THE NATURAL AND THE NORMATIVE: SUPERVENIENCE AND COUNTERFACTUALS

THE NATURAL AND THE NORMATIVE:SUPERVENIENCE AND COUNTERFACTUALSphil_417 197..214

STEVEN ROSS

I.

My subject here is the realization of normative properties in the material world.Obviously, pre-philosophically anyway, we think we encounter cruel actions andsomber paintings, considerate gestures, and expressive sculptures. Such thingscertainly seem to be in the world, and yet, at the same time, we do not think suchthings—cruelty, expressiveness—can be thought of as straightforwardly part ofthe natural world, as part of the world of quarks and protons, of forces and laws.This is not yet a puzzle; it just sets the framework for the subject.

An inevitable part of this framework is the idea of supervenience. Superve-nience is a handy notion, and at least at first, takes away any immediate difficulty.In the context of the natural sciences, where the idea is most straightforward, whenwe say A supervenes upon B, we mean that B causes A-ness to arise without itselfbeing A. A arises, causally, through the properties of Bs in concert. For example,it is quite natural to speak of solidity supervening upon the molecules of the table,without of course our holding that any of the molecules are themselves solid. Akind of second-order ontology is made sense of without violating the stringenciesimposed by the first. It is very natural for philosophers to import this model, thisidea, to the realization of normative properties in the natural world too. So,philosophers often speak of the cruelty supervening upon the act understood as anatural event, or the expressiveness supervening upon this particular bit of marbleor stone.

II.

But before exploring how this idea might be extended into the normative, moremust be said as to why my taking this way of understanding it is appropriate. I

© 2012 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

197

have, it will be noted, shamelessly relied upon the idea of causation in mycharacterization of supervenience, and, it might be said, the idea of supervenience,for some at least, is appealing precisely in so far as we can employ it without anysuch reliance. Thus, we might say (instead) that A supervenes upon B just in caseany change in B will be matched by some change in A, and “the troublesome ideaof causality is not brought into it.”1

Certainly, there are many ways in which this idea could be fixed. Any prefer-ence for one understanding over another must be defended; it cannot be assumed.I admit it: I prefer the understanding of supervenience that accepts the messyentanglements of causation talk because I think there are too many cases ofsupervenience a “matching change” model won’t satisfactorily capture. So forexample, suppose we gradually replace the molecules of a wood table withmolecules of plastic, and stop half way. The underlying molecules have surechanged, but the supervenience story—at least with respect to one property,solidity—has not. Why? This is because the causal properties of the plastic andthe wood molecules are, with respect to solidity, on a par. Conversely, soliditysupervenes upon the water molecules that form the icicle outside; as the outsidetemperature warms, the molecules remain the same, but now there is no soliditysupervening upon them. Here we have no molecular change, but a change in thesupervenience story. Perhaps one finds this example is less persuasive because“something else” has changed, that is, the outside temperature. Indeed, this is so,but it is because of the causal properties of that change (in these circumstances)that it matters! Were the icicle-shaped object outside made of iron, the move from20 degrees to 80 degrees Fahrenheit would be of no importance. In short, we canhave no criterion whatsoever as to which “changes” are important, which trivial,unless we turn to causation.

And this brings us to a related consideration: How are we to fix the ideas of“change” and “consequence” this model makes such central use of? Suppose wechange the letter order of “tab” to “bat.” We have surely changed the word, themeaning. Is this “supervenience?” Do we want to say that “the word” or “themeaning” “supervenes upon” “the letters?” We could, of course, but what would bethe point? To mention now a theme that will come up over and over in this paper, wecan use this term to cover as many and as various a set of relations as we like—asHumpty Dumpty famously said toAlice, the question is who is to be master, that’s all.2

1 A much appreciated comment by an anonymous referee.2 “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means what just what I

choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can makewords mean different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, p. 66 in theCalifornia Press version of the Pennyroyal edition (Berkeley 1983).

STEVEN ROSS

198

Well, Humpty was not quite right about the second part. The question is just what wemean in a particular case when we speak this way, and how far we are from the moreor less straightforward causal case when we do so. Of course, I concede, this way oftalking takes the causal story as central, and one could say this move begs preciselythe question at issue. My reply is: I am trying hard not to beg any questions; I amsimply defending a particular use. The causal case as I describe it is the mosttransparent, the one most nestled in straightforward naturalistic explanation. It is forjust this reason I think that philosophers seek to extend the idea to what are, primafacie, more mysterious relations. And finally, to make a small and perhaps unneces-sary point: The notion of causation I am appealing to here is not to be thought of assequential—B does not cause A later in time. It is the causation so usefully capturedthat famous remark of John Searle’s, when he said he takes intentionality to be“caused by and realized in the brain.” (Searle may well be wrong about intentionality,of course, but he does here use, on my view, the right notion of supervenience.)3

III.

So, to return to our earlier point of departure: What might be meant then insaying that “the normative supervenes upon the natural,” that, for example, crueltysupervenes upon the act understood as a mere event, or expressiveness supervenesupon the sculpture when picked out simply as a block of marble? If this sort of talkis taken as simply what ontological correctness concerning particulars demandsamong naturalists, it is absolutely innocuous. One might imagine Henry James ata dinner party trying to explain to the querulous and skeptical physicist seated nextto him how he understands the beautiful and, desperate for concord, says, “ah,well, I of course don’t think there is anything further than the material world; the“beauty” I speak of simply supervenes upon it”—and his dour neighbor finallyrelaxes and smiles. No Platonic entities have been countenanced, nor are weaffirming anything so unsatisfactory as reduction or eliminativism toward thenormative either. But if this is said as well to indicate the correct explanatory story,an importation of the one we understand straightforwardly in the natural context,it is now, almost certainly, misleading.

I say “almost certainly misleading” because I do not think it is right to suggestthat the marble molecules “cause” the expressiveness of Michael Angelo’s Pris-oners in anything like the way they do cause the solidity, or lack of solubility, ofthe sculpture. Of course, this point needs to be argued, not merely asserted, and Iwill turn to it below. But for now, I hope I can say that at the least, the followingasymmetry is hard to deny. Insofar as we have a physical story causing a super-vening physical property, we have a story that admits of counterfactuals that are

3 John Searle, “Minds Brains and Programs,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980): 417–24.

THE NATURAL AND THE NORMATIVE

199

indifferent to history, culture, and intention. Even if people never existed, let alonefailed to have the distinctive history (or art history) they had over a certain periodof time, or failed to have certain psychological states available, these marblemolecules would still cause solidity to arise when massed as they are here. But thesame sort of claim is clearly not available for the expressiveness that we attributeto a given work of art. Indeed, I doubt, when seeking an explanation for thesculpture’s expressiveness, what is causally distinctive about marble moleculeswill have very much of a role in that story at all. (Had these sculptures beenrealized in an off-white plastic visually similar, and all else about persons and theirhistory remain the same, I am pretty confident the attribution of expressivenesswould still be warranted.) Suppose we call the straightforward causal story inthe natural world, where non-A Bs cause A-ness to arise (the molecules cause thetable to be solid) bottom-up causation. Then, I think it is fair to say, whatever theright account of how expressiveness comes to be attributed to certain works of artmay be, or how it is that certain acts are found negligent, this is not going to be abottom-up causation story.

Well, perhaps this is too strong a claim at this point: intuitively plausibleperhaps, but not yet shown. After all, all sorts of things do cause all sorts of things.Why could expressiveness or negligence not be caused by the way world is, thehard facts of the world? Why couldn’t it be that, as some have put it, so long asGod put the fundamental particles in place, the expressiveness of Michelangelowould follow—would have to follow? Certainly in this age of ebullient realism,such claims have been made.4 Let me now take up this issue by returning tosomething briefly mentioned before, counterfactuals, and looking more closely atthe sorts of counterfactuals normative claims do and do not support. I believe thatif we think about the sorts of counterfactuals that normative claims cannotsupport, we have a very fruitful way into the sort of thing normative claims are.We also, it turns out, have a way into some interesting differences between theaesthetic and the moral.

IV.

It is intention, broadly understood, that brings all sorts of interesting things intothe world. But the intentionality in question, and the things that it generates, can

4 For the idea that all that there is could be said to follow from the fundamental physical facts alone, seeFrank Jackson, “Armchair Metaphysics” Philosophy in Mind, ed. M. Michaelis and J. O’Leary-Hawthorne (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994) 23–44; David Chalmers and Frank Jackson, “ConceptualAnalysis and Reductive Explanation,” Philosophical Review 110 (2001): 315–60. For the specific claimthat normative properties causally flow from natural ones, see Michael Devitt, Putting Metaphysics First(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010), especially chapter 9,“Moral Realism, A Naturalist Perspective.”

STEVEN ROSS

200

be more or less tied to the contingencies of history and human psychology. Peoplemake tools and people write experimental novels. The second sort of artifactbecomes possible for persons only at a certain point in their history; for creaturesthat might be like us in some ways but not in others, perhaps such a thing willnever be possible at all. This is very much not so for things of the first type. It isnot hard to imagine apes making tables or using simple weapons of sticks andstones (perhaps they already do). They have that sort of intentionality. But apescannot write Ulysses. All right then: This being so, suppose we tried to articulatesomething like a spectrum of intentionality, tracking the degree to which variousobjects of intentionality are more or less tied to the contingencies of persons andtheir actual history. This in turn will generate something of a spectrum of coun-terfactuals: Unsurprisingly, the stories that have increasingly intention-richobjects as their outcome will support counterfactuals of diminishing breadth.

The distance between the world as it is apart from persons and the worldchanged by intentionality is at its thinnest I think before very crude artifacts (if“artifact” is even the right word in this context). Consider the stone that is simplypicked up and becomes an axe, or the stick that, unchanged, is used as a stabbingtool. And from here it is a relatively short distance to the world of simple artifacts,where not much intention is expended to alter the object in the natural world intothat which serves a purpose but where we cannot think of the physical objectbefore us as arising (barring miracle) without intentionality (attach that stone to astick by strips of hide and you have that sort of axe).

I do not think that is it simply a quirk of ordinary language that we do not usethe language of “supervenience” here. For all the widespread use of the term, inall sorts of contexts, I have never heard a philosopher say the “table-ness” “super-venes” upon the physical object that is in fact (whatever else it is) a table, “thewatch supervenes upon the circular metal case and gears,” or “the pen supervenesupon the steel tube and colored fluid.” Why is this? I am not sure, but I think whereartifacts are concerned (and I will now speak of all of them, not merely the verysimple ones), the causal role of intentionality is so vivid to us that there is notemptation to traffic in language that imports any idea of bottom-up causation.Here, it is very clear from the start that it is the purpose, the shaping intention thatdoes the substantive explanatory work. Of course, there is a multiple realizabilitypoint in the background as well. A pen or a watch (or axe or table) can be realizedin a variety of material kinds. But in the case of artifacts, it is the particularexplanation of this fact that I am pointing to. Hearts and eyes may be multiplyrealized in a variety of materials too. Watches and pens are successfully made outof different things because, guided by a certain sort of intention, the intention tomake that which tells time or that which writes, all sorts of bits of the world maybe taken up, judged, and then kept or set aside. Of course, the bits that are keptmust have certain causal properties. How could that ever be denied? That is why


201

they are kept! (We don’t try to make watches out of birch bark and sawdust.) Butit is the fact that such bits are chosen for these properties, in light of this end, thatexplains the particular constellation of stuff, and the causal outcome such stuffhas, in any particular case.

Let us now turn to the counterfactuals. Artifacts of this sort occupy an inter-esting position in the spectrum I want to lay out here. By “this sort” I meanartifacts that are essentially constructed for their causal properties. We makeknives and pens to do a certain task, to alter the physical world in certain ways.The knife must be able to separate parts of substances that were previouslyuniform. The pen must be able to excrete, continuously and smoothly, a more orless permanent fluid. Novels, laws, and money, I take it, are also artifacts, but theseare constructed for their “meaning properties,” and they will admit of a verydifferent treatment. So, imagine a possible world all respects like ours, but withoutpersons and their history. If somehow this object, this pen, were to have arisen inthis world through natural processes (which of course I suppose is possible),would it still be a pen? In one sense, yes, and for the same reason that motivatesthis category to begin with. The object in question would, by stipulation, have allthe causal properties of a pen. But of course, in the absence of persons and theirpurposes, it is simply weird to call anything “a pen.” We are in a kind of concep-tual vertigo here, for we have imagined a world where there are, in a sense, pentokens, but there is no pen-type.

It is important to see that this point is not trading on (what is also important)that, without the intentional background, it is unlikely to the point of miraculoussuch objects could in fact ever arise to begin with. If we go back to the crudeartifacts with which we began, the stone-that-becomes-an-axe say, this difficulty isremoved, for such objects did arise without persons. The paradoxical quality of therelevant counterfactual, however, remains. “In a world like ours but withoutpersons, would this be an axe?” has the same obscurity. We take away theintentional background and then ask whether an intentional concept neverthelessmight apply to what would normally satisfy the truth conditions for that concept.It is not important to me that we fix upon an actual answer to this question. For mypurposes, what is important is that the obscurity of the question be held fast. Theother main point I want to repeat is that once we have crossed over into theintentional, to speak of such (intentional) properties supervening upon their tokeninstances is innocuous enough if we mean only such properties are here realized.It is deeply misleading if we suggest the physical properties of the object cause theproperty to come into the world, not merely as type (for this is clearly absurd, andI take it that no would hold this) but also as token. Indeed, I suppose my pointmight be put just this way: If the physical story cannot explain how the propertyas type comes into the world (as appeal to molecules of a certain kind can explainhow liquidity, as type, arises) then it is never satisfactory to point to those physical

STEVEN ROSS

202

properties as a substantive explanation for how it is that token instances of thatproperty arise either. The physical properties of objects in the world will notexplain how “watch” as type arises. No one would ever suggest otherwise. But inthat case, it will never be a satisfactory explanation of why this thing is a watch topoint exclusively to the physical properties of the object-token either. And in thatcase, we should be very careful when speaking of “watch-ness” “supervening”upon the object understood as mere thing too. Fortunately, as I said at thebeginning of this section, we are, here at least, so careful it seems that we never dothis at all.

V.

Let me now move to more complicated matters, moral and aesthetic life. I beginwith the aesthetic because its overall status is relatively non-controversial. I takeit that ontologically, the art world not only is, but (equally importantly) is gener-ally seen as, roughly like the legal world—it exists because persons have made it.Philosophers advance no serious claim of Platonic realism where art is concerned,and I take it the rich intentionality of at least the central cases renders tendentiousany attempt to see central cases of aesthetic attribution as brute, natural, non-cognitive reactions (along the lines of how things taste or how the starry sky mightstrike us). But the ontology of art is not exactly our subject here; supervenience is.Let us assume that “dramatic” when applied to Turner’s Rain Steam and Speed or“expressive” when applied Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm are justifiable attributions.There are a lot of other attributions true of these works that, arguably, are not trueof them merely as physical objects. For example, they belong to certain genres;perhaps, even to say they are paintings is to say more than what can be said of amere object naturalistically understood. But I will focus on attributions like“expressive” and “dramatic” because they are, certainly initially, more elusive,and because when we engage with a work under these descriptions, we do so incomplicated ways.

Can we say the expressiveness supervenes upon the painting understood asphysical object? The reader by now must surely guess my answer here: Of coursewe could. The question is what we make clear and what we may obscure inspeaking this way. The important thing is that this talk does not tempt us intoemploying an explanatory model that in this case would be misleading.

On the surface, the aesthetic case appears to present an intentional context ofthe most developed type. This will not necessarily always be so of course—manyobjects behind museum glass cases are not very far from the stone that becomesan axe, but let us assume that the object before us is one of those that arise withina complex, self-conscious history and is the product of sophisticated individualintentions within such a history—suppose, for example, we are considering the


203

Pollack mentioned above. As I say, here it seems fair to start with the thought thatwhat we have is an object that must be understood in ways analogous to the waya new language or foreign ritual must be understood—it must be decoded, inter-preted; signs, gestures, and choices must all be identified and given their meaning,and so forth. All this is fair enough, and were this not so, undergraduate art historysurvey courses would have a lot to answer for. But it would be a mistake toassimilate art (or at least, art of this type) completely to something like a language(however broadly we may decide to use this term), to some sort of “code” or“schema” that must be interpreted and, once interpreted, is then wholly before us.For surely there is also a responsive aspect to our encounter with art. I don’t meananything silly or crude by this. No Romantic infection is claimed. Nor am I sayingthat this is a constant or consistent feature of our relation to art. But surely it wouldbe a mistake to analyze our relation to art in a way that made this aspect myste-rious, or something we had to think of, if it does occur, as outside of what art (onour analysis) is really said to be or is “essentially.” And if we see art as exactly likea language, this is exactly what does follow, for no responsive element is a part ofwhat it is to understand the meaning of a sign. And so this cannot be right, cannotbe the whole story.5

It is that that makes the aesthetic case so difficult and so interesting. So, back toPollock’s Autumn Rhythm, or if you like, some late work by Rothko. Obviously,there are all the ways in which works like these cannot be grasped unless they arelocated within a particular, and by now, well-known history. These components,the strong brushstroke, the juxtaposed bits of color are meant (they are not thetraces of trying out the pigment), and the totality is a composition (it is not anaccident; it is an intentional object). And the point of these compositions, ofcompositions like these, must be placed against the background of past works andtheir point, and the intention, especially significant in Western art, of exploringteleologies quite different from what has gone before. Presumably, none of this isobvious, and so all of it must be taught. But then, there is this further fact, and thatis that the painting, when it is so grasped, when seen within these frameworks,engages us in a certain way, resonates a certain way. We are, once we understand,able to respond. And this responsive element is surely not some accidental featurewe just “happen” “to be able” to engage in—in responding, we are also engagingwith the work as intentional object. When we find a joke funny, surely to responda certain way is simply to take up or meet what was intentionally constructed inthe first place. So it is here. In responding, or in being engaged under a certaindescription (i.e., in doing more than merely seeing that certain meanings arethere), we acknowledge or take up that which was intentionally constructed.

5 See Richard Wollheim, “Expression,” in his collection Art and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUP, 1974) 84–100.

STEVEN ROSS

204

This causal or responsive element in our relation to art gives some initialplausibility to speaking of the aesthetic predicate as supervening upon the objectunderstood descriptively. So we might say: The “Zen-like dreaminess” of theRothko painting “supervenes” upon the painting understood as mere object. Noneof the underlying components are themselves Zen-like (of course)—the propertyin question might seem best thought of as something collectively caused by suchcomponents (the bits of color in this arrangement, say). Because the thing caused(on this account) is also itself a causal property (the attribution of this Zen-likedreaminess goes hand in hand with our having certain responses or being able toengage with the painting under a certain description), the language of superve-nience can seem unusually natural in this case.

Of course, I think it does not matter much which terms we use; what does matteris what we think lies behind our talk. The property here is one that arises througha particular historical story; it cannot be thought of as one that might arisenaturalistically through bottom-up causation, for that implies what is surelyfalse—that such a property would have come into the world regardless of theparticular history we have actually had or apart from the choices an artist has made(as salinity comes into the world indifferent to our history, indifferent to ourintentions). If we mean that this property is token realized in some descriptivestate of affairs, this is a harmless thing to say. But if we mean to suggest that theproperty arises through a naturalistic causation story, then we have it wrong. Yetwhat is distinctive here is this: It must not simply be “conceded” but insisted uponthat the property itself has a causal dimension. A property that is logically tied tointentionality, to choices made within a field of alternative meanings, also has acausal component, and on the whole, it has this causal dimension only for thosewho understand these meanings, these choices. The cave man before the Rothkodoes not respond to the painting under this description, though his retina is justlike ours and the painting’s colors will have the same causal properties they havefor him as they do for us.

But I feel I have to hedge this claim a little too, hence the “on the whole” in thesentence above. After all, I have argued that it is not plausible to see art of this kindas like a sentence in a language, or like a “sign,” entirely the presentation of someset of meanings to be identified or interpreted. And this means that at least someof the components of art must be thought of as having resonance for us apart fromtheir use in an aesthetic context, or what they have become for us in a particularhistory. It is perhaps easiest to see what I am suggesting here in the context ofmusic. Hermann’s music in Vertigo is, let us agree, “suspenseful” or “eerie.” It iscertainly contemporary, by which I mean, 20th-century music, and we certainlyhear it that way. So it follows that a creature biologically like us but from ourprehistory would not hear these sounds as composition, as music. But I amprepared to believe that some of the chord changes, or changes in timbre, would


205

be found, shall we say, at the least, “disquieting” to such a creature, just in virtueof the sort of changes these are and what causal consequences they have upon thehuman brain. A correct or full description is not available without the history. Butthe music annexes and exploits certain causal properties that are a-historical. I cansee no escape from this conclusion, for I can see no other way in which we cangive a plausible account of how art may be expressive, or what we mean when wesay that it is expressive, when it is.

So the counterfactual story gets a bit interesting here. As a sketch, I wouldsay this. Aesthetic attributions, typically, are deeply or “essentially” historical.By this I mean they have been realized and achieved in particular historicalcontexts; they are therefore accessible only to those who can retrieve thishistory. In some other possible world where there are creatures biologicallyidentical to us but who have had no such history, these attributions then cannotarise. Or, to put the point more fundamentally: The object, naturalisticallyunderstood, cannot be said to generate these properties in virtue of whatevercausal properties that object has when those properties are taken in conjunctionwith persons biologically understood. But the object naturalistically understoodmay generate a kind of skeletal version of the aesthetic property, or a primitiveproperty the aesthetic property includes, though not vice versa, when in causalconjunction with biological persons. Hermann’s music may not be “intrinsi-cally” disquieting, but it may turn out that it is disquieting for any creaturebiologically like us. And consistent with the model I have defended, it wouldthen not be misleading to say the disquieting nature of the music supervenesupon the component notes, no single one of which has this property but which,collectively (given this tempo, this rhythm, and so forth), do. Where the causalstory is straightforward, so then (on my view) is the legitimacy of superveniencetalk. And when I say “when the causal talk is straightforward,” what I mean is:when the causal claim survives counterfactual stories that posit substantivelydifferent historical ones. That is, one might say, what it is to have a robustcausal story in the first place. This is not a point about words or “aestheticconcepts.”6 The term “disquieting” might be used to pick out a feature tied to acomplex historical story (consider the drawings of Egon Schiele); it might, as inthe example of Hermann’s music I have used above, be used to pick out afeature that has its aesthetic properties in virtue of a purely causal one. Theimportant point is just to acknowledge the complexity of the aesthetic case, ormore accurately, the kind of complexity that it has. Without doubt, one of thesources for art’s very special hold on us is that, nestled within a highly complex

6 See Frank Sibley for the classic expression of the view that it is about concepts or words, thataesthetic concepts may be divided into distinct kinds. “Aesthetic Concepts,” Philosophical Review68 (1959): 421–50; reprinted in Approach to Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001).

STEVEN ROSS

206

intentional story, there sometimes lies a straightforward causal one. And toreturn to the question of supervenience talk and its legitimacy, I want to say thatit is only in the latter case that we can speak of the property supervening uponthe object—that is, if do not wish to speak misleadingly.

A final point about the use or presence of a-historical, causal, relations inworks of art: We should also remember that we have some sort of aestheticrelation to nature, by which I mean nature sometimes presents itself to us ashaving an aesthetic aspect, and here, clearly, such a relation must be understoodpurely in causal-psychological terms. If we find the landscape of broken treesmelancholy, or the cloud-streaked sunset beautiful, this cannot be because ofany “intentionality,” because of any “choices” made within a complex “historyof meanings.” I think our relation to art and to nature is importantly different forjust this reason—we do not interpret nature. But again, we do not want anaccount that presents these two domains as utterly unconnected, as enjoying noaffinities whatsoever. If we allow that art sometimes annexes and exploits causalrelations that may operate apart from art, we preserve this connection in just theright way.

VI.

I turn now to morality, and I begin by noting one of the important ways in whichit differs from the aesthetic context. In the aesthetic case, since we speak ofaesthetic properties (perhaps) “supervening upon” an aesthetic object, it is quitenatural to ask if this object has these properties simpliciter, or in virtue of acomplex intentional-historical story. Persons produce art objects intentionally, butthere is then an object we can then point to apart from any such intentionalprocesses. It is in part for this reason, no doubt, that the temptation to speak of“supervenience” arises in the first place—after all, in both the museum and in thelaboratory, we do have an independently identifiable object, bearing properties wecannot ascribe to its component parts. In the case of morality, there is no object ofassessment apart from the intentional states persons have or the intentional actionspersons perform. So here, the supervenience issue will be framed in a way familiarto us from the philosophy of mind. For example: In what sense, if any, does thegoodness of my intention to give to the needy “supervene upon” the brain state Iam in when having this intention? This question is “theory-neutral” in thathowever we understand the idea of “goodness” here (as utilitarians, Kantians, orwhatever), the question of how to understand the relation between the normativeascription applied to the intention and the natural state that realizes it remains thesame.

The counterfactuals I will be interested in here are different too, deployed toilluminate a different question. In the aesthetic case, the question was whether this


207

object could have these particular aesthetic properties if it was not the bearer ofthis particular history or the product of these particular intentions—if it were thisobject, naturalistically understood, but generated some other way. There is nocounterpart question in the moral case that I can see since, as was acknowledgedabove, the object of moral judgment is the intention and can be nothing else.7 Inthe moral case, the counterfactual I will be interested in is not how much historywould have to be the same for this attribution to arise (or be justifiable) but ratherhow much about persons must stay constant, for moral judgment as such, for theattribution of any moral predicate, to be possible. Since the currency of moralassessment is deeply theory laden—we advance or accept certain considerationsas Kantians that we do not as utilitarians, for example—this question is not theoryneutral but will be answered differently when within different theories. Indeed, Ibelieve that pursuing this question gives us a fertile way to capture some inter-esting differences between theories. When we ask (and answer): how much aboutthe world could change and this moral theory still have application, we pick outwhat the theory is truly committed to. And in doing this, I think we also identifywhat gives the theory its distinctive power. These remarks are, I realize, a bitpromissory, and I hope to make them clearer in the course of what follows.

VII.

Let us start with utilitarianism, since here, natural causation stories are likely,prima facie, to figure significantly, whatever our final conclusion about the roleof such causation may be. So let us take a case where someone strikes a blow,causes pain. Some might say that under utilitarianism, this causal story just hasmoral significance, as it is, simpliciter. This is a reasonable thing to say, and itmay even be right, but I do not think this is quite right. For such pain to havemoral significance, we need some further story as to what persons (or sentientcreatures generally) deserve and what is good or bad, all things considered—thesecond worry handled, of course, by a utilitarian “best-net” calculus. So theblow may be promoting utility in the context of training a boxer or perhaps(more controversially for us, now) in inflicting some justifiable punishment. ButI think we have, under utilitarianism, in the moral context, something akin to thea-historical predicates that lie beneath aesthetic predicates mentioned earlier.The pain, which is about as straightforward a natural phenomenon as one couldask for, is a bad thing, and this bad thing will have some moral currency, cer-tainly, when we turn to the question of what we ought to do. It may be, strictlyspeaking, accurate to say that without the utilitarian theory, the pain does not yet

7 I am very grateful to a reader of an earlier version of this essay for raising this point.

STEVEN ROSS

208

have moral status. But under what the theory says is so, it has somethingvery close to such status even when we are not fully within moral life. Thisis why the utilitarian view can say what it says about animals. Animals are notfull moral creatures, obviously; they are not agents. They cannot deliberateabout what might bring about the greatest utility for the greatest number. Butthey figure in moral calculation because, simply in virtue of feeling pleasureand pain, when viewed from what is (on this view) the correct moral theory,they bear properties that will have moral currency. The animal case also illus-trates why I am reticent to say the pain has moral currency simpliciter. If onebull gores another, the pain might be token identical to what Bob Nozickinflicts when swinging his (once famous) bat upon the head of a lucklesscow, but the pain the bull suffers has no moral status; that of Nozick’s bovinevictim does.8 The pain has moral status only insofar as it may be seen as anintentional object, only insofar as it may be self-consciously avoided or, ifincurred, justified.

The counterfactuals such a moral conception allows for vary with your viewof the underlying currency. If you think, like David Lewis, that pain is a func-tional kind of a particularly liberal sort, then creatures very different from us(like Martians made of tubing) will nevertheless, through natural causationstories, bear properties that will have currency in the (allegedly correct) moraltheory of utilitarianism.9 So long as there were self conscious creatures thatavoided certain states, regardless of what those states were, utilitarianism wouldhave its subject matter. There is no obvious limit as to what such creatures mightbe like—if you think “pain” operates this way. Conversely, if you have materi-alist intuitions about pain-as-a-kind, the counterfactuals as to what sort of crea-tures could bear morally relevant properties will be limited accordingly too. Butunder either view of pain, as I have already indicated, I would be reticent to saythe moral status of this property, its “badness,” say, “supervenes upon” thenatural causation story. Why? The natural causation story is crucial here, to besure. As utilitarians, we cannot even begin; we are in a kind of dead space as itwere if we do not posit sensations or feelings of some kind or another. There isnothing to talk about if there are no sensations. But it is only when such facts areviewed from within the framework of the normative theory that they have moralweight. Once within the moral theory, these natural facts have this status almostautomatically one might say, but that is another matter; that is not to say theyhave this status as natural objects.

8 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) 37.9 David Lewis, “Mad Pain and Martian Pain,” Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, ed.

Ned Block (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980) 216–22.


209

VIII.

Let me now turn to how supervenience of the moral upon the natural might lookwithin the Kantian picture. Under utilitarianism, as under any theory, we will wantpeople to have what the theory will identify as morally good intentions (we willwant them, of course, always to aim at the greatest utility), but what it is we aimat when having such intentions is a state of affairs we can describe independently.Under Kantianism, this is not so. In having the right intention, in wanting to do thegood, we aim at having an intention of a certain kind, one that in fact passes acertain test. Thus, when taking up the issue of supervenience here, we also take upthe issue mentioned earlier—the relation between the normative attribution of anintention and the material state that here realizes it.

I am going to assume that the Kantian criterion of rightness may be applied withrelative clarity; that is, that we can say when the intentional principle, or “maxim,”can be willed as a universal law, or when our intention toward another does or doesnot treat that person “merely as a means.” This is, in my view, in fact not likely tobe so. I am skeptical that we can identify clear truth conditions for the applicationof the categorical imperative test. But this worry is not important here. If weassume that the Kantian can say when an intention is good or right, then we simplygrant to the Kantian what we pretty much unhesitatingly grant everywhere else—that some intentions can be identified as morally admirable. With this in mind, letus now ask, in what sense does the goodness of this intention (however suchgoodness is understood) “supervene” upon the natural state of affairs that realizesit? Obviously, this question arises for any theory that can speak of there beingmorally good intentions (and I believe even the intuitionist can do that, albeitobscurely). Our conclusions regarding Kantian good intentions will then, I think,be applicable across the board.

All right: Let us assume then that agent A has maxim M, and M “cannot bewilled as a universal law.” M as token will of course be “realized” in somenatural state or other, but there are several considerations that make it unlikelywe can see M as type as identical to a material kind. First are all the familiarfunctional arguments: Surely, it will be said, an intentional state with the content“I will pretend to promise but not keep my promise” could be realized in crea-tures materially very distinct from us. But the reason the functional argumentseems so plausible here (much more so, at least to me, than in the case of pain)goes to why material type-identity is unlikely even should we restrict our atten-tion to a single species. An intentional state defined by complex semanticcontent, by interrelated beliefs about complex intentional objects (such as prom-ises), will have truth conditions indifferent to material kinds. Even if every caseof this intentional state so far known to us and a particular material kind turnedout to be coextensive, we would not defer to the material criterion should the two

STEVEN ROSS

210

seem to diverge in a future instance.10 The criterion of application here, forsaying so and so has intention M, will be tied to the beliefs he affirms, theconnections he holds these various beliefs to have to one another, and so forth.There is no reason whatsoever to think these conceptual and semantic connec-tions, essential to the attribution, can be captured in the language of materialproperties and material causation. I cannot see why this point would not apply toany intention with complex semantic content. So, insofar as we are assessingintentions that are understood to have complex semantic content, I cannot seehow we can see such intentions as deriving their relevant properties from theirunderlying material states. As a result, once again, I see no harm in saying theintention here “supervenes” on the underlying brain state if all we mean is thatthis is how it is here instantiated; it is misleading to speak this way if we suggestthe properties of the intentions are in this way explained.

For the utilitarian, I think it is fair to say that the raw material for moralassessment is a natural kind. For the Kantian, the raw material for moral assess-ment is not a natural kind; it is rather an intentional state defined by semanticcriteria. The counterfactuals are robust in either case. For the utilitarian, there willbe moral properties so long as there are creatures with sensations (where that inturn may be understood functionally or materially) and the question arises as tohow such creatures should be treated. For the Kantian, there will be moralproperties so long as there are creatures with complex intentions, and the questionarises as to what such creatures owe to one another.

IX.

I have argued throughout here that it is by and large misleading to say thatnormative states of affairs “supervene upon” natural ones, though of course, suchstates of affairs are realized in the material world. The raw material for normativeclaims is a natural state of affairs, if you are a utilitarian. And in many aestheticcontexts, there is a natural-psychological causal story antecedent to aestheticproduction the aesthetic accomplishment annexes or exploits. But the normativecannot be thought of as arising from the natural, the way higher-order propertiesarise from lower-order ones; the normative is not caused by such properties. Still,because the normative does, in different contexts, and according to differenttheories, take up the natural in different ways, we have interestingly differentclaims of scope that come out when we consider the sorts of counterfactualsdifferent sorts of normative claims support. Consider the following:

10 See Donald Davidson’s analogous argument against behaviorism in “Mental Events,” Experienceand Theory, ed. Lawrence Foster and J. W. Swanson (Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P, 1970)79–101.


211

1. Water boils at 212 F.2. Enslavement of a people on the basis of race is wrong.3. Someone who can save a life at no or trivial cost to himself is obliged to do

so (e.g., the Singer shallow pond example).4. De Kooning’s Woman Number 32 is expressive.

The first statement is indifferent to any and all facts about persons. Regardless ofhow persons are said to be constituted, whatever the contingencies of their history,or even if there were no persons at all, this claim would be true (obviously). Thesecond, I am inclined to say, is true in virtue of the most basic facts about personsas those facts are identified by the Kantian and in virtue of how the theory goes onto say such facts should be acknowledged in our collective life. It requires there becreatures that can form and assess their intentions from an impersonal point ofview. In the absence of that, the sentence would have no referent. If there is to be“a people,” then certain sorts of creatures are presumed. If creatures of this typeare presumed, then this way of treating them (enslavement) cannot be justified.For the utilitarian, the third is true in virtue of the quantitative distribution of theutilities in this case (where the pleasures and pains lie) and what the theory saysis the best way to handle or respond to this distribution. It is because of the secondpart of that sentence that the “goodness” of the act cannot be quite thought of asa natural fact or as supervening upon a natural fact, as that term is bestunderstood—though “goodness” here does track natural facts. For there to befacts that admit of moral status, we need only creatures with sensations, and in thissense, utilitarianism requires a less complex world, or a less evolutionarily devel-oped one, than the Kantian. But for such facts to generate moral obligation ormoral reasons, we need an agent, a creature capable of grasping the utilities inquestion, and now the presumptions of Kantianism and utilitarianism are not sovery far apart at all.

Now, there is another dimension to moral life I have so far set aside—the degreeto which moral claims are rooted in a contingent history. So, I take it as undeniablethat what counts as “negligent,” or even whether a moral code will have thisconcept in any form, is a function of contingent history; it hardly follows from“what it is to be a person” whether we specify that in Kantian or utilitarian terms.I see no need to belabor this point. If you are a Kantian or utilitarian you mustinsist only that not all morality is this way, that at least some moral claims requireonly what the theory identifies as minimally necessary for morality to arise in thefirst place for their justifications to go through. I believe the Kantian and utilitarianare right about this, but defending this claim—which I see as identical to defend-ing the claim that there is some moral objectivity—must be set aside here. It isenough to acknowledge that many moral claims will support far narrower coun-terfactuals than the ones I have focused on so far. And in this sense, moral claims

STEVEN ROSS

212

can resemble aesthetic attributions. We would not expect symbolist poetry to haveresonance if we had not had a certain history. And we would not think to callcertain consequences of rational self-interest “negligent” without a certain historyeither.

The differences we see across these counterfactuals are not just some kind ofinteresting curiosity. They reflect interesting differences in the justification storywe would give (or, in the natural science case, the explanation story as opposedto a justification story we would give). Because the sentence about enslaving apeople on the basis of race is justified in virtue of very general facts aboutpersons, it remains true, or justifiable, even if we imagine all sorts of contingentfacts about persons being otherwise (we could have no relation to beauty any-where, for example, or no sense of humor—this would make no difference forthe Kantian and the Kantian justification story regarding enslavement). Becausethe statement about De Kooning is true (justifiable) in virtue of a complexhistory and the shared intentions of an artist and audience at a certain point inthat history, it ceases to be so if we imagine the object naturalistically described,but a world in which this history never occurred. Unsurprisingly, the claim aboutDe Kooning and its justification are much easier to challenge even should westay firmly within the world we have, since whether this history actually achievesthis outcome in this case may be disputed by those who can offer an intelligentalternative reading of the story in question. By contrast, the claim about whathappens to water under certain conditions is explained in virtue of certain physi-cal facts. This is not a judgment that needs justification but a fact about thephysical world that admits of an explanation. This difference is crucial, and deep.And for me, for reasons I have rehearsed here, it is only in this domain, thedomain of physical facts being explained in virtue of some sort of causal story,that talk about “supervenience” is truly appropriate. When we can speak of Asupervening upon B and this being explained by the physical facts, where thereis no judgment, even one well founded in transpersonal considerations—this iswhere talk of “supervenience” will be most natural. As soon as judgment entersin, one might say, the explanatory burden now shifts, is now borne by the normand not the facts the norm takes up. Of course, I cannot present a preference forwhat may be a mere way of talking as the irresistible conclusion to an undeni-able argument (much as I might like to). What I can do, though, is point out theterrifically important differences in the justification stories that obtain here, andthe way these differences in turn support very important differences in counter-factual claims. If you want to speak of the “expressiveness” “supervening upon”the De Kooning understood as mere object, fine, go ahead—so long as you alsoconcede that here the justification for this claim will be very different in kind,and very different in the counterfactuals it supports, than any claim about tablemolecules and solidity.


213

And both of these claims—claims about the physical world, claims aboutart—will be interestingly different from claims about enslavement or claims aboutrescuing a drowning child at no risk to oneself. These latter claims are implicatedsimply by the understandings that constitute the moral theories that put themforward; as a result, for their truth, they require only that these central conceptshave some referent. The referent in question, the rational agent, or the agent withsensations, is otherwise unspecified, and so may be as otherwise different from usas we care to imagine. The claim about water is wholly indifferent to persons. Theclaim about enslavement is not. But it is indifferent to what such persons may belike, so long as they are otherwise persons. The claim about De Kooning cannot beso easy going. It insists on the actual world, the actual history we have had. Itcannot be justified—it could not even really arise—in some other possible worldwe might imagine where that history has not occurred. Some claims remain soeven if we imagine no persons at all. This is the domain of the natural. When weturn to the normative, we have a bit of a spectrum. Some normative claims remainjustifiable just so long as we imagine there are creatures that are persons, whateverelse they may be like. Though different theories, like Kantianism and utilitarian-ism, will identify the minimal conditions for persons differently, they are alike ininsisting that substantive normative implications follow from these minimaldescriptions. Some aesthetic attributions require only there be creatures biologi-cally like us; no particular history is required. And some claims—the typicalclaims of art criticism, the claims of moral life that are not implicated by thecentral understandings of plausible theory—these claims, for their justification togo through, require pretty much the exact world we have, the biology, thehistory—the whole crazy disaster.11

Hunter College/The Graduate Center/CUNY

11 The line of course is Zorba’s (referring to his marriage and children) in the 1964 film Zorba theGreek.

STEVEN ROSS

214

Documents

THE NATURAL AND THE NORMATIVE: SUPERVENIENCE AND COUNTERFACTUALS