Revisionist Philosophy: Mr Truman’s Degree

In this week’s story, we’ll explore the surprising connections which link contemporary social protest, to Oxford University’s decision to award Harry Truman an honorary degree (despite dropping the bomb), via the work of the philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this lecture, you should be able to:

1. Reconstruct Anscombe’s ethical objection to Sidgwick’s theory of intentional action.
2. Explain Anscombe’s theory of intention, and show how it resolves the problem she identified.
3. Know the difference between reasons for acting, a rationalisation of an action, and a rational action.
4. Show how contemporary culture has, in some areas, (mistakenly?) re-embraced Sidgwick’s theory.

Behaviour and Action, I

In ordinary language, we distinguish between a person’s behaviour and their action. What does this distinction amount to?

Question: What does it mean to subtract facts?

Behaviour and Action, II

As a first attempt to identify the difference, let us try the following:

• A behaviour is purely physical. We normally think of behaviour as involving motion (e.g., “my arm goes up”) but behaviour does not necessarily require motion (e.g., “playing possum”).
• An action involves both behaviour and the appropriately associated mental state.

Question: What is the “appropriately associated mental state”?

This is the question to which we now turn.

Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics

Sidgwick’s theory of intention: why it matters

[I]n the case of conscious actions, the agent is not regarded as morally culpable, except in an indirect way, for entirely unforeseen effects of his voluntary actions. \citep[pg. 60]{Sidgwick:1907}

Thus the proper immediate objects of moral approval or disapproval would seem to be always the results of a [person]’s volitions so far as they were intended. \citep[pg. 60]{Sidgwick:1907}

Sidgwick’s theory of intention

In the seventh edition of The Method of Ethics, Sidgwick defines ‘intention’ as follows:

I think, however, that for purposes of exact moral or jural discussion, it is best to include under the term ‘intention’ all the consequences of an act that are foreseen as certain or probable; since it will be admitted that we cannot evade responsibility for any foreseen bad consequences of our acts by the plea that we felt no desire for them, either for their own sake or as means to ulterior ends: such undesired accompaniments of the desired results of our volitions are clearly chosen or willed by us. \citep[pg. 202]{Sidgwick:1907}

Sidgwick’s theory of intention

As a further intuition pump, Sidgwick gives the following illustration:

Suppose a nihilist blows up a railway train containing an emperor and other persons: it will no doubt be held correct to say simply that his intention was to kill the emperor; but it would be thought absurd to say that he ‘did not intend’ to kill the other persons, though he may have had no desire to kill them and may have regarded their death as a lamentable incident in the execution of his revolutionary plans. \citep[pg. 202, footnote 1]{Sidgwick:1907}

“Mr. Truman’s Degree”

In 1956, G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe led a controversial protest against Oxford University’s decision to award Harry S. Truman an honorary doctorate of civil law. Why?

“Mr. Truman’s Degree”

The atomic blast at Hiroshima, 2-5 minutes after detonation.

“Mr. Truman’s Degree”

The atomic blast at Hiroshima, 2-5 minutes after detonation.

G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe

G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe

Where Sidgwick went wrong

Anscombe’s critique

The problem, for Anscombe, is that Sidgwick’s definition of intention draws the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate objects of attack, during war, in the wrong place.

Anscombe wants to say that innocent civilians cannot be targetted by the military waging a war. But:

[T]he concept of “innocence” at work in these distinctions does not have to do with a person’s moral character: the point of the restrictions is not that armies should attack bad people rather than good ones, but rather that they may attack only those people who are actively involved in the military conflict. \citep{Schwenkler:2019}

Anscombe’s critique

Who are the innocents?

Typical answer: (a) People who are not fighting, and (b) people who are not supplying those who are fighting with the means of fighting.

Under Sidgwick’s definition of intention, the distinction between innocents and non-innocents gets drawn in the wrong place. E.g.,

• A farmer who grows crops, foreseeing that they will be sold to a distributor, who will then sell them to the army.
• A civilian who makes cotton thread, foreseeing that some of the thread will likely end up in military uniforms.

Anscombe’s critique

In other words, the foreseeability criterion is so permissive that the only people who won’t satisfy it are:

1. Young children
2. The extremely ignorant

Was Truman a mass murderer? According to Sidgwick’s concept of intention, most of the dead were classified as legitimate targets, not innocents. So, no.

Anscombe thought this was mistaken.

Anscombe’s solution

It’s worth noting that Anscombe’s distinction has historical precursors going back to Thomas Aquinas’s writings in Summa Theologica (13^th century).

Anscombe’s solution

By decoupling foreseeable consequences from intended consequences, Anscombe gave us the conceptual resources to criticise Truman’s decision.

Many of those killed were innocent because they did not intend to help the war effort, even though their actions had the foreseeable consequence of doing so.

“Acting under a description”

Recall that, in week 2, we covered how we understand our own experiences through interpretation.

According to Anscombe, when we act we do so under a description of how we understand what we are doing.

I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I do not do four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given. \citep{Davidson:1963}

Intention, action, and reason

What does it mean to say that $A$ does $X$ for a reason?

Rationalisations of an action

A rationalisation of an action is an explanation of the action which cites the agent’s reason for doing what that agent did.

When an agent does something for a reason, this means, for Davidson, that:

1. The agent held a pro-attitude towards actions of a particular kind.
2. The agent believed [other mental states might do as well] that their action was of that particular kind.

A reason is a pair $(p,b)$ consisting of a pro-attitude $p$ and a belief $b$.

Descriptions and (primary) reasons

For Davidson, a primary reason is the (a?) reason which caused an agent to perform an action. We can see the role played by descriptions in the following quote:

$R$ is a primary reason why an agent performed the action $A$ under the description $d$ only if $R$ consists of a pro-attitude of the agent toward actions with a certain property, and a belief of the agent that $A$, under the description $d$, has that property. \citep[pg. 687]{Davidson:1963}

Reasons, rationalisations, and rationality

At the end of the day, the picture we arrive at is this:

• The descriptions contained within a reason determine the action an agent did intentionally.
• Two different descriptions may pick out the same event, with only one description identifying the action done by an agent.
• A reason provides a rationalisation of an action.
• Not all rationalised actions (a descriptive notion) are rational (an evaluative notion).

Social protest and Joshua’s question

Recall Joshua’s question, from week 1: “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?”