Franz Brentano has unique answers to questions posed in moral philosophy. T. M. Scanlon has revived Brentano’s particular approach within the context of contemporary metaethics. This essay will compare Brentano’s account with Scanlon’s “buck-passing” account, and note the advantages of Brentano’s view. The buck-passing account seems to stumble when faced with the “wrong kinds of reason” problem; however, Brentano overcomes this hurdle with his notion of “correctness.” This notion must be explored further, especially with some of the tools provided by contemporary moral philosophy. I suggest that Brentano’s notion of correctness raises questions which cannot be adequately dealt with by a discrete look into Brentano’s philosophy; rather, contemporary solutions – mostly from the philosophy of emotion and moral psychology – can supplement Brentano’s picture.

To paint the background Scanlon’s view, we can make an initial distinction in the normative sphere between evaluative concepts and deontic concepts. Deontic concepts include things like reason, right, wrong, duty, obligation, and so forth. Evaluative concepts include things like value, good, bad, better, worse, and the like. Metaethics, and Scanlon’s enterprise, comments on the nature of these concepts and how we are to understand their relation. For instance, we might say that “good” (or “value”)[1] is a simple, basic (unanalyzable) property; as such, one might use “good” to define all the other concepts – say, actions are “better” if they have more good, or we have a “reason” to act if it gets us closer to good.

Scanlon’s buck-passing account takes a particular stance on the relation between these categories (viz. deontic and evaluative) of normative concepts. Buck-passing is committed to the idea that evaluative concepts can be analyzed using deontic concepts; more specifically, “good” is to have other properties which provide “reasons” (to respond). (p. 97) On this view, when we say something is “intrinsically good,” we are not saying that there is some concept “good” which makes the thing intrinsically good. Rather, when we say something is “intrinsically good,” we look at the reasons to respond: namely, natural properties, like attractiveness or happiness. Let me clarify, a response, here, does not have to mean action; it can also mean to take up an attitude to favor something (a “pro-attitude”), or even to take an attitude against it. Hedonism is a type of buck-passing; that is, good things have the natural property of pleasure which ground all practical reasons. Again, “good” does not add a further reason to favor something; rather, it merely tracks reasons to respond and collect things that are valuable on other grounds. (Scanlon, 1998)

A question arises: on this account, what exactly is meant by “good?” In short, it is a higher-order property which is determined by the lower-order natural properties. For instance, when we say the chocolate bar is “good,” we do not mean that our liking the chocolate bar is because there is some property of “goodness” within in the chocolate bar. When we say that the chocolate bar is “good,” we mean that it has a natural property of pleasurableness (begotten from the sweetness, richness, or creaminess of the chocolate bar). What makes us like (or take up a pro-attitude towards) the chocolate bar is its pleasurableness. “Good,” then, means having a reason to take up a pro-attitude – in the chocolate bar example, the “goodness” is the pleasurableness. In other words, the reasons are generated from the good-making property, not “good” per se. In effect, the normative “buck” is passed from the “good” to the natural, good-making properties.

Moving on, we must sketch Brentano’s position. We must first situate his moral psychology in his general theory of mind, and then discern his specific metaethical views from his moral psychology. His general theory of mind focuses on objects of inner perception – that is, a sort of first-person phenomenological point of view. Brentano identifies three kinds of mental phenomena: presentations, judgments, and love/hate. The last category, the phenomena of love and hate, is what is relevant for our purpose, but love/hate is somewhat dependent on the other categories. Presentation is the act of being directed towards an object – for instance, seeing, remembering, imagining. A judgment is based on the presentation: we can accept or deny it. So, once an object is presented to us, and we accept it, we have some feelings towards it, which end up being positive (“love”) or negative (“hate”). This final category of love/hate is where we can find his metaethical views.

Brentano makes a distinction between “what we value” and “what is objectively valuable” through the notion of “correctness,” or having the right kinds of feelings. This is to say that emotions can be correct or incorrect. For instance, saying pleasurableness is “good” means that it is correct to value it positively, or love pleasurableness and pursue it as an end. Now, let me be careful here to distinguish the separate roles of judgement and love/hate. We can value a thing, assign love/hate, without judging that the thing valuable; note, this is discrete to love/hate. Indeed, it is necessary to have an initial merely emotional (love/hate) attitude to engage in evaluative judgement – without this initial emotional attitude, there would be nothing to evaluate. It seems confusing to think that emotions can provide us with moral truths, but much rests on the notion of correction.

To clarify, “correctness” in emotion must not be confused with “correctness” in judgment. Note early that both forms of correctness have a distinctive phenomenology – we know when we are experiencing “correctness.” Let us briefly revisit judgment to understand correctness in this context. Judgments are correct when they are made from self-evidence, which is derived through inner perception. Since judgments assess presentations, self-evidence judgments – and consequently, the experience of correctness – manifests when comparing self-evident judgments with the contrary. We can derive the notion of impossibility by reflecting on judgments made when we are presented with things like round squares or married bachelors. We can similarly derive notions of correctness by universalizing self-evident judgments. For example, when presented with a chocolate bar, this presentation can be affirmed or rejected; since we already have some notion of self-evident judgments, we can then compare this particular judgment with our notion of self-evident judgments. Correct judgements are ones that match up with self-evident judgments.[2]

The “correctness” in emotions is different from the “correctness” in judgement, but they are analogous features in their structure. In the way judgments can be self-evident to be correct, emotions can derive correctness in a similar way. For instance, we may love the pleasurableness from chocolate and compare to the contrary – mainly, hating the pleasurableness of chocolate. Loving something can be universalized much the same way self-evident judgments are (i.e. through inner perception), so we can correctly love the pleasurableness from the chocolate (and incorrectly hate it). This is a rough picture of Brentano’s metaethics.

Let us now make the connections between Scanlon and Brentano more explicit. They are motivated by the same questions: What are moral truths? How do we know them? How do they affect us? They have a similar starting point in that they merely want to show that “we have good grounds for taking certain conclusions that actions are right or are wrong to be correct […]” (Scanlon, 1998, p. 2) They also have an aim of clarifying what is intrinsically good or valuable; indeed, they take ethics to deal with “those ends which are worthy of being pursued for their own sake.” (Brentano, 1952, p. 7) The main point of similarity between Scanlon and Brentano is the “good” – or, for Brentano, “love” – is conceptually subsequent. “Reasons” or “correctness” always come first, and then good is fixed to these terms.

A difference is what they see as the preconditions for moral knowledge. For Scanlon, there are reasons, for Brentano, there are emotions. For Brentano, moral judgements are judgements about the correctness of emotions. For Scanlon, moral judgements are the natural properties which give us reasons to act. For Brentano, to favor something is just to have the phenomenological experience of “preferring.” (Brentano, 1889, p. 26) The normative is explained in terms of this preference, or “better than.” To compare Brentano and Scanlon, we would need to see how comprehensive their views are, and this is done by assessing how well their accounts deal with problem cases.

One sort of problem for these types of accounts is the “wrong kinds of reason” (WKR) problem. The WKR problem is that there seem to be cases where we have reasons to favor an attitude which seems intuitively not good (or not valuable). The usual example is Roger Crisp’s (2005)[3] demon example: imagine an evil demon threatens to punish you unless you desire a cup of mud. Here, we have a reason to desire the cup of mud, but we are hesitant to say that there is anything good (or valuable) about the cup of mud; however, if we are committed to buck-passing accounts, we may be committed to saying that the cup of mud is good. In other words, the issue is that we have reasons to favor an object that has nothing to do with the object itself; rather, it has to do with reasons for favoring the favoring attitude.

Even if it were not an evil demon, but your caring wife who wants you to love a vase she bought. The reason to love the vase is make your wife feel good about her purchase, and we have reasons to love the vase even if it is aesthetically very ugly. G. E. Moore has a similar concern. (Moore, 1902) Moore has trouble saying that “inanimate beautiful objects” are intrinsically good; rather, our appreciation of them makes them good. To use a modern economic analogy, it is like a Veblen good. Veblen goods are things which have a demand strictly because of its high price and not because of the value of the thing itself (e.g. luxury cars, designer handbags, expensive wines). We seem to want Veblen goods for the wrong kinds of reasons.  Attempts have been made to address the WKR problem, but subsequent counterexamples and modifications to the WKR scenarios have also been put forth.

Derek Parfit (2001) provides a useful distinction that may relieve the tension: objective-give considerations and state-given considerations. If we map these distinctions onto the example of the demon threatening us to desire a cup of mud, we might say that the state-given consideration is the incentive to avoid punishment whereas the object-given consideration is attached to the mud itself. We might further say that we have “reason to favor” the state-given consideration of avoiding punishment (thereby saying it is valuable or good); conversely, we say that the object-given consideration of the mud itself is not a “reason to favor.”

But there are problem cases which are immune to Parfit’s attempt at a resolution. Berys Gaut (2007) thinks of the hilarious joke that is also cruel. Here, we might think we have state-given considerations to not laugh at the joke, and thereby no reasons to favor this state-given consideration. However, the object-given consideration is stipulated as hilarious, and we might have reasons to favor the joke itself. This is problematic on the buck-passing account because we seem to have a reason to favor the joke, since it is hilarious, but we have some Frankfurt-like second order desire not to desire to favor it (since it is a cruel joke, and we do not want to be cruel by laughing at the joke). It is unclear whether the joke is valuable or good. In the end, it seems the “wrong kinds of reasons” problem still stands for buck-passing accounts.

On Brentano’s picture, the “wrong kinds of reasons” problem does not appear to be explicitly problematic. Brentano gives an explicitly criteria of demarcating the right kinds of reasons from the wrong kinds of reasons through the notion of “correctness.” In effect, the right kinds of reasons are self-evident because we can experience the “correctness” of emotions. In the cruel joke example, we can affirm the correct love of the “hilariousness” and reject the correct love of “cruelness.” Sven Danielsson (2007) notes a “Brentano-style approach” to addressing the classic demon example. He notes a distinction between holding-reasons (reasons for having an attitude) and content-reasons (reasons for the correctness of the attitude. He further makes a distinction between beliefs and conative attitudes. We can cite holding-reasons for a belief (we ought to have the belief) and we can holding-reasons for a conative attitude (we ought to have the attitude); similarly, we can cite content-reasons for a belief (we ought to believe that it is true) and content-reasons for a conative attitude (we ought to have the attitude that it is true). In the demon example, we can identify the mud as a holding-reason to have the conative attitude to favor the mud, but not the parallel content-reason. Here, the content-reasons for a conative attitude are what correctness is supposed to be.

But this raises further worries. Despite doing better against the WKR problem than buck-passing accounts, the reason for Brentano’s account doing better against the WKR problem (viz. correctness) raises further questions. What does it mean for an emotion to be correct? What is the nature of the phenomenology of correctness? How does emotion and correctness relate to the object? Perhaps these are reasons to think Brentano’s views are suspect. I think, however, the many questions raised by Brentano’s notion of correctness are being tackled by contemporary moral psychologists and philosophers of emotion. The rest of this paper will elucidate on some avenues of research and connect them to Brentano’s enterprise.

Christine Tappolet (2016) gives one account of what we might want to mean when we say emotions are “correct.” In sketching her view, she gives a helpful survey of competing views of emotion: namely, conative theories, cognitive theories, and perceptual theories. Conative theories have the advantage of propositional content in desire, but they lack “correctness conditions.” (p. 10) Cognitive theories say emotions are cognitive states, but this seems counterintuitive. Perceptual theories say that emotions are “perceptual experiences of evaluative properties” (p. 10), and she finds this most convincing. She adds that perceptual theories have analogues in perceptual experience: the experience (say) of blue has the same phenomenal analogue in experiences (say) of fear. (p. 19) To add, perceptual theories have an explanation of the casual link between events in the world and emotion; moreover, they have correctness conditions and seem to capture some intuitions about emotions. More specifically, she calls her view, “sentimental realism,” and argues that “evaluative concepts have to be explained in terms of fitting or appropriate emotions, and are thus response-dependent. But the properties they pick out are fully objective as well….” (p. 79) Here we see a sort of hybrid view of buck-passing and Brentano. Like the buck-passing account, evaluative concepts are collapsed into deontic ones, but, like Brentano, the deontic concepts are “correct”[4] emotions; moreover, like buck-passing, the basic properties are natural (or “objective) properties. It must be noted that Tappolet’s views do not map perfectly, but we can see strands of similarities with buck-passing and Brentano.

Others in the philosophy of emotion aim to answer questions of how emotions may be evaluative in the right sense. This can inform our discussion of Brentano’s notion of “correctness.” Justin D’Arm and Daniel Jacobson (2000) investigate the relation between emotions and judgments (qua beliefs of evaluation). They find emotions are inextricably linked to judgments; even when we resist emotions, thereby resisting the evaluative presentation, they still have an affective presence on us. Resisting disgust, for example, is like “being aware of perceiving an optical illusion” (p. 67) – that is, even if we are aware that we are feeling disgust, we cannot mitigate its effect on our judgment (just as we cannot mitigate the effect of optical illusions). Furthermore, they note that emotions can be criticized the way judgments can. Idioms like, “don’t cry over spilt milk” and “the grass is always greener on the other side,” point at the size or degree of certain emotions; in other words, some emotions like sadness or envy can be inappropriate or unfitting if they are overblown (or they are “overreactions”). This picture gives support to Brentano’s general psychology in that emotions and judgments are closely linked, and that emotions have an innately evaluative quality.

Ronald de Sousa (2016) picks up on this point, and expands on the epistemic role of emotions. For Brentano, this is precisely the phenomenon of “correctness.” He notes some intrinsically epistemic feelings, like knowing, doubting, certainty, and familiarity, but he also notes some other feelings which act like epistemic feelings, like fear, greed, trust, and doubt. (p. 3) The later feelings which act like epistemic feelings affect things like convictions or inferences – for instance, fear diverts attention and motivates self-deception, but it is also an “instinctive measure of risk.” (p. 4) This all goes to suggest that perhaps Brentano’s “correctness” may be expanded to include emotions, or, at the very least, it is not the exclusive standard for assessing emotions. Still, Brentano’s “correctness” may yet be the best standard. The phenomenology of this “correctness” might be compared to the certainty mentioned by Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum,” (p. 9) or the feeling of rightness experienced by religious experiences.  

Moral psychologists have also contributed to the questions raised by Brentano’s notion of “correctness.” Jesse Prinz (2006) suggests a “methodological promiscuity” to “intermingle empirical and philosophical results.” (p. 30) There are many empirical studies to suggest the fact that emotions influence moral judgment. The emotion of disgust was examined when subjects were given a series of vignettes[5] and asked to rate the wrongness. One set of subjects read the vignettes at a clean desk and the other set of subjects read the vignettes at a dirty desk, as to elicit the emotional response of disgust. The studies found that the subjects at the dirty desk rated the vignettes as more wrong than the subjects at the clean desk. The takeaway here is that emotions go hand-in-hand with moral judgments. Many other experiments come to similar conclusions which inform our philosophy (or psychology).

Some moral psychologists start with the psychology and use that as the starting point for philosophy. Let us explore how some using this approach have come up with philosophical conclusions useful for expanding Brentano’s picture. Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell (2012) have rested their moral psychology on the “dual process” (p. 319) model. Here, two systems work at the aim of moral evaluative: first, “system 1” is a quick, automatic, emotion-driven system; second, “system 2” is a slow, controlled, reason-driven system. These authors resist the claim that the emotionally based system 1 is unreliable, and they show this through a cumulative case of empirical studies, especially studies measuring responses of subjects exposed to moral dilemmas. Their aim is to find an empirically based model of the moral mind, and subsequently answer philosophical questions from there.

If empirical research can indeed inform our general metaethics or moral philosophy, it will have implications on how we answer the questions from Brentano. The field of experimental philosophy aims at using empirical data to inform philosophical questions, and this is particularly useful for Brentano. Those working in this field have an approach similar to Brentano, except they have varied methodologies for studying (phenomenal) conscious states. The dual process model, for instance, corroborates Brentano’s account of phenomenological psychology. We can map on the initial love/hate to system 1, and find the “correctness” within system 2. Perhaps there can be some amalgamation of the inner, phenomenal philosophy of Brentano, and the outer, objective science.

Philosophy of emotion provides some useful conceptual tools to tackle some of the questions raised by Brentano’s notion of correctness, and experimental philosophy’s development in methodology may provide further support to buttress Brentano’s picture. Competing theories, like Scanlon’s buck-passing account, seems to require major patchwork to overcome issues like the “wrong kinds of reason” problem. Brentano was hauntingly ahead of his time: he had a more comprehensive account and pointed to questions which are hot topics for moral philosophers now.

---

[1] I use them interchangeably; similarly, “goodness” and “valuableness.” I will sometimes add one or the other to clarify or channel the right intuitions.

[2] Although all self-evident judgements are correct, not all correct judgements are evident.

[3] Crisp (2005) notes some other issues with buck-passing. He notes an issue with treating lower-order as natural properties misrepresenting the phenomenology of evaluative experience. He also notes that this may lead to troubles with discriminating between different kinds of values (e.g. grace and sublimity cannot be capture in terms of a set of natural properties).

[4] It is unclear if “correct” is used by Tappolet the same sense as Brentano. I think it is, as she quotes Chisholm (p. 87) and states that “appropriate” emotion might understood as one that ought to be felt in the normative sense.

[5] For example: cooking and eating the family dog, flushing the country’s flag down the toilet, having sex with a chicken, having sex with one’s siblings, and so forth.