Why It's OK to be a Moderate
Forthcoming in 2025, Routledge
Advance praise
“Marcus Arvan has written an extremely valuable book about one of the most unfairly maligned and misunderstood figures in contemporary politics—the political moderate. He shows that far from being wishy-washy cowards, moderates in fact play a thankless but vital role in a healthy democracy. If you’ve ever been criticized for refusing to stick to an extreme view, you would benefit from reading this book. If you’ve ever issued such a criticism to another, everyone else would benefit from you reading it.”
– Justin Tosi, Georgetown University
“Moderates are often derided by extremists on both sides, who see them as willing to compromise with the enemy. Against this backdrop, Arvan offers a compelling defense of political moderation—which involves pragmatism, respect for different values, and a view towards the long run. Combining historical examples with philosophical analysis, the book is especially relevant in these polarized times. Students, political philosophers, and concerned citizens in general will find much to draw from and engage with in this excellent short book.”
– Hrishikesh Joshi, University of Arizona
“In a world that grows more and more polarized, many of us feel pulled further to the right or left. This book is an excellent prophylactic against that tendency. Though often disparaged, Marcus Arvan makes a compelling case for why it’s okay to be a moderate. Just as convincing are his arguments against being a radical. If you feel out of place in a world of political extremes, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.”
– Brian Kogelmann, Purdue University
Overview
Conservatives and progressives rarely agree on much—but one thing many agree upon is that it’s not OK to be a moderate. This book shows they are wrong.
In Why It’s OK to be a Moderate, Marcus Arvan shows how many of history’s worst evils have resulted from far-right and far-left radicalism, how escalating conflicts between conservatives and progressives are undermining democracy, and how many widely hailed social and political achievements have been achieved by moderates and radicals working in constructive tension with each other.
Using philosophy, science, and historical analysis, Arvan shows that critics of moderates tend to equate them with spineless centrists, but that most moderates aren’t centrists, falling into diverse categories across the political spectrum. Arvan then shows that although radicals tend to be popular in their era, many of them have gone down in infamy, while many moderates, like Abraham Lincoln or Clement Attlee, have endured short-term unpopularity to “make history.”
Arvan shows that it’s OK to be a moderate precisely because not everyone should be one. He makes this case to you, showing that whatever your reasonable political ideology may be, things tend to go best politically when radicals and moderates effectively complement each other’s virtues while counterbalancing the other’s vices.
Chapter Overviews
1. The Curiously Poor Reputation of Moderates
This chapter shows that many people falsely equate moderates with political centrists and disdain centrists as unprincipled defenders of the status quo. The chapter then provides evidence that most moderates aren’t centrists, showing in turn how difficult it is to define exactly who is a moderate. Finally, the chapter details why, whereas many radicals have enjoyed short-term popularity before perpetrating many of history’s worst horrors, many moderates were unpopular in their era before going on to be widely hailed in historical retrospect of their moderation.
2. What is it to be a Moderate? Means, Ends, Degrees, Contexts
This chapter argues that it seems impossible to define precisely what makes someone a moderate because ‘moderate’ is a vague category. Rather than precise conditions that define what makes someone a moderate, moderates instead tend to bear a cluster of “family resemblances” to each other, much like medical conditions are characterized by sets of possible symptoms. Moderates tend to be pragmatists, value pluralists, compromisers, and gradualists to higher degrees than radicals, and whether someone is “a moderate” then is a matter of the degrees that they exemplify these qualities with respect to means and ends in a relevant context of comparison.
3. The (Potential) Virtues of Progressivism and Conservatism, But (Very Real) Vices of Radicalism
This chapter outlines a politically nonsectarian method for distinguishing political virtues and vices. It then explains what progressives and conservatives take their own virtues to be, before arguing that radicals on both sides of the political spectrum tend to exhibit twelve related political vices: moral extremism, Manichaean (“good versus evil”) thinking, moral grandstanding, dehumanizing demonization, polarization, political misperception, motivated reasoning, conspiracism, magical thinking, crude consequentialism, violence, and authoritarianism. These vices are shown to at best result in political gridlock or swings of the political pendulum from one side’s favor to the other, and at worst, to political violence, tyranny, and war.
4. The (Very Real) Virtues and (Potential) Vices of Moderates
This chapter argues that moderates tend to display five political virtues more than radicals: unique forms of political prudence, moderation, and civility that tend to foster civic friendship and achieve gradual change while avoiding moral and political disasters. It then shows that the main vice that moderates can demonstrate is “business as usual” deference to the status quo. The chapter concludes by detailing how widely hailed forms of progress have often resulted from radicals and moderates complementing each other’s virtues while counterbalancing their vices.
5. Radical 20th Century Solutions, Radical 21st Century Problems: From Isolationism, Communism, Fascism, Reaganomics, and Thatcherism to Brexit, White Nationalism, and Back Again
This chapter details how although humanity is arguably faring vastly better than at any time in recorded history, radical left-wing and right-wing politics have contributed to many of the world’s most serious and widely-acknowledged problems from at least the 20th Century to the present—including two world wars, Nazism, Fascism, Communist tyrannies, Islamic extremism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, soaring inequality, and reemergence of white nationalist neo-fascism. It then argues that the lesson we should learn is that prudent politics requires balance: the kind of moderation that Aristotle’s “Golden Mean” and Buddhism’s “Middle Way” advocate.
6. Why It’s OK to be a Moderate: Prudently Guiding the Political Pendulum (with Radicals!)
The chapter shows that regardless of your political leanings, you have reasons to believe it’s OK to display political prudence: strategies for effectively advancing your political goals while avoiding political reversals or catastrophes such as tyranny. The chapter then uses history, current events, and science to shows that progressives should believe it’s OK to be moderate progressives, conservatives should believe it’s OK to be moderate conservatives, and that it often can be OK to be a centrist because centrists help to preserve democracy. Finally, the chapter shows how many widely hailed forms of political change have resulted from moderates and radicals complementing each other’s virtues while counterbalancing their vices; why politics needs moderates now as much as ever; and how to better harness their virtues.
Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory
Routledge, 2020
Reviews
'. . . a stimulating and important book on the natures and complex interrelations of prudence, morality, and neuroscience.'
- Gregory Robson, Journal of Moral Philosophy (2022)
'[An] interesting and well-written book . . . informative, well-written, and engaging, and should be of considerable interest to those working in cognitive science and philosophy, particularly those working in normative ethics and meta-ethics or interested in the neuroscience of morality.'
- Tom Buller, Metascience (2022)
Overview
Philosophers across many traditions have long theorized about the relationship between prudence and morality. Few clear answers have emerged, however, in large part because of the inherently speculative nature of traditional philosophical methods. This book aims to forge a bold new path forward, outlining a theory of prudence and morality that unifies a wide variety of findings in neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing.
Chapter Abstracts
Introduction: Philosophers have long theorized about the relationship between morality and prudential self-interest. Many argue that moral actions are always or usually prudent, and that morality may even be reducible to prudence. However, others argue that moral actions are not necessarily prudent, or that prudence and morality involve fundamentally different types of normative reasons. This chapter outlines how these disagreements reveal the limitations of traditional philosophical methods. It then provides an overview of the new approach this book defends. It explains how this book combines traditional philosophical methods with behavioral neuroscience and scientific principles of theory selection to defend a new unified theory of prudence and morality. It also outlines how the book’s theory is simultaneously normative and descriptive, providing an account of how prudent and moral agents ought to act, along with testable predictions regarding how prudential and moral cognition actually function. Finally, it explains how this book’s theory refines and defends my earlier theory of morality, Rightness as Fairness, from a variety of objections in the literature.
Chapter 1 - Outline of the Behavioral Neuroscience of Prudence and Morality: This chapter outlines the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality, explaining how the findings raise normative and descriptive explanatory questions. It begins by detailing how prudential and moral cognition involve mental time-travel (the capacity to imaginatively simulate different possible pasts and futures), other-perspective-taking (the capacity to imaginatively simulate other people’s perspectives), and risk-aversion. It then discusses 17 distinct regions of the human brain’s default mode network (DMN)—a region involved in daydreaming, mind-wandering, thinking about oneself and others, remembering the past, and imagining the future—that have been implicated in moral judgment and sensitivity across a wide variety of tasks. It also outlines how stimulation and inhibition of particular DMN regions and capacities, including the temporoparietal junction, have been found to have bidirectional effects on prudential and moral cognition and performance. Finally, it suggests the findings outlined raise normative questions about why particular brain regions and capacities should be involved in prudential and moral cognition, and descriptive questions about how they are involved in both forms of cognition, and how the findings summarized appear to cohere poorly with some dominant views in moral philosophy.
Chapter 2 - Outline of a Theory of Prudence: This chapter outlines a new normative theory of prudence and descriptive psychological theory of prudential cognition. It begins from the common premise in the literature that prudence is normatively a matter of acting in ways that have the greatest-expected aggregate lifetime utility. It then suggests that because life as a whole is profoundly uncertain, prudence requires acting on principles that are rational from a standpoint of radical diachronic uncertainty—from what Donald Bruckner calls a ‘Prudential Original Position’, a model similar to John Rawls’s famous original position, but where an individual agent is situated behind a veil of ignorance applied to their own life. Following Bruckner, I assume that minimax regret—the principle of acting in ways that minimize the maximum amount of regret an action might result in—is the most rational principle in the Prudential Original Position, and that this principle converges with maximizing expected aggregate lifetime utility the more an agent cares about the past and future. The chapter then constructs a detailed theory of how Bruckner’s account coheres with and appears supported by a specific form of ‘moral risk-aversion’ that prudent people typically engage in and progressively internalize across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Chapter 3 - Derivation of Morality from Prudence: This chapter derives and refines a novel normative moral theory and descriptive theory of moral psychology—Rightness as Fairness—from the theory of prudence defended in Chapter 2. It briefly summarizes Chapter 2’s finding that prudent agents typically internalize ‘moral risk-aversion’. It then outlines how this prudential psychology leads prudent agents to want to know how to act in ways they will not regret in morally salient cases, as well as to regard moral actions as the only types of actions that satisfy this prudential interest. It then uses these findings to defend a new derivation of my (2016) theory of morality, Rightness as Fairness, showing how the derivation successfully defends Rightness as Fairness against a variety of objections. The chapter also details how this book’s theory helps to substantiate the claim that Rightness as Fairness unifies a variety of competing moral frameworks: deontology, consequentialism, contractualism, and virtue ethics. Finally, the chapter shows how Chapter 2’s theory of prudence entails some revisions to Rightness as Fairness, including the adoption of a series of Rawlsian original positions to settle moral and social-political issues under ideal and nonideal circumstances—thus entailing a unified normative and descriptive psychological framework for prudence, morality, and justice.
Chapter 4 - A Unified Neurofunctional Theory of Prudence and Morality?: This chapter utilizes seven principles of theory selection to compare the theory of prudence and morality advanced in this book to alternatives. It first argues that there are two possible ways that a theory of prudence and morality may explain relevant target phenomena: (1) as a normative teleofunctional explanation of why particular phenomena found in behavioral neuroscience should be the case and (2) as a descriptive functional explanation of how prudential and moral psychology actually function. It then argues that in order to evaluate how successful a theory is in both respects, theories of prudence and morality should be judged according to seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences, including principles of internal and external coherence, explanatory power, unity, parsimony, fruitfulness, and ‘firm observational foundations’. Finally, it outlines how this book’s unified theory of prudence and morality—Prudence and Morality as Fairness to Oneself and Others—appears to satisfy all seven principles of theory selection more successfully than other existing normative moral theories and descriptive theories of moral psychology.
Chapter 5 - Replies to Potential Concerns, and Avenues for Future Research: This chapter responds to potential concerns about this book's theory of prudence and morality. It first addresses the concern that the theory is overly speculative, arguing that the theory is normatively and descriptively promising and thus worthy of further philosophical and empirical examination. Next, it responds to the concern that the theory commits the naturalistic fallacy and violates the ‘is-ought gap’, arguing that the theory commits neither error. It then addresses the concern that there may be counterexamples to this book’s theory of prudence: individuals who appear to live in prudentially successful ways while not appearing to have internalized the form of ‘moral-risk aversion’ that Chapters 2 and 3 argued serve as the foundation for normative moral philosophy and descriptive moral psychology. The chapter argues that it is ultimately an empirical question whether such counterexamples are genuine and, by extension, whether there really are individuals to whom morality does not normatively apply—implications the chapter argues for taking seriously. Finally, it addresses the concern that my theory is at most a theory of how morality is prudent, not a theory of morality per se.
Diagram of the book's theory (p. 88)
Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory
Palgrave MacMillan, 2016
Reviews
'This is an ambitious book, the aim of which is to provide foundations for moral normativity based on instrumental rationality...The arguments...are worthy of discussion, and contain points of genuine insight. [Arvan]'s account of the role of what he calls “natural coercion” in forming just institutions—that is to say, in accounting for illness and natural disasters in our account of what is just—as well as his discussion of “mental time-travel” to generate principles of fairness, are points Arvan rightly judges (to this reviewer’s knowledge) as novel to his work.'
- Emily Spencer, Journal of Moral Philosophy (2018)
'Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory is a recent work in normative ethics that makes an interesting and worthwhile contribution to the field.'
- Liam Moore, Res Publica (2017)
'This is an ambitious book...worth reading for philosophers in the fields it covers.'
- Fritz Allhoff, Philosophy in Review (2017)
Overview
Moral philosophy is marked by systematic disagreement. In Rightness as Fairness, I argue that to reliably arrive at moral truth, moral philosophy must be based upon seven scientific principles of theory-selection. I then argue that our best empirical evidence reveals morality to be a matter of acting in ways that our present and future selves can rationally agree upon across time. I show that this agreement—Rightness as Fairness—requires us to be fair to ourselves and to others, including animals. Further, the Four Principles of Fairness comprising this agreement reconcile a variety of traditionally opposed moral and political frameworks. Finally, Rightness as Fairness provides a uniquely fruitful method for resolving applied moral and political issues: a method of ‘principled fair negotiation’ that requires merging principled debate with real-world negotiation.
Chapter Overviews
Chapter 1. Ethics for the Twenty-First Century
I argue that moral philosophy currently lacks a reliable method for distinguishing what is true about morality from what merely ‘seems true’ to different investigators. I then defend seven principles of theory-selection adapted from the sciences—Firm (Observational) Foundations, Internal Coherence, External Coherence, Explanatory Power, Unity, Parsimony, and Fruitfulness—as the most reliable method for distinguishing moral truth from ‘seeming truth.’ Next, using these seven principles, I argue that moral philosophy should be based on a simple ‘means-ends’ instrumental theory of normative rationality: a theory that enjoys virtually universal support in everyday life and philosophical history. In the process, I show that a variety of alternative approaches to moral philosophy—intuitionism, constitutivism, eudaimonism, reflective equilibrium, moral realism, moral-language analysis, second- and third-personalism, etc.—all violate the first, and most important, principle of theory-selection: Firm (Observational) Foundations. I argue that only (A) instrumentalism and (B) other empirical facts regarding human cognition and moral psychology satisfy this first principle. I also argue that instrumentalism promises systematic advantages over other approaches on the other six principles of theory-selection as well. Finally, I address concerns that instrumentalism is not universally accepted, provides the ‘wrong kinds of reasons’ for moral behavior, and cannot establish morality’s categorical normative force—explaining how the remainder of the book will disarm such concerns.
Chapter 2. The Problem of Possible Future Selves
I show that our capacities of mental time travel—our abilities to imagine and care about our past, present, and future—generate a problem for rational decision-making for which there is no known solution: the Problem of Possible Future Selves. First, I show that in many cases of uncertainty, including paradigmatic moral decisions, we have an interest in both knowing our future interests and weighing them with our present ones, including our future interests regarding our past decisions. Second, I show that due to the unexpected nature of the future—including psychological change, transformative experience, and free choice—there appears to be no instrumentally rational way to know and weigh our future interests against our present ones. Finally, I argue that two possible solutions—probabilistic decision theory, and Michael Smith’s suggestion that consistency is a constitutive, non-instrumental requirement of ideal rationality—both fail to solve the problem.
Chapter 3. The Categorical-Instrumental Imperative
I argue that a new principle of rationality, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, solves the Problem of Possible Future Selves. I show that our present and future selves share interests in solving the Problem, and that these shared interests can only be satisfied if one’s present self and future selves cooperate across time to forge and uphold a recursive, universal agreement that all of one’s possible future selves can rationally accept given co-recognition of the Problem (in the present and future). I show that this ‘universal agreement’ with all of one’s possible selves is not only intuitive—amounting to a strategy of ‘being fair to oneself’ and ‘not putting one’s future in jeopardy’ that many of us already implicitly adopt to solve the problem in everyday life. I also show, in decision-theoretic terms, that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative explains why unfair behavior is instrumentally attractive but nevertheless irrational. Specifically, I show that while the likely personal utility of immoral action may be high in Problem-cases, the overall expected utility of conforming to the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative is infinitely higher, as conformity to that principle can be rationally endorsed and upheld, in the present and future, by all of one’s (infinite) possible selves. Indeed, I show that this argument formally verifies Immanuel Kant’s famous claim at the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason that moral behavior is infinitely valuable, precisely insofar as moral principles reach out into ‘worlds upon worlds.’ Acting on the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative is instrumentally rational, in Problem-Cases, precisely because an infinite number of one’s possible future selves—across an infinite number of possible worlds—can rationally endorse acting upon it for its own sake. Finally, I detail how the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative recursively applies to itself, and must be utilized to determine which of our future actions it should apply to, thus drawing morality’s limits from within.
Chapter 4. Three Unified Formulations
I show that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has several equivalent formulations analogous but superior to Immanuel Kant’s formulations of his ‘categorical imperative.’ First, I show that insofar as our possible future selves can identify their interests with those of other human and nonhuman sentient beings, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative can be restated in an equivalent ‘Humanity and Sentience Formulation’ which requires acting in ways that all possible human and nonhuman sentient beings could rationally agree upon. I then show that this second formulation entails a third formulation—the ‘Kingdom of Human and Sentient Ends Formulation’—which requires acting on a universal agreement arrived at by abstracting away from the contingent ends of particular human and nonhuman sentient beings. Finally, I demonstrate these three formulations of the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative have advantages over Kantian ethics, particularly Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative,’ on all seven scientific principles of theory-selection defended in Chapter 1.
Chapter 5. The Moral Original Position
I show that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative’s satisfaction-conditions can be modeled using a thought-experiment similar to John Rawls’ ‘original position’: a Moral Original Position that requires one to treat the interests of all human and nonhuman sentient beings as possibly one’s own. First, I summarize Rawls’ original position and discuss Rawls’ Kantian, reflective equilibrium, and public reason rationales for utilizing it. Second, I summarize libertarian, feminist, communitarian, and cosmopolitan critiques of Rawls’ theory. Third, I construct the Moral Original Position, showing how it models the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative’s satisfaction-conditions and corroborates the aforementioned critiques of Rawls. Finally, I argue that the Moral Original Position must be utilized to resolve numerous points of contention between Rawls and his critics.
Chapter 6. Rightness as Fairness
I use the Moral Original Position to derive Four Principles of Fairness: (1) a Principle of Negative Fairness requiring coercion-avoidance and minimization as ideals, (2) a Principle of Positive Fairness requiring certain types of assistance to others as ideals, (2) a Principle of Fair Negotiation that requires negotiating conflicts between and costs related to the first two principles, and (4) a Principle of Virtues of Fairness that requires developing standing dispositions to conform to the first three principles, and applying the first three principles from such dispositions. I then combine these Four Principles of Fairness into a single criterion of moral rightness—Rightness as Fairness—showing how it reconciles several competing traditional moral frameworks (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and contractualism), and provides a fruitful new method of ‘principled fair negotiation’ for resolving applied ethical issues. Finally, I show that this method generates a compelling, nuanced approach to solving a variety of problems in applied ethics—including the ethics of lying, suicide, assistance to others, development of one’s natural talents, Trolley Problems, torture, world poverty, organ transplantation, and the ethical treatment of animals.
Chapter 7. Libertarian Egalitarian Communitarianism
I demonstrate that Rightness as Fairness reconciles three traditionally-opposed normative political frameworks: libertarianism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism. I begin by summarizing the moral attractions and critiques of each framework. I then show how Rightness as Fairness’ Principle of Negative Fairness embodies a libertarian ideal of coercion-avoidance and minimization, its Principle of Positive Fairness an egalitarian ideal of assistance, and its Principle of Fair Negotiation a communitarian concern for context-sensitive (e.g. personal and communal) costs and benefits—thus establishing each framework as containing genuine (but incomplete) elements of moral truth. Finally, I show that Rightness as Fairness requires iterated, ongoing fair negotiation to weigh and balance libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian concerns (rather than principled argument or divisiveness) to settle, on an ongoing basis, what domestic, international, and global justice require.
Chapter 8. Evaluating Rightness as Fairness
I contend that Rightness as Fairness fares better than existing moral theories on all seven principles of theory-selection defended in Chapter 1. Specifically, I argue that Rightness as Fairness has Firmer (Observational) Foundations than existing theories, grounding moral philosophy not in contested intuitions, but in observable facts about instrumental normativity and moral psychology; greater Internal Coherence, reconciling a variety of traditionally-opposed moral and political frameworks more successfully than rival theories; greater External Coherence, cohering with a wider variety of moral and non-moral facts than existing moral theories; greater Explanatory Power, Unity, and Parsimony, reducing morality to a form of prudence that explains a wide variety of moral and empirical observations, including recent experimental interventions that demonstrably improve human moral behavior; and finally, greater Fruitfulness, providing a more compelling all-purpose method for resolving applied moral and political issues than rival theories.