Skeletal vs Fleshed-Out Philosophy

All philosophical views are to some degree skeletal. By this, I mean that the details of their application remain to some extent open. This is true of virtually any formal system: Even the 156-page rule handbook for golf couldn't cover every eventuality: What if the ball somehow splits in two and one half falls in the hole? What if an alien spaceship levitates the ball for two seconds as it's arcing through the air? (See the literature on "open textured" statements.)

Still, some philosophical views are more skeletal than others. A bare statement like "maximize utility" is much more skeletal, much less fleshed out, than a detailed manual of utilitarian consequentialist advice. Today, I want to add a little flesh to the skeletal vs. fleshed-out distinction. Doing so will, I hope, help clarify some of the value of trying to walk the walk as an ethicist. (For more on walking the walk, see last month's posts here and here.)

[Midjourney rendition of a person and a skeleton talking philosophy, against a background of stars]

Using "maximize utility" as an example, let's consider sources of linguistic, metaphysical, and epistemic openness.

Linguistic: What does "utility" mean, exactly? Maybe utility is positively valenced conscious experiences. Or maybe utility is welfare or well-being more broadly construed. What counts as "maximizing"? Is it a sum or a ratio? Is the scope truly universal -- for all entities in the entire cosmos over all time, or is it limited in some way (e.g., to humans, to Earth, to currently existing organisms)? Absent specification (by some means or other), there will be no fact of the matter whether, say, two acts with otherwise identical results, but one of which also slightly improves the knowledge (but not happiness) of one 26th-century Martian, are equally choiceworthy according to the motto. 

Metaphysical: Consider a broad sense of utility as well-being or flourishing. If well-being has components that are not strictly commensurable -- that is, which cannot be precisely weighed against each other -- then the advice to maximize utility leaves some applications open. Plausibly, experiencing positive emotions and achieving wisdom (whatever that is, exactly) are both part of flourishing. While it might be clear that a tiny loss of positive emotion is worth trading off for a huge increase in wisdom and vice versa, there might be no fact of the matter exactly what the best tradeoff ratio is -- and thus, sometimes, no fact of the matter whether someone with moderate levels of positive emotion and moderate levels of wisdom has more well-being than someone with a bit less positive emotion and a bit more wisdom.

Epistemic: Even absent linguistic and metaphysical openness, there can be epistemic openness. Imagine we render the utilitarian motto completely precise: Maximize the total sum of positive minus negative conscious experiences for all entities in the cosmos in the entire history of the cosmos (and whatever else needs precisification). Posit that there is always an exact fact of the matter how to weigh competing goods in the common coin of utility and there are never ties. Suppose further that it is possible in principle to precisely specify what an "action" is, individuating all the possible alternative actions at each particular moment. It should then always be the case that there is exactly one action you could do that would "maximize utility". But could you know what this action is? That's doubtful! Every action has a huge number of non-obvious consequences. This is ignorance; but we can also think of it as a kind of openness, to highlight its similarity to linguistic and metaphysical openness or indeterminacy. The advice "maximize utility", however linguistically and metaphysically precise, leaves it still epistemically open what you should actually do.

Parallel remarks apply to other ethical principles: "Act on that maxim that you can will to be a universal law", "be kind", "don't discriminate based on race", "don't perform medical experiments on someone without their consent" -- all exhibit some linguistic, metaphysical, and epistemic openness.

Some philosophers might deny linguistic and/or metaphysical openness: Maybe context always renders meanings perfectly precise, and maybe normative facts are never actually mushy-edged and indeterminate. Okay. Epistemic openness will remain. As long as we -- the reader, the consumer, the applier, of the philosophical doctrine -- can't reasonably be expected to grasp the full range of application, the view remains skeletal in my sense of the term.

It's not just ethics. Similar openness also pervades other areas of philosophy. For example, "higher order" theories of consciousness hold that an entity is conscious if and only if it has the right kind of representations of or knowledge of its own mental states or cognitive processes. Linguistically, what is meant by a "higher order representation", exactly? Metaphysically, might there be borderline cases that are neither determinately conscious nor unconscious? Epistemically, even if we could precisify the linguistic and metaphysical issues, what actual entities or states satisfy the criteria (mice? garden snails? hypothetical robots of various configurations?).

The degree of openness of a position is itself, to some extent, open: There's linguistic, metaphysical, and epistemic meta-openness, we might say. Even a highly skeletal view rules some things out. No reasonable fleshing out of "maximize utility" is consistent with torturing babies for no reason. But it's generally unclear where exactly the boundaries of openness lie, and there might be no precise boundary to be discovered.

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Now, there's something to be said for skeletal philosophy. Simple maxims, which can be fleshed out in various ways, have an important place in our thinking. But at some point, the skeleton needs to get moving, if it's going to be of use. Lying passively in place, it might block a few ideas -- those that crash directly against its obvious bones. But to be livable, applicable, it needs some muscle. It needs to get up and walk over to real, specific situations. What does "maximize utility" (or whatever other policy, motto, slogan, principle) actually recommend in this particular case? Too skeletal a view will be silent, leaving it open.

Enter the policy of walking the walk. As an ethicist, attempting to walk the walk forces you to flesh out your view, applied at least to the kinds of situations you confront in your own life -- which will of course be highly relevant to you and might also be relevant to many of your readers. What actions, specifically, should a 21st-century middle-class Californian professor do to "maximize utility"? Does your motto "be kind" require you to be kind to this person, in this particular situation, in this particular way? Confronting actual cases and making actual decisions motivates you to repair your ignorance about how the view would best apply to those cases. Linguistically, too, walking the walk enables you to make the content of your mottoes more precise: "Be kind" means -- in part -- do stuff like this. In contrast, if you satisfy yourself with broad slogans, or broad slogans plus a few paragraph-long thought-experimental applications, your view will never be more than highly skeletal. 

Not only our readers, but also we philosophers ourselves, normally remain substantially unclear on what our skeletal mottoes really amount to until we actually try to apply them to concrete cases. In ethics -- at least concerning principles meant to govern everyday life (and not just rare or remote cases) -- the substance of one's own life is typically the best and most natural way to add that flesh.