' utilitarianisms come to mind. Ironing out problems is a certain kind of progress, but not necessarily any sign of progress across the field due to some sort of collaborative or collective effort. To the contrary, some of the progress of this latter sort comes about in order to try to defend a type of theory from criticisms launched by proponents of other types of theory. I don't know, is that progress across the field? Launching criticisms at one another is a kind of collective effort I suppose, but not the one that springs most immediately to mind.

[bill lewis]

If what Leiter and Im suggest regarding the relevance of recent normative ethics is true and if what McMahon says about "bad French Philosophy" (that it seduced many in humanities and the social sciences) is also true, then isn't it the case that "bad French Philosophy" has been and possibly still is more relevant than recent work in normative ethics? Some may bemoan this fact, but this "tradition" apparently fulfills a felt need and has explanatory value for many and, therefore, is relevant. Of course, this is not to say that what it offers marks progress in ethical theory. In fact, placing the adjective "bad" in front of "French Philosophy" pretty much insures that it does not. However, we would have to say the same thing regarding the contributions of "bad normative ethics" to philosophical progress, wouldn't we?

[J. Edward Hackett]

I would have to say that French philosophy is derisive almost of itself since French philosophers could never put into words their view since to do so would invoke the same meta-narratives they abhor. Perhaps, this is why it is often suggested that Derrida's thought is a parody of itself. However, I digress from what I was going to post about.

I would have to take Jeff McMahan's words with a grain of salt. It seems like his esteeming the analytic tradition is self-gratifying verbosity without defense of that view. The greatest thing about philosophy is we can always place the burden on others to argue for their assertions, and here it is no exception.

All my advisors are telling me to specialize in what I like, but to achieve a comprehensive view of philosophy as a graduate student in order to teach a wide array of courses. This pragmatic advice is commonly given to young graduate students so we do not screw ourselves in the job market later (as the view goes). There are certainly some research constraints I have adopted with my interests. This leads me to believe that while specializing, philosophy is a tight-rope between one's research specialty and being more "philosophically worldly."

Another fact about McMahan's quote is suspect. One of the views of continental philosophy is that it is all Foucaultian/Lyotardian/Baudrillardian French dribble that comes at a price of clarity and precision. This view displaces other people of the more clear traditions of German thinkers, and casts an overshadowed light on the entire field of continental philosophy.

[Lisa]

If you look at McMahan's CV his work is astoundingly relevant:

http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/FACSTAFF/BIOS/mcmahan.html

Of course it depends on how you define relevance. Relevant to whom? But it is relevant to the problems our society currently faces, the questions most human beings grapple with at some point in their lives, etc. So it doesn't surprise me he thinks normative ethics is relevant, although I don't know precisely what he means by relevant. Perhaps others can say why they doubt the relevance of normative ethics.

[anon grad student]

"I believe that most philosophical views that have gained any currency in the tradition either are extremely plausible or can be made so by a little generous reconstruction. Views that have been held and developed by intelligent people over long periods of time are unlikely to be infected by logical errors and elementary mistakes, or to be refuted by local arguments. Usually the "standard objections" that one school of thought raises against another are question-begging in deep and disguised ways; in fact they presuppose the first school's was of looking at things. Philosophers are at their best when the task is the internal development of a philosophical position into a plausible and systematic view; the criticism of an opponent's position is normally the weakest part of a philosophical work. Deep disagreements among good philosophers spring from large-scale differences of approach and outlook; these are what are really at stake.

This conception of the subject makes determining the choice among opposing philosophical positions both more difficult and more interesting. The philosophical tradition - and, in my view, the contemporary philosophical scene - present us with a true embarrassment of riches. We are or should be perplexed at being confronted with so many seemingly contrary and plausible views. Our perplexity begins to dissipate when we come to see that the proponents of different views are raising and therefore answering somewhat different questions. We will only know what to think, however, when we can find once again the common human plight or worry that motivates them to ask these different questions. The correct view is not going to be the one left standing when the contradictions and absurdities of all the others have finally been exposed. It is going to be the one that answers best to the human concerns which motivate the study of philosophy in the first place.

...

Philosophy is a cooperative enterprise. How could it be otherwise? Philosophical arguments can succeed only if their audience can recognize themselves, their plight, the human condition, in the way that those arguments are presented. Yet every person's mind has a set of natural, almost primitive biases: towards the big picture of the intricate detail, towards similarity and system or distinction and difference, towards the careful conservation of territory already mapped out and won, or the radical challenge to received ways of conceiving things. These biases are not bad in themselves, but left uncorrected, they threaten to turn your individual voice into a merely idiosyncratic one. They way to get on in philosophy is to let your natural mental proclivities do their utmost and then call in your teachers and friends and students and critics to correct the negative effects of your biases. I have been lucky in my teachers and friends and students..."

- Korsgaard, introduction to Creating the Kingdom of Ends

[George Wrisley]

The end of the McMahan quote reads: "When the results of individual efforts are combined, we may achieve a collective product that exceeds in depth, intricacy, and sophistication what any individual could have produced by working on the larger problem in isolation."

Given that individual results are not "self-combining," any attempt at such a combination is itself a philosophical endeavor, one made more complicated by the fact that the "results" are not always/often determinate.

And while systemization certainly has its drawbacks, e.g., the temptation to find symmetry where none exists, with specialization and compartmentalization there is certainly the danger of forgetting that the lines drawn between, say, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are artificial in that results from one area have implications for or depend on results from the other areas.

[Avi Craimer]

Manyul Im comments: “…normative ethics seems to be a specialization in which people clearly "have philosophies." People tend to be consequentialists, Kantians, social contract theorists, virtue theorists, neo-Aristotelians, particularists, etc. in approach, even when they disagree with others who share the same approach.”

I take it that this kind of affiliation with a global moral theory is exactly what McMahan is criticizing when he commends the idea of moral theorists not having “a philosophy”. The best work in normative theory in recent years (including McMahan’s own work) draws on all of these traditional moral frameworks for ideas, but is not committed to any of them dogmatically. This non-global approach to moral theorizing focuses on making good arguments about specific moral problems rather than simply applying a one-size-fits-all theory.

I think McMahan is absolutely on target in his optimism about the future of normative theory. Unlike metaethics and traditional global moral theorizing, the sort of normative theorizing McMahan is talking about engages directly with practical problems that are of real concern to non-philosophers. Further, contrary to what many philosophers who are not themselves normative theorists seem to believe, normative theorizing does not go around in circles or simply restate old pieties. I find it difficult to believe that anyone who denies the claim that normative theorizing is one of the most creative and progressive areas of philosophy today has actually read much recent normative theorizing. On that score I highly recommend starting with McMahan’s book, The Ethics of Killing.

[Eric Rovie]

Echoing the comment made by Avi Craimer, I think McMahan's recent work on war is a good example of the rejection of the 'one-size-fits-all' theorizing. Instead of simply being opposed to the standing just war tradition, McMahan shows one can examine it's component parts and criticize them, where needed, to build from there. His work hasn't rejected a long-standing tradition outright, but merely works within the tradition, replacing the weak bits and strengthening the rest.

The biggest problem with this sort of work, however, is that it is difficult, intricate, and not always easily applicable to the average reader or the average undergraduate student. It's easy to teach a simplistic theory and then consider how it can be applied to a moral problem (what might a Kantian say about abortion?) but it's harder to take McMahan's deep and dense work (in The Ethics of Killing) and teach it to undergrads. It's possible to do so, but much harder than the standard 'applied ethics' approach.