If person A puts in a good, smart effort in attempting some task, we think something like this: it “should be the case” that she succeeds. Similarly, if B works harder and smarter than A at the same type of task, then it “should be the case” that B’s efforts yield more success than A’s efforts. (In this case, we might also think that it is fair that B have more success than A – and that it would be unfair if it went the other way around.)
What is ‘should be the case’ getting at in these cases? We might analyze the feature here in terms of appropriate response in attitude.
Try this: (a) it is appropriate to desire that B succeed more than A (and hence appropriate, whether or not all-in advisable, to promote this) and (b) it is appropriate to be angry at others for failing to desire that B succeed more than A and for frustrating this (and hence appropriate, whether or not all-in advisable, to hold people accountable to responding positively to B succeeding more than A). The second normative element (or thread of rational response and justification) here is what makes B succeeding more than A not merely desirable or valuable (for everyone, in an essentially shared or public way), but something that should happen.
Does this seem like a promising idea (either on its own or as a development or application of a fitting-attitude theory of the various sorts of broadly evaluative properties)? What is good or bad about it?
(If B deserves to succeed more than A, then it should be the case that B succeeds more than A. Maybe as well: if it should be the case that B succeeds more than A, then B deserves to succeed more than A. Desert-features, then, are really close-by.)
(Let me say something to motivate the topic and proposal. Suppose that, against how things should be in our schematic case, A succeeds more than B. Boo! Hiss! It does not follow, and it is a distinct claim, that we – society – have failed to show due consideration to B here (say in settling on or building the norms and institutions that we have presently, when alternative social arrangements are available that would not result in B getting relatively short-changed). In the second case, B is a victim and we are the perpetrator; and the person-directed attitudes (resentment, anger, guilt) are directed toward persons who play relevant roles relative to a social process that fails to show due consideration B. By contrast, in the first case, the person-directed attitudes, person-directed anger in particular, is directed toward failures to respond appropriately to relevant social states of affairs (B doing worse than A when she should have done better). In this way, the same problematic distribution of goods in a society (unequal, non-merit-tracking, etc.) might either merely be something that should not happen (with corresponding strong reason to correct the situation) or be something that is a product of society abusing some of its members – so that society changing the way it is does things is required, not just advisable. One result here, then, is that luck-egalitarianism has to appeal to advisability, not requirement or deontology. I’m sure there are other ways to get this kind of result, but, for a bunch of background reasons, the approach here seems to me to be the way to go.)
Policy of Truth 
The first conjunct of (b) strikes me as outlandish. A state of affairs can be appropriate to desire while falling well short (to put it mildly) of provoking anger when it’s not desired. I don’t see the motivation for the “it is appropriate to be angry” condition.
And I’m the angry one around here! Even I’m not that angry.
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My God, what an unendurably bad song. I don’t blame the wife for being “angry all the time.”
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Oh man, a couple of lines in and I’m ready to wretch.
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The motivation for [b], or something like it, is just that B succeeding more than A being desirable is different from B succeeding more than A being the way things are supposed to be (should be, ought to be, etc.). [a] just gets you the desirability, so maybe something like [b] makes the target state of affairs not only desirable but something that ought to happen.
Perhaps ‘anger’ is too strong. The main thing is that it is appropriate to have a negative reaction [ed. – person-directed negative reaction] to others failing to have a positive reaction (and act accordingly). One is, as it were, interested in everyone having the right first-order response (and in doing one’s “regulatory part” to help achieve this), not just having the right first-order response oneself.
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Anger is way too strong. But what I’m getting at is: is it really obvious that it’s appropriate to have a negative affective reaction at all? Does thinking that X ought to happen entail anything in particular about affective reactions? It’s not obvious to me. Suppose that I agree that X should happen. Now suppose it doesn’t happen, but I have no particular reaction to this fact at all. I agree that it shouldn’t happen, but am affectively indifferent. Would you grant that that’s possible? If so, how does it fit with what you’re saying?
It seems to me that you need to introduce a lot of background claims to get us to the conclusion that anything that should happen of necessity elicits an “appropriate [affective] reaction” in any observer. It just strikes me as obvious that there are millions of things we might think “should happen,” but that elicit no particular reaction from us at all. Think of how many times you scroll past things on social media, and (in passing) see things that should or should not happen. Maybe your immediate reaction is affective, and maybe not. What if it’s impartial and aloof? Your view seems to imply that “impartial and aloof” reactions are either nomologically impossible or if possible, then misleading or radically defective (as though the person claiming not to have the reaction is actually having one, but suppressing or covering it up).
To get a reaction out of someone, there either has to be something about normative judgments that inherently causes the reaction, or something about normatively-judgable events that affectively pulls them in regardless of what they take to be their distance from the event. Either way, there’s a gap you need to fill.
I don’t mean this invidiously, but your view here reminds me of Peikoff’s claim in “Fact and Value” that every apprehension of a fact entails a value judgment along with an appropriate reaction to the judgment. I’m not accusing you of being Peikovian; my point is, like his claim in FV, your claim presupposes a lot that you’re not making explicit.
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It is generally part of a fitting-attitudes analysis (of broadly evaluative properties) that the appropriate (or fitting) response in attitude is not always advisable (or what one has most reason to do all-in). So my proposal can allow not only for the fact of affective indifference to B doing better than A despite [B doing better than A] being desirable, but also for this indifference being advisable. And similarly for affective indifference to (and hence lack of any particular person-directed attitudes toward) others failing to desire B doing better than A. I think my main presuppositions here are simply the plausibility and explanatory machinery of a fitting-attitudes type of analysis. I guess I’m also presupposing that we are plausibly adding the right sort of thing to desirability, in adding appropriateness in person-directed mutual-accountability-type attitudes toward people having or not having the relevant first-order attitudes, to get us to should-be-ness.
A genuine counterexample to the second part of the analysis would be a scenario in which (intuitively) it should be that P, but it is not appropriate (whether it is advisable or not) for one to have negative, person-directed attitudes toward others because they fail to desire that P obtain. I cannot think of a clear, obvious case like this. On the other hand, when it is not only desirable that P but it ought to be the case that P, it seems right that it is appropriate to hold each other to account in some way for having the right orientation toward that-P obtaining. My added comment below raises some questions about what is the best way to cash out this sort of intuition (on a fitting-attitudes explanatory model).
I agree that a stronger defense of my proposal would run through lots of real-life or very specific cases. For sure, I’ve presented it in pretty abstract or schematic terms.
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I guess I need to go back and review/re-think fitting attitudes theories of ethics. I think of “fitting attitudes” reflexively on the model provided by Aristotelian virtue ethics, but “fitting attitudes” theorists have something else in mind. I read Gibbard’s Wise Choices, Apt Feelings thirty years in grad school, but only because I was forced to, and I neither “got” it nor got anything out of it. The “circularity” problem just seemed so obvious and conclusive that (apart from some flirtations with an article or two by McDowell and Wiggins) I dismissed the whole approach and moved on. But perhaps I’m due for a re-thinking.
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I actually need to do that as well. I’m not up on the latest stuff by any means.
I think quite a lot turns on how one interprets the ‘because’ in such constructions a ‘it is fitting for me to desire that-P because that-P is valuable’. If the ‘because’ indicates making-so, then the value is metaphysically prior to the fittingness of attitude. And the fitting-attitudes analysis is circular/doomed. If not — if the ‘because’ indicates something like our having sufficient reason to infer that the attitude is fitting if we know that the item is valuable — then the fitting-attitude analysis of this or that broadly evaluative property (fill in the specific property) has some game.
(I have not read this, but it looks good (and I’ve liked stuff I’ve read by Chris Howard):
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitting-attitude-theories/
Also Mark Schroeder has an SEP article on Value Theory that looks good and has a section on fitting-attitudes analyses of value. As I’ve been wanting to refresh my knowledge on these topics, I expect I’ll be reading both of these. If you have time and want, we could read through together or do something here on the blog or in the discussion group.)
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I just went back to an earlier post of mine on (nominally, but not actually) the same topic:
In that post, I’m concerned with it being the case that society (society’s norms and institutions) ought to be some particular way (with the ‘ought’ interpreted as ‘required’). I’ve got some thoughts relating that post to this one.
(1) Society S being required to be way W includes a special case of it being the case that (a) S ought to be W (where ‘ought’ does not mean the same thing as ‘required’). It also includes something like this: (b) our being required (society being required) to do something to bring about S being W.
(2) On my analysis here, [a] essentially involves it being appropriate for one to have negative person-direct attitudes toward anyone not caring about S being W (and not doing easily-enough-doable things to promote S being W; and, I would add here, toward people actively doing things, especially intentionally, that make it harder for S to be W). How might this square with a similar, fitting-attitudes-based analysis of [b]?
(3) Try this for [b]: for us (society) to be required to do something about S being W (about S presently failing to be W) essentially involves it being the case that it is not only appropriate but advisable for one to have sharp negative person-directed attitudes (anger in the ordinary sense of the term) toward, in particular, people failing to do their part (what they can do easily-enough, etc.) in getting society arranged such that S is W (also, at the level of action, one would have both attitude-appropriateness-grounded and strong practical reasons favoring the behaviors and practices of “holding people to account” for doing their part, etc.).
All of this is far from a proper analysis (of either [a] or [b]). But it interestingly (and plausibly) it presses in the direction of these two claims: first, that sometimes things (and in particular ways that society could be) ought to be a certain way, without it being the case that we are particularly required to do anything about it and, second, that the difference between this and it is also being the case that we are required to promote the state of affairs that ought to be (that society is required to be a certain way) is: (i) partly a function of appropriate strength of reaction and (ii) partly a function of relevant practical considerations that make person-directed, holding-to-account sorts of response to people doing (or failing to do) their part to make S be W not only appropriate, but advisable (advisable for each of us and hence perhaps advisable from the standpoint of a certain general or public-spirited commitment).
(We might, then, interpret my earlier post as making certain claims about what our being required to make S be W comes to, when it is cashed out in terms of the reasons, requirements, etc. of individuals (in the context of coordination or collective action problems that we face in each doing her part or what she can to realize or promote S being W). That, in any case, is what the back-and-forth in the comments on the earlier post mainly focused on.)
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