Action-guidance

As was said in Chapter1, evaluative adjectives are characterized by their connection to action and motivation. The metanormative literature has long expanded on this feature of normative vocabulary (see e.g. Björklund et al. 2012; Blackburn1998; Dreier1990, 2009; Finlay2004;

Gibbard1990; Hare1952, a.m.o). The idea is that, when a rational speaker makes a positive [negative] value attribution about an object, they shouldeo ipso be inclined to act in favor of [against] that object. In other terms, attributing positive [negative] value invites the inference that one will orient one’s action towards [against] the object under evaluation.

For instance, if I judge football to be a great sport, I am expected to be willing to watch it, play it or follow it somehow. By contrast, if I judge football to be a popular sport, there is no comparative expectation about what my practical attitudes towards football will be. This is what Stevenson1937, p. 16 called the “magnetism” of evaluative vocabulary—the good is attractive; the bad is repulsive.

Among the lexically subjective adjectives, some are action-guiding and some are not. For ex-ample,difficult,softorsalty, although they are lexically subjective (they give rise to subjective disagreement and embed underfind), they do not invite an inference that the speaker will behave in any particular way. We will represent this inference using↝(although we remain neutral for now on the nature of the specific inferential mechanism that is in place), wheresupport/reject can be taken as placeholders for any positive or negative attitude or stance:

(2.35) a. Today’s exam was good. ↝the speaker supports today’s exam b. The floor is still ugly. ↝the speaker rejects the floor

c. The soup is awful. ↝the speaker rejects the soup

(2.36) a. Today’s exam was difficult. ↝̸the speaker supports/rejects today’s exam b. The floor is still soft. ↝̸the speaker supports/rejects the floor c. The soup is salty. ↝̸the speaker supports/rejects the soup Evaluative sentences invite the inferences in (2.35), while adjectives such as difficult or soft do not. Nonetheless, it is easy to imagine that, with a bit of context, a speaker of any of the sentences in (2.36) could be intending to communicate an attitude of support or rejection. But we cannot know what that attitude is or would be in virtue of the meaning of the sentence alone.

The presence of such inferences is difficult to attest in traditional linguistic terms, but we may rehearse the following two tests.

Thealthough-test

First, consider the contrast within each pair of sentences:

(2.37) a. Matheus thinks that volunteering is virtuous, although he doesn’t have any inten-tion or plan whatsoever of supporting, promoting or doing it.

b. ?? Natalia thinks that volunteering is unpaid although she doesn’t have any in-tention or plan whatsoever of supporting, promoting or doing it.

(2.38) a. Matheus thinks that donating is unethical although he belongs to a charity.

b. ?? Natalia thinks that donating is widespread although she belongs to a charity.

While the a-sentences are acceptable, the b-sentences sound marked. Why is this so? We venture that the oddness is due to the connectivealthough, which suggests a contrast between its arguments. To describe an individual as having a certain evaluative stance—thinking that an activity is virtuous or unethical—while at the same time attributing to her a practice, or a practical intention, that is markedly incoherent with that evaluative stance constitutes good grounds for such contrast. But regular beliefs about matters of fact—thinking that an activity is unpaid or widespread—do not contrast with practices or practical intentions in any immediate way.

Thus, the connective although marks an inexistent contrast in the b-sentences, and the sen-tences are awkward for that reason. But in thea-sentences, the contrast between attributing a certain evaluative belief and practical intentions that are somehow incoherent does license the connective.¹⁶

16The significance of this test should not be overstated, however: background or contextual information could very well fill the missing pieces that would make theb-sentences acceptable: for example, in a context in which it is common ground that Natalia only ever enjoys very exclusive activities, (2.38b) would be a perfectly natural thing to say. In absence of such contextual clues however, (2.38b) is odd.

Substitutionsalva validitatein practical inferences

Secondly: cogent practical inferences (that is, inferences whose conclusions are courses of action, or at least attributions of intentions to engage in some course of action) require at least one premise concerning the practical stance of their agent. For example, we accept chains of inferences like the following:

(2.39) a. It’s raining.

b. You are going out.

∴ Take an umbrella.

But it is clear that, as it stands, that inference is only cogent as an enthymeme whose elided premise is something likeyou do not want to get wet, or something likeit is a bad idea to get wet:

(2.40) a. It’s raining.

b. You are going out.

c. You don’t want to get wet.

∴ Take an umbrella.

(2.41) a. It’s raining.

b. You are going out.

c. It’s a bad idea to get wet.

∴ Take an umbrella.

The important thing to notice is that no premise void of some referenceeither to the desires, intentions or plans of the agent,or to what is valuable, could to the trick and make that infer-ence cogent. But note that there is a crucial differinfer-ence between (2.40) and (2.41): the former introduces as its (elided) premise an attribution of a propositional attitude (a desire), while the latter introduces an evaluative sentence, but says nothing about desires, plans or intentions.

Regardless, the inference in (2.41) goes through.

In view of this, we may hypothesize that evaluative sentences are the only type of non-attitudinal premise that can make a chain of practical inference cogent.¹⁷ As the examples (2.40)-(2.41) show, in a practical inference an action-oriented propositional attitude ascription can be substituted for an evaluative sentencesalva validitate.

Before we move on, let us point out two potential objections. First, one might complain that action-guidance is less robust than what we have said here. Restricting ourselves to the moral case for example, do we not constantly behave in ways that go against our moral beliefs? In other words, is Matheus’ plight in (2.37a) not a rather common one? This is the classic problem of Weakness of the Will, which is a general problem for accounts of normative thought which claim there to be a tight connection between normative thought and action (see Davidson1969 for a classic statement).

Discussing that problem would take us too far afield, but let us repeat that we are purposefully remaining agnostic about the nature, and thus about the exact strength, of the connection be-tween evaluative thought and action. It could be a semantic entailment (perhaps asui generis

“practical entailment”), a presupposition, an implicature or something else entirely. Moreover, it is important to remember that practical inferences are in general defeasible. An agent who

17 Thanks to Salvador Mascarenhas for this suggestion. See Hare1952; Wright1972for classic discussions of these and related points. A similar point can be found in Chrisman (2018, p. 416), who proposes to think of the practical commitments associated with normative language in terms of commitments toreason practicallyin certain ways, that is, to accept certain considerations as reasonsfor action. See also Finlay2004, p.206 n.3.

goes through the chain of inference in (2.40) or (2.41) might fail to take an umbrella. So the fact that someone, for example, avows an evaluative belief and then fails to behave accordingly can hardly be taken as evidence that the connection between evaluative thought and action is cancellable in the same way that, say, some implicatures are—the defeasible nature of practical reasoning makes it difficult to draw that conclusion.¹⁸

A second potential objection to my characterization of evaluative adjectives as action-guiding has to do with thescopeof action-guidance. While it may be accepted that moral and practical adjectives are action-guiding, one might resist the view that this is true of aesthetic adjectives as well. In what sense is a sentence like (2.42) connected to action?

(2.42) What a beautiful sunset!

(2.42) seems to be merely an expression of pleasure at a particular perceptual experience.

Nonetheless, note that aesthetic adjectives show the same connections to practical attitudes and inferences to those displayed by other evaluative adjectives:

(2.43) Matheus said that the sunset was stunning although he immediately took out his phone to look at Instagram.

(2.44) a. It’s raining.

b. You are going out.

c. Rain makes your hair ugly.

∴ Take an umbrella.

We might think of it this way: whereas moral and practical adjectives guide us towards the thing to do, aesthetic adjectives guide us towards the thing to experience. An aesthetic judgment, even if based on pure contemplation like (2.42), involves the idea that the object of evaluation is worth experiencing. It involves a commendation of whatever is experienced, that is, an invitation to share the experience (mutatis mutandisfor negative aesthetic adjectives).¹⁹

We conclude that all evaluative adjectives are action-guiding, and that it is this property which sets them apart from other, lexically subjective gradable predicates. We turn now to the family of philosophical proposals which claim to have the upper handvis-à-visan account of action-guidance, namely non-factualism.