Intentions, Judgments, and Weakness of the Will

I wrote this paper for a Metaethics class while completing my MA in Philosophy.  This was submitted on May 11, 2011 and remains as I submitted it (apart from formatting changes).
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          Traditionally, weakness of the will has been characterized as a person choosing to act against his or her best judgment about what he or she should do.  That is, one recognizes that it would be best to do one thing but chooses to do another instead.  This choice is free and hence is not compelled; the agent could have done otherwise (Watson 114).  Such a conception dates back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  Socrates famously denied that a person could knowingly fail to do what he or she believed was best “because he believed that human beings always most desire, and hence pursue, what is (thought to be) best” (Watson 114).  One could interpret Plato’s later writings as suggesting that weakness of will occurs when the nonrational part of the soul overpowers the rational part of the soul and so “the desires of the nonrational soul may motivate the agent contrary to his or her ‘desires’ for the good” (Watson 115).  Aristotle attempted to explain the phenomenon by suggesting that, while reflecting on knowledge, one could not act against it.  However, such knowledge could be stored in one’s mind but not consciously reflected on at the moment of action.  Hence, this knowledge would not be readily available to guide the agent and so the agent’s action would not consciously contradict this knowledge.  Alternatively, such knowledge could be faked and hence not really known, like an actor reciting lines on a stage.  Nevertheless, if one had full unqualified knowledge about how to act, one could not act against one’s best judgment.

          While many contemporary philosophers have continued to explain, criticize, and defend weakness of will as understood along similar lines as proposed by the ancients, Richard Holton has recently offered a different conception of weakness of will.  He believes that weakness of will is best characterized as being displayed in cases when a person fails to act on his or her intentions, though not in all such cases.  For example, a person may choose to not act on an intention because the circumstances surrounding that intention have changed.  Or perhaps that person has acquired new information that bears on the action or has reconsidered the information relevant to the situation and has rightly judged that one’s previous intentions were ill-considered (Holton, “Intention” 1).  What is distinctive, then, in cases of weakness of will is that “agents are too ready to reconsider their intentions” when faced with a choice about an action (Holton, “Intention” 1).  The agent’s intentions are not sufficiently resistant to being changed and hence these intentions of the agent’s will are weak.  This paper will explain and critique this conception of weakness of will, but will ultimately find a revised version of it satisfactory in explaining what we intuitively take be instances of weakness of will.  That is, weakness of will involves an agent freely choosing to act against her ongoing intentions that were formed on the basis of her best rational judgment so as to act in accordance with her more immediate desires.

            An agent will quite often form an intention to perform a certain act in the future.  This intention is a decision to act that is stored until the moment of action comes.  If one does not revise one’s intention, then one will act on the basis of that stored decision.  And since such intentions are generally not revised or reconsidered, they are thought to be fairly stable (Holton, “Intention” 3).  For our purposes, such intention-forming abilities are useful because they allow us to make decisions about our future actions in circumstances that are more conducive to making a good decision.  For example, suppose that I believe that I should act in a certain way in the future but I know that I will be tempted not to when the time arrives.  “Then it would be useful to form an intention now, an intention that will lead me directly to act when the time comes, and that will be somewhat immune to reconsideration in the light of the desires I shall have then” (Holton, “Intention” 4).  Thus, by forming a prior intention to act, one can overcome a present desire that may influence one’s decision to act in the moment.  One has already made the decision and so the desire cannot enter into one’s deliberation about the act. 

            This is especially important in instances where one act will not lead to harm, but repeating the action over and over will.  For example, one may eat a carton of ice cream one night.  In itself, this action will not be very harmful to one’s health, although making a habit of eating a carton of ice cream every night would lead to serious health problems.  However, every night a person could reason that it’s just one carton of ice cream and one carton of ice cream is not that unhealthy.  In fact, if we just focus on eating this one carton of ice cream, then perhaps all things considered, it will be best to have this carton of ice cream (e.g., one experiences satisfaction, pleasure).  But even if each individual instance by itself will produce the best outcome at the time, one will quickly experience very serious health problems if one only considers each instance in isolation.  In order to counteract this way of reasoning, one needs “a general intention concerning a certain type of action; … a policy intention” (Holton, “Intention” 4).  That is, one needs to form a general intention that rules out specific actions on the basis that repeating them will lead consequences that one wishes to avoid.

            According to Holton, weakness of will occurs when one does not follow one’s prior intentions regarding specific acts or types of acts.  Instead, one reconsiders or revises the previously made decision “in circumstances in which they should not have revised it” (Holton, “Intention” 5).  This revision “exhibits tendencies that it is not reasonable for the agent to have” (Holton, “Intention” 6).  That is, it conflicts with norms of reasoning.  For example, it is generally reasonable to change one’s intention if the circumstances change, but not if the circumstances remain the same since one has already formed a decision to act on the basis of the same available information.  In the case of weakness of will, one typically has formed an intention to act that one knows will be met with contrary desires at the moment of action.  The intention is supposed to overcome these contrary desires by precluding them from the decision process.  However, in the face of these contrary desires, one reconsiders and revises one’s decision, thereby accommodating the desires that were meant to be ignored and overcome.

            As such, there are two components to Holton’s conception of weakness of will.  First, the descriptive component requires that in order for an agent to display weakness of will, she must have first formed an intention to act that is then revised at the time of action.  Second, the normative component requires that the revision should not have been done as measured “by the standards of a good intender” (Holton, “Intention” 13).  Holton does not explicitly say what he means by “good intender”, but we may take him to mean that a person who follows through on her intentions in circumstances that society would approve of and who revises her intentions only when society would approve of such a revision would not make a revision in this case; this revision did not conform to norms of reasoning.  This is in contrast to the traditional account in which there is only a descriptive component: the agent acts weakly when acting against her best judgment about an action.

            This view, Holton believes, has several advantages over the traditional view in which weakness of will has to do with acting against one’s better judgment instead of too readily revising one’s intentions to act. I note two here.  First, Holton points out that there are instances of weakness of will in which we do not act against our better judgment.  There are situations in which we are faced with choosing from two actions that, though conflicting, are difficult or impossible to compare with each other and so neither is judged to be better than the other.  For example, I may desire to study philosophy (requiring me to live far from home), but this conflicts with a desire to live close to my family.  It is difficult to assess which of these actions is better as they take into account different values and considerations and so are not directly comparable.  Nevertheless, if I were to choose one course of action but then fail to follow through, I would have acted weakly.  So it is possible to display weakness of will even if one does not act against one’s best judgment.

            Second, Holton’s account makes better sense of the social stigma attached to weakness of will.  Holton notes that we do not regard people as weak willed in all cases when they act against their better judgment, but only when they have publicly declared their intention to do so and have failed.  For example, suppose that a person sincerely judges that eating meat is wrong and that under no ordinary circumstances would it be permissible for her to eat meat.  We wouldn’t yet say that this person was weak willed if she still chose to eat meat regularly.  This person’s actions are inconsistent with rationality, but we would not say that she was weak willed (and hence deserving of “scorn”) unless she had formed and declared a sincere intention to not eat meat but yet did so anyways (Holton, “Intention” 10).  In other words, an action is not weak in virtue of being contrary to a judgment, but in virtue of being contrary to an intention to act.         

          While displaying advantages over the traditional account, Holton’s view is open to criticism. In particular, there are three objections that require a revision of the view if it is to sufficiently avoid them.  First, Holton’s account does not satisfactorily demarcate between instances of compulsion and instances of weakness of will.  On the traditional account, “one displays weakness of will when one freely acts against one’s own best judgement; one is compelled when one’s action against one’s own best judgement is not free” (Holton, “Intention” 15).  Freedom on this account seems to involve one’s having control over one’s actions.  In contrast, Holton’s account makes no mention of control or freedom.  This is a problem since a compulsive person can be understood as forming an intention that is always revised (involuntarily) at the moment of action, and hence compulsive acts would be classified as weak-willed.

            In response, Holton first claims that it would not necessarily be bad to say compulsives were weak-willed, though it may be socially inappropriate to describe them as such (Holton, “Intention” 15).  Gary Watson agrees with this first suggestion in characterizing weakness of will as a form of compulsion.  He does not think that instances of weakness of will involve freedom because in these instances the agent lacks self-control, which is “the capacity to counteract recalcitrant motivation, that is, motivation which is contrary to one’s better judgment” (Watson 117).  This recalcitrant motivation, Watson believes, is “alien” and contrary to the will of the weak individual, just as in cases of compulsion (Watson 119).  So while weakness of will is an instance of compulsion, it is a special case of compulsion.  We judge people to have weakness of will when “they give in to desires which the possession of the normal degree of self-control would enable them to resist” (Watson 122). 

          Given this, we can see that Watson, like Holton, takes weakness of will to be a normative concept.  He goes so far as to say that whether a person displays weakness of will depends on what society she is in, making weakness of will relative to society.  He claims that through socialization, we acquire the capacity to resist desires and to maintain self-control.  In light of this, we hold each other responsible for maintaining a certain standard of conduct.  A person displays weakness of will by falling short of these standards of self-control.  On the other hand, a person displays compulsion when we recognize that they are being motivated by desires that would not be countered by having achieved a normal standard of self-control (Watson 123).  That is, the compulsive agent experiences desires that “the normal capacities of resistance are or would be insufficient to enable the agent to resist” (Watson 122). 

            However, though the weakly-willed agent does not have self-control and is being compelled to act, we believe that the desires that motivate them are resistible because “had they developed and maintained certain normal capacities of self-control, they would have resisted them” (Watson 124).  Weak-willed agents are thus like weight-lifters that have failed to train adequately in order to lift a normal amount of weight.  Even though they cannot in fact lift the weight placed before them, we can still blame them for not having trained properly in order to do what is expected of them.  Similarly, we can hold weak-willed agents responsible for their actions in virtue of the fact that they did not develop and maintain normal capacities of self-control; they are responsible in virtue of their negligence, even though at the time of action they cannot do otherwise. 

          But Watson’s account and Holton’s first response both seem wrong on several points.  First, weakness of will is not an external relation compared to other members of society, but an internal relation with respect to oneself.  On Watson’s account, a highly disciplined Buddhist monk will, having entered into our society, never display weakness of will.  Any potential instance of weakness of will as judged by the standards of conduct of our society will be seen to be an instance of compulsion instead, for the monk has a degree of self-control far beyond what most members of our society have.  However, the monk will know that he has displayed weakness of will in this case.  It seems that he will not compare himself to others in his society, or even to other similar monks; he will assess his actions by what he believes he could have done, that is, by what he believes was in his power to do but yet failed to do.  Consider also that it is possible for a person that was not raised in a society and who lived alone to display weakness of will.  This hermit will simply fail to act on her intentions in this case and will judge herself without making any reference to societal norms.  So it seems that we judge ourselves to have acted weakly when we have failed to act in accordance with a standard set by our own actions and judgments and not those of society.  An account of weakness of will need not reference society in any way and so it must be an internal matter with respect to oneself.

          Second, Watson’s account fails to recognize that, unlike instances of compulsion, the weakly willed person identifies with her action.  She takes the motivation to act to be part of her and so does not view it as an alien or external force.  For example, a drug addict suffering from a compulsion to take drugs will feel as though an external force is pressuring her to take drugs, whereas the recreational drug user that judges such drug use to be wrong will feel motivated internally to take drugs and will take this to be her own motivation.  Thus, the weak agent identifies in some sense not only with her best judgment but also with the contrary motivation or will; she takes herself to be intentionally acting against her own judgment instead of being compelled or overwhelmed by some external force to do so.  So it does not seem that weakness of will can be classified as an instance of compulsion.

          Third, and related to the second criticism, weakly-willed actions are believed to be free and within the agent’s control.  Agents take themselves to be acting freely when they display weakness of will, which explains why we reproach ourselves for failing to act according to our best judgment and original intention.  Watson’s account counters many contemporary accounts in claiming that weakness of will does not involve a free act.  For example, Davidson’s account of incontinent action requires that the agent believe that there is an alternative act open to the agent (Audi 175).  Audi similarly claims that weakness of will is “criticizable” behavior, and can only be criticizable if one is not compelled to act (Audi 179).  Thus, incontinent acts are not done under compulsion (Audi 180).  Freely choosing to act and being in control of that action both seem to be essential features of an agent’s experience in instances of weakness of will.  Given these considerations, it seems that we must disagree with Watson and take Holton’s second suggestion that the policy revision must be within the agent’s power in order for it to be evaluated with respect to reason.  Since the compulsive’s policy revision happens outside of the agent’s control, it does not meet the normative requirement and hence is not an instance of weakness of will.

          While having an adequate response to this first objection, Holton’s argument faces a more serious second objection that requires a revision of his account.  The objection is that while his account seems to make sense of intentions concerning one-time acts, it has a hard time accounting for policy intentions.  Holton considers the case in which we intend to get out of bed every morning at six, but remain in bed one day until nine.  It seems that in such a case, I have not revised my intentions yet I have displayed weakness of will.  Holton claims to the contrary that “I have revised the intention. I haven’t abandoned it altogether, but I have revised it. I have inserted a let-out clause: I intend to get up every day at six, except today” (Holton, “Intention” 14).

            However, this response does not seem adequate.  If we had revised our intention, then we should not feel as though we had failed in some way since we did not fail to act in accordance with our revised intention.  But we do feel as though we have failed, suggesting that we have not revised our original intention.  Instead, we have maintained that intention throughout; it is ongoing.  Dodd similarly claims that “whether [an agent] really did cancel the old policy will be shown by how he acts and feels later. Subsequent guilt feelings, promises never to do that again, and the like are all signs that the policy was still in effect and broken” (Dodd 54).  Holton’s suggestion makes it impossible to ever actually violate one’s intentions; what one does is what one completely intended to do thanks to a quick revision.  Thus, one’s feelings of guilt must come from judging that one had unreasonably revised one’s intentions as judged by society’s standards of reasoning.  However, this seems to amount to a denial of the commonsense understanding of weakness of will as involving a failure to act on one’s best judgment or to follow through on one’s intentions by acting in accordance with them.  It also denies the commonsense understanding that guilt arises through a failure of some kind and not through an instance of unreasonableness or irrationality.

            Dylan Dodd pursues this line of criticism.  While largely agreeing with Holton’s account, he argues against Holton’s suggestion that weakness of will depends on what intentions one should have had when performing an action.  He claims that “what policies one used to have isn’t what makes one’s current actions weak-willed. What matters is the policies one has now—the policies the agent has at the time (s)he performs the action” (Dodd 48).  Holton’s account likens weakness of will to a last minute change in a law whereas Dodd believes that weakness of will is more like disobeying a law that is still in effect.  He claims that “the policy the agent backs— legislates as a law for herself—will come into conflict with certain psychological states, moods, dispositions, and so forth, that the agent will continue to have at various times after she forms the policy” (Dodd 54).  These contrary states will at times incline the agent to act contrary to her policy intentions, resulting in an instance of weakness of will.

          This seems to make intuitive sense.  In an instance of weakness of will, we want to say that the person had the correct will in intending a certain action (that is, a will that was in accordance with one’s best judgment), but that the will was not strong enough to achieve that intention.  In contrast, Holton’s account suggests that instances involving a weak will are actually instances involving a wrong will: the agent revises an intention that she should not have.  Notice that, for Holton, the weakness of will occurs prior to the action.  It is the revision that is done weakly and deserving of scorn, not the actual action that follows from the revision.  In contrast, for Dodd, the weakness of will occurs at the time of action.  One maintains the same intention throughout, but fails to follow through on this intention when the moment to act comes.  Audi shares this intuition, claiming that a condition on an incontinent action is that the agent has “not abandoned” a judgment that there is another action not chosen that would be better to do to than the action that is chosen (Audi 180).  Dodd’s account, like the traditional account, rightly claims that an intention (or best judgment) is maintained throughout one’s engagement in the weak action, thus allowing for there to be a discrepancy between what one intends (or judges best) and what one does. 

            A third and related concern has to do with Holton’s normative component.  We have already seen that it does not make sense to construe weakness of will as an external normative relation, but this is precisely what Holton’s account requires.  According to Holton, whether a revision counts as an instance of weakness of will has to do with whether the revision “exhibits tendencies that it is not reasonable for the agent to have” (Holton, “Intention” 6).  What is reasonable is judged “by the standards of a good intender” (Holton, “Intention” 13).  Thus, an instance of weakness of will is determined by an external relation comparing one’s action to the action of an idealized “good intender” who acts in accordance with accepted norms of reasoning. But whether an action counts as being an instance of weakness of will does not involve an external relation to society, a “good intender”, or norms of reasoning.  The agent knows when she has behaved weakly by looking to her own judgments and intentions, which have been violated by her action. 

          Dodd avoids this issue by developing an account in which weakness of will is purely descriptive.  He writes that one forms a policy that, acting like a law, indicates how one ought to act.  In an instance of weakness of will, “a disposition at a particular time leads one to violate a policy one continues to have at that time” (Dodd 58).  This is a descriptive claim.  One is not judged by standards of reasonableness in revising an intention nor regarded as not displaying norms of self-control.  Instead, weakness of will is judged with respect to the agent alone concerning his or her intentions to act or refrain from acting in a certain way.  Thus, it seems that weakness of will is a descriptive matter as the traditional account and Dodd’s account suggest it to be.

            Finally, Holton does not explain the relationship between one’s best judgment and one’s intentions.  This is not a direct objection to the account, but it is a desiderata of any account that proposes to offer a new account of weakness of will.  In order to offer a satisfactory alternative to the traditional account, one must explain the nature of this relationship and how the alternative account can accommodate the intuition that weakness of will involves acting against one’s best judgment.  I think the answer lies in the obvious fact that one’s intentions to act tend to be based on one’s best judgments.  We generally reflect on circumstances surrounding a decision and then come to some sort of judgment about what our best course of action would be.  We then (usually) form the intention to act in accordance with our best judgment and, barring instances of weakness of will, we act in accordance with our intention.  Thus, when one does violate one’s intention, one (typically) will violate one’s best judgment.  This idea is shared by Audi, who claims that two conditions of an incontinent action are that it is done “intentionally or knowingly” and with the understanding that “there is another action A', such that [the agent]… has judged, or makes or holds the judgment, that it would be better to do A'” (Audi 180).

            Having considered Holton’s account, objections to it, and possible revisions, we can now say what weakness of will is: an agent acts with weakness of will when the agent freely chooses to act against her ongoing intention (and usually, as a consequence, her best judgment).  But while this says what weakness of will is, this does not explain how it is possible.  That is, what has yet to be explained is how or why an agent acts against her intention and thereby against her better judgment.  For example, it certainly seems paradoxical to suggest that one can intend to act against one’s intentions, and so this must be more carefully explained. 

            This is the task that Sarah Buss takes up.  First, Buss defends the claim that “no one can do something intentionally, if she believes that, all things considered, it would be better to do something else” (Buss 16).  That is, an intentional action must follow from and be in conformity to what the agent believes to be, all things considered, the best action at the time of action.  Buss believes this claim is supported by observing that no one can be forced to do something intentionally that she would rather not do (Buss 16).  One may be compelled to act contrary to what one takes to be the best action, all things considered, but one would not be acting on one’s own intentions and thus acting intentionally, since one must identify with one’s intentions and compulsion is self-alienating. 

            Consequently, only an agent’s intentional actions can be considered to be her actions.  Buss claims that “all of the movements of my will—for instance, my choices and decisions—are movements that I make.  None is a mere impersonal occurrence, in which my will moves without my moving it” (Buss 17).  For an action to count as her action it must spring from her; she must identify with the action by approving it and maintaining a sense of ownership over it.  Thus, “a person relates to her own intentions as something she forms (and sustains) herself” (Buss 17).  This is an important point because, as mentioned earlier, we are not alienated from the motivations and intentions that occur in weakness of will.  If we were, then weakness of will would be a form of compulsion, which it is not.  As Buss claims, “though someone may be helpless to resist her inclination to do X, this inclination is powerless to force her to intend to satisfy it, as long as she would really prefer not to” (Buss 18).  However, contrary to an instance of compulsion, an instance of weakness of will does involve a preference to act against one’s best judgment, and hence, one intentionally acts against one’s intentions.  The agent “endorses the very action of which she disapproves” (Buss 29).

          How then does weakness of will occur, given that one can only intentionally act in accordance with one’s all-things-considered best judgment?  This can be explained in the following way.  Normally, we operate under the assumption that, all things considered, it is good to act rationally even in the face of contrary passions.  But occasionally our more immediate passions are strong enough to make it extremely desirable for us to act contrary to what we rationally take to be the best action, all things considered (and contrary to whatever intentions have been formed on the basis of that judgment).  However, in order for an action motivated by these passions to not count as an instance of compulsion, we have to adopt them as our own and so we must undermine the judgment that prevents us from doing so.  To do so, we challenge the belief that it is desirable to act rationally in all circumstances.  Having doubted the basis of rationality, we have given ourselves a reason to not trust the conclusions of reason.  We are therefore free to embrace other desires and to act in accordance with them on the basis of a new all-things-considered best judgment that includes this reason to not trust reason (Buss 33).  That is, we can choose to identify with our desires, and therefore act on them, while still recognizing that our best rational judgment recommends that we should do otherwise.  Thus, one can still make a judgment that an action is best (and hence form an intention to act in accordance with this judgment), but then act against this judgment (and intention) by undermining rationality itself. 

            Acting in this way is irrational, and fits with our later assessment that what we did was irrational.  But in another sense we do maintain our rationality because we are using our rationality to undermine itself.  Buss characterizes this as “a typical piece of tortured rationalizing” (Buss 35).  We attempt to maintain our conception of ourselves as behaving rationally while attempting to avoid the conclusions of our reason, and so we look for reasons to act in accordance with our desires as opposed to our best rational judgment.  Finding such reasons, we can justify our actions and therefore come to identify with them (Buss 36).  Thus, Buss understands weakness of will as involving “a conflict between [an agent’s] actual all-things considered evaluative judgment and the all-things-considered evaluative judgment she believes she would have reached if, when she acted, she had accepted the authority of her own reason” (Buss 36).  This is the result of flawed reasoning that rationalizes in order to justify an action in conformity to one’s desires.  In other words, an instance of weakness of will occurs when one intentionally acts in accordance with one’s new all-things-considered best judgment, which is formed on the basis of desires and a reason that undermines rationality, instead of acting on one’s ongoing intentions that were formed in accordance with one’s best rational judgment of how to act.

            Buss’s account strikes me as correct, but it does require clarifying the proposed account of weakness of will in which an agent acts with weakness of will when the agent freely chooses to act against her continued intentions (and usually as a consequence, her best judgment).  On Buss’s account, the agent has changed her final intentions by changing her all-things-considered best judgment, since at the moment of action she intends to act in accordance with this newly formed all-things-considered best judgment.  However, the best rational judgment remains the same throughout, as does the recognition that one should act in accordance with the intention that was formed in accordance with it. 

          So we should say that weakness of will occurs when the agent freely chooses to act against her intentions that were formed on the basis of her best rational judgment (or formed on the basis of a rational judgment if there is no best alternative).  In order to do so, the agent undermines the rationality of her judgment in order to come to a new all-things-considered “best” and “rational” judgment that accommodates the desires she wishes to identify with as her own.  And as we would expect, once the desires have subsided and the agent recognizes that she has failed to act in accordance with the truly best rational judgment and the intentions formed in accordance with them, the agent feels guilt for doing so.  That is, she recognizes that she has acted in accordance with her own weak will.

Works Cited and Consulted

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. J.A.K. Thomson.  New York: Penguin, 1953. Print.

Audi, Robert.  “Weakness of Will and Practical Judgment.” Nous 13.2 (1979): 173-196.  JSTOR.
          Web. 30 March 2011.

Buss, Sarah. “Weakness of Will.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78.1 (1997): 13-44.  Wiley
          Online Library. Web. 30 March 2011.

Dodd, Dylan. “Weakness of Will as Intention-Violation.” European Journal of Philosophy 17.1
          (2007): 45-59. Wiley Online Library. Web. 30 March 2011.

Holton, Richard.  “Inverse Akrasia and Weakness of Will.” Bibliography: Richard Holton.  MIT,
          7 Jan. 2010. Web. 30 March 2011.

Holton, Richard. “Intention and Weakness of Will.” Home Page: Richard Holton. University of
          Edinburgh, 1 Oct. 2003. Web. 30 March 2011.

Mele, Alfred. “Weakness of Will and Akrasia.” Philosophical Studies 150.3 (2009): 391-404.
          Springer Link. Web. 20 March 2011.

Watson, Gary. “Skepticism About Weakness of Will.” Moral Philosophy. Ed. George Sher.
          Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. 113-128. Print.

In Defense of Naturalism: A Response to Rosati

I wrote this paper for n Ethics class while completing my MA in Philosophy.  This was submitted on October 10, 2011 and remains as I submitted it (apart from formatting changes).
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                In “Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument” Connie Rosati challenges new naturalism’s claim to have closed off any open questions regarding its definition of ‘good.’  Focusing on Peter Railton’s naturalist account, Rosati argues that one can still wonder whether what is ‘good for a person’ on the naturalist view is in fact good for a person (Rosati 65).  If this is the case, then Railton’s definition will not have effectively captured ‘good for a person’ in purely natural terms.  After developing Rosati’s argument, I will argue that it can be resisted in several ways and that the new naturalism is safe from her objections.

                The new naturalist’s goal is to capture the normativity of goodness in purely descriptive and natural terms.   He or she will wish to “construct a descriptive meaning for ‘good’ that secures its recommending and expressive functions simply in virtue of the proposed descriptive content” (Rosati 46-7).  In keeping with this goal, Railton’s ‘synthetic naturalism’ defines ethical terms such as ‘good’ in terms of natural properties and relations to which they are identical a posteriori (Rosati 48, 65).  The view is developed by first noticing that, as expressivism has shown us, ethical judgments are inherently motivating or recommending.  As such, it is “a necessary condition on something’s being good that it be capable of motivating” (Rosati 49).  This is the thesis of existence internalism.  Second, if something is capable of motivating an action, then it must be something that we care about (Rosati 50).  However, individuals obviously care about many different things, so what may be ‘good’ for one person may not be ‘good’ for another in the sense that one person may care about X while another person will not care about X.  Thus, if something is to be considered good for a person, it must be “made for” or “suited to” that person (Rosati 50). 

                When something is good for a person, that person will be motivated by it under certain relevant conditions (Rosati 50).  These relevant conditions, as Railton has developed his view, concern our cognitive status.  We recognize that our desires can be misguided due to faulty or incomplete information or processes and so they, and we, may not fare well in the world (Rosati 51).  Consequently, “the normativity of goodness [for a person] involves not only an internal connection to the individual whose good it is, but justification in the sense of epistemic warrant” (Rosati 51-2).  One must be justified in believing that a course of action will indeed be good for oneself.  Thus, the new naturalist arrives at a definition of goodness for a person: “X is good for a person A iff A would want her actual self to want it were she fully informed and rational and contemplating the position of actual A as someone about to assume her position” (Rosati 52).  As Rosati explains, “a person’s good is indicated by what she would want her actual self to want were she fully informed about her nature and circumstances and completely rational, suffering no cognitive defects and committing no errors in instrumental reasoning” (Rosati 53).

                Rosati believes that Railton’s definition fails because it makes a person’s motivational system determine what counts as ‘good’ for that person, and it may be this very thing that is being questioned by that person.   Consider Rosati’s supposed counterexample in which Sally is concerned that she is living her life in an overly cautious, orderly, and restrictive manner.  She dislikes the fact that she likes order so much, and admires her friend Madelyn’s spontaneity.  Worried that she might be missing out on important things in life, she wonders whether she should become more spontaneous, and seek therapy in order to accomplish this (Rosati 53).  Given this concern, she will wonder if “what someone like herself would want for her if fully informed and rational is indeed good for her” (Rosati 54).  If Sandy can wonder this, then there is still an open question related to Railton’s account of ‘good for a person.’

                What exactly is the worry here?  It seems to be that our personalities may be biased in such a way that a fully informed and rational individual with our personality may not make the best recommendation about what we should do.  Rosati does not explicitly define what she means by “full rationality,” but she does say that a completely rational person would (1) suffer no cognitive defects and (2) would make no errors in instrumental reasoning (Rosati 53).  The biases cannot be from difficulties in reasoning properly and so must come from one’s desires.  Sandy wonders if she ought to desire different things (e.g., spontaneity).  If she was a different sort of person and had different character traits, she would desire different things, and so she wonders if she should be a different sort of person.  Hence, the type of person she currently is cannot play a role in helping her decide what type of person she ought to be, for this is the very thing she is questioning.

                Before moving on, it is important to note that Rosati seems to be assuming a Humean view of practical rationality in which our actions issue from a belief-desire pair that determines our actions.  If two individuals had the same information, the same beliefs, and the same desires, they would make the same decisions.  Consequently, any two fully rational and informed individuals will differ in their recommendations of action only if they have different desires that are relevant to the recommendation. 

                 I believe the new naturalist can resist Rosati’s argument in several different ways.  First, one can take issue with her understanding of ‘full information.’  What ‘full information’ amounts to is never defined by Rosati (probably because she believes that the notion is “not clear or coherent”) (Rosati 67).  Still, she uses it in such a way that it is limited to information concerning facts about one’s actual surroundings (i.e., circumstances) and facts about one’s actual physical and psychological status (i.e., nature).    Notice that important modal information is missing regarding what would happen if Sandy were to follow different recommendations and what another person with different character traits and desires would recommend. 

                Rosati seems to have assumed that if one does not have the proper desires regarding what to do, then one cannot know what to do.  But this is false.  If an idealized individual can have modal knowledge, we can then say that an idealized individual will know which desires and actions are best to have in order to satisfy Sandy’s most fundamental desires and can advise Sandy about how to shape these desires through action, even if the idealized individual does not have these certain character traits.  Sandy’s idealized self will know how a less rigid person will assess Sandy’s situation and will know if being less rigid will lead to satisfying her fundamental desires.  Thus, Sandy’s idealized self can make the best recommendation for Sandy and consequently there will be no open question about whose advice to follow. 

                Second, notice that I am assuming that Sandy has fundamental desires that she identifies with.  These desires are unchangeable.  Take Sandy for example.  In order to make sense of her wondering whether to be another sort of person, we have to attribute to her some feature that will survive any change.  Not all of her desires can change, particularly those that are fundamental to who she is.  Instead, she seems to be concerned with modifying some of her desires and motivations, and only those that she does not identify with.  Rosati seems to be presupposing that one can critically assess each of one’s desires, as though we can put them all aside and look at them.  She claims that Sandy can consider “which desires to embrace or reject, which motivations and traits to retain or transform.  Through her reflection, she comes to dissociate herself from some of her desires, motivations, and traits, while identifying with others” (Rosati 61).  This is true with regards to first order desires, but is more difficult and perhaps impossible with higher order and more fundamental desires.  Indeed, how should we critically assess our desires if there were no guiding or overriding desires to assess them by?  Thus, I believe that Rosati’s notion that we “self-invent” is too strong, for we can only “self-invent” within limits. 

                Rosati may respond that perhaps some of our desires are fixed, but this gives rise to the very problem she has pointed out, for idealized advisors will have different fundamental desires and therefore will recommend different things.  However, it seems to me that any two sorts of people will have some fundamental desires in common, and if so, then all idealized advisors will have some common fundamental desires that can ground and unify their recommendations.  Hume believed that there are universal sentiments in humans that come from our nature.  Consequently, humans will have some fundamental desires in common.  So it is not true that “an account of a person’s good will fail to be suited to persons as self-inventors insofar as it treats a person as identical with certain motivations or traits, for this is to accord her current features a normative authority that they lack” (Rosati 62).  There are current motivations or traits that are given to us by nature and hence do have normative authority.  For our purposes, we only need to identify an individual as identical to her most fundamental desires that make her who she is and which are common to all others (Rosati 62).

                For example, it seems to me that at the very least, no matter what sort of person Sandy could become, she will always care about her own happiness (however one wishes to spell this out naturalistically).   Sandy is wondering whether she would be happier if she were more spontaneous and less rigid like Madelyn.  Happiness appears to be intrinsically good and so one cannot claim that persons like us (capable of emotion) could possibly not desire happiness in some form.    Furthermore, any idealized individual with full information and full rationality will know how to maximize this happiness in any given situation, and so it seems to me that any two idealized individuals will agree in their recommendations if desire-satisfaction is part of what makes a choice better than another choice (Rosati 57).

                Rosati could object that “our concern is not simply with happiness, for instance, but with what sort of happy person to be” (Rosati 60).  The idea behind this objection seems to be that there are many ways to be happy, and Sandy is wondering which way she should take.  The new naturalist can respond in two ways.  First, perhaps there are many ways to be happy, but only one way to be maximally happy.  If this is true, then any two idealized individuals will recommend the same route to becoming maximally happy.  Second, perhaps there are many ways to becoming maximally happy, and if so, then any of these choices is equally correct.  Rosati herself allows for such a possibility: “a person’s good may be indeterminate in some cases, either because there is no determinate answer as to what her good consists in, or because several options are equally acceptable” (Rosati 67).  This is a form of openness that is not problematic for the naturalist.

                Third, even if humans do have common and fundamental desires, Rosati worries that in order to become fully informed and rational we must lose our capacity to judge what is good by becoming cold and calculating.  If so, “the reactions of persons with these characteristics would hardly be recommending to most of us, regardless of how fully informed and rational they might be” (Rosati 57).  The new naturalist can make two responses here.  First, there is no reason to assume that full rationality and the possession of full information are incompatible with feelings and good character.  For example, the notion that God is omnibenevolent and omniscient does not seem to be inherently contradictory.  Second, suppose that the process does make an individual cold and calculating.  Does that individual need to feel in order to make good recommendations?  It does not seem so.  We can imagine a computer that has full information and rationality and possesses all facts about feelings and character traits although it possesses none of them.  Why should we reject its recommendations, especially if following them has always proven to turn out for the best?  We can still accept its judgments without wanting to be like it in all respects, because we value it as an advisor regarding our actions and not as a model of what sort of person we should be.  Thus, either way, it would be wise to follow the advice of a fully informed and fully rational advisor’s recommendation concerning our good.

                Fourth and finally, Rosati is assuming a Humean view of practical rationality when one might instead adopt a Kantian view.  Hume believed that our desires were not subject to rational criticism while Kant believed that at least some of them were.   Railton agrees with the Kantian view and believes that we can criticize our desires on rational grounds (Railton 271). Indeed, how can we understand Sandy as wondering whether she should desire something else unless she takes some of her current desires to be open to criticism in some way?  If this is true, then at least some of our desires will be excluded because they are irrational, and it seems likely that some desires will be demanded by rationality.  Consequently, a fully rational and informed individual like us will have some of the same desires as another fully rational and informed individual like us in virtue of the fact the she is fully rational.    As long as these common desires control the deliberative process, then two fully rational and informed individuals will make the same recommendation and the open question is avoided. 

                Given these four available responses, I believe that the new naturalist can resist Rosati’s argument.  Armed with full rationality, full information, and fundamental yet universally held desires that may themselves be demanded by rationality, a person’s idealized advisor will undoubtedly  make the correct recommendation concerning whether something is ‘good for a person.’  Thus, any open questions have been effectively closed. 

Works Cited and Consulted

Darwall, Stephen.  “Morality and Practical Reason: A Kantian Approach.”  The Oxford Handbook of
                Ethical Theory. Ed. David Copp. New York: Oxford, 2006. 282-320. Print.

Railton, Peter. “Humean Theory of Practical Rationality.” The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory.
                Ed. David Copp. New York: Oxford, 2006. 265-281. Print.

Rosati, Connie. “Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument.” Nous 29.1 (1995): 46-
                70. JSTOR. Web. 25 Aug. 2011.

Sturgeon, Nicholas.  “Ethical Naturalism.”  The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Ed. David
                Copp. New York: Oxford, 2006. 91-121. Print.

A Defense of Normative Counterfactual Negative Causation

I wrote this paper for a Metaphysics class while completing my MA in Philosophy.  This was submitted on December 6, 2010 and remains as I submitted it (apart from formatting changes).  I probably would change a lot in this paper if I were to revisit this topic as I am not sure that I agree with myself anymore.  Perhaps someday I will write a response.
_______________________________________________________________________________


           In the last twenty years, the topic of omissions and preventions has been given much discussion in the causation literature.   David Lewis argued exclusively for their existence in one of his last published papers, while D.M. Armstrong and Helen Beebee have both strongly objected to his claims.  Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has taken up the defense of omissions and preventions and has been engaged in a back and forth debate with Phil Dowe, their most prominent critic.  While the topic is much too broad to discuss in its entirety, this paper attempts to develop a consistent defense of the existence of omissions and preventions against their usual criticisms by assuming the legitimacy of counterfactual causation and the ontological existence of normative claims.  In so doing, I will show that such negative causation, when it involves a normative component in the description of the causal event, is a genuinely metaphysical relation between events that is worthy not only of conceptual, linguistic, and pragmatic acceptance, but of ontological acceptance as well.  I will also show that such an account can guide our ascriptions of moral responsibility to agents in instances of potential omissions and preventions.

          Most theories of causation fall into two somewhat opposing categories.  One contains theories that analyze causation in terms of counterfactual dependence while the other contains singularist theories that hold causation to be an intrinsic relation between singular events.[1]  Considering the later, singularist theories argue that causal relations among particulars lead to regularities and patterns but are not dependent on them.  Two events C and E are necessarily related in virtue of their intrinsic properties and local factors.  In other words, there is a physical connection between C and E.  Given this physical connection, causal relations exist only between positive events and entities, that is, between factors that are empirically detectable.

          On the contrary, the counterfactual theory of causation holds that particular causation occurs conditionally in virtue of causal regularities and patterns; causation is an extrinsic relation between events that depends on factors external to the related events themselves.  As most famously advanced by Lewis, these causal relations can be analyzed and reduced to causal dependence, where causal dependence holds between two events C and E if and only if there is a chain of counterfactually dependent events linking C to E.  In other words, “causal dependence holds between events if and only if the counterfactual ‘if C had not occurred, then E would not have occurred’ holds” (Armstrong 445).  This counterfactual is true if and only if there is a possible world in which C does not occur and E does not occur and this world is closer in similarity to the actual world than any other possible world in which C does not occur but E does occur.  Such similarity is largely due to the laws of nature (Lewis 279).[2]

          Until fairly recently, such theories of causation have largely focused on giving an account of the relation between positive events, i.e., those events that actually occur.  However, our causal language often includes talk of negative events, that is, “events whose essence is the absence of a property or particular” (Beebee 291).  Omissions and preventions are examples of these.  Preventions are “causes of what they prevent, ‘effects’ that never occur.  Omissions are things that are not done but that have positive effects” (Armstrong 447).  For example, my failure to rescue the drowning child in the pool before me could be said to have caused that child’s death.  In this case, my omission brought about the drowning.  However, suppose that I dove into the pool and pulled the child out and it did not die.  Then my action can be said to have prevented the child’s death and that I caused the child to not die.  In each case, the supposed causal interaction involves a negative event, one that does not actually occur.  The singularist must reject the intuition that actual causation occurs in this situation.  On the other hand, the counterfactualist tends to allow that such absence or negative causation does occur and that negative events are ontologically legitimate.

           However, such an affirmation faces many problems.  First the singularist argues that negative events do not in fact exist and so they cannot figure into causal relations about the actual world.  As Lewis writes, “a relation requires relata” (Lewis 281).  Without ontological relata, a causal relation cannot be ontologically acceptable.  The proposed relation may be pragmatically, conceptually, or linguistically useful, but it will not give an account of what actually occurs in the real world since it will not actually exist.

          Second, even supposing that negative events exist, there is no causal chain linking the positive and negative events together.  For example, suppose that, through a father’s negligence, a child is hit by a car after running into the street.  Dowe points out, “it may not be true that had the father not done those actual positive things he did the accident would not have occurred since there are other ways that the father could have failed to prevent the accident” (Dowe, “A Counterfactual” 220).  Thus, it might be the case that counterfactual dependence does not exist between an omission and its cause or a prevention and its effect, and without this dependence, causation does not occur.           

          Third, one might ask where these preventions and omissions occur.  In his criticism, Dowe gives three possibilities: there, here, or everywhere.  To be located “there” is for an absence to be “located at the location of the actually occurring alternative to the absent event” (Dowe, “Absences” 12). For example, this is where the father is when his child is hit by the car.  Dowe objects that this cannot be the right location since the father is separated in space from the accident, which violates the assumed fact that causation at a distance does not occur.  To be located “here” is for an absence to be located where the absence would have occurred.  For example, this is where the father would have grabbed his child and thus prevented him from being hit.  But, Dowe objects, this is also separated in space from the accident.  Finally, to be located “everywhere” is to be “not located at all” and thus a violation of the claim that causes and effects must be located (Dowe, “Absences” 16).  Since prevention and omissions are neither here, there, nor everywhere, Dowe concludes that they do not exist. 

          A fourth charge is that if omissions and preventions are causes then the actual amount of omissions and preventions is far greater than our intuitions will allow.  Dowe points out that Kennedy’s bodyguard, you, me, and Julius Caesar all could have pushed the gun away if we had been on hand, so we are all the cause of Kennedy’s death, “and so too for every event that has ever occurred that could have been prevented by human intervention” (Dowe, “The Power” 7).  If Dowe is right, then there are too many omissions and preventions to count as causes and therefore the view that they are causes is absurd. 

          Fifth, supposing that omissions and preventions are legitimate causes, can the counterfactualist maintain a moral distinction between, say, killing and letting die?  If there is a moral distinction between some direct causes and some indirect or absent causes as if often thought, then the counterfactualist must be able to explain what that difference is and why it makes a moral difference.  If she cannot, then a singularist will have the advantage in explaining this moral intuition.

          Several distinctions need to be made that have been largely neglected in the discussion of this topic.  The first is the distinction between what “causation” means as it is commonly used and what it ought to mean.  The former focuses on usage and as such is a semantic claim about the word “causation.”  In this, the counterfactualist meaning clearly matches our usage much better than the singularist meaning because it allows for absence causation (see Schaffer “Causes need”).  Singularists may charge that this is not what “causation” ought to mean because it does not match the metaphysical reality of causation, but that is a separate question from what it means in practice.  It is important to not conflate these two distinctions. 

          Second, one needs to distinguish between “a cause” and “the cause.”  Almost nothing can claim to be the cause of any event.  Instead, most events have several causes that together cause them.  When we single out a cause as being the cause, it is often done for practical purposes that serve human needs and interests.  However, we want to give an account of causation that is not merely pragmatic but objectively true; we want an ontological analysis of causation.  Thus, it may be appropriate to speak of a cause as being the primary cause of an event if the majority of that event’s causes can be traced back to this cause, but it will still be considered a cause, one of many causes, of the event.[3]

          Third, one needs to distinguish between negative causation by agents and negative causation by events.  We should not presuppose that an example of agent causation can be translated into a generalized formulation of event causation.  Within negative causation by agents, one also needs to distinguish between different kinds of normative agents and which normative claims relevantly apply to them.  For example, my oven thermometer may fail to register the correct temperature and thereby cause my turkey to be burned, but I would not hold it morally responsible for that result.  That is, I would not ascribe to it the property of moral blameworthiness for its failure to function as it ought to.

          Fourth, one should note that causal responsibility is distinct from normative responsibility.  It does seem to be always true that if A is (morally) responsible for B, then A caused (or was a cause) of B.  We only hold people morally responsible for an ensuing event if they were somehow a cause of it and it does not make sense to hold someone responsible for an event for which they were not a cause.  However, it is clear that it is not always true that if A caused (or was a cause of) B, then A is (morally) responsible for B (e.g., my breathing may have been a necessary condition for the occurrence of a tornado, but usually I am not morally responsible for the damage it causes).  But the conditional is not always false either.  Why, then, do we hold others morally responsible in some cases but not in others when in both cases they are a cause of the ensuing event?  That is, why does an agent acquire the property of being morally blameworthy and why is her action singled out among the many causes of an event in some instances but not in others?  Since neither intention nor primary causality is necessary for moral responsibility, it seems that causality is turned into responsibility by the violation of a norm; what is caused is normatively significant and hence its initiator acquires a normative property.  Thus, we can say that an agent A is responsible for B if A is a cause of B and A violates a norm related to B’s occurrence. 

          However, while this is easily applied to agents, it is more difficult to apply it to events in general and omissions and preventions in particular.   One can immediately object that events are not “responsible” for other events and that causation, like these events, is not normative.  This is the position that Helen Beebee takes.  Beebee says that a normative analysis of causation “doesn't look like the sort of analysis we ought to be giving of the metaphysics of causation by absence” (Beebee 296).  She goes on to assert that “nobody within the tradition of the metaphysics of causation that I'm concerned with here thinks that causal facts depend on human dependent norms,” and that adding normativity “would in any case make the truth of causal claims turn out to be a relative matter” (Beebee 297).  In other words, Beebee believes that causation is an objective metaphysical relation that is not dependent on human subjectivity.  In order to maintain this objectivity, we cannot admit relative normative claims into our analysis.

          However, it seems possible to maintain the objectivity of causation even if we permit moral claims and other normative notions into our analysis.  If normative claims are not relative or dependent on humans but instead are true in virtue of ontologically real normative properties or statistical regularities in the world, then these claims can factor into an objective analysis of causation.  Indeed, the counterfactual analysis of causation is based on Hume’s regularity analysis.  Or, if one does not want to make causation an intrinsically normative relation, one can locate the normative component in the events that are related and thereby maintain the objective status of causation.  Thus, the counterfactual analysis of causation can easily accommodate a normative component in an acceptable way.

          Beebee brings up another related objection.  She claims that “how often something has to happen in order to count as ‘normal’- and hence for its absence to count as abnormal - is always going to be rather fluid” (Beebee 297).  She is concerned that there is no genuine unity to our concept of “normal.”  McGrath counters this worry by noticing that we speak of something as normal by referencing an appropriate objective standard (McGrath 138).  For example, with promises, we appeal to a moral standard; with alarm clocks, a design or artifactual standard; with hearts, a design or biological standard; with rain, a weather-cycle standard based on statistical regularities and laws of nature (McGrath 138).  These standards are different for each domain and pose different requirements for what counts as normal.  However, common to each example is a measurement of how well it matches the standard in its domain, and this commonality gives unity to the notion of “normal.”  Given the foregoing reasons, it seems possible to have an objective notion of “normal” and hence, normative claims can play a role in causal claims.   

          At this point, we can consider the first objection: negative events do not in fact exist and so they cannot figure into causal relations about the actual world.  Schaffer offers a solution, as suggested by Lewis, that we can “regard the absence description as a way of referring to a present event” (Schaffer, “Causes need” 212).  For example, the father’s failure to prevent his child from running into the road is a way of describing what the father actually did (e.g., take a nap, read a book).  Similarly, supposing that the father did restrain the child and thereby caused the accident to not occur, the event of the accident’s non-occurrence refers to the positive event of whatever the child did (e.g., sit down, stay on the lawn).  However, this leads to our second objection that there is no causal link between the negative event and the positive event.  For instance, suppose that the father took a nap and the child ran into the street and was hit.  It is not necessarily true that, if the father had not taken a nap, then the child would not have been hit.  The father could have read a book or watched TV instead of napping.  Thus, there is no causal dependence between the referred-to positive event and its supposed effect.   

          We need a way to turn the positive event “the father’s taking a nap” and the negative event “the father’s not being watchful” into one positive event that gives counterfactual dependence.  The solution is to include the normative component of the negative event into the positive event or to give a positive event that is normative.  For instance, the event “the father’s taking a nap” is not an ordinary nap-taking.  In context, this event violates a moral norm since it is a negligent nap-taking.  It would be better to describe the event as “the father’s taking a nap and not being a watchful father.”  Thus, “the father’s taking a nap and not being a watchful father” caused the accident because, if the father had not been taking a nap or had been a watchful father, then the accident would not have occurred.  We might also characterize the event as an instance of negligence in which the father’s taking a nap is a description of that instance.[4]  In other words, the true event is not the father’s taking a nap, but the father’s being negligent.  Instead, the nap describes how he was negligent.  Thus, the father’s negligence caused the accident because, if the father had not been negligent, then the accident would not have occurred.   This is true in the most similar possible world to the actual world, and so there is causal dependence and hence causation.[5]

          If normative claims and normative properties are ontologically real, then this event is a real event.  To say that a father is “watchful” or “negligent” is to attribute real moral properties to him and to say that he fulfills or does not fulfill his real moral obligations. In addition, the father did take a nap, so this event is positive in nature; it really exists.  The actually occurring event provides the positive relata and the normative component or property of the event provides the counterfactual dependence. Together, they secure a genuine causal relation between these two events.  This causal relation is ontologically real and not merely linguistic, pragmatic, or conceptual.

          If the foregoing is correct, we can easily address the other problems lodged against this position.  First, one can appeal to the normative component or property of an event to limit the number of omissions and preventions.  Even Lewis subtly appeals to this when he claims that someone cast into the void dies because “he would […] have been surrounded by the life-sustaining objects that normally surround us” (Lewis 282).  Normative claims can pick out which agents and events have a normative relationship to the ensuing event.  For instance, it is not my nap, nor your nap, nor anybody else’s nap the causes the child to be hit by a car.  It is the father’s nap and his lack of positive moral properties in addition to his moral obligation to his child that makes the father a cause of the accident.  I may have napped, and I may not have good moral character, but since I do not stand in a relevant normative relation to this child, I am not a cause of the accident.

          Second, we can say that the omission occurred where the referred-to positive event occurred (e.g., wherever the father is taking a nap when the accident happens), since it is this event that stands in a causal relation to the effect.  Similarly, a prevention occurs at the positive point of prevention (e.g., where the father grabs the child to prevent it from running into the road).  Dowe will object that in both cases, the cause is separated in space from its effect.  But this only poses a problem if causes are physically connected to their effects (as Dowe assumes).  The counterfactual theory of causation does not require a cause and effect to be physically connected, but only that a chain of counterfactual dependence exists between them.  Since this criterion is met, causation at a distance is legitimate.

          Third, the counterfactualist can make a distinction between positive and negative causation that is morally relevant by referencing the normative component of the events involved.  For example, suppose it is true that “one should never kill an innocent person.” Then the event “the physician’s administration of a lethal dose” caused the event “the patient died.”  The moral norm can be added to the first event, and though it does not make any causal difference, it makes a difference with respect to responsibility.  In this case, the physician is morally responsible for the patient’s death.  However, the event “the physician pulled the plug” caused the event “the patient died” only if there is a moral norm against pulling the plug.  Assuming there isn’t, then this is not a genuine case of causation, that is, the pulling of the plug did not cause the patient to die.  Instead, the ailment that the patient was suffering from caused the patient to die.  But if there was a moral norm against pulling plugs or against letting people die, then this would count as genuine causation.  We could say that the event “the physician’s pulling the plug and his not being a moral practitioner” caused the event “the patient died” because if the physician had not pulled the plug or had been a moral practitioner, then the patient would not have died.  We could also go on to say that the physician was morally responsible for the patient’s death since his pulling the plug violated a moral norm and caused the patient’s death.

          In his conclusion, Lewis asks: “What is causation? As a matter of analytic necessity, across all possible worlds, what is the unified necessary and sufficient condition for causation? - It is somehow a matter of counterfactual dependence of events (or absences) on other events (or absences)” (Lewis 287).  This paper has attempted to defend this position specifically in instances of absences.  It has been argued that if normative claims are true in virtue of ontologically real normative properties or statistical regularities in the world, then these claims can factor into an objective analysis of causation.  On such an analysis for omissions and preventions, one can combine the normative component of a negative event with its positive referring event to create a positive event that is normative.  This normative and positive event can then figure into causal dependence and hence causation itself.  Thus, omissions and preventions are, properly construed, examples of genuine causation.

Works Cited and Consulted

Armstrong, David. “Going Through the Open Door Again.” Causation and Counterfactuals. Ed.

John Collins, Edward Hall, and Laurie Paul.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 445-58. Print.

Beebee, Helen. “Causing and Nothingness.” Causation and Counterfactuals. Ed. John Collins,

Edward Hall, and Laurie Paul.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 291-308. Print.

Dowe, Phil. “Absences, Possible Causation, and the Problem of Non-locality.” Phil Dowe:
          Selected Work on Causation. N.p., Jan. 2009. 1-23. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. <http://homepage.
          mac.com/pdowe/Research/cause.html>.

---. “Causes are Physically Connected to their Effects: Why Preventers and Omissions
          are not Causes.” Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Ed.          
          Christopher Hitchcock. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004: 189-96. Print.

---.  “A Counterfactual Theory of Prevention and ‘Causation’ by Omission.” Australasian Journal of
          Philosophy 79.2 (2001): 216-26.  Philosopher’s Index. Web. 1 Oct. 2010.

---. “The Power of Possible Causation.” Phil Dowe: Selected Work on Causation. N.p.,
          Jan. 2009. 1-22. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. <http://homepage.mac.com/pdowe/Research/
          cause.html>.

Lewis, David. “Void and Object.” Causation and Counterfactuals. Ed. John Collins, Edward

Hall, and Laurie Paul.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 277-90. Print.

Lowe, E.J. A Survey of Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

McGrath, Sarah. “Causation by Omission: A Dilemma.” Philosophical Studies 123 (2005): 125-
          48.  Philosopher’s Index. Web. 1 Oct. 2010.

Schaffer, Jonathan.  “Causation by Disconnection.” Philosophy of Science 67 (2000): 285-300.
          Philosopher’s Index. Web. 1 Oct. 2010.

---. “Causes need not be Physically Connected to their Effects: The Case for
          Negative Causation.” Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Ed. Christopher          
          Hitchcock. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004: 197-216. Print.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] For the purposes of this paper, I will ignore probabilistic theories and I will be assuming a largely deterministic universe, although my argument seems to be neutral between determinism and indeterminism.

[2] Lewis ultimately rejected this specific formulation in favor of his influence account of causation.  However, my argument does not depend on the specific details of a counterfactual account of causation, but only on the general framework that is common to all such accounts.  That is, that causation is a matter of counterfactual dependence between events.

[3] This point may be contested as some may insist that there is always a “the cause” of an event.  However, my argument does not seem to require taking a side on this issue.  Rather, the point is made in order to be clearer about the terms being used in the debate.

[4] Thanks to Andrew Morgan for offering this point.

[5] This account can avail itself to the same modifications and strategies that all counterfactual theories of causation use to avoid cases of preemption and other similar issues.  However, this is a side issue to the main point of this paper, which assumes the legitimacy of counterfactual theories of causation in general.

Philosophy of Analytics, Lesson Two: Who Are You Working For?

Introduction

In a previous post, I discussed the first lesson in a philosophy of analytics: begin with the end in mind.  That is, keep in mind the purpose of analytics when you are starting and designing and running an analytics project.  I defined the telos, the purpose, of analytics in the following way:

The purpose of analytics is to (1) justify or change beliefs with the use of evidence in the form of data  (2) in order to generate true (or truer) beliefs that can then be used to make decisions related to one's goals, and that, (3) because they are more in accord with reality, are more effective in bringing about one's goals.

This addresses the fourth of Aristotle's causes for an object: material, formal, efficient, and final.  In this post, I will address the efficient cause, that is, what brings about, creates, or changes the object.  In our context, the question we are discussing then is, what brings about, creates, or makes changes to analytics?  Who or what creates the data, who uses the data, who controls the data, who develops the analytics, and who uses the analytics?

A Little Action Theory

Before we answer that question, let's look at the purpose of analytics more closely.  Analytics is intended to justify or change beliefs, to generate true beliefs, to help make decisions to achieve goals.  Beliefs, decisions, and goals are held by agents with intentional states (i.e., people).  We can break each aspect down further:

• Beliefs: a person's beliefs relate to facts known by the person as well as assumptions made by the person, not necessarily supported by facts.
• Goals: a person's goals relate to what that person desires, that is, what that person wants.

The belief and goal (belief and desire pair) lead to a decision (action) on the part of an agent.

• Decision: a cognitive act which results in the taking of physical action or communication in accord with the belief-desire pair.

For example, suppose I want to eat an apple (goal/desire).  If I know that the grocery store sells apples (belief), then I can decide to go to the store to satisfy my desire to eat an apple.  Taking the action of going to the store and buying an apple will satisfy my desire, and it is the belief that the store has apples along with my desire to eat an apple that leads me to act.

Applying to Analytics

Why does this matter for analytics?  Well, since analytics is about changing/confirming beliefs so that decisions can be made in accordance with goals, we need to make sure we understand the who behind the beliefs, goals, and decisions:

• Beliefs: whose beliefs are we trying to change/confirm?  Maybe just as important, whose beliefs are we NOT trying to change/confirm?
• Goals:  whose goals are we trying to meet?  Whose goals are we NOT trying to meet?
• Decisions: who makes the decisions?  Who doesn't make the decision?

It is important that we keep each of these straight and separate, for they may not belong to the same person or group.  For example, suppose I am developing analytics for my manager.  We have data that will change or confirm his beliefs about customer sales.  He reports his belief to the CEO, who makes a decision to act in a certain way using my manager's belief.  The CEO makes this decision with the goals of the stockholders in mind in hopes of achieving the goals of the stockholders.  As one can see, there can be a lot of who involved analytics.

Who is Who?

Who is the who in an analytics environment?  That is, who or what brings about, changes, uses, or creates analytics? Perhaps this is a bit simplistic, but the following analytics flow is perhaps representative of most cases when boiled down to essentials in a business context:

1. Data source: the source of the data upon which the analytics will be done.  This can be machine generated (server logs) or people generated (customer sales transactions).  Perhaps the data is already stored in a server or data warehouse, and so this specific analytics project is a little downstream and can be seen as part of a larger analytics project (analytics within analytics).
2. Data administrators: those individuals whose job is to pull from the data source the data that is needed, clean it and transform it as needed.  Usually, this data will stored in a database.
3. Data warehousers: those individuals whose job is to take the data from the databases and create data warehouses that contain aggregates of data, summaries, calculated metrics, and KPIs.
4. Report/dashboard developers: those individuals responsible for developing reports, charts, dashboards, etc. that bring out the trends, metrics, and summaries of the data.
5. Analysts: those responsible for making sense of the data in the business context, spotting trends, noting key outliers, observing the metrics, and internalizing the overall business context.  These individuals use the reports and dashboards.
6. Belief Holder (Manager, Director, CEO): responsible for using the analysis of the data to inform his or her beliefs about the business context in order to communicate this belief to others.
7. Decision Maker (Manager, Director, CEO): responsible for using his or her beliefs about the business to make a decision about how to run the business.
8. Goal Holder (Manager, Director, CEO, Stockholders, Stakeholders): the ultimate stakeholder, the one whose goals and desires are to be achieved by the decision made on the basis of belief.

Notice something very important.  Persons 1-5 are usually thought of in the context of analytics.  However, the whole purpose of analytics rests with persons 6-8.  That means that there can be (and often is) a major gap (technologically, contextually, purposefully, etc.) between those who create, change, and bring about analytics and those who use analytics for its purpose.  For example, if I am a report developer, how can I make sure that the reports I am developing are useful if I don't know what the goals of the organization are?

Bridging the Gap

How is this gap bridged?  In the following way.  As the data, analytics, belief, decision, and goal flows from 1 through 8, the reverse also needs to be true.  The goals of the stakeholders need to be communicated to the decision makers, the decision to be made needs to be presented to the belief holder, and the beliefs to be tested or confirmed need to be communicated to the analyst and beyond.  In fact, the more that 6-8 can be communicated to 1-5, the better. For example, a data administrator that knows what the CEO cares about will know how to administer the data most effectively in accord with the CEO's goals.

Conversely, the more that 1-5 can be communicated to 6-8, the better.  A decision maker that doesn't appreciate the process that the data flows through, including its difficulties and limitations, will certainly not appreciate those who provide that data, nor will he or she fully understand the context of the decision to be made.  This can lead to undesirable results.  For example, a decision maker that has a true belief that customer sales are increasing rapidly may believe this to be true across the board.  However, if the data source excludes a certain kind of product, and this kind of product is in fact decreasing in sales, then any decision in regards to that product that assumes that it is increasing in sales will likely be a bad decision.

In short, communication is crucial.  Up and down the chain there needs to be constant communication about beliefs, goals, desires from 6-8 and technological/data-related specifics from 1-5.

The Analyst's Point of View

From the analyst's point of view, you need to know who cares about analytics.  Who are you working for?  What are his or her beliefs, goals, and decisions to be made?  What is most important to him or her in the business context?  Once you know this information, make sure your analytics, from start to finish, keep this in mind.  Again, begin with the end.  You are trying to represent the business context in the most realistic way so that those who are making decisions in accordance with the desired goals will have true beliefs about the business context.  Make sure your analytics are relevant to these beliefs, goals, and decisions.

Remember that the analytics you create need to be useable, not merely true.  If the analytics platform you provide is not understandable by the person using it, then it is not fulfilling its purpose.  Who cares if it is true if it is not useable?  Who cares how pretty it is if no one understands it?  My friend tells a story in which he created a beautiful and sophisticated dashboard for an executive.  The kinds of charts he used were perfectly selected to convey the needed information.  However, the executive could not make sense of the more sophisticated charts, and asked for a simplified version.  The lesson here is that you need to know your audience, and design your analytics for your audience.  Think about the user's perspective before designing your analytics so that when the analytics are complete, the users will actually use and understand your work.

Conclusion

In short, your analytics need to relate to the beliefs, goals, and decisions being made by those who use your analytics.  Furthermore, your analytics need to be useable by these individuals.  When your analytics target the beliefs needed to make good decisions in accordance with goals, and they are useable by those individuals informing beliefs, making decisions, and setting goals, then your analytics will fulfill their purpose, their telos.

Master's in Data Science and Data Analytics: A List of Programs

Introduction

I recently decided to go back to grad school to work on a Master's in Data Science/Data Analytics.  There are lots of programs to choose from, and many different factors to consider: location, reputation, curriculum, cost, online/on-campus, etc.  While there are many lists available online, here is the list of schools I looked at with information about each program based on my information gathering.

The Programs

Some of this data may get out of date as time goes on. Also, some programs are more complete in their information than others. Please verify the information gathered below with the official information on the website.  This information below is provided merely to get you started in thinking about what you may be interested in looking at.

In alphabetical order, here is a list of programs I looked at:

CUNY (City University New York School of Professional Studies)

• Website:
• https://sps.cuny.edu/academics/graduate/master-science-data-analytics-ms
• Degree:
• MS Data Analytics
• Admission Requirements:
• BA, 3.0 GPA, personal statement, resume, two letters of recommendation, skill assessment, admissions interview
• Time to complete:
• 36 credits, 12 courses
• Part time student: 2-3 years
• Cost:
• Tuition is $425 per credit, $1275 per course (online program = in-state tuition)
• approximately $18,000 after fees
• Curriculum:
• Business focus: very little.  Electives available (e.g., project management)
• Technical focus: very technical.  Topics include security and architecture, web analytics, networks, Hadoop/Mahout, Github, Python, R, MapReduce, SQL, NoSQL, graph databases.  More focus on data science as opposed to traditional BI/analytics.
• Online Time:
• 100% online
• Live classes:
• Yes, but students are not strictly required to attend the weekly meetings.  No grading for attendance.  All meetings will be recorded. 
• Campus Time:
• None
• Faculty:
• Practitioners, not researchers.  Members of data science/analytics business and technology community.
• Application Due:
• For Fall 2016, due by July 15, 2016

Northwestern

• Website:
• http://sps.northwestern.edu/program-areas/graduate/predictive-analytics/index.php
• Degree:
• MS Predictive Analytics
• Admission Requirements:
•  The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is not required, but strong scores bolster chances for admission.  Letters, resume, statement of purpose, transcripts.
• Time to complete:
• Students are required to complete 12 courses to earn the degree. It is designed to be completed in two to three years of uninterrupted part-time study (one to two classes per quarter), although students are allowed five years to finish the program.
• Cost:
• $49,368 
• Curriculum
• Business focus: not much.  Project management, Theories of leadership
• Technology focus: very technical.  SQL, NoSQL, R, Python, SAS.
  Topics include marketing analytics, risk analytics, text analytics, web and network data science, variable selection, PCA, clustering, GLM, Poisson, survival, ARIMA
  database management, ML, data visualization.  Focused specifically on predictive analytics, as opposed to all around BI.
•  Online Time:
• 100% online.
• Live classes:
• Yes, but you can watch recordings.  Looks like you can choose a day to do a live sync with professors for office hours.
• Campus Time:
• None
• Faculty:
• Unknown.
• Application Due
• Fall - due by July 15, 2016

 

Southern Methodist University (SMU)

• Website:
• https://datascience.smu.edu/
• Degree:
• MS Data Science
• Admission Requirements:
• GRE scores are required for admission to the program. The GRE requirement can be waived if you have five or more years of industry experience in a related field or a previous master's degree.
• Time to complete:
• Students in the program complete 32 credits, with 30 credits of core coursework and a 2-credit immersion experience, which will take place at SMU. 
•  Students can earn the Master of Science in Data Science in 18–24 months.
• This is a rigorous program for highly motivated students. In addition to the weekly class sessions, you can expect to dedicate approximately 10 hours per week per class to studying and completing self-paced online coursework.
• Cost:
• $54,528
•  $1,704 per credit
• Curriculum:
• Business focus: not much
• Technical focus: more technical.  Statistics, ML, and big data.  Python, Github, Shiny, SAS, MongoDB, XML, network security, SQL, No SQL.  More data science than traditional BI.
•  Online Time:
• All online, except for one weekend campus visit required.
• Live classes? 
• Unknown
• Campus Time:
•  There is an extended weekend experience which takes place on the SMU campus in Texas when students have the chance to meet in-person with classmates and faculty for collaborative, hands-on workshops and informational sessions with networking and relationship building opportunities.
• Faculty:
• Unknown
• Application Due:
• There are three cohort start dates each calendar year. January, May, and August.  For the September 2016 Cohort, Priority Application Deadline - May 16, 2016.  Final Application Deadline - July 11, 2016.  Classes Start - August 29, 2016

 

UC Berkley

• Website:
• https://datascience.berkeley.edu/
• Degree:
• Masters in Information and Data Science (MIDS)
• Admission Requirements:
• GRE is required.  No more than five years may have passed between the GRE or GMAT test date and the application deadline.  Resume, transcripts, statement of purpose, etc.
• Time to complete:
• The  program consists of 27 units. Students can complete the program on one of three paths: full-time, accelerated, or part-time.  The full-time path is designed for working professionals and can be completed in 20 months, with two courses per semester.  The part-time path allows students to drop down to one course per semester and complete the program in no more than 32 months.
• 9 courses
• Cost:
• $2,222.22 per unit, plus a $525 semester fee. Tuition is charged per unit.
• $59,999.94 total cost for tuition.
• Curriculum:
• Unknown
•  Online Time:
• While all courses are delivered online.
• Live classes:
• Unknown
• Campus Time:
• Students are required to attend at least one, 3-4 day immersion on the UC Berkeley campus. 
• Faculty:
• Unknown
• Application Due
• The Master of Information and Data Science program starts three times throughout the year (January, May and September).

 

University of Maryland, University College (UMUC)

• Website:
• http://umuc.edu/academic-programs/masters-degrees/data-analytics.cfm
• Degree:
• MS Data Analytics
• Admission Requirements:
• transcripts, statement of purpose, etc.  No GRE required.
• Time to complete:
• 36 credits are required, 6 courses, 6 credits each.
• Cost:
• $24,984
• Curriculum:
• Business focus:  much more business than other programs.  Strategy.
• Technology focus: technical.  Big data, BI, visualization
• A required grad info course.
• A balance of business and technical courses.  More BI than data science focused.
•  Online Time:
• Unknown
• Live classes:
• Unknown
• Campus Time:
• Unknown
• Faculty:
• Unknown
• Application Due
• Unknown

 

University of Washington

• Website:
• http://datasciencemasters.uw.edu/
• Degree:
• MS Data Science
• Admission Requirements:
• GRE required.  Statement of purpose, transcripts, letters of recommendation, etc.
• Time to complete:
• Nine 5-credit courses, for a total of 45 quarter credits.
• Cost:
• $44,775
• Curriculum:
• Unknown
•  Online Time:
• none.  All is on-campus.
• Live classes? 
• Campus Time:
• Classes held in the evenings on the UW Seattle campus.  Classes one or two times a week in evening.
• Faculty:
• Unknown
• Application Due:
• Applications due April 22

 

University of Wisconsin

• Website:
• http://datasciencedegree.wisconsin.edu/data-science-program/
• Degree:
• MS Data Science
• Admission Requirements:
• Letters, transcripts, statement of purpose, etc.  No GRE needed.
• Time to complete:
• 2 year program , 12 courses. 
• Summer, fall, spring semester schedule
• Cost:
• $825 per credit.  36 credits required
• $29,700 for degree
• Curriculum
• Business focus: ethics, decision theory
• Technology focus: R, Python, SQL Server, and Tableau, classification, visualization, network, web analytics, PowerBI, GIT, data warehousing, big data, Hadoop, Pig, Hive.
• Virtual lab with all software preloaded.  Less technical than some but more than other programs.  Gives BI and business background. 
• No electives. 
• Online Time:
• 100% online
• Live classes:
• Unknown
• Campus Time:
• None
• Faculty:
• Mix of math, business, computer science researchers.
• Consulted with practitioners to make sure topics are relevant.
• Application Due:
• Application is rolling.  August 1st is latest for Fall 2016.

 

Villanova

• Website:
• http://analytics.villanova.edu/lpppc-msa/
• Degree:
• MS Analytics
• Admission Requirements:
•  Completed online application, resume, two essays, transcripts, recommendations, GMAT or GRE score (recommended).
• Time to complete:
• Earn your degree in as few as 20 months.  The program consists of five semesters—each of which is divided into two terms. You will take one or two courses per term.
• 33 credits, 11 classes
• Cost:
• $37,950
• Curriculum:
• Business focus: done through the school of business.
• Technology focus: statistics , Hadoop, text and web analytics.  Mostly industry BI software.  Has R, but no Python.
• More business focused, all around coverage of everything BI.  Definitely more traditional BI than data science. Designed to expose students to the whole analytics continuum from data collection through analysis through implementation and use.
•  Online Time:
• 100% online format
• Live classes:
• Courses are primarily delivered in an asynchronous environment using a combination of tools such as recorded presentations, discussion forums, and interactive case studies to let students learn according to their own schedule. However, select synchronous elements including online discussion sessions (all recorded so you can watch them on your own schedule) and virtual office hours are also incorporated into each course.
• Campus Time:
• None
• Faculty:
• All are professors, academicians, researchers, usually with business background.
• Application Due:
• Fall Semester: 6/30/16

Applied, Accepted, Committed

The programs above are CUNY, Northwestern, SMU, UC Berkeley, University of Maryland (UC), University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Villanova.  Which program did I choose, and why?  Your values may differ, but here is what I was interested in:

• Admission requirement:
• no GRE requirement.  I've been there, done that, and I didn't want to take it again.
• Time to complete: 
• not very important to me.  I was not interested in how long it would take.  In fact, some of the longer programs interested me more because they would cover more ground and be more in depth.  They had more classes.
• Cost:
• low cost is important since I am paying for the program myself, but it is not conclusive.  However, it can be a deciding factor in deciding between two similar programs.
• Curriculum:
•  some programs are more business oriented.  Some are more traditional BI focused.  Still others are more data science and technically oriented.  I wanted to be in a program that was very technical.  I felt that this was where I needed the most help in gaining the skills and experience I needed for the sorts of jobs I was interested in.
• Online:
• I wanted to be in an online program, rather than an in person program.  The program needed to fit my schedule since I would be working and I have many other commitments.
• Live classes:
• I needed to be able to watch recorded lectures, not simply attend live sessions at inconvenient times.
• Campus time:
• not critical one way or another.  A short weekend visit would be fine.  But I didn't want the whole program to be on campus.  Ain't nobody got time for that.
• Faculty:
• I wanted to learn from people on the cutting edge in business and technology.  That is, I wanted to learn from people doing and using the analytics skills being taught.  This field is changing fast, and I wanted to learn from those that knew where it was currently at in the industry and where it was going.
• Application due date:
•  not as crucial, as long as I could get the application in on time.

So which programs did I apply to based on the above criteria?  Here is what I did along with the reasons for making my decision to apply or not:

• Applied:
• CUNY
• 12 courses in semester system, taught by practitioners, no GRE needed, least expensive, very technical.
• University of Wisconsin
• 12 courses, mostly technical, no GRE needed, and not very expensive.
• Villanova
• More BI and business focused, but not as expensive as other programs.  Good reputation.  11 classes and no GRE needed.
• Northwestern
• Very expensive, but has great reputation, great technical curriculum, no GRE required.  12 courses in quarter system.
• Didn't apply:
• SMU
• really technical, but really expensive compared with similar programs.
• UC Berkeley
• really expensive, required GRE, not as many classes offered in program.
• University of Maryland (UC)
• inexpensive, but very few courses and the program was more business focused.  6 long courses.
• University of Washington
• expensive and also not online.  GRE required.  Not as many courses in program - 9 courses in quarter system.

Of the four programs I applied to, I was accepted into the three programs I heard back from before I made my decision (I didn't wait for the fourth program to respond back to me).  Ultimately, I chose CUNY to do my Master's degree.  It was the least expensive, very technical, taught by practitioners (not researchers), and it covered many courses and topics I was interested in taking.  It was, in short, the best fit for my interests and needs for a Master's program in analytics/data science.

Conclusion

Again, the above list is not exhaustive.  There are many other data science and data analytics programs that one can apply to.  These are only the ones that I looked at.  Also, simply because I chose CUNY does not mean that another program may be a better fit for someone else.  An on-campus program may be a better fit for some, a less technical program for others.  Some may not be concerned with cost (especially if their company is paying for it), and others may need to finish a program as quickly as possible.  Still others may be more interested in research as opposed to business/practical applications.

The point is, you need to find the program that is best for you, not me.  Find the program that meets your needs and interests.

I hope the above information helps you in that endeavor, wherever you go and whatever you do in your educational and career aspirations.