Shiffrin and the Toxin Problem
Sorry if my thoughts are a bit scattered (aka make no sense) in this post; I just woke up and had a barely coherent string of thoughts hit my brain. Hopefully something interesting comes out of me posting this!
Here's the quote from Shiffrin that for whatever reason triggered thoughts in my mind about the toxin problem: "Relationships of recognition and close relationships–both necessary for full self-development and flourishing–rely on access to the contents of one another's minds (10)." Specifically, these thoughts center around our discussion of promises/agreements in relation to the problem that rational choice theorists have in not being able to make promises (as the toxin problem illustrates).
My first thought when reading this was that Shiffrin's observation that "relationships...rely on access to the contents of one another's minds" suggests a potential framework where promises function as a particular form of truth-oriented communication (10). This is because, when we make genuine promises, we communicate our true intentions regarding future actions and share the contents of our minds about what we commit to do.
Sadly, her discussion of promises in "Promises as a Moral Resource" in relation to the discussion at hand is restricted solely to the notion that "promises have special, distinctive normative force because they allow the promisee to direct the promisor's activity in a way that she could not prior to the promise and to do so on the basis of an authority interest that is as of right" (56). She focuses more on promises under duress and how they represent "an opportunity for forging some form of settlement and resolution of conflict" (59), but my focus is more on situations wherein promises are made, not under duress, but organically (resulting in mutual benefit and access to community and associated internal goods as defined by MacIntyre).
Question Here: Could the practice of promising be understood as a method designed to facilitate the truthful sharing / communication of mental contents across time, allowing others to coordinate their actions with our future selves and secure the progression of moral agency?
It seems to me that promises might function as powerful moral tools within Shiffrin's framework because the framework prioritizes access to mental contents, which she asserts to be fundamental to moral development. As Shiffrin describes, we become moral agents partly through learning about and responding to the mental states of others (Intro). In my mind, promises could extend this access across time, creating a bridge between present intentions and future actions. More importantly, in non-duress situations, promises may play a role in generating the necessary conditions for ongoing collaborative projects and the cultivation of virtues that depend on not only truthful communication, but reliable commitment.
Generally speaking, I feel as though promises serve as tools for additional relationship-building and "moral glue" by introducing trust and truth into situations where it might have been absent previously. Specifically, the act of committing to future action regardless of changing circumstances creates foundations for deeper forms of moral recognition and development between individuals. Through the practice of promising, people might be able to develop expanded capacities for things like fidelity and integrity.
As we explored, the toxin puzzle reveals a profound limitation for rational choice theorists in that they are unable to genuinely make promises. Because promises require committing to future actions regardless of preferences at the time of performance, recalculating (as a rational choice theorist must) at each point in the decision-making process will not allow you to make that commitment.
To me, this points out some glaring limitations to rational choice theory regarding moral development:
Exclusion from Cooperative Moral Development: Rational choice theorists appear fundamentally excluded from certain forms of truth-telling, relationship-building, and moral growth (à la that which depends on promises). If Shiffrin is right that relationships rely on access to the contents of one another's minds, then the inability to make binding commitments severely restricts participation in the collective moral project of developing agency through mutual recognition and trust within communication. In this way, it seems as though the rational choice theorist can't be fully immersed or participate in the moral community because they cannot offer others reliable (true) access to their future intentions.
Fragmentation of Moral Agency: The capacity to make and keep promises might also be fundamental to how we understand ourselves as moral agents over time. This suggests rational choice theorists might be unable to develop a coherent moral identity that persists meaningfully across time, rather, they found their identity on a sequence of incohesive, singular moments of utility maximization.
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