What Happens When Parfit Gets Ticked Off

Derek Parfit is actually a very sweet man. But sometimes he fires really nasty rockets at people. And it's really funny -- and justified, because he's usually right. One of the funniest snarky passages in his forthcoming book is the following, which comes at the end of a long section that completely blows the tar out of Alan Gibbard's entire new metaethical program (pardon the length; it's just so hilarious):

"When Gibbard sums up his aims, he writes:

Above all, I hope, the analysis will help us understand why it matters which acts and feelings are rational.

But as before, if Gibbard's view were true, there would be nothing to understand. Since there is no expressivistic sense in which anything could be rational, there would be no point in asking which acts and feelings are rational. Nor could anything matter. Just as our normative beliefs could only mimic the search for truth, things could only mimic mattering. Since a mimic is a fake, or sham, such mimicry is not enough.

Gibbard's analysis, he also claims,

can transform our view of what we are doing when we ponder fundamental normative questions, and allow us to proceed more effectively in our normative thinking.

Gibbard's analysis would indeed transform our view. If we became convinced that there are no truths about what is rational, or about reasons, or about what we ought to do, we would cease to believe that normative questions could have answers. Our normative thinking would then be easier, since we would cease to worry that we might be getting things wrong. But that would not make our thinking more effective, since it would not help us to get things right. There would be nothing to get right.

…

Gibbard also hopes that, when we are trying to decide 'what really matters and why', his account of normativity can make some 'fruitful' answers 'seem evident and right'. If Gibbard's view were true, no answer could be right. And if we really accepted and understood this view, none could even seem to be evident or right. Phrases like 'what really matters' would be seen merely to mimic the search for the truth.

As Gibbard writes, his main question is:

Can I ever be mistaken in an ought judgment?…Do we discover how best to live, or is it a matter of arbitrary choice…?

On Gibbard's view, I have argued, there would be nothing to discover. We could never be mistaken in our judgments about how it would be better or worse to live, since this would just be a matter of arbitrary choice.

Unlike many noncognitivists, Gibbard realizes that his view cannot be restricted to practical reasons: reasons for caring and for acting. In his words, 'Norms are fundamental to thought…we cannot think at all without some implicit guidance by norms'. Just as 'what it is rational to do settles what to do…what it is rational to believe settles what to believe'. Remember finally that, on Gibbard's view, 'to call a thing rational is not to state a matter of fact, either truly or falsely'. If there could not be facts or truths about what it is rational to believe, as Gibbard's view implies, it could not be rational to believe anything, including Gibbard's view."

This is from ch.28 of On What Matters, a manuscript for a two-part book that Parfit has made available for wide public circulation.

As Parfit said in class, you also know that a philosopher must have something wrong when he can only state his view by inventing locutions which are transparently ungrammatical. And the funny thing is that when you realize why they're ungrammatical, you realize that he really is pulling a pathetic trick. If one looks at the semantics of infinitives like "to do", one finds that these fellows admit of several readings -- among others, a 'could' reading...and an 'ought' reading. Kinda funny.