Abstract
This chapter differentiates between a Kantian, teleological way of adopting a point of view and a Humean, non-causal way to do so. After analyzing the pros and cons of both positions, a re-worked and more substantial behaviorist dispositional option is emphasized. The main reason is that, against positions that follow a certain kind of principle in order to adopt a point of view or merely referring to expressivist agreement in attitudes, Modal Perspectivism encourages the adoption of points of view via identifying them with their own coherence, consistency, and explanatory scope.
One resists an invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of armies.
—Victor Hugo, The History of a Crime.
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Notes
- 1.
Actually, Moline has Baier (1958) as main target. Baier’s complete quote actually goes: “Answers to practical questions are arrived at by reference to a point of view, which may be defined by a principle. When he adopts a point of view, we adopt its defining principle. To look at practical problems from that point of view is to be prepared to answer practical questions of the form “What shall I do,” “What shall be done” by reference to its defining principle” (Baier 1958: 184). More about this could be found in Sect. 3.2.
- 2.
According to Moline, this second sense is the philosophically important one since, for instance, it was the view that apparently Hume had in mind when he talked about a “point of view common… with others” in the Treatise of Human Nature (Book III, Part 3), and in An Enquiry Concerning of the Principles of Morals (Sect. 9, Part I), as it has been explained in Sect. 2.2.5. In this regard, Moline’s theory could be considered neo-Humean, and as such non-causal and non-deterministic. I believe that this is the right path to follow. However, as it would be pointed out in the sections to follow, Moline’s position is problematic, and it has to be enriched in a substantial way in order to avoid some undesirable consequences.
- 3.
- 4.
In a similar wise, Brandom (1982) develops a concise approach to points of view referred to moral practical reasoning. In his view, he confronts the formalist approach to moral judgments that look at all considerations as directly relevant with his pragmatic account about considering only the relevant statements from the point of view under question. According to Brandom, a point of view consists of two different elements. First, the point of view has a specification of a set of sentences expressing directly relevant considerations. Second, points of view are determined by a maxim that conditions a preferred order of directly relevant circumstances. From there, those who adopt a certain point of view then: (a) would develop a concrete practical deliberation through which to determine what sets of sentences are directly relevant (or assign probabilities to directly relevant considerations), (b) would assign truth-values to conditionals whose antecedents describe the various contemplated actions that are being compared and whose consequences express directly relevant considerations, and (c) would apply the maxim to compare the directly relevant consequences and, then, yield a recommended course of action. It is obvious then that a set of inferential practices that could not be expressed entirely in terms of a particular point of view might be captured by two (or more) points of view according to a hierarchical decision-maker for adjudicating disputes between them (Brandom 1982: 331). The notion of point of view, consequently, provides a tool to pass from reasons-on-balance to presumptive reasons without need to appeal to ceteris paribus clauses (Brandom 1982: 324). Even though Brandom’s position analyzes points of view according to the model of propositional attitudes from a Kantian perspective (that is, according to their inner structure and content), I think that it is extremely important because the results of adopting a certain point of view can be presented as a reason-on-balance from a restricted perspective without denying the feasibility of the action appraisal provided from other perspectives. This element can improve the structural position that I will favor in this book, and I will come back to it below. See Sects. 3.2 and 4.3, and Footnote 16 in Chap. 4 for further details.
- 5.
Besides the problems previously seen, Baier stresses a similar point when asserts that moral convictions are true if they are required or acceptable only from the moral point of view in question (1958: 183–4). Nielsen (1968) is in agreement.
- 6.
As Rachels puts it, “an ‘all things considered’ point of view would be similar to what a competent judge would intuitively approve: This definition of competence does not refer to any special attitudes or interests on the part of the judge, and hence his intuitive judgments need not proceed from any special point of view but from his overall feeling for what is important and what is not” (1972: 153, Footnote 16). See also Rawls (1957) for a similar position. Compare with Moore’s position, for whom such “all things considered”-point of view would be from no point of view after all, since it would be an absolute outlook. See Moore (1987) and Moore (1997a), and Sect. 2.3.1.
- 7.
Section 2.3.1 has profusely attended to such a notion of absolute point of view, and its criticism. However, see Nagel (1986) and Putnam (1981 and 1990). Compare to Aldrich (1979), Biro (2006), and Chen (2008).
- 8.
Keep in mind though that the criteria of relevance will not be the only to be considered for evaluating the practicality of points of view. As shall be explained in depth in Sects. 5.2 and 5.3, it is of high importance to appeal also to the explanatory scope of the point of view under question. The reasons why are going to be expound in what follows.
- 9.
- 10.
Similar criticism can be address to other Kantian positions as well. See, for instance, Gewirth (1980).
- 11.
Some of the theses to follow are inspired by Urmson (1968), especially Chap. 9.
- 12.
“The fact that something was a good road might indeed be a reason, among others, for saying that it was a good thing from the farmers’ point of view. But this would not be so in the degenerate way in which the fact that something was a good road would be a reason for saying that it was a good road… It might be perfectly relevant to give reasons for saying of a road that it was a good thing from the farmers’ point of view which had no relevance to the question whether it was a good road…” (Urmson 1968: 101).
- 13.
Here I follow what Quinn (1974: 241) suggests in regard to this issue.
- 14.
Actually, this seems to be Pitcher’s suggestion when he wrote: “When a thing is judged to be good of a kind, there is always an assumed point of view from which it is so judged” (1970: 588).
- 15.
I believe, of course, that we actually need such points of view given the fact that there is no other way to obtain access to the ways the world and what it contains might be, as the following chapters shall demonstrate. The question refers then to the correct way of addressing not only the criteria of relevance, but also the criteria of consistency, coherence, and adequacy of points of view, as previously stated.
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Colomina-Almiñana, J.J. (2018). Adopting a Point of View. In: Formal Approach to the Metaphysics of Perspectives. Synthese Library, vol 392. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73655-6_3
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