I am very sympathetic to the intuitions that you canvas from Cohen's "Rescuing Conservatism". But I find the theoretical framework that you are presupposing here to be somewhat dubious and obscure....
1. In your statement of what you call "Cohen's conservatism", you write as though the fundamental bearers of value are things like paintings - things of the kind that can be "destroyed" or "replaced". But for reasons that are most clearly explained by Stephen Finlay ("Confusion of Tongues", Chap. 2), I am convinced that the fundamental bearers of value are really *states of affairs* (or broadly proposition-like entities). In my judgment, most of the intuitions that you canvas here can be explained by the point that the state of affairs of the relevant item's being conserved - and thereby lasting for a longer period of time - is intrinsically better in a certain respect than the state of affairs of that item's being destroyed. E.g. it is in a certain way better for two friends to have a lifelong friendship rather than for them to drift apart and lose interest in each other, etc.
2. I find the idea of "subjective values" to be quite mysterious (as opposed to beliefs about or expectations of objective values). So, I prefer to appeal to a larger inventory of objective values instead. The attitudes constitutive of being a loyal friend are intrinsically good attitudes. Arguably, so too are the attitudes of treasuring prized possessions, becoming deeply familiar with and appreciative of a particular unique environment, etc. The point is that we have reason to have such intrinsically good attitudes, and - at least with many types of attitudes - what makes these attitudes intrinsically good is not just the agent-neutral value of their objects, but some relation in which the agent stands to those objects.
Thanks, Ralph! I'm actually very much with you on (1), but for the purposes of the blogpost, I tried to stick with the account of bearers of value that Cohen and Nebel and others seem to work with. But I think you're absolutely right that the whole thing can be cast in terms of the (better) view that states of the affairs are the bearers of value (which accords a lot better with the decision-theoretic approach and so makes it easier to connect with that).
On (2), conditional on your subjectives-values-as-expectations-of-objective-values-framework, I agree, but I don't agree with that framework! But it is interesting that everything can be translated into that.
This might be an unfair question, but I'm thinking it through in some of my own work, and I'm interested in what you have to say:
What is philosophically important about casting states-of-affairs as the bearers of value, beyond formalizability in decision-theoretic terms? Or is being so formalizable the principal reason for casting states-of-affairs as bearers of value? (Is being so formalizable really that important philosophically?)
I don’t know enough semantics to evaluate it, but the Stephen Finlay chapter that Ralph mentions above argues for it from considerations about the semantics of the word ‘good’. For me, what seems important is that the value an object adds to a state of affairs depends on other features of the state of affairs, so it makes sense to say it is the state of affair that is the primary bearer of value and then try to explain how to extract the value of an object from how we value states of affairs that differ only in having or lacking it. It’s not that I don’t think you can go the other way—I’d hope they’re mutually interpretable. It’s rather that saying it’s the states of affairs helps keep various things clear.
The crucial test for self-described Oakeshottian conservatives is their attitude trade unions. Unions are familar (more so than the modern form of the corporation), tried over two hundred years, factual, actual and so on. Moreover, they are the epitome of solidaristic community as opposed to both individual self-seeking and the rationale rule of experts.
The great majority of self-described conservatives fail this test - I've never been able to pin down Oakeshott himself.
Doesn’t it confuse things to use the term ‘conservative’ for these sets of value-preserving attitudes?
‘Everyone gets attached to the familiar, things they already value.’ It makes sense people would want their environment to be predictable, etc.
The example of friendship I find especially confusing because it involves love.
What might be going on here is that there is an independent feature of our psychology that involves attachment. It is not about ‘conserving’ for the sake of conserving but about being the kind of person who will form attachments. Without this trait, we would not be reliable for other people, and we would be less motivated to protect things of value.
We grow attached to things, people, situations, etc. Once a person is attached, they stop assessing the value in some objective all-things-considered way. A person who did that regularly, particularly with relationships, might be rather monstruous. Attachment is connected to loyalty, love, reliability, trustworthness, and many other ways people are that are extremely important to being decent, connected to others, part of communities—our sociality.
Many things and people cannot and should not be assessed primarily in terms of their ‘worthiness’ and ‘independent benefit to us’ such as our children, and other family members. A person who ranked such things on an absolute scale would be a person who doesn’t know what it is to love something.
This can be true even of things. We even might be MORE attached when we come to know we are one of the few who appreciates that thing, and that it might not matter to other people, and that its not mattering might result in its destruction. We can think of various little places which we see as tied to local history. With their destruction will come loss of that history. An insensitivity to the meaning of loss is one of the things characteristic of cold, heartless people.
Our society values such heartless people. They are good at capitalism. But they regularly decimate things of value.
We are bad at assessing value. It is better that we become attached for this reason. It is better that we are slower to destroy than we might be if we thought we had a perfect calculus for what should be maintained and preserved. But this doesn’t have anything to do with political conservatism as it operates in politics.
Our identity eventually gets tied up in our affinities so easily shifting affinities would be a violation of who we are for other people. We can only trust other people if we think their affinities are stable. If their affinities are continually subject to utilitarian calculation, then we should not trust them —because the events where the calculations will shift are entirely contingent, and can happen on a dime.
Politically, conservatives of the ultra-capitalist type tend toward preferences for economic value over human-beings and other living things. What they generally want to preserve is hierarchy which both makes them feel safer, and puts them in some position of power relative to others. They are not more inclined to form deep attachments (though probably not less inclined) and not more inclined to protect those people and things with which they have an affinity if those people and things are not also conducive to this social hierarchy.
The process of deeply valuing something probably does involve lasting attachments that make us resistant to change. So, it’s probably true that ‘radicals’ of any sort are either less prone to this attachment or less prone to favor whatever their attachments are in the face of some prospective beneficial change. But this probably doesn’t track political orientations very well. Deeply valuing and desiring to protect what one values is probably more of a personal trait that goes across the political spectrum.
re: ‘I’ll be glad I did it’ reasoning, it's true that a simple application can lead us astray (say because shifting preferences will lead us to be glad of whichever decision we take, even the worse one). But it may be more secure to look at *degrees* of gratitude, in comparative fashion. If I would be *more* grateful in the o' branch than in the o branch, then that seems some reason to think that the o' branch is more worth choosing? (At least, if we bracket degenerate cases where the extra gratitude is due to something psychologically distorting like making a larger near-loss extremely salient.)
Yeah, I think this is all much more complicated than I was able to describe in the blogpost. My official view involves choosing from the point of view of a particular self, but that particular self giving weight not only to their own values but also to the values assigned by future (and possibly even past) selves, though perhaps not weighting them as heavily as they weight their own values. There are going to be odd cases where you don't quite want to go the degrees of gratitude route either, or not obviously. Classic sorts of cases involve having children: I might now prefer being childless to being a parent by, say, 10 utiles, but, were I to become a parent, I'd prefer being a parent by, say, 20 utiles. It doesn't seem obvious you should choose on my behalf now to make me a parent (however that might be possible!). But I'd be more grateful if I were to become a parent than I will be if I remain childless.
I agree it's very non-obvious how best to deal with shifting preferences! Though that very fact makes me wary of shifting too quickly from 'proposal X is not obviously correct' to 'proposal X is not correct'. Some view has got to be correct at the end of the day, and none of them are obvious.
I think I finally better understand my own somewhat dismissive response to this paper when others urged me to include it in a political theory syllabus on conservatism. Thank you!
Because what he's calling conservatism isn't really connected to conservatism in political theory? Or because it's a rather weak and uncontroversial thesis he's arguing for?
I am very sympathetic to the intuitions that you canvas from Cohen's "Rescuing Conservatism". But I find the theoretical framework that you are presupposing here to be somewhat dubious and obscure....
1. In your statement of what you call "Cohen's conservatism", you write as though the fundamental bearers of value are things like paintings - things of the kind that can be "destroyed" or "replaced". But for reasons that are most clearly explained by Stephen Finlay ("Confusion of Tongues", Chap. 2), I am convinced that the fundamental bearers of value are really *states of affairs* (or broadly proposition-like entities). In my judgment, most of the intuitions that you canvas here can be explained by the point that the state of affairs of the relevant item's being conserved - and thereby lasting for a longer period of time - is intrinsically better in a certain respect than the state of affairs of that item's being destroyed. E.g. it is in a certain way better for two friends to have a lifelong friendship rather than for them to drift apart and lose interest in each other, etc.
2. I find the idea of "subjective values" to be quite mysterious (as opposed to beliefs about or expectations of objective values). So, I prefer to appeal to a larger inventory of objective values instead. The attitudes constitutive of being a loyal friend are intrinsically good attitudes. Arguably, so too are the attitudes of treasuring prized possessions, becoming deeply familiar with and appreciative of a particular unique environment, etc. The point is that we have reason to have such intrinsically good attitudes, and - at least with many types of attitudes - what makes these attitudes intrinsically good is not just the agent-neutral value of their objects, but some relation in which the agent stands to those objects.
Thanks, Ralph! I'm actually very much with you on (1), but for the purposes of the blogpost, I tried to stick with the account of bearers of value that Cohen and Nebel and others seem to work with. But I think you're absolutely right that the whole thing can be cast in terms of the (better) view that states of the affairs are the bearers of value (which accords a lot better with the decision-theoretic approach and so makes it easier to connect with that).
On (2), conditional on your subjectives-values-as-expectations-of-objective-values-framework, I agree, but I don't agree with that framework! But it is interesting that everything can be translated into that.
This might be an unfair question, but I'm thinking it through in some of my own work, and I'm interested in what you have to say:
What is philosophically important about casting states-of-affairs as the bearers of value, beyond formalizability in decision-theoretic terms? Or is being so formalizable the principal reason for casting states-of-affairs as bearers of value? (Is being so formalizable really that important philosophically?)
Wonderful post, by the way! Thank you!
I don’t know enough semantics to evaluate it, but the Stephen Finlay chapter that Ralph mentions above argues for it from considerations about the semantics of the word ‘good’. For me, what seems important is that the value an object adds to a state of affairs depends on other features of the state of affairs, so it makes sense to say it is the state of affair that is the primary bearer of value and then try to explain how to extract the value of an object from how we value states of affairs that differ only in having or lacking it. It’s not that I don’t think you can go the other way—I’d hope they’re mutually interpretable. It’s rather that saying it’s the states of affairs helps keep various things clear.
Got it. Thanks!
The crucial test for self-described Oakeshottian conservatives is their attitude trade unions. Unions are familar (more so than the modern form of the corporation), tried over two hundred years, factual, actual and so on. Moreover, they are the epitome of solidaristic community as opposed to both individual self-seeking and the rationale rule of experts.
The great majority of self-described conservatives fail this test - I've never been able to pin down Oakeshott himself.
Doesn’t it confuse things to use the term ‘conservative’ for these sets of value-preserving attitudes?
‘Everyone gets attached to the familiar, things they already value.’ It makes sense people would want their environment to be predictable, etc.
The example of friendship I find especially confusing because it involves love.
What might be going on here is that there is an independent feature of our psychology that involves attachment. It is not about ‘conserving’ for the sake of conserving but about being the kind of person who will form attachments. Without this trait, we would not be reliable for other people, and we would be less motivated to protect things of value.
We grow attached to things, people, situations, etc. Once a person is attached, they stop assessing the value in some objective all-things-considered way. A person who did that regularly, particularly with relationships, might be rather monstruous. Attachment is connected to loyalty, love, reliability, trustworthness, and many other ways people are that are extremely important to being decent, connected to others, part of communities—our sociality.
Many things and people cannot and should not be assessed primarily in terms of their ‘worthiness’ and ‘independent benefit to us’ such as our children, and other family members. A person who ranked such things on an absolute scale would be a person who doesn’t know what it is to love something.
This can be true even of things. We even might be MORE attached when we come to know we are one of the few who appreciates that thing, and that it might not matter to other people, and that its not mattering might result in its destruction. We can think of various little places which we see as tied to local history. With their destruction will come loss of that history. An insensitivity to the meaning of loss is one of the things characteristic of cold, heartless people.
Our society values such heartless people. They are good at capitalism. But they regularly decimate things of value.
We are bad at assessing value. It is better that we become attached for this reason. It is better that we are slower to destroy than we might be if we thought we had a perfect calculus for what should be maintained and preserved. But this doesn’t have anything to do with political conservatism as it operates in politics.
Our identity eventually gets tied up in our affinities so easily shifting affinities would be a violation of who we are for other people. We can only trust other people if we think their affinities are stable. If their affinities are continually subject to utilitarian calculation, then we should not trust them —because the events where the calculations will shift are entirely contingent, and can happen on a dime.
Politically, conservatives of the ultra-capitalist type tend toward preferences for economic value over human-beings and other living things. What they generally want to preserve is hierarchy which both makes them feel safer, and puts them in some position of power relative to others. They are not more inclined to form deep attachments (though probably not less inclined) and not more inclined to protect those people and things with which they have an affinity if those people and things are not also conducive to this social hierarchy.
The process of deeply valuing something probably does involve lasting attachments that make us resistant to change. So, it’s probably true that ‘radicals’ of any sort are either less prone to this attachment or less prone to favor whatever their attachments are in the face of some prospective beneficial change. But this probably doesn’t track political orientations very well. Deeply valuing and desiring to protect what one values is probably more of a personal trait that goes across the political spectrum.
Yes, I agree! That’s what I was getting at in the last paragraph! Cohen’s ‘conservatism’ doesn’t seem very conservative!
re: ‘I’ll be glad I did it’ reasoning, it's true that a simple application can lead us astray (say because shifting preferences will lead us to be glad of whichever decision we take, even the worse one). But it may be more secure to look at *degrees* of gratitude, in comparative fashion. If I would be *more* grateful in the o' branch than in the o branch, then that seems some reason to think that the o' branch is more worth choosing? (At least, if we bracket degenerate cases where the extra gratitude is due to something psychologically distorting like making a larger near-loss extremely salient.)
Yeah, I think this is all much more complicated than I was able to describe in the blogpost. My official view involves choosing from the point of view of a particular self, but that particular self giving weight not only to their own values but also to the values assigned by future (and possibly even past) selves, though perhaps not weighting them as heavily as they weight their own values. There are going to be odd cases where you don't quite want to go the degrees of gratitude route either, or not obviously. Classic sorts of cases involve having children: I might now prefer being childless to being a parent by, say, 10 utiles, but, were I to become a parent, I'd prefer being a parent by, say, 20 utiles. It doesn't seem obvious you should choose on my behalf now to make me a parent (however that might be possible!). But I'd be more grateful if I were to become a parent than I will be if I remain childless.
I agree it's very non-obvious how best to deal with shifting preferences! Though that very fact makes me wary of shifting too quickly from 'proposal X is not obviously correct' to 'proposal X is not correct'. Some view has got to be correct at the end of the day, and none of them are obvious.
I think I finally better understand my own somewhat dismissive response to this paper when others urged me to include it in a political theory syllabus on conservatism. Thank you!
Because what he's calling conservatism isn't really connected to conservatism in political theory? Or because it's a rather weak and uncontroversial thesis he's arguing for?
All of it:)
It's a question I have often asked …
Reminds me of those days of yore before Conservatism became politically extinct. I sort of wish we had conserved them.