We have two qualms with Stanford's target article: one regarding the way he characterizes the question he raises – the objectification of moral norms – and one regarding the way he answers it – that the objectification of moral norms evolved as a strategy to promote hyper-cooperation and to avoid exploitation. On the first count, we show that objectification is a feature of value judgment in general, whatever the domain. On the second count, we argue that this level of moral norms and judgment cannot be decoupled from the level of motivation and preferences, without which it would lack its motivating strength. We conclude by pointing out the implications of these two points for an evolutionary approach to morality.
First, Stanford seems to take for granted his starting point, that externalization is distinctive of moral judgment. In fact, he does not even consider the possibility that other kinds of value judgments also exhibit this feature. But it is pretty clear that they do as well. Take, for instance, aesthetic judgment: saying that something is beautiful entails that everybody should find it so. Since Kant's third Kritique (i.e., Critique of Judgment, Kant Reference Kant and Pluhar1790/1987; see also Ginsborg Reference Ginsborg and Zalta2014; Zangwill Reference Zangwill and Zalta2014), it is undisputed that value judgments aim at universal validity and cannot be reduced to subjective preferences. Other kinds of judgment are not so objectified. Neither the judgment of the agreeable, which simply claims that one likes something but not that everyone else ought to like it, nor cognitive judgments, by which we ascribe a property to an object, exhibit this objectivity.
It follows from this that the explanandum of the target article – the externalization of moral judgment – is too narrowly set. An evolutionary account of externalization has to deal with the externalization of value judgments in general, not just of moral judgments. Therefore, the explanans proposed misses the real nature of the phenomenon in question, the fact that human values, not just moral ones, do not reduce to subjective preferences. An evolutionary account of externalization in terms of the benefits of hyper-cooperation misses the point of externalization as such. The fact that externalization contributes to morality does not imply that it was actually selected for this effect (Gould & Lewontin Reference Gould and Lewontin1979). Sophisticated language, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning also contribute indirectly to cooperation in the way that Stanford claims for externalization (transmission of information about others’ moral commitments), but they are not considered features of morality. Why should externalization be different?
Second, if for the sake of the argument we accept that Stanford's proposal – that moral norms and values externalization promote group conformity – can be extended to all sorts of value judgments, the question still remains as to how it is that norm objectification manages to do so. In other words, how is it that people's behavior is sensitive to such normative judgments? It is at this point that a link between the level of preferences and the level of norms is unavoidable. While it is clear that moral judgments do not reduce to prosocial preferences – a point already made by Darwin in The Descent of Man – it is also important to realize that norms and values are not decoupled from motivations either. Again, we miss an explicit recognition of this fact in the target article, although it is implicitly assumed near the end, when Stanford notices that moral commitments are intrinsically motivating (and carry a demand for intersubjective agreement). Without this link, recognition of a universal, objective duty might be behaviorally inert – and fear of group exclusion is not the psychological way through which we experience the call of duty. In other words, the real evolutionary quiz is not the externalization of moral norms, but the fact that we feel the pull of the norm.
From this point of view, Stanford's evolutionary scenario is unsatisfactory, because it is concerned just with the level of norms and values, as detached from the level of motivations. It is as if humans come to formulate judgments, to recognize them as moral in character, and automatically become prone to conform to them and to demand from others a similar conformity. What is missing is an answer as to why we feel obliged to comply, why we feel intrinsically motivated to behave according to the judgment, and why we expect others to feel the same.
A promising answer to this question, we submit, can be found in Darwall's second-person view of morality (Darwall Reference Darwall2006). In outline, it would go like this: The objective character of moral norms is geared to subjective motivations because such norms are grounded in the patterns of claims and demands that emerge in intersubjective interaction and that a community comes to sanction. From this point of view, the process that explains the link between norms and preferences would be as follows: (a) I interact with another agent with coordination and reciprocity, and out of evolved prosocial preferences; (b) We explicitly or implicitly make demands on each other; (c) We hold each other accountable in case of failure to comply without excuse; (d) We come up with expectations and norms about how others will or ought to behave; (e) We feel motivated to conform to those norms because we know that we can be held accountable by others; (f) The group comes to sanction those norms and expects everybody to conform; (g) We end up experiencing these norms as moral (i.e., externalized) and at the same time are motivated by them.
Taken together, both points – that externalization is common to all value judgments, and that norms are motivating because of their intersubjective grounding – suggest that an evolutionary account should deal, on the one hand, with norm and value externalization as the real cognitive novelty in the human lineage – a novelty that appears to be general rather than domain-specific – and on the other hand, with the social dynamics through which intersubjective claims and demands come to be externally sanctioned, and psychologically internalized. From this point of view, externalization is not a selected feature to ensure conformity to moral norms because of their efficiency in promoting cooperation; rather, externalization is an outcome of the process through which prosocial preferences become normative because of the demands of mutual accountability that mediate the interactions in a species like ours.
We have two qualms with Stanford's target article: one regarding the way he characterizes the question he raises – the objectification of moral norms – and one regarding the way he answers it – that the objectification of moral norms evolved as a strategy to promote hyper-cooperation and to avoid exploitation. On the first count, we show that objectification is a feature of value judgment in general, whatever the domain. On the second count, we argue that this level of moral norms and judgment cannot be decoupled from the level of motivation and preferences, without which it would lack its motivating strength. We conclude by pointing out the implications of these two points for an evolutionary approach to morality.
First, Stanford seems to take for granted his starting point, that externalization is distinctive of moral judgment. In fact, he does not even consider the possibility that other kinds of value judgments also exhibit this feature. But it is pretty clear that they do as well. Take, for instance, aesthetic judgment: saying that something is beautiful entails that everybody should find it so. Since Kant's third Kritique (i.e., Critique of Judgment, Kant Reference Kant and Pluhar1790/1987; see also Ginsborg Reference Ginsborg and Zalta2014; Zangwill Reference Zangwill and Zalta2014), it is undisputed that value judgments aim at universal validity and cannot be reduced to subjective preferences. Other kinds of judgment are not so objectified. Neither the judgment of the agreeable, which simply claims that one likes something but not that everyone else ought to like it, nor cognitive judgments, by which we ascribe a property to an object, exhibit this objectivity.
It follows from this that the explanandum of the target article – the externalization of moral judgment – is too narrowly set. An evolutionary account of externalization has to deal with the externalization of value judgments in general, not just of moral judgments. Therefore, the explanans proposed misses the real nature of the phenomenon in question, the fact that human values, not just moral ones, do not reduce to subjective preferences. An evolutionary account of externalization in terms of the benefits of hyper-cooperation misses the point of externalization as such. The fact that externalization contributes to morality does not imply that it was actually selected for this effect (Gould & Lewontin Reference Gould and Lewontin1979). Sophisticated language, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning also contribute indirectly to cooperation in the way that Stanford claims for externalization (transmission of information about others’ moral commitments), but they are not considered features of morality. Why should externalization be different?
Second, if for the sake of the argument we accept that Stanford's proposal – that moral norms and values externalization promote group conformity – can be extended to all sorts of value judgments, the question still remains as to how it is that norm objectification manages to do so. In other words, how is it that people's behavior is sensitive to such normative judgments? It is at this point that a link between the level of preferences and the level of norms is unavoidable. While it is clear that moral judgments do not reduce to prosocial preferences – a point already made by Darwin in The Descent of Man – it is also important to realize that norms and values are not decoupled from motivations either. Again, we miss an explicit recognition of this fact in the target article, although it is implicitly assumed near the end, when Stanford notices that moral commitments are intrinsically motivating (and carry a demand for intersubjective agreement). Without this link, recognition of a universal, objective duty might be behaviorally inert – and fear of group exclusion is not the psychological way through which we experience the call of duty. In other words, the real evolutionary quiz is not the externalization of moral norms, but the fact that we feel the pull of the norm.
From this point of view, Stanford's evolutionary scenario is unsatisfactory, because it is concerned just with the level of norms and values, as detached from the level of motivations. It is as if humans come to formulate judgments, to recognize them as moral in character, and automatically become prone to conform to them and to demand from others a similar conformity. What is missing is an answer as to why we feel obliged to comply, why we feel intrinsically motivated to behave according to the judgment, and why we expect others to feel the same.
A promising answer to this question, we submit, can be found in Darwall's second-person view of morality (Darwall Reference Darwall2006). In outline, it would go like this: The objective character of moral norms is geared to subjective motivations because such norms are grounded in the patterns of claims and demands that emerge in intersubjective interaction and that a community comes to sanction. From this point of view, the process that explains the link between norms and preferences would be as follows: (a) I interact with another agent with coordination and reciprocity, and out of evolved prosocial preferences; (b) We explicitly or implicitly make demands on each other; (c) We hold each other accountable in case of failure to comply without excuse; (d) We come up with expectations and norms about how others will or ought to behave; (e) We feel motivated to conform to those norms because we know that we can be held accountable by others; (f) The group comes to sanction those norms and expects everybody to conform; (g) We end up experiencing these norms as moral (i.e., externalized) and at the same time are motivated by them.
Taken together, both points – that externalization is common to all value judgments, and that norms are motivating because of their intersubjective grounding – suggest that an evolutionary account should deal, on the one hand, with norm and value externalization as the real cognitive novelty in the human lineage – a novelty that appears to be general rather than domain-specific – and on the other hand, with the social dynamics through which intersubjective claims and demands come to be externally sanctioned, and psychologically internalized. From this point of view, externalization is not a selected feature to ensure conformity to moral norms because of their efficiency in promoting cooperation; rather, externalization is an outcome of the process through which prosocial preferences become normative because of the demands of mutual accountability that mediate the interactions in a species like ours.