An Interview with T. M. Scanlon

April 22, 2015 7:17 AM

Yascha Mounk at the utopian conducts An Interview with T.M. Scanlon: I: Free Will, Punishment and The Significance of Choice

The Utopian: One of philosophy’s oldest worries is causal determinism: the fear that, if what we do and think is determined by physical processes beyond our control, then we should abandon moral categories like praise and blame and choice. But I take it that you’re less worried about that than many of your colleagues? Tim Scanlon: I think there are three ways in which this problem arises – the problem being the possibility that a causal explanation of a reaction we give would undermine its significance in one way or another.

T.M. (Tim) Scanlon is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard, a moral philosopher, expert in contractualism, and the author of What We Owe To Each Other

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part II): What We Owe to Each Other

Answering that question is kind of a matter of self-description or self-psychoanalysis: When I say that something is morally right, what do I have in mind, beyond just saying that I broke a promise, or whatever? Why does promise-breaking matter and why is there something in common to the way promise-breaking matters and the way torturing matters, or the way not giving aid to people in distant lands matters? What is it that’s common about the way those things are objectionable?

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part III): Imperfect Compliance in Political and Moral Philosophy

Take free speech, for example. I think our ideas of free speech are largely – not solely, but importantly – ideas about how the powers of government to regulate various kinds of expression have to be limited because we have certain beliefs about how those powers would be used if they were granted. That involves a recognition that they’re not going to be perfectly executed, so we need to have a margin of error on the side of being overly restrictive of the powers of government.

But I wonder: do we want to draw a similar conclusion in the moral case?

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part IV): Philosophical Method: Intricate Examples, the Status of Intuitions, and Reflective Equilibrium

But if you mention an example like that – and somebody says “well, but it’s not really clear what’s going to happen, and we don’t really know, and…” – as a philosopher, my first instinct is to say: “Come on, that’s not really the question. The relevant moral question is: what would the facts justify if the facts were this or if the fact were that?” But that’s a mistake, right? To understand real-life questions, the epistemological difficulty is very real, and the imagined examples are misleading if they allow you to smuggle in – without realizing that you’re smuggling them in – assumptions about what the facts are, and what’s clear about the person’s will, that in real life would not be at all clear.

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part V): Biography: Indianapolis, Princeton, Harvard – and the Purpose of Political Philosophy

Look: this is an explanation for why people react. If people care about justifiability to others, this doesn’t necessarily operate only as something that motivates them to do better, morally speaking. In a certain way, caring about morality can be a reason for doing things that are in some way worse. It’s a version – but not the same thing – as what you were saying earlier about wanting to minimize the cases in which you’re doing something wrong. This isn’t doing that by choosing a different style of action; it’s doing that by changing your view about what is right and wrong.

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part VI): Intellectual Influences: John Rawls and a Semi-Secret Reading Group

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (Part VII): Adversaries: On Utilitarianism, Libertarianism and The Nature of Rights

My answer was that to say something is a right is to say it’s a principle that is seen to be necessary in order to prevent some unacceptable loss of certain important values, and that it is a feasible way of doing that. That is, a right is a principle we ought to accept in part because it doesn’t unacceptably constrain other things we ought to do. Rights, I said, are limits on people’s discretion to act, which are justified by being necessary in order to promote or protect important values – but are also a feasible way of doing that.

I still sort of believe this.

An Interview with T. M. Scanlon (VIII): Tolerance and The Future of Liberalism


T.M. Scanlon at PEA Soup

As a frequent and admiring reader of PEA Soup over the years I am very pleased to be asked to be a Visiting Philosopher in this new series. I will be happy to try to respond to questions about any of the things I have written. Lately I have been thinking particularly about equality, trying to revise and extend my views about the diversity of objections to inequality and to consider how they apply to recent political controversies about increasing inequality. I have also been thinking about blame and responsibility.

posted by the man of twists and turns (6 comments total)

Pretty great post. Thanks!
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:33 AM on April 22, 2015

Great post! I was very sympathetic to contractualism in my days of taking philosophy seriously and I have a copy of What We Owe To Each Other on my shelf. Looking forward to checking these links out.
posted by Kwine at 7:58 AM on April 22, 2015

Thanks for this post. Just popping in to say that (based on learning from him and talking to him decades ago) Scanlon is one of the kindest geniuses around.
posted by sheldman at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2015

Thanks for this! I don't have time to actually delve into the links right now, but just reading the pull quotes has caused my brain to start fizzing pleasurably.
posted by languagehat at 11:29 AM on April 22, 2015

but just reading the pull quotes has caused my brain to start fizzing pleasurably.

You should read the ones I didn't pull quote - they are un-pull quotable.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:21 PM on April 22, 2015

To understand real-life questions, the epistemological difficulty is very real, and the imagined examples are misleading if they allow you to smuggle in – without realizing that you’re smuggling them in – assumptions about what the facts are, and what’s clear about the person’s will, that in real life would not be at all clear.

Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment (via)

oh and speaking of inequality i was reading this yesterday:

When commodities produced and distributed are properly rival and excludable—access cheaply controlled, scarce, and produced under constant-returns-to-scale conditions—and if information about what is being bought and sold is equally present on both sides of the marketplace—no adverse selection or moral hazard—then the Smithian market has its standard powerful advantages as long as the distribution of wealth is such as to accord with utility and desert. [/em added]

and i was like 'desert'? so scanlon goes: "A desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way claims that this form of treatment is made appropriate simply by facts about what that person is like, or what he or she has done."

and then i was all...
-Desert
-moral desert
-What Do We Deserve?
posted by kliuless at 2:34 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]