On Graham Oddie’s Experience Conjecture

In his 2005 book Value, Reality, and Desire, philosopher Graham Oddie defends a robust version of moral realism according to which 1) evaluative judgements have propositional content, 2) the presuppositions of some of our evaluative judgements are fulfilled, 3) the truth or falsity of evaluative judgements is mind-independent, 4) evaluative judgements are not reducible to any other kind of judgement, and 5) values are causally efficacious features. As such, Oddie’s robust version of moral realism stands in stark opposition to expressivism, the error-theory, idealism, naturalism, and evaluative epiphenomenalism. Now, Oddie rarely presents a positive argument in favour of this robust version of moral realism. Instead he hopes to offer up solutions to some of its most pressing problems, thereby showing it to be a plausible value-theoretic alternative. Among the more difficult problems discussed in Oddie’s book is the problem of value-data. In short, the problem of value-data is the familiar epistemological issue of explaining how we can possibly acquire evaluative knowledge if values are indeed something over and beyond the realm of empirical reality. In this blog post, I want to provide the reader with a summary of Oddie’s solution to this problem and formulate some modest criticism towards it.

Oddie introduces his theory on value-data by pointing out a puzzling asymmetry with regard to value-judgements.[1] The asymmetry is that a person may very well express a value-judgement of the form “it is best for Peter to give away some of his money to charity, but Peter does not desire to do so”, but to express a value-judgement such as “it is best for me to give away some of my money to charity, but I do not desire to do so” seems a bit odd. Intuitively, there is an asymmetry because of the close connection between asserting a value-judgement and having certain motivational tendencies. In other words, if a person really believes that something is right or wrong, then it seems that she must be predisposed to act in accordance with this belief. Anything else would imply dishonesty or perhaps a linguistic incompetence with regard to moral concepts. In Oddie’s words:

That I endorse the value judgement necessitates my possessing the appropriate desire – the desire to donate my surplus income to charity. So by expressing my endorsement I commit myself to the existence of that desire. But straightway I go on to deny the existence of that very desire. So the oddness of my utterance consists in a kind of contradiction – between what I imply by affirming the value judgement (viz. that I have a certain desire) and what I imply by affirming the non-value judgement (viz. that I lack that very desire).[2]

The view that there is a strong conceptual relationship between asserting value-judgements and having certain motivational tendencies is often referred to as motivational internalism. Robust moral realists such as Oddie could accept motivational internalism, but it has often been thought that this might force them to accept that beliefs alone can effect our motivational tendencies or that value-judgements consist of some third category of mental states that happen to have the characteristics of both beliefs and desires. Oddie would presumably find these alternatives a bit hard to swallow. So instead he proposes that our value-judgements express beliefs and that these beliefs correspond to – and in some sense depend on – our desires. In Oddie’s view then, our desires are the source of our evaluative knowledge in much the same way as our ordinary sense-perceptions – e.g. our sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, etc. – are sources of empirical knowledge.[3] So there is indeed a strong relationship between our value-judgements and our desires, but it is not a conceptual one.

Stated more clearly, Oddie’s theory on value-data says that there are experiences of value which give us strong reasons to hold such beliefs and these experiences can be identified with our desires. Desiring something then does not necessarily entail that it is in fact valuable – just like the experience of a red rose does not entail that there is in fact a red rose. According to Oddie, desires are merely value-seemings.[4] Oddie proceeds to argue that this Experience Conjecture is in some ways supported by the phenomenological character of desire:

When I desire that P, P has a certain magnetic appeal for me. It presents itself to me as something needing to be pursued, or promoted, or embraced. Now the good just is that which needs to be pursued, or promoted, or embraced. So my desire that P involves P’s seeming good (seeming to be worth pursuing). So the desire that P looks as though it just is the experience of P as good.[5]

As I understand it, the Experience Conjecture is actually supposed to solve two separate problems in value-theory in one fell swoop. One of these problems is the familiar epistemological issue of accounting for the source of our evaluative knowledge given that values are something over and beyond the realm of empirical reality. The other problem however has to do with the reconciliation of our motivational intuitions with the view that value-judgements express beliefs, rather than some set of non-cognitive mental states (such as desires, attitudes, preferences, and so on). If the Experience Conjecture is sound then, it would prove very handy indeed for proponents of a robust version of moral realism.

In my view, the Experience Conjecture represents a far more plausible epistemology than the old tactic of claiming that our intuitions are the source of our evaluative knowledge. Indeed, most philosophers would probably agree that this tactic, which was once employed by robust moral realists such as G. E. Moore and W. V. Ross, invites more questions than it answers. I also think that Oddie’s Experience Conjecture is attractive in the way that it establishes a close link between our value-judgements and motivational tendencies in so far as it avoids the implication that beliefs alone can effect these tendencies, or that value-judgements are constituted by some third category of mental states that has the characteristics of both beliefs and desires. Nonetheless, there are a few worries associated with the Experience Conjecture. One of these is referred to by Oddie as the problem of bad data.[6] This problem has to do with the fact that our desires can be defective in several ways. For instance, it can sometimes happen that we desire things that we know are bad. Oddie attempts to accommodate this fact with the Experience Conjecture:

That we often have bad data does not entail that we never have any decent data. As we have noted several times, experience provides, at best, highly defeasible reasons for the associated beliefs, and the same goes for desires. There can be inappropriate and misleading desires, just as there can be inaccurate perceptions. Desires do not have to be a completely reliable presentation of the good in order to play the role of value data. Something can seem good to me even though it is not. Analogously, I can have perceptual experiences of things that are not there.[7]

On the face of it, this response seems to reiterate a point brought up above and further emphasizes that desires are nothing but value-seemings. Oddie admits, however, that this response might be too quick and he also considers the suggestion that perhaps most of our desires are defective in the sense described above. This will seem obvious to some since people’s desires do not cohere to the same extent that our ordinary sense-perceptions do. Oddie thinks that a proper response to this version of the argument has to accomplish two things.[8] In the first place, it has to explain how we can come about accurate value-judgements from what appears to be defective value-data. In the second place, it has to “provide room for persistent and legitimate agent-relativity in desire, even after our agent-neutral value judgements have been perfected in the light of both experience and reason”.[9] Keeping these goals in mind, Oddie then formulates a response that further fleshes out the analogy between desires and ordinary sense-perceptions.

Oddie brings to our attention the fact that the sun might appear to be smaller than the moon even though, in reality, it is a bit larger. The reason of course is that the sun is much farther away from the us than the moon is. Oddie then raises the rhetorical question whether our sense-perceptions of the sun and the moon are defective in this case. Of course, Oddie answers this question in the negative and adds that we should not expect things to look exactly as they are, no matter the point of view from which they are experienced. “If desires are experiences of value,” Oddie explains, “and valuers are differently situated with respect to value, then we should expect something analogous to the phenomenon of perspective”.[10] In support of this line of reasoning, Oddie then formulates two hypothetical cases. In one of these cases, we are to suppose that Oddie’s daughter and the daughter of a stranger are both about to drown. Though it might be equally bad if Oddie’s daughter drowned as it would be if the stranger’s daughter drowned, we do not expect Oddie to have the same desire for saving both girls. In fact, it would seem absurd to even suggest that Oddie should be indifferent between the death of his own daughter and that of the stranger’s. From this and insights drawn from similar cases, Oddie concludes:

… even though facts about value are valuer-neutral, experiences of value can and should be valuer-relative, since they depend on exactly where the valuer is situated with respect to the objects of desire. In general, we do not require that a perceiver’s experiences be isomorphic to reality for him to be perceiving appropriately. Analogously, we should not require that a valuer’s desires be isomorphic to value for her to be responding appropriately.[11]

Another problem facing the Experience Conjecture that Oddie discusses shortly thereafter has to do with the fact that we can possibly desire that which we believe to be evil.[12] The question is whether this can be accommodated by the conjecture, since it claims that desiring something is to experience it as good. In the end, Oddie thinks that it can. On his view, the belief that something is evil or without value is only incompatible with the experience that this something is valuable if one regards the experience as reliable. That is to say, when our evaluative beliefs and our desires differ, then the beliefs must be false or the desires must for some reason be unreliable sources of value-data. Later, when Oddie discusses some worries related to the problem just mentioned, he points out that, even though desires are value-data, this “does not entail that they should always be trusted, or that in cases of conflict with judgement, it is the judgement that must surrender”.[13]

Finally, Oddie considers the troubling objection that we can desire that which seems evil and he admits that, if the Experience Conjecture is correct, this actually is contradictory in some sense. Nonetheless, he still thinks that this can be accommodated with the conjecture:

There is a contradiction in both desiring P and not desiring P. But there is no contradiction in desiring P and desiring not-P. Such a deeply conflicted desirer is in a bad way, and his desires can be criticized rationally, but such combinations of desire are possible.[14]

Oddie concludes his discussion of The Experience Conjecture by explaining the phenomenon of disappointment, exactly why and how desire can effect or add to the value of a state of affairs, and some other issues that ultimately relate to the non-conceptual content of desires. For brevity’s sake, I shall not dwell deeper into these further discussions as I think relatively little is lost by skipping over them. I will mention however that I have significant doubts about the soundness of the Experience Conjecture as I understand it. Oddie seems to argue that desires are the most fitting candidates for the role of value-data because most other mental states are too dis-analogous to ordinary sense-perceptions or do not have the appropriate connection to our motivational tendencies. Still, I think one could legitimately question whether the analogy between our desires and ordinary sense-perceptions really works as well as Oddie thinks it does. One of the main flaws in the analogy appears to be that we have a fairly clear idea how our ordinary sense-perceptions can be the sources of our empirical knowledge in the first place. That is to say, we have quite a good picture of the causal mechanisms that tie the outside world to our perceptual apparatus, but this does not seem to be true of the supposed link between values and our desires. Assuming then that Oddie succeeds in arguing that values could figure in causal explanations to begin with (as indeed he attempts to do in a later chapter of his book), I would argue that our picture of the causal mechanisms involved in these explanations would remain frustratingly vague.

I suppose another way to illustrate the above-mentioned worry is to consider the problems that concern explanations as to how desires can fail as guides to evaluative knowledge. In the case of ordinary sense-perceptions, we can in most cases explain or speculate about what is going on when there seems to be a red rose, even though there is in fact no red rose. We may say e.g. that our perceptual apparatus has been physically damaged, that our sense-perceptions have been compromised by the use of narcotics, or that we have been tricked by some visual illusion. And at some later time, one of these speculations may prove to be probable or even correct. However, in cases where we desire something that is not valuable or where we do not desire something that is valuable, it is not always clear exactly how this could be explained. Admittedly, Oddie does address problems of this kind, but I find his treatment of them is disappointedly shallow. To simply say that we are differently situated with regard to the values we experience is a bit too easy. So even if his Experience Conjecture may seem to hold some promise at first sight, I do not expect any moral sceptics to be particularly moved by it.

Another worry I have with The Experience Conjecture has to do with the great variety of different values in existence. Just to name a few, there are intrinsic values, final values, instrumental values, values-relative-to, and values-for. I think one could reasonably question whether desires are adequate guides to knowledge about all these values and whether they alone are capable of helping us differentiate between them. Of course the same line of argument applies to moral values and aesthetic values. How can we by way of our desires alone establish whether some evaluative consideration is a moral or aesthetic one? A related but perhaps more troubling question is how we could possibly distinguish between the importance of certain considerations if our experiences of different values are so easily effected by our position relative to those values. That our value-data should be able to differentiate between all these axiological types and their respective force is perhaps not a necessary condition on the epistemology of a robust moral realism, but I think most would agree that it is an attractive one.

Finally, one might wonder whether The Experience Conjecture could lead to the collapse of robust version of moral realism into some form of idealism, since it establishes such a strong link between our evaluative knowledge and our desires. In other words, the Experience Conjecture seems to beg the question as to why we need to posit the existence of values as something over and beyond our desires in the first place. This is a problem that Oddie himself considers and I will hopefully discuss his treatment of it in a later blog post.

1. See Graham Oddie’s Value, Reality, and Desire 2005, p. 28.
2. Ibid, p. 28.
3. Ibid, pp. 40-43.
4. Ibid, pp. 52-54.
5. Ibid, p. 55.
6. Ibid, p. 58.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid, p. 59.
9. Ibid, p. 60.
10. Ibid, p. 62.
11. Ibid, p. 63.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid, p. 65.
14. Ibid, p. 67.

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