Critical Notice on John McDowell’s “Valuesand Secondary Qualities”

Yuichi Amitani 1

Dec. 10, 2004

1University of British Columbia. mailto: yuiami-at-gmail-dot-com All rightsreserved.

1 Introduction

The notice here is on John McDowell’s paper for the so-called moral real-

ism1. Therefore it is not compatible with error theory and moral relativism

(Mackie is an anti-realist in this sense). It is also distinct from moral cogni-

tivism. (McDowell 1985). This seminal paper is a response from McDowell to

Mackie’s error theory (Mackie 1977) of moral value and moral statements2.

His paper is divided into five sections; in the first section, McDowell briefly

explains Mackie’s error theory. In the next section, he points out that Mackie

assumes moral values are modeled as (something like) the primary qualities.

The third section criticizes Mackie’s account on the distinction between the

primary and secondary qualities, and suggests that even the secondary qual-

ities have objectivity and reality in a sense. That is, they are true indepen-

dently of any particular person’s sensibility (weak objectivism), not that they

are true independently of anyone’s sensibility (strong objectivism) as Mackie

assumes. Then McDowell claims that, contrary to Mackie’s account, moral

values are indispensable for explanation of moral phenomena and thereby can

pass the explanatory test for reality (the fourth section). In the last section

he tries to show how it is to do moral explanations under the secondary-

quality model of moral values and criticizes Simon Blackburn’s account of

moral phenomena.

1In this notice, realism of moral values (properties) means the claim that ‘[t]here aremoral facts and moral properties whose existence and nature are independent of people’sbelief and attitudes about what is right and wrong’ (Audi 1999).

2McDowell’s paper first appeared in a tribute to Mackie (Honderich 1985).

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This critical notice focuses on the fourth and last sections in his paper.

In the rest of this section, we very briefly outline his account for the reality

of moral values. In the next section it will be seen that McDowell’s analogy

between fearfulness and moral values does not work and its failure makes his

account of moral values look bleak. The last section deals with the question

of whether what is called ‘merit talk’ (to be explained later) in this notice

is actually an explanation. It is important for McDowell’s account because

he says that considering this way of talking about moral statements is what

Mackie’s and Blackburn’s accounts of moral phenomena lack.

‘Merit talk’ as what is not explained by causal explanation According

to McDowell, one of Mackie’s tenets is that moral values do not pass ‘the

explanatory test for reality’.

(a) If x does not appear in any explanation of the phenomena in question,

x does not exist.

(b) Moral values do not appear in causal explanation of the phenomenology

of moral judgments.

(c) Merely causal explanation is satisfying for the explanation of the phe-

nomenology of moral judgments.

(d) Therefore, moral values do not exist.

However, McDowell denies (c), because there is another dimension of expla-

nation in the cases of fearfulness and moral values (McDowell takes fearful-

ness as an example the explanation of which by projectivists appear more

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plausible (but in fact not) than that of McDowell). This is an explanation

like these (hereafter we call such an explanation ‘merit talk’);

A: Why is the lightening fearful?

B: Because it merits fear.

A: Why am I wrong to kick Ken?

B (A’s father): Because it is wrong.

They are clearly not causal explanations, but seem to consist of our ordinary

moral judgments. And this is the most important explanation for fearfulness

and moral values, McDowell thinks, because this opens the possibility of

rational discussion. For example, when A hears B’s reply, A might further

ask why. Then B might show further explanations. It is wrong to harm

a friend without reason, for example. Then B might reply to it (“It was

Ken who kicked me first,” etc.). This is an argument for reason. Causal

explanation does not have such a character. McDowell (1985) says,

[I]f what we engaged in is an ‘attempt to understand ourselves’,

then merely causal explanations of responses [...] will not be satis-

fying anyway. [...] [A] technique for giving satisfying explanations

[...] must allow for the possibility of criticism; we make sense of

fear [and moral phenomena] by seeing it as a response to objects

that merit such a response [...] (p.176)3.

3Pagination in this paper is from (Sayre-McCord 1985).

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Therefore, McDowell replaces (b) and (c) with (b’) and (c’):

(b’) Moral values appear in the ‘merit talk.’

(c’) The ‘merit talk’ is the best or most important explanation of the phe-

nomenology of moral judgments.

We cannot infer the inexistence of moral values from (a), (b’), and (c’). This

is one of McDowell’s accounts for moral values.

2 Danger, Fear, and Moral Values

McDowell deals with danger and fearfulness in an equal way (p.175). But

there is a difference between danger and fear. Fear deals with feeling in

an essential way in which danger does not. For example, some feel fear of

something non-dangerous. Think about phobias (animal or insect phobia,

agoraphobia, etc.). Some might say that these things are dangerous in some

situations. Spiders are dangerous when they carry poison. But since almost

everything is dangerous in one or another way (a mug is dangerous if one

hits my head with it), almost everything would be dangerous and it is trivial

to say that we fear of a dangerous thing. It’s counterintuitive.

“Merit talk” in fearfulness is actually prediction How about fear?

Take this example. Suppose that all people in one country do not feel fear of

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radioactive material. But something radioactive seems to merit fear . What

does this ’merit fear’ mean? An analysis;

(i) The people in one country don’t fear of radioactive material.

(ii) Radioactive material is dangerous in that it could have negative effects

on one’s health.

(iii) All (or most, or the majority of) people should feel fear of a dangerous

thing.

(iv) Therefore, it merits fearfulness, although they do not feel fear of ra-

dioactive material.

What does the ’should’ in (iii) mean? One analysis would be like this.

(v) They want to preserve themselves.

(vi) They should avoid serious danger in order to preserve themselves.

(vii) They should feel fear of dangerous things in order to avoid serious

danger.

(iii) Therefore, all (or most, or the majority of) people should feel fear of a

dangerous thing.

This analysis interprets ‘should’ as obligation. In other words they ought to

feel fear of a dangerous thing. But this analysis has defects, because what

seems to merit fear is not always dangerous. Again, think of various kinds

of phobias. For instance, for those having claustrophobia, confined space

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merits fearfulness. But we do not say that they ought to or have obligation

to feel fear of confined space. In addition, contrary to (vii), feeling fear is

not a necessary condition of avoiding danger. It is conceivable to recognize

things completely intellectually and to avoid the danger with the help of

one’s reason (at least in principle. See Damasio (1994)). Then how about

changing the phrase ‘avoid danger’ and looking for sufficient conditions of

‘eeling fear’? As the space is limited, we cannot examine possible alternatives

one by one. However, we have a reason to think those alternatives would not

work successfully. It is that whether a given thing is fearful or not essentially

depends on empirical fact that people actually feel fear of that thing on such

and such situations. One reason we think the case of radioactive material is

plausible is that the people in the country (or most of them) would feel fear

of radioactive material when we know the nature and negative health effects

of it. Accordingly, whatever condition we posit as necessary for feeling fear,

it is always conceivable that some feel fear of things which is not under that

condition. And it is not appropriate to say that they have an obligation not

to feel fear of them. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that all instances

of feeling fear have or would have the same function like avoiding danger.

Then, again, what meaning does ‘should’ in (iii) have? I believe this is

prediction. From the past cases of feeling fear (or our neurological mecha-

nisms), it is reasonable to predict that they would feel fear of the dangerous

thing. So (iii) will be:

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(iii∗) All (or most, or the majority of) people would feel fear of a dangerous

thing.

This analysis is applicable to other instances of fearfulness, especially

phobia cases. It would sound weird if you say “he (with phobia of confined

space) has obligation to feel fear of a confined room,” but it would not if

you say “he would feel fear of a confined room.” It might be objected that

this still involves justification, because this seems to open rational discussion

about his fearfulness which is shared by the cases of moral value. However,

even though this involves justification, the type of justification is that for

prediction, therefore it is within the framework of scientific explanation. It

is not the same as the one in moral philosophy (i.e., justification for obliga-

tion). If feeling fear is subordinate to some objective of human being (e.g.,

surviving) and it is a necessary condition to the goal, we can say that one

has obligation to feel fear, but as is seen before, this is not the case.

How about what seems ‘erroneous fear’? Is it a proof that fearfulness

statement has truth value and fearfulness exists in this world? Suppose that

you enter your room and find something black on the floor. You thought of

it as a roach and you feel fear of it. But after a while, you find it is your

black sock and think to yourself, “It [your sock] does not merit my fear.” Is

the fearfulness of your sock erroneous? No. True, after you recognize the

‘something’ as your black sock, your sock does not merit your fear. From

the past experiences of human beings it is not reasonable to predict that you

would feel fear of your sock given that you know it is your sock, not a roach.

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But this does not mean that even if you did not know it, your sock does not

merit fearfulness. It is reasonable to predict that you would feel fear of your

sock if you mistook it for a roach. In other words, your fear was mistaken if

you understand the situation thoroughly, but it is not if you do not. Your

‘erroneous’ fear comes form your erroneous cognition, and, given that your

response itself is not an error.

Therefore, there is no reason to presuppose the reality of fearfulness. As

is seen before, whether a prediction works partly depends on conditions of

our mind and body. For instance, a confined room is fearful for those who

are claustrophobia, but it is not for most people. The same thing in the

world is fearful for one person, but not for the other. Whether a given thing

is fearful or not depends on the situation. It might be objected that this is

compatible with the dispositional nature of fearfulness. As color like yellow

looks green under a green light, the same thing looks fearful or not according

to a situation. But according to McDowell’s account, being a disposition

is not sufficient for existing. It is here that the ‘merit talk’ matters. But

as is already seen, the ‘merit talk’ does not have power which McDowell

expects it to have and it can be accounted within the framework of scientific

explanation.

Argument from queerness remains If the ‘merit talk’ in the case of

fearfulness is actually about prediction, how does it affect McDowell’s ac-

count? What if McDowell says like this? “Oh sorry, fearfulness is a bad

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example. But that fearfulness and moral values have a particular dimension

which causal explanations cannot account for is explained by this example

(even if it is not true in fearfulness), and this argument is applicable to the

case of moral values. That is what I wanted to do, and the argument in

the previous sections does not affect it, does it?” To answer this question,

it is good to see what role the example of fearfulness plays in McDowell’s

account. In his paper, McDowell mentions four kinds of properties; shape,

color, fearfulness, and moral values. Shape is primary quality, and color is

secondary quality. Fearfulness and moral values are not secondary qualities

but much more similar to secondary qualities than primary qualities4 . They

also share ‘merit talk’ which is the major difference between the last two and

secondary qualities. In this sense, fearfulness places itself between color and

moral values. Given that one of McDowell’s motivations is to make a coun-

terargument to Mackie’s argument from queerness (that is, moral values are

so different from other qualities, say in its priscriptiveness, that it is weird to

posit its objective reality), fearfulness constitutes a chain starting from color

apprehension to moral values and it plays a role to make moral values look

less queer or not very different from other qualities.

The disanalogy between fearfulness and moral values disconnects this

chain and thereby sheds light again on the queerness of moral values. It is true

that if one admits the analogy of secondary qualities and moral values (this

4McDowell refers to a disanalogy between color and moral values (p.175). He also notes“Fearfulness is not a secondary quality” (p.178).

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is admitted here for the sake of argument) in McDowell’s account then moral

values look less queer. But as long as they still have unique characteristics

such as the merit talk (which fearfulness does not share in spite of McDowell’s

intention) and its prescriptive power, moral values are still quite unique from

other qualities.

And some disanalogies between secondary qualities and moral values pull

away further the two and make the peculiarity of moral values stand out

more. As Simon Blackburn (1985) points out, there are disanalogies between

secondary qualities and moral values5 . For example, evaluative predicates

attribute to a subject (p.15)6 . When we use evaluative predicates, we say,

“A’s doing B is good qua a father.” But we would not say that this apple

is white qua an apple7 . If it is white, it is white with no qualification 8.

Another difference is the extent to which qualities vary according to the

situation. The same act (for example, sacrificing one’s life to the king in

one’s country) is seen to be act of the brave or the barbarian, whereas the

same object rarely looks pink in one situation and blue in another situation.

Color can change, but not as much as moral evaluation of an act. Given

those disanalogies, the distance between moral values and other qualities is

even larger (p.14).

5This does not mean that McDowell does not notice that there are disanalogies betweenthe two.

6Citations in this paragraph are all from Blackburn (1985).7This sentence could read that this apple is white despite the general fact about apples,

i.e., that they are not white. This is not the usage which I want to pay attention to here.8Of course, under which light we see an object (or whether one is color-blind) could be

qualification when attributing a color to it, but this is not the subject here.

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Therefore despite McDowell’s intention, moral qualities are quite different

from other kinds of qualities. Only moral qualities can approve the special

usage of the word ‘merit’ and prescriptivity. Things are better than Mackie

thinks, because the secondary quality model of moral properties seems closer

to the case (if McDowell is right). But most of the queerness which Mackie

mentions remains even in McDowell’s model.

3 Is the merit talk a genuine explanation?

As is seen before, merit talk in moral values shows one character of moral val-

ues; opening a series of rational explanations/discussions. McDowell thinks

this is what causal explanations do not capture. But a question arises here.

Is the merit talk itself an explanation? Take this dialogue again.

A: Why am I wrong to kick Ken?

B (A’s father): Because it is wrong.

A question here is this; Is B’s reply really an explanation? It is true that B’s

reply opens the possibility of rational discussion, because A can keep asking

“why is it wrong?” and then B cannot make the same answer (or repeat

the same answer forever). It is rational explanation of why A’s conduct is

wrong that B needs here. In this sense B’s reply has a distinct characteristic

different from causal explanations. And it is only McDowell’s realism that

can explain this moral phenomenon. That is why McDowell thinks moral

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value can pass the explanatory test for reality (p.174) despite of Mackie’s

argument.

But there are reasons to doubt that this constitutes a genuine explanation.

First, B adds hardly any information to A’s utterance. It is hard to make

sense of an information which can explain itself. Secondly, it is because the

first dialogue looks like this ‘conversation’;

A: Why am I wrong to kick Ken?

(B hits A’s head without saying anything)

Is B’s hitting an explanation? At least it is doubtful, because it does not

have any propositional content. It is true that A can infer (or conjecture)

some propositions from B’s hitting (e.g., you should not kick a friend), but

it is not the same as that it has some propositional content. And the point

is that, B’s first response seems to function in the same way as B’s hitting.

In both cases, one can expect similar responses. The fact that in the first

case one tends to say with hitting (kicking, striking a table, etc.) that it is

wrong supports this. And if B’s hitting is not an explanation, is there any

reason to think B’s first utterance as an explanation?

One might object, as Blackburn implies (see p.17), that this is an expla-

nation corresponding to A’s interest (say) in how much confidence B has on

his moral position about A’s conduct. Suppose that A is at the age sufficient

to understand kicking a friend is wrong. But A might not understand how

wrong it is. For example, not saying hi to a friend when we meet is wrong,

but it is not as wrong as kicking a friend without reason. A’s question can be

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understood in this perspective. A might ask the question in order to know

how wrong B think it is to kick a friend. And B’s utterance is an explanation

along with A’s interest. But this account is the one of why B’s utterance

is an interest-relative (if any) explanation, but not the one of why it is an

explanation in the first place (and Blackburn does not seem to explain why

this is an explanation).

It might also be objected that B’s utterance is an abbreviation (in the

first case, it might be a statement that you should not kick a friend). Again,

B’s hitting gets in the way of this objection, because B’s hitting seems to

(be able to) play the same (or very similar) function. A, hit by his father,

might feel as if his father says you should not kick a friend (Of course, this

interpretation might be wrong, but this is also true of B’s utterance, because

B’s utterance does not necessarily remind A of that statement). Then what

is the reason not to think B’s hitting of abbreviation of that statement?

Implication for McDowell’s account The fact that B’s utterance (the

moral-value version of “merit talk”) is not actually an explanation could

have serious implications for McDowell’s account, because this “merit talk”

is what causal explanation lacks. It is a sign of the phenomenology of moral

judgments (remember the citation from McDowell in the first section).

It is true that even just because B’s utterance is not an explanation does

not mean that McDowell’s account as a whole collapses. As is seen in the

previous citation, he sees the peculiarity of moral statements as allowing for

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rational criticism, and the merit talk seems to open this “space of rational

criticism.” Although Humeans would argue that those discussions are ulti-

mately based on emotion (therefore they are not rational discussions), we

cannot presuppose this here to criticize McDowell. However, a sentence like

B’s utterance is a very ‘pure’ form of such discussions and it is hard to un-

derstand as a genuine explanation without making committment to realism

of moral properties. After all, this is the only type of explanation which

McDowell mentions in his paper needs the existence of moral values. If this

is not actually a genuine explanation, then (c’) in his counterargument to

Mackie’s criticism (a-d) (see section 2) is not true, therefore his attempt

against Mackie’s anti-realism does not work well.

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References

Audi, R., ed. (1999), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd Edition),

Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.

Blackburn, S. (1985), Errors and the phenomenology of value, in T. Hon-

derich, ed., ‘Morality and Objectivity’, London: Routeledge and kegan

Paul.

Damasio, A. (1994), Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason, and Human Brain,

New York: Grosett/Putnam.

Honderich, T., ed. (1985), Morality and Objectivity, London: Routeledge and

kegan Paul.

Mackie, J. (1977), Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth.

McDowell, J. (1985), Values and secondary qualities, in T. Honderich,

ed., ‘Morality and Objectivity’, London: Routeledge and kegan Paul,

p. Routeledge and keg.

Sayre-McCord, G., ed. (1985), Essays on Moral Realism, Ithaca: Cornell

University Press.

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