more about derivative and non-derivative attitudes

Here are a few thoughts about yesterday’s class and in anticipation of further inquiry.  

Remember that the question we’re pursuing is: what kinds of things to humans non-derivatively care about?  

Again, to care about something derivatively is for one's caring about it to manifest one's caring about something else.  When you derivatively care about something, in some sense the "real story" behind your caring about it is that you care about something else.  

This question is entirely psychological.  It isn’t normative or evaluative in any sense.  The question isn't (now) what humans *should* care about.  Nor is it the question what, given what we care about, we *should* do.  

It's also entirely a question about contemporary (or at least historical) human psychology.  It isn't a question about evolutionary history.  I will say a bit more about this, following up on my in-class comments.

The point can be a bit tricky because the question of the evolutionary origins of an attitude and the question whether it is derivative (and if so, of what) are both *explanatory* questions.  But they are *different* explanatory questions.  One of them has to do with whether there is some other attitude this attitude manifests -- that's the question whether it's derivative.  If so, then that other attitude will be a psychological state contemporary with the attitude it explains.  For instance, your caring about your keys is explained by your caring about being able to access your car or whatever.  That's a fact about how one of your current psychological states explains another current psychological state.  

But of course evolutionary explanations aren't like this.  What evolution might give us is an explanation of why humans tend to come to have attitudes like this (it would never give us anything like a complete explanation of why you now have a certain attitude).  These evolutionary explanations will cite some fitness-enhancing effect of the attitude.  For instance, why do humans have lust?  Presumably that attitude had a certain fitness-enhancing effect in our ancestors who had it – it caused them to reproduce more, passing on the genes responsible for their having it.  (Lust is such a good example for two reasons.  First, it’s so obviously innate – we don’t have to be trained to have it, although of course the details are to some extent enculturable.  Second, the evolutionary explanation is, at least in large part, pretty obvious.)

So when we give evolutionary explanations we cite some effect of the trait we’re explaining.  That’s true when the trait is an attitude; i.e., a state of caring about something.  But it doesn’t follow that when we explain an attitude this way, the attitude in question is derivative of a state of caring about bringing about the relevant effect.  Evolution doesn’t work by starting with our caring about the effect and then getting us to have attitudes which we take to promote the effect.  Rather, it works by our acquiring attitudes which do in fact promote the effect, regardless of whether we’re even aware of that.  Remember, the evolutionary process works on many traits aside from psychological states.  For instance, it explains the traits of plants. The point is just that if we give an evolutionary explanation of a state of caring about X in terms of that state’s tending to have a certain effect – bringing about Y – that doesn’t mean that the state of caring about X is derivative (in our sense) of caring about Y.  It doesn’t follow that we care about Y at all or even understand Y.  In some sense the relevant effect is always the passing on of genes (at least in genetic evolution), but we didn’t even know about genes until recently. 

A bit more trickily, perhaps, the question whether an attitude is derivative of another attitude is not the question whether it is developmentally promoted by that other attitude.  For instance, suppose Jones realizes that he’d be happier if he had more friends, and that he’ll have more friends if he cares more about other people.  So – from self-interested motives – he cultivates more caring about other people.  He may in fact succeed so that he comes to care more about other people in themselves.  His egoistic concern is in part causally responsible for his other-directed concern (“nepotistic” as I called it), but that doesn’t mean his other-directed concern is just a manifestation of his self-directed concern.  It has taken on a life of its own and become non-derivative. 

To see the point, consider a simpler example.  Suppose Jones is totally egoistic.  Then he is given a pill which will affect his brain in such a way that he will acquire some non-egoistic concern for others.  He has to decide whether to take it.  Of course, being totally egoistic, if he takes it, then his later non-egoistic concern will be caused by his egoistic decision to do so.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t genuinely non-egoistic at the later time.  People can change and genuinely acquire new non-derivative concerns.  In fact, everyone does this.  Think about someone you now care about non-derivatively but whom you didn’t know a few years ago.  In the meantime you’ve come to have new non-derivative attitudes, to this person.  Perhaps you originally met this person from self-interested motives – you wanted to be happier and you thought meeting someone would help bring this about say.  But just because egoism is in the causal history of your concern for this person it doesn’t follow that your concern for them is egoistic in our sense. 

Here’s one way of thinking about the difference between the Jones-type case and the kind of case in which one’s concern for another really is egoistic (e.g., is just using that person for sex, money, vanity, or opportunities).  The crucial point is this: regarding certain attitudes, *part of what it is to have* the attitude is to have dispositions to acquire other attitudes.   In particular, it is to have a disposition to acquire attitudes to things one takes to be relevantly related to the object of the original attitude.  For instance, to care about yourself in the ordinary way *is* to be disposed to care about what you think will harm or benefit you.  Suppose Smith claims to love Mary.  And Smith realizes that Brown is planning to assault Mary.  Suppose Smith simultaneously claims to love Mary but is utterly indifferent to Brown’s plans.  Can we make sense of this?  It seems that Smith is being insincere in saying he cares about Mary.  Part of what it is to care about someone is to be disposed to care about whether they’re assaulted. 

Now suppose that Smith really does care about Mary.  And suppose that when he comes to learn about Brown’s plans, he isn’t indifferent – it matters to him, and he wants to stop it or warn Mary or whatnot.  These latter attitudes are the manifestations of the dispositions which constitute his caring about Mary.  They are thus derivative of his caring about Mary.  For instance, he has a desire to call the police.  That desire is clearly derivative – he doesn’t want to call them for its own sake.  It’s a manifestation of a disposition constitutive of his caring about Mary. 

So we can give a more precise account of what it is for an attitude to be derivative (and, correspondingly, non-derivative).  It isn’t just that it is *caused by* another attitude.  It depends on how the causing occurs.  If it occurs in the way that Jones’ desire for his own happiness causes him to care about others, or in the way that your desire for a relationship caused you to come to care about a person you currently care about (in the above examples), then it is not derivative.  But if it is caused in the sense that it merely manifests a disposition constitutive of another attitude, then it is derivative. 

Hmmm…  I intended to say more but didn’t think this would take up so much time and space.  Perhaps I’ll stop here.  The more comments, the more inspired I’ll be to write more.  :-)

Questions?  Thoughts?