What Money Can’t Buy: the status of financial evaluation

Ian Baker

BA, BA (Hons)

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the

University of Western Australia.

School of Humanities, Discipline of Philosophy.

September 2007

Abstract

“Money can’t buy everything”, people say. In the same spirit, it is sometimes claimed that there are incommensurable values. I conclude this thesis by rejecting that claim as both confused and confusing. But the route to the conclusion is indirect, revealing why the appeal to incommensurability is nevertheless so commonly made, and showing how, once we understand what it is to compare things, we can display clearly its underlying insight. I argue that the criteria against which we must justify any comparative judgment are supplied not by descriptions of the compared items but by what Julius Kovesi (in Moral Notions, 1967) called the formal element of the concept under which we seek to compare. That concept will correspond with what Ruth Chang has referred to as the covering value for the comparison. For any particular comparison, I argue, the formal element of that concept will be the same as the point of the comparison: the reason why it has been undertaken. Hence, given that we can explain why we are comparing, we can offer a justification for a comparative judgment of any two items. From this analysis I offer refutations of standard arguments for the incommensurability of values, among them the influential argument from small improvements and Joseph Raz’s argument for the constitutive incommensurability of friendship with money. I then reconstruct Raz’s argument to show that any friend must recognise his comparisons of the values of optional acts to have a more general point than his gaining of money. Against criteria supplied by that point, and no matter how great the sum at stake, any friend may judge that he does better to forgo a financially profitable act for a less profitable alternative. What, necessarily, money can’t buy is the ability to recognise when such a judgment is justified. That ability, I observe, underlies not only friendship but also prosperity and money itself.

We must begin with the mistake and find out the truth in it. That is, we must uncover the source of the error; otherwise hearing what is true won’t help us. It cannot penetrate when something is taking its place. To convince someone of what is true, it is not enough to state it; we must find the road from error to truth. –Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’” A lot people don't understand what it has taken to get here, but now I've done it, the money means nothing to me. –Motorcycle racer Casey Stoner, 21, quoted on the day he gained himself several million dollars by winning the 2007 MotoGp World Championship.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments xv

1. Comparisons and concept formation 1 Julius Kovesi’s theory of concept formation can help us see why we might think some

items were not comparable with others, and why we would be wrong.

1.1 Introduction: Are there incommensurable values? 1

1.2 Moral Notions 3

1.3 The formal and the material 5

1.4 Following a rule 9

1.5 Comparison and intention 12

1.6 Valuing and evaluating 17

1.7 Formal elements of concepts and formal elements of

comparative concepts 17

1.8 Complete moral notions and other notions 18

1.9 Parallels, and calculation 23

2. Comparisons and reasons 28 Examples where compared items are given similar descriptions often seem more

straightforward than examples where compared items are given diverse descriptions.

This is because, in the former case, we are more likely to presuppose a reason why we

are comparing.

2.1 General and specific comparative concepts 28

2.2 Comparing similar goods 32

2.3 Making fine distinctions 36

3. Incomparability 40 Incomparability outlined, arguments for it from the diversity of values examined and the

nominal–notable objection to such arguments analysed. The nominal–notable objection

succeeds because it widens the range of reasons for comparing that might be

presupposed by somebody considering a hypothetical comparison.

3.1 Overview 40

3.2 Incomparability outlined 41

3.3 Arguments from the diversity of values 46

3.3.1 The great-artists example 46

3.3.2 The nominal–notable objection outlined 47

3.3.3 The nominal–notable objection analysed 49

3.3.4 Increasing the precision of comparative concepts 53

3.3.5 A case-study: testing intelligence 58

3.4 Arguments from bidirectionality 64

4. Calculation, commensurability and vagueness 66 Because comparisons of value must always be judged under a single concept,

arguments for incomparability from calculation fail. John Broome’s discussion of

indeterminacy in comparisons under allegedly vague concepts shows that comparative

judgments may stand in need of justification.

4.1 Arguments for incomparability from calculation 66

4.1.1 Overview 66

4.1.2 Betterness and quantities of value 67

4.1.3 Comparability and commensurability 71

4.1.3.1 Relative Strengths 71

4.1.3.2 Pythagoras and plurality 74

4.1.3.3 Units of value 77

4.2 Arguments from constitution or norms, and from the rational

irresolvability of conflict 79

4.3 Arguments from multiple rankings 80

4.4 Comparability and vagueness 81

4.5 Arguments from small improvements 87

5. Significant incommensurability and justifying choice 89 We can justify being indifferent between options supported by similarly weighty but very

different reasons, if we have a still weightier reason for choosing either rather than

continuing to deliberate.

5.1 Significant incommensurability: Raz’s case for its possibility 89

5.1.1 Overview 89

5.1.2 Raz’s careers case analysed 91

5.1.3 Raz’s equivocation 99

5.1.4 Raz’s careers case resolved 103

5.2 The justification of choice 106

5.2.1 Aims 106

5.2.2 Consistency 106

5.2.3 Why we resist coin-tossing 107

5.2.4 Equally good options might not have equally good consequences 109

5.2.4.1 Distinguishing options from their consequences 109

5.2.4.2 A trivial example: ice-cream portions 111

5.2.4.3 A significant example: Raz’s careers case 112

5.2.4.4 An example exposing the costs of deliberation 115

5.2.5 Justifying a choice between equals 116

6. The argument from small improvements 120 We can justify judging non-identical options to be equally good only on the grounds

that their values do not differ significantly. The argument for incomparability from

small improvements shows only that some stipulated improvements could be

insignificant.

6.1 Overview: Small improvements and parity 120

6.2 The argument from small improvements: Two refutations 121

6.3 Equality and standards of significance for difference 123

6.4 Reversing the inference: From indifference to equality 125

6.5 Inferring standards of significance for goodness 128

6.5.1 Overview 128

6.5.2 The lady or the tiger 130

6.5.3 Significant differences and the limits of human judgment 132

6.6 The significance of Chang’s small improvement 134

6.7 Small improvements and moral dilemmas 138

6.8 Small improvements and the phenomenology of choice 143

6.9 Implications for adding parity to the value trichotomy 145

7. Constitutive incommensurability 148 Joseph Raz argued for constitutive incommensurability on the grounds that it explains

observable social patterns exhibiting loyalty. On inspection it turns out to explain

fickleness just as effectively. We can remove some confusion by disentangling

competing senses of having.

7.1 Overview 148

7.2 Raz’s argument for the constitutive incomparability of friendship

with money 151

7.2.1 The argument outlined 151

7.2.2 The key role of exchange 153

7.2.3 A tell-tale slip: Exchanging possessed options 155

7.3 Constitutively incomparable items: Raz’s examples 162

7.3.1 Money and children 162

7.3.2 Money and spousal companionship 166

7.3.3 Pinning down Raz on exchanges 168

7.3.4 Reconciling competing ways of having 170

7.3.5 Exchanges, actions and symbolic significance 172

7.3.6 Raz’s third example: Money and friendship 174

7.4 Friendship, money and blame: an outline 176

8. Friendship and money 180 The relation of money to friendship turns not on a friend’s resistance to comparing but

on her resistance to believing that her preferences provide a sufficient basis for the

justification of her comparative practical judgments.

8.1 Overview 180

8.2 Money 182

8.3 Friendship 187

8.4 Friendship and the justification of practical judgments 188

8.5 Friendship, money and the covering value 194

8.6 Comparing friendship with money 200

8.7 Comparing justice with money 202

8.8 Why money can’t buy friendship 204

9. Conclusion: The status of financial evaluation 206 The value which is expressed in any comparative judgment in which money features as

an item will share its description with the description we give of the reason why the

comparison has been conducted.

9.1 Overview 206

9.2 Money and regret 210

9.3 Where values conflict 213

9.3.1 The surgeons and the recluse 213

9.3.2 Judges and justification 217

9.3.3 Justification and conflicting values 220

9.4 Resolving value conflicts 222

9.5 Some general conclusions 224

9.5.1 Overview 224

9.5.2 Justice and happiness 225

9.5.3 Justice and self-interest 229

9.5.4 The virtues and self-interest 237

9.6 Conclusion: Value and money 238

Bibliography 243

Acknowledgements

It is not likely this dissertation would have been completed without the support and

deep insight of my dear friend and partner, Gail Boyle. I would like also to

acknowledge the patience and unwavering support of my children, Serena and Clea

Lumley, and their mother, Sarah Lumley. My supervisor, Stewart Candlish, proved a

good judge of what would help me complete this project. I am grateful for his wisdom

and understanding, and for his penetrating critical comments on the entire work.

Alan Tapper commented helpfully on an early draft of the first chapter and was always

encouraging. My first supervisor, R.E. Ewin, introduced me to Julius Kovesi’s work and

commented helpfully on drafts of the first five chapters.

Prominent among the many friends and associates who enthusiastically and helpfully

discussed with me aspects of this work are Duncan Andrews, Rae Bacon, Annelies

Gartner, Roger Grammer and David Trembath.

My brothers Chris, Michael and Andrew Baker extended to me financial assistance for

which I am very grateful.

I would not have begun this research had I not received the generous assistance of an

Australian Postgraduate Award, which supplied core funding for it over 42 months.

All errors which this dissertation contains are mine.

xv

1. Comparisons and concept formation

Julius Kovesi’s theory of concept formation can help us see why we might think some

items were not comparable with others, and why we would be wrong.

1.1 Introduction: Are there incommensurable values?

In one of the foundational philosophical essays on comparability, which he titled “Are

There Incommensurable Values?”,1 James Griffin considers several possible

interpretations of the claim “some values are incommensurable” and concludes that no

convincing case has been made for any of them. The aim of this chapter is to give an

account of a theory of concept formation, published 40 years ago as I write, which may

help us see that the question Griffin’s article sets out to answer is not as interesting as it

might have appeared. What will be interesting, is to see why the question appeared

interesting. I will argue that when we ask how we could compare the value of item A

with the value of item B, we tend pervasively to presuppose about A and B what must be

in question whenever we compare. I will do so by seeking to expose, in the chapters that

follow, the presence of such presuppositions in arguments for the incomparability or

incommensurability of values. (For reasons that I will give in Chapter 4, I will use the

terms comparable and commensurable synonymously.)

As I will emphasise below, my argument will not rely for its validity on the

acceptability of the theory I am about to outline; rather, the theory supplies a framework

and some terminology that will help me make obvious the presuppositions.

The theory, expounded by Julius Kovesi in his 1967 book Moral Notions,2 draws a

sharp distinction between what he refers to as the activity of valuing and the activity of

evaluating. Valuing, Kovesi thinks, is what governs the formation of descriptions in

language. Evaluation, in contrast, is a matter of ranking particulars in terms of how well

each meets the standard which a description implies. Comparisons of value, I will

argue, are in Kovesi’s terms evaluative activities. They involve the ranking of

particulars under a description. I will argue that there are no particulars which could not

1 Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol 7: 1 (autumn 1977); pp39-59. 2 London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1

be so ranked: that given a description of value under which to compare them, all

particulars are comparable and commensurable.

The reader might suspect that I shall have no great difficulty supporting such a weak

conclusion. However, if that conclusion is weak, then it is worth asking why the

question “Are there incommensurable values?” appeared strong enough to warrant a

paper from Griffin and at least dozens from a range of authors since which confront the

topic directly. Values, surely, are empty unless instantiated in particulars. We might be

inclined to agree with Michael Walzer that when he saw a picture of marchers on the

streets of Prague carrying signs that said simply “Justice”, he knew immediately what

the signs meant;3 but Walzer would be forced, I suspect, to re-examine his claim if he

were to attempt to live with the marchers and were to discover that there was no

particular act which the marchers thought just that he agreed was just – or even if there

were very few such acts. Walzer is doubtless right to think such an eventuality unlikely;

my point is simply that a claim that one knows what somebody else means by justice is

empty unless one can point out instances of justice that the other would agree are

instances of justice, and show also that the agreement on the instances is significantly

systematic and not merely coincidental. As we shall see, this is at the core of Kovesi’s

analysis of concepts: he argues that moral concepts such as justice are similar in this

way to non-moral concepts such as table. But if it is obvious that there are no

incomparable particulars – that nobody, for example, would raise any objection to the

suggestion that I could compare a table with a chair, or a stabbing with a shooting, and

even in a way that admitted of a judgment expressible as some multiple of a nominated

unit – why would anybody puzzle over the possibility that there might be

incommensurable values?

I suspect that when people claim there are incommensurable values, they are defending

the intuition that what we value to some extent under different descriptions cannot be

reduced to something that we value to a greater or lesser extent under a single

description. Griffin gives as an example, which he attributes to Laurence Tribe, the

proposition that “[a] man would not agree to have his arms and legs cut off for any

number of desserts.”4 But we can state the point much more simply and directly by

3 Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994; p1. 4 “Are There Incommensurable Values”, p44. The attribution is to Tribe’s “Policy Science: Analysis or Ideology?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs Vol 2: 1 (fall 1972); p90. 2

observing that no number of hats will add up to a pair of trousers. Thus stated, the point

again seems quite obvious, for it relies on the equally obvious observation that in so far

as we value hats and trousers as hats and trousers we do so for different reasons. But

then, is the value of a hat incommensurable with the value of a pair of trousers?5 The

question whether there are any incommensurable values is a question of just this kind

but expressed more generally. It relies for any interest it may have on equivocal

understandings of what we mean by “a value” or by “the value of x”. Kovesi’s theory

can offer us a valuable tool for separating these equivocal understandings, and in this

thesis I attempt to use that tool to resolve the equivocation, paying particular attention to

what is colloquially referred to as the value of money.

If my use of the tool is to be understood then it will help if I explain first the theory that

underlies it, and that explanation will occupy the rest of this chapter.

1.2 Moral Notions

R.E. Ewin has written of Moral Notions that on publication it caused quite a splash but

then dropped from view. He accounts for the book’s rapid sinking into obscurity partly

by the suggestion that its subtlety had been misunderstood and partly by pointing to a

change in philosophical fashions that drew attention away from the kind of problem the

book dealt with directly.6 Evidence for the splash remains in a Critical Notice from

Mind in 1969 in which the distinguished moral philosopher Bernard Mayo described the

book as highly compressed, strongly original and somewhat intoxicating. “Fresh ideas

crowd in so thickly that the pattern of argument is easy to lose,” Mayo wrote. “Time

and again a startling paradox brings us to a halt, and we want a recapitulation of the

steps of the argument that got us there. Nearly always we are driven back to realise that

a favourite preconception has been subtly charmed away.” Established ways of

distinguishing matters of fact from matters of value had been entrenched since the time

of Hume and Kant among all but a few resistance fighters such as Philippa Foot, Mayo

wrote. “Now Mr Kovesi launches (from Western Australia) a lightning campaign of a

5 In this context it is worth recalling Aristotle’s observation about money’s ability to make different goods commensurate: “Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently.” Nicomachean Ethics (trans W.D. Ross), 1133a7-1133b28. 6 “Moral Philosophy Papers: Introduction”, in Tapper, A., ed., Julius Kovesi: Values and Evaluations, New York, Peter Lang, 1998; p12. 3

mere 40,000 words which, I think, decisively and permanently alters the balance of

power.”7

Except that it didn’t. A paper directly criticising the book appeared in Analysis in 1975

and a defence in the same journal in 1976 but otherwise it has had little critical

comment. 8 The established distinction between matters of fact and matters of value

retained the high ground, and Kovesi’s work has played only a small part in subsequent

attempts to undermine its position.9 The book has its admirers – in particular, Kovesi’s

colleague Ewin has made its central theme the backbone of books on political theory

and the criteria for death10 – but few writers have sought explicitly to employ Kovesi’s

analysis in attempts to resolve philosophical puzzles.11 Relevantly for this project, no

one has suggested that Kovesi’s work has obvious implications for the philosophy of

comparability.12 That is what I will suggest here, and I shall claim that these

implications are profound. Indeed, Kovesi’s insights appear to be so effective in

resolving contemporary problems of comparability as to raise the strong suspicion that

he must be misguided, or perhaps that their effect is simply to disguise the problems,

which will reappear in another form. The other possibility, of course, is that Mayo was

right to attribute a great deal of explanatory power to Kovesi’s theory, and the results of

my applying it are just what could be expected. But while my argument in this work has

been inspired by Kovesi’s theory, it does not depend on that theory’s being

incontestable. I have sought to offer a logically sound basis for very plausible

conclusions. I do not need to defend Kovesi’s thesis and will not attempt to do so.

However, if readers find my argument compelling, that may suggest Kovesi’s work

deserves renewed attention.

7 “Moral Notions”, Critical Notices, Mind, Vol. 78, No. 310 (April 1969); p285. 8 The critique is Graham, Keith, “Moral Notions and Moral Misconceptions”, Analysis 35 (January 1975); pp65-78; the defence Shiner, Roger A., and Bickenbach, Jerome E., “Misconceptions About Moral Notions”, Analysis 36 (January 1976); pp55-67. 9 Kovesi did not rate a mention in the recently published collection of essays by Hilary Putnam which he titled The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002). 10 Liberty, Community, and Justice, Totowa, N.J: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987; and Reasons and the Fear of Death, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; and less explicitly, Virtues and Rights, Oxford, Westview Press, 1991. 11 One writer who has done so recently is Brian Morrison. See “Mind, World and Language: McDowell and Kovesi”, Ratio (new series) 15: 3 (September 2002); pp293-308. Morrison argues that Kovesi’s thesis illuminates John McDowell’s Mind and World (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1994). 12 Although James Doughney has urged the application of Kovesi’s work to economic theory: “Fact and Value in Economics: Putting some pieces back together”. (Modified version of paper delivered at the 16th History of Economic Thought Society of Australia conference, Melbourne, July 2003). 4

Moral Notions is not an easy book to summarise while doing justice to its bearing on

the analysis I will develop. The difficulty arises partly from the laconic style alluded to

by Mayo and partly because there is scarcely a section of the book that is not relevant

for an examination of the comparability of values: it is hard to give a thorough account

while using fewer words than Kovesi used himself.13 Mayo lamented that in order to

discuss Kovesi’s central thesis and its more striking applications he had been obliged to

omit much that was equally striking.14 I shall proceed, therefore, by outlining the core

analytical tool Kovesi develops, which is the division of concepts into formal and

material elements, and by showing how this generates the distinction between valuing

and evaluation which I alluded to above. The remainder of the chapter will draw out in

general terms the implications of the formal-material distinction for comparability,

taking in some other relevant aspects of the book along the way.

1.3 The formal and the material

After noting that Kovesi is disarmingly modest about the claims which underlie his

theory, Mayo comments that:

The most devastating of all turns out to be the innocent-seeming “I would like to

introduce here two technical terms borrowed from Aristotle”. With these terms, –

form and matter – he constructs in Chapter 1 a philosophical framework which

enables him, in the rest of the short book, to solve or dissolve an impressive list of

standard problems in moral philosophy. This framework is a general theory of

concept-formation, meaning, and rules of usage. It owes (despite disclaimers) a

certain amount to Wittgenstein, but there is a strongly Kantian theme: a new

version of the Copernican revolution. Nature and morals are both man-made;

Nature, for reasons not altogether un-Kantian; morals, for precisely the same, and

therefore quite un-Kantian, reasons.15

Mayo thus outlined the significance and parentage of Kovesi’s formal-material

distinction better than I could have – although if I had attempted to I would also have

alluded to possible parallels with the phenomenological methodology of Husserl. But

13 An alternative account has been offered by R.E. Ewin at Chapter 3 of Reasons and the Fear of Death, in particular pp29-39. Ewin’s account differs from mine mainly in emphasis. For an important difference of emphasis, see note 20 below. Brian Morrison, op. cit., also offers a very brief but helpful account of Kovesi’s core thesis. 14 Mayo, op. cit., p292. 15 Op. cit., p285. The quote from Moral Notions occurs on p3. 5

one of the beauties of Kovesi’s exposition is its down-to-earth clarity. However his

analysis, as Ewin suggests, is subtle.

Here is how Kovesi elaborates on these two terms, having introduced them. He says

that:

By matter I do not mean simply the tangible material of the object, nor by form its

shape or appearance. In the case of tables, I call the matter not only the various

materials out of which we may construct tables but any characteristics in which the

object may vary without ceasing to be a table. So the shape of the table, far from

being its form will be part of its matter, since it may change – a table may be

oblong, round or square – while the object remains a table. Similarly, whether the

object has four legs or three, whether it is made of wood or iron, are questions

about the material elements of tables.

The very fact that the material elements are unspecified and may vary, calls for the

introduction of the term form. An answer to the question why we call a large

variety of objects “tables” and refuse the word to other objects gives what I want to

call the form of a table.16

This division between the formal and the material is a general division which Kovesi

thinks can be supplied to at least very many of our concepts: they can usefully be treated

as comprising a formal element – an answer to the question why we apply the term

denoting the concept to some items and not to others – and any number of material

elements – the characteristics in which an instance of the concept may vary without

ceasing to instantiate the concept. While I think this original formulation of what is a

concept’s form captures most accurately what Kovesi is driving at, the formal element

can also be described as the reason why people sharing a concept share that concept, or

alternatively, as whatever is the point of people sharing the concept. Both of these

alternative formulations are easier to grasp intuitively but both also are relatively vague.

One might think, for example, that the reason why people share the concept “table” is

that a long time ago someone coined the word “table” for the sorts of things we now call

tables and people have followed suit ever since. That would not be the sort of reason

Kovesi is looking for, and we can see that it is not when we recognise that it is not an

answer to the question why we refuse the word “table” to other objects. He is seeking an

16 Moral Notions, p4. 6

answer from the way in which concepts expressed in language serve human needs for

communicating about those concepts. “Historically, without a need for tables we would

not have these pieces of furniture;” he writes, “logically, we cannot understand the

notion of a table without understanding that need.”17

That the material elements of concepts are unspecified leads to Kovesi’s next

observation, which will help us understand why he has drawn the division between

material and formal elements where he has. When he says that the material elements are

unspecified, he means that: “We cannot give a complete enumeration of the conditions

that must be fulfilled for the proper use of a term.”18 That is to say that the sorts of

things that can constitute a thing or an act cannot be enumerated in a final list. For this

reason, Kovesi says, “there can be no entailment relation between the material elements

and what we say a thing or action is”.19 For example, we cannot say whether an object

is a table simply from examining what Kovesi tends to refer to as its empirical features,

no matter how minutely or extensively we examine them. We can say whether an object

is a table only when we know what the object is for.

It may seem peculiar to claim that we need to understand how an object functions

before we can say what that object is. One might object that rocks, say, existed long

before humans and therefore long before human needs, and so surely we ought to be

able to conceptualise rocks in a way that permits them independence from human needs.

Kovesi, I think, would not have wanted flatly to reject this objection. Rather, he could

have replied to it by pointing out that it is not the human need for the rock that is

relevant here but the human need to share the concept of a rock. That is what would

drive the formation of the concept.20

17 Op. cit., p3. 18 Op. cit., p7. 19 Op. cit., p8. 20 This is a distinction Ewin acknowledges and indeed takes some pains to point to (Reasons and the Fear of Death, p33), but he under-emphasises it nevertheless. The under-emphasis amounts, I suggest, to a slide away from the point a few pages later when Ewin observes that: “Because we bend at the hips and knees and have cups of tea, it serves our interests to have tables. Since it serves our interests to have tables, it also serves our interests to have the concept table to mark off those items of furniture” (p36). This, I suggest, is a question-begging way of putting the point. Because we bend at the hips and knees and have cups of tea, it serves our interests to have, not tables, but somewhere convenient to place the cups. It is not because it serves our interests to have tables, but because it serves our interests to communicate about these somewheres, that it serves our interests to share the concept table. Ewin exhibits a similar slide on p33 when claiming that “considerable parts of our lives depend on the brute fact that we simply do share common judgments, ...”. He elaborates: “As a matter of fact, people with normal color vision simply do agree that light blue looks more like dark blue than it does like orange ...”. In light of Kovesi’s analysis, this way of putting the point amounts to a fallacy. Rather, people have formed the concepts 7

Having raised that objection, I have the opportunity to offer a clarification. Kovesi often

uses the terms empirical features or empirical similarities when alluding to the features

of an object or act that will be insufficient, without the formal element, to allow us to

conclude that the object or act instantiates any particular concept. But in doing so he

risks equivocation, for on the one hand he would want to say that we cannot say

whether an object is a stone simply from examining its empirical features; but on the

other, it is hard to see how he could deny that it could be an empirical feature of an

object that it was made of stone. For if he denies the latter, then he has to explain why

something’s being made of stone could not be one of its empirical features if its being

hard, for example, could be an empirical feature; and if its being hard could not be an

empirical feature then it is difficult to see what else could be. But alternatively, if an

object’s being made of stone could be an empirical feature of it then surely its being a

stone could be also. I suspect we do not need to theorise about what is given rawly to

the senses, however, in order to appreciate the distinction Kovesi is aiming for here. His

references to empirical similarities can, I suggest, be understood as references to

similarities that are not in question where what instantiates the concept is in question.

Hence, if the question is whether an object is a table, Kovesi’s point is that we cannot

answer that question by appealing to features of the object that are not in question, such

as its being made of stone; and similarly, if the question is whether an object is a rock

we cannot answer the question by appealing to features of that object that are not in

question, such as its being hard. We might, of course, seek to move in the other

direction and claim that the question whether an object is hard can be answered by

appealing to its unquestionably being a rock. But we could do that only on the premise

that all rocks are hard, in which case, if the object is unquestionably a rock, then its

hardness necessarily is not in question.

Kovesi denies that the formal element of a concept is always something final and

definable. “With changes in our needs and social conventions our reasons for having

tables might also change and consequently what will count as a table and what will not,

will also change,” he writes.21 Indeed, it seems to me that it will be inescapably

complex just what is the formal element of very many established terms in a language.

The power of Kovesi’s analysis, I think, lies not in its ability to motivate us to focus on “blue” and “orange” so that they can communicate about colour distinctions that people with normal colour vision perceive similarly.

8

specifying in great detail what has led to the formation of particular concepts, but in its

encouraging us to recognise that concepts always are formed from some point of view,

and that an appreciation of that point of view is an essential component of the concept.

Kovesi asserts that the material and formal elements of a notion are inseparable. “Matter

and form are one pair of concepts,” he says.22 And while he elaborates that: “Without

the formal element there is just no sense in selecting, out of many others, those features

of a thing or act that constitute it that thing or act,”23 we should not be misled by this

into thinking that the features are of lesser importance. What Kovesi is taking such

pains to emphasise is just that the features are not all-important. That there is, to borrow

a term from Husserl, an inescapably intentional aspect to our conception of any thing or

act, without which it would not be a conception of that thing or act.

1.4 Following a rule

“Whatever might be the advantage of constructing a language that would mirror the

world of [sense] data,” Kovesi writes, “our language functions differently from such a

language. In our language, to be able to understand the significance or the meaning of a

term, we have to be able to follow a rule in using that term, not to be able to perceive an

entity of which our term is a name.”24 It is only through an appreciation of the formal

element of a concept that we can follow a rule in applying the concept, he asserts. One

of his examples here is the concept of murder. Murder, he proposes, is a concept which

has grown out of the human need to live socially, and hence to blame people for, and

discourage them from performing, certain sorts of act. And what distinguish a murder

from killings which do not amount to murder are just those features of the act which are

relevant to deciding questions about whether somebody is to blame for the death, who

that is and how they are to be blamed. It is only through understanding the human need

to communicate about blaming that anybody can see what these features will be and

why they will be relevant. Kovesi observes that pushing a knife into somebody and

pushing somebody over a cliff may each be cases of murder, but that it is only through

an appreciation of why people have the concept of murder that anybody can see why

they would amount to the same thing.

21 Op. cit., p5. 22 Op. cit., p24. 23 Loc. cit. 24 Op. cit., p20. 9

The point is brought out more obviously by another of Kovesi’s examples which is less

engaging emotionally, the concept of inadvertency. I will quote him here at length,

because the passage explains succinctly a great deal about what he is driving at:

One day I inadvertently break a teapot while reaching for the salt. Another day I

am walking on the beach and I jump back from a sudden wave. In so doing I

destroy a sandcastle, inadvertently. There is no observable similarity between the

two inadvertent acts, and if we were to think of a third example we would not

conduct our search for it with observable similarities in mind; we would look for

cases which however empirically dissimilar, would nevertheless come to the same

thing. Now the various ways in which we can perform inadvertent acts constitute

what I call the material elements of inadvertency. Inadvertency is not an extra

element over and above our doing what we do, it is what these various doings all

amount to. The formal element is that same thing they all come to. Without this

formal element we would be unable to find new examples of inadvertent acts, and

unable to follow a rule in using a term. We must recognise what it is for an act to

be inadvertent, no matter what else it may be, before we can call it ‘inadvertent’,

and it is this recognition, and not the recognition of any empirical similarities

between different instances of inadvertent acts which enables us to follow a rule in

using this term.25

The emphases are Kovesi’s, and the references to empirical similarity are many and

mildly confusing, while nevertheless promoting brevity. Kovesi’s direct point is that we

can’t observe in the two different inadvertent acts their inadvertency; rather, we classify

both as inadvertent by understanding the point we have in so doing, which (in short) is

to describe each act in a way that attributes to the actor a form of excuse. The less direct

implication, however, is that the question whether an act is inadvertent cannot be

answered by attending to features of the acts that are not in question, whether or not

those features are observable. In describing the acts as inadvertent we are classifying

them, and we can classify consistently only in so far as we understand why we are

classifying.

One further clarification can usefully be made at this point. Kovesi says that “the

various ways in which we can perform inadvertent acts constitute what I call the

material elements of inadvertency”. There is room for ambiguity here, given that the

25 Op. cit., pp16-17. 10

“ways in which we can perform” an act could be taken either as referring to a summary

of the act – I knocked over a sandcastle – so that knocking over a sandcastle and

knocking over the salt each are material elements of inadvertent acts; or as finer details

of the act: that it took place at noon, for example, or that the sandcastle had four turrets.

We do well here, I believe, to refer to Kovesi’s more comprehensive specification of

what he takes the material elements of a concept to be: any way in which an instance of

a concept may vary without ceasing to be an instance of that concept. I generalise here

from the example I alluded to above in which Kovesi says that by the material elements

of the concept table he means any way in which an object may vary without ceasing to

be a table. Hence, the instances of a concept – various tables, say – are among the

material elements of the concept, but so also are the innumerable features we attribute to

those instances – that a table was made on a Friday, or that its top is circular.

This brings us to a point where we can begin to see how the theory clarifies puzzling

aspects of comparability. Murder and table and very many other terms in language are

terms of classification. They can be contrasted with what I was taught to call proper

nouns but Kovesi calls proper names, which are terms we use to refer to particulars as

those particulars.26 One gains little from attempting to distinguish the formal and

material elements of a proper noun and that is partly because a proper noun is taken in

general usage only to have one instance, and therefore there is an entailment relation

between the material elements of a proper noun and what we take that proper noun to

refer to. Kovesi observes that “there must be more than one instance of anything which

can be described by the help of a term consisting of formal and material elements”.27 It

is because general concepts classify that the idea of the formal element becomes

relevant: we cannot understand fully the meaning of the concept unless we understand

why people would want to divide up the world of their experience in that way, and what

demonstrates our incomplete understanding is our inability to continue reliably the

classifying process. But having taken that on board, and bringing in now the activity of

comparing, we can see that at least two kinds of judgment might comprise a comparison

of any two items. One would be the judgment whether one item properly falls into the

same class as the other item. Another would be the judgment whether one item merits a

higher or lower ranking than the other as a member of that class.28

26 Interestingly perhaps, we do not have proper verbs which refer in the same way to particular acts. 27 Op. cit., p155. 28 Not every class admits of an order of merit, and this too has presented difficulties for discussions of comparability, as we shall see. 11

It may be observed also that a comparison can mean little to us unless it is associated

with the membership of some class, if not explicitly then implicitly. An essay question

inviting students to compare Tolstoy with D.H. Lawrence implicitly invites a

comparison of their prowess as novelists, and we can see how important this implicit

classification is for the question if we consider instead a case where students were asked

to compare Tolstoy with the internet search engine Google. A student might infer that

they had been asked to point out differences and similarities between the two items, but

it would be very understandable if they were at a loss as to where to begin, or could not

see which observations would amount to a good answer. We can restate their difficulty

as their being unable to see what features of Tolstoy and Google would be relevant to

the comparison they had been asked to make. Why can’t they? Well, because Tolstoy

and Google, each considered via a proper noun, are particulars. They are not being

considered for membership, or as members, of any specified class, and it is the class

that will tell us what would be relevant for our judgment in the comparison.

Now what Kovesi is telling us about the importance of the formal element for our

understanding of concepts is that we cannot classify reliably unless we have some

understanding of the intention with which a classification was formed. That is a rather

vague way of expressing his theme – it is far from clear what would count as some

understanding – but at this juncture it serves my purposes well enough. For if he is

right, then we have a key piece, and perhaps the key piece, for the puzzle of

comparability. For it appears that comparison assumes classification, and classification

requires an understanding of its intention. Hence intention will be relevant for any

comparison. What we need to see is how.

1.5 Comparison and intention

I proposed above that at least two kinds of judgment could comprise a comparison of

two items, one being the judgment whether the items were members of the same class,

and the other being the judgment which was the more meritorious member of a

particular class. Let us now look in these terms at what is the explicit subject of

contemporary discussions of comparability in practical reasoning, the comparison of

value.

12

Are there different kinds of value, and if there are, are these different kinds

commensurable? Well, what would it mean to say that there were different kinds of

value? Recall Kovesi’s claim that: “In our language, to be able to understand the

significance or the meaning of a term, we have to be able to follow a rule in using that

term, not to be able to perceive an entity of which our term is a name.” If he is right,

then he will be right about the term value as about any other term. Hence, we will not

find the answer to the question whether there are different kinds of value by looking

around us in an attempt to perceive whether there are values of different kinds, and nor,

if value, like inadvertency, is imperceptible, in an attempt to perceive things from which

we can infer the presence of values of different kinds. Rather, we will be looking in the

right place for the answer if we ask how it would serve human needs to be able to refer

to values of different kinds. And we will see that it could be of great service to be able

to do so, and to be able to refer to different kinds of disvalue also. And that indeed, we

do refer to values of different kinds. In fact, the question whether there were

incommensurable values would not even arise unless we did refer to values of different

kinds. For if we never took the term value to be divisible into kinds of value then it

would no more occur to us to ask whether there are incommensurable values than it

does to ask whether there are incommensurable millimetres.

Ruth Chang, introducing what she calls the basic notion of incomparability in her

introduction to Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, perhaps

somewhat ingenuously takes it as given that there is a very great variety of kinds of

value.29 For having observed, and in broad terms very plausibly, that every comparison

must proceed in terms of a value, and having stipulated that the value in terms of which

any particular comparison proceeds is to be called its covering value, she says that:

Covering values can be oriented toward the good, like generosity and kindness;

toward the bad, like dishonor and cruelty; general, like prudence and moral

goodness; specific, like tawdriness and pleasingness to my grandmother; intrinsic,

like pleasurableness and happiness; instrumental, like efficiency; consequentialist,

like pleasurableness of outcome; deontological, like fulfilment of one’s obligations;

moral, like courage; prudential, like foresight; aesthetic, like beauty; and so on.

Most covering values have multiple contributory values – that is, values that

contribute to the content of the covering value. The contributory values of

29 Chang, R., ed., Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997; pp1-34. 13

philosophical talent include originality, clarity of thought, insightfulness and so

on.30

What Chang has listed, I think we can see clearly enough, are different ways in which

some item can be valuable.31 And what Kovesi’s analysis helps us see is that these are

no more and no less than ways in which things can be valuable that we find it helpful to

refer to with a single term or stock phrase. The contributory values are finer distinctions

that we have wanted to make. Chang’s assertion that most covering values have

multiple contributory values might be taken as a claim that from careful attention to the

covering value we can perceive, or infer from our perceptions, that it is divided into

several contributory parts. It is more helpful, I suggest, to follow Kovesi and say instead

that people have needed to make sub-classifications within the value classification of

philosophical talent, and that among the terms for such sub-classifications in general use

are (philosophical) originality, clarity of (philosophical) thought and so on.

The reason I think it is more helpful to follow Kovesi is that to do so casts the question

whether there are incommensurable values into a starkly different light. It is people who

have needed to distinguish kinds of value and to share their understandings of many of

those distinctions, and our need to share certain of these understandings has arisen so

frequently that we have come to refer to them under single terms or short phrases. Now

some of these terms might become redundant and so the kinds of value to which they

referred might become commensurate because effectively they have become identical –

we might come to recognise, for example, that we no longer had any reason for

distinguishing between the temperate and the continent. But in so far as the terms are

not redundant, each refers to a particular class of value that we have had reason to

distinguish from other classes, or so Kovesi’s analysis suggests. And given that it is our

need to make distinctions that, on this account, has driven the development of the

different terms, it is obvious that we cannot substantiate claims of equivalence between

the terms unless we can show why we no longer need to distinguish the kinds of value

to which they refer.

30 “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p5. 31 Indeed, Chang soon afterwards draws our attention to recent work by J.J. Thomson in which Thomson argues that things can only be good in a way, as opposed to good simpliciter. Much of what I have to say here is applicable also Thomson’s analysis, “Evaluatives and Directives”, in Gilbert Harman and J.J. Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996; pp125-154). 14

It might be objected that what commensurability requires is not an absolute equivalence

between terms but merely a qualitative equivalence, so that the different kinds of value

can all be expressed as quantities of one of those kinds or as quantities of something

else. The objection is answered by the observations that the classification of value into

kinds is generally a qualitative classification, and that where it is not we are usually in

no doubt that it is not. The division of monetary value into shillings and pence is a case

in point: no one who understood the British imperial monetary system doubted that 12

pence were equivalent to one shilling.32 The point of classifying financial value by

pounds, shillings and pence was just to supply terms denoting different quantities of

financial value. But often the point of classifying value by kind is to make qualitative

distinctions, and that is because people have needed to refer to these distinctions.

This is why the question whether all values are commensurable is analogous to the

question whether hats and trousers are commensurable. If people were to evolve over

millennia into spherically shaped beings, so that a single garment would serve them

equally well as a covering for their lower or upper quarters, then we can imagine that

our need for distinguishing in our language between hats and trousers would pass. But

for so long as we value hats and trousers for different reasons, we will continue to want

and need to distinguish them in our language. And while that is the case, there will be

no number of hats that will add up to a pair of trousers. Something similar will be true

of courage and kindness.

But here we come upon some of the alleged puzzles of comparability. For of course,

there will be a number of hats whose price will add up to the price of a pair of trousers.

And somebody might reasonably assert that, given a choice between the two, they

would rather have 1000 hats than a single hat and pair of trousers. And somebody might

have reason to ask whether it was better to be led by a courageous person than a kind

one if one could not be led by somebody who displayed both of these virtues. Or, to

take an example which Griffin has adapted from Bernard Williams, somebody in charge

of a geriatric institution might have reason to ask whether it was better to enhance the

residents’ dignity by giving them greater privacy or to enhance their comfort by

upgrading the heating, given that they could not do both.33 Surely the fact that we make

32 Modern coin collectors, of course, will deny that 12 one-penny coins are equivalent to a single one-shilling coin. 33 “Are There Incommensurable Values?”, p55. The allusion to Williams is to his Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973); pp102-3. 15

decisions about issues of this kind shows that values which are qualitatively distinct are

somehow commensurable after all, or at least are comparable in so far as they are

susceptible to being ranked. Which suggests that, qualitatively distinct as they may be,

we must be capable of rendering their qualitative distinctions as merely quantitative

distinctions. Otherwise it must show, as Joseph Raz has suggested it does show, that we

make many decisions which we cannot justify on the basis of our having rationally

judged a comparison.34

Well here is a suggestion, and it is a suggestion about what is the role of intention in

questions of comparison. We can compare quantitatively any particulars from any point

of view which seeks to compare them quantitatively. But any such point of view will

represent each of these particulars as instances or examples of some single concept. No

particulars can be compared quantitatively from points of view which seek to represent

each as conceptually unique, because in so far as each is conceptually unique, there will

be no other example of the particular with which it can be compared.

Now of course, the point of view from which any concept is formed is a point of view

which seeks to represent that concept as unique. For there will never be any need to

form a new concept that is equivalent to a concept which we already have. Hence,

excepting cases where concepts have become equivalent and hence redundant, the

formal element of any concept will attend to what distinguishes that concept from any

other concept. And therefore, concepts will never be comparable quantitatively when

each is seen from the point of view from which it was formed: that is, when each is

understood through its own formal element. Concepts will only ever be comparable

quantitatively when each is understood as an instance of some other single concept,

which will of course have a different formal element: a different reason for which the

concept is shared. We can compare hats with trousers under the concept of, for example,

financially valuable items. Similarly, we can compare courageous acts with kind acts

under the concept of, for example, financially valuable acts. And we do not need to

commensurate the value of courage with the value of kindness in order to do so.

Crucially for the status of financial rankings, the same principle applies when we

attempt to compare the value of a financially profitable act with the value of a kind act.

34 For example, in his “Incommensurability and Agency”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, pp110-128. 16

1.6 Valuing and evaluating

Now the foregoing has been a long way of getting to the distinction Kovesi makes

between valuing and evaluating. Kovesi says that “we evaluate particulars as they fall

under a certain description but valuing is what governs the formation of our

descriptions”.35 We form our descriptions for reasons which have to do with human

interests, and they will fundamentally be reasons why we want or need to make the

distinctions which the descriptions describe. Valuing is not ranking or ordering but is

attending to these distinctions. We distinguish the virtues of courage, kindness and

honesty not because we want to rank courageous acts as always better than kind acts but

because we have a need to distinguish good acts as being good in different ways. In

contrast, we may seek to evaluate a range of kind acts as more or less kind, and we do

this, Kovesi thinks, by applying a standard which the formal element of the concept of

kindness supplies for us. He argues that:

Evaluation is possible only when there are or can be more than one instance of a

thing. If something were unique in the sense that we could refer to it only by a

proper name, say, Jack, then we could not say that it was or was not a good Jack.

Of course we could still evaluate Jack under a description by saying that Jack was

good for putting things on or good as [an actor playing the role of] Hamlet … but

in these cases we are not evaluating Jack as Jack.36

1.7 Formal elements of concepts and formal elements of comparative concepts

Kovesi was concerned mainly to show that evaluation differed from valuation, and that

to reach a moral judgment was not to evaluate but to value. To decide whether an act is

good, bad or neutral, he thought, was to decide under which moral description it fell:37

did a particular act of killing amount to killing in defence of one’s country, or to

murder, or to killing by an unfortunate accident for which the killer could not

reasonably be blamed. Hence his examples of evaluation are limited mainly to such

general judgments as whether a boat is a good boat or a table a good table. He did not

take the further step of examining how we would justify a claim that this table was

better than that table, or that this act was kinder than that one. 35 “Valuing and Evaluating”, in Values and Evaluations; p20. 36 Moral Notions, pp155-56.

17

That is the step that I take here. What I propose is that we can extend Kovesi’s claim

that we evaluate only under a description, by observing that we do not need to restrict

the descriptions under which we evaluate to the formal elements of general terms as

they are widely used by those speaking a particular language.38 We can have reasons for

evaluating that are not widely shared, and it will be these reasons, and not the more

general reasons why the term which we use to refer to our “covering value” is part of

the language, that constitute the formal element of that term, as it supplies criteria from

which we can judge that comparison. Indeed, we can and often do have purely private

reasons for conducting comparisons. However, in so far as we need to justify our

judgments to others, we must do so by agreeing upon the reasons why we are

conducting the comparison and showing how our judgment is justified in terms of those

reasons. Hence it is those reasons which supply the formal element of the comparative

concept, because they are the reasons why that comparative concept is shared by the

people who are conducting the particular comparison.

The question, then, whether it is better to provide dignity or to provide comfort to the

residents of a nursing home will never be answerable from examining the concepts of

dignity or comfort and asking whether they are comparable. It is answerable only

through evaluating particular instances of dignity and comfort as instances of some

other concept. We may refer to that concept with a term or stock phrase – well being,

perhaps, or quality of life, or cost-effectiveness. But however we refer to it, agreement

about whether we do better to provide dignity or comfort, where we cannot provide

both, will always depend on agreement about the reasons why we are asking the

question, which will imply criteria against which the comparison can be judged.

1.8 Complete moral notions and other notions

Among the reasons people have for developing concepts in language, Kovesi observes,

will be their need to communicate about praising and blaming. Thus in the course of

Moral Notions he develops a distinction between what he calls complete moral notions

and other notions. Complete moral notions are those formed completely from the point

37 Or more accurately, under which description among those which had been formed from a moral point of view. 38 Cf Chang’s account of nameless values: “Putting Together Morality and Well-Being”, in Practical Conflicts, eds. M. Betzler and P. Baumann, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 18

of view of praising and blaming; other notions are not formed completely from this

point of view. Anything properly described with a complete moral notion will be always

good (or right, bad, wrong or neutral, depending on the notion), simply because the

notion has been formed from the point of view of making just these distinctions. Hence,

to use an example Kovesi alludes to frequently, murder is wrong not because we can do

what Hume said we cannot and find in the act that “matter of fact or real existence”

which we call vice, but because we consider that the term murder properly describes an

act only if we have concluded that the act did display vice. Murder, then, is a complete

moral term in so far as virtuous or neutral acts are always misdescribed when referred to

as murder. If we are in doubt about whether a killing was vicious, then we are in doubt

about whether it was a murder. That is not to say that people will never disagree about

whether some particular act amounted to murder, nor that some act which fulfils certain

technical conditions could not be adjudged a murder in a criminal court while invoking

widespread disagreement about whether it was vicious, as a person’s killing his

terminally ill spouse at her request might do. When it comes to imposing publicly

enforced sanctions on acts, we tend to institute decision procedures whose result counts

because it was reached by the proper procedure. But the court does not reach a verdict

of murder while observing that, from the perspective of existing criminal law, the

murderer acted virtuously; and observers who believe that in this case the law was an

ass will claim that this act ought not to count as murder.

The complexity of usage makes it difficult to give many examples of concepts that are

unequivocally complete moral concepts. Kovesi discusses, as a contrast, the concept of

lying, saying, in effect, that our familiarity with the concept of the white lie shows that

we do not think lying is always wrong. He offers, however, as a contrasting example

bearing false witness.39 A better example he gives of a complete moral concept is

prejudice. My suggestion, which I shall use in the penultimate chapter of this work, is

that we cannot do better for an example of a complete moral concept than the concepts

of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, since these very obviously have been formed

completely from the point of view of praising and blaming. To do what is praiseworthy

is always right, and a praiseworthy act is always a good act – which, once again, is not

to deny that we may disagree about what acts are praiseworthy. But this is at the heart

of Kovesi’s point about complete moral concepts: in so far as an act described as

praiseworthy is always good, it is good analytically. It is necessarily the case that all

39 Moral Notions, p127. 19

praiseworthy acts are good; but it remains an open question what acts are praiseworthy.

As a contrasting example, take the question whether torture is wrong. We can say that

torture is always wrong, but only if we are prepared to refuse the description torture to

any rightful act, no matter how distressing it may be for its object. Similarly, if we are

to accept that the description torture may be assigned properly to some rightful or

neutral acts that are very distressing for their objects, so as to accept, for example, that

we are not misusing the term when we describe a cat as torturing a mouse before killing

it, then we must deny that torture is always wrong, while not ruling out the possibility

that it may sometimes be wrong (for example, when it amounts to cruel and unusual

punishment).40

But while the concept of praiseworthiness might offer a watertight example of a

complete moral concept, common usage leads to leakage when we move to the ways in

which an act might be praiseworthy. We might think that courageous acts always are

praiseworthy, and hence that courage and other virtue concepts are complete moral

concepts. But in so far as it has become common usage to describe as courageous risky

acts which in Aristotelian terms might be very obviously not courageous but reckless,

we cannot fail to notice that foolhardy, and hence blameworthy, acts may be

courageous, and hence that courage seems to be becoming in some quarters an open

notion rather than a moral notion. The same sort of slide in popular usage might be

observed in the slogan “Greed is good”, promoted by the character Gordon Gekko in

the 1987 film Wall Street.

Kovesi argues that it is only because we describe agents’ situations with complete moral

notions that they appear to face irresolvable moral conflicts. He offers the example of

Philippe, a member of the French Resistance during World War II who also works for

the occupation government in the official capacity of executioner.41 Philippe is ordered

to execute Georges, a man who he knows to be innocent of the crime for which he is to

be executed but who he also knows is a spy for the Gestapo who is about to identify the

leaders of the Resistance. Philippe might be represented as having the options of killing

an innocent man, and hence murdering him, while saving the lives of the Resistance

commanders, or of refraining from murdering and also refraining from preserving the

40 Consider, as a contrast, our reaction if somebody were to tell us that they had seen their cat murder a mouse after catching it. I suspect we would think their use of the term murder inappropriate, and because we see nothing wrong in a cat’s killing a mouse. 41 Moral Notions, p111ff, in particular 112-113. 20

other lives, and therefore as facing a conflict of moral principles. But, Kovesi proposes,

it is only by describing Philippe’s possible execution of Georges with the complete

moral term murder, and therefore implicitly describing it as necessarily wrong, that the

conflict is generated. “Without accepting the validity of moral principles or the force of

moral notions he would not be in a complex situation,” Kovesi argues. “One could say

that he would not be in a situation at all. He would merely be in an excellent position to

dispose of a Gestapo agent.”

Kovesi goes on to offer a contrasting example in which Philippe, in his role as a

Resistance fighter, is lying in ambush for Georges with the intent of killing him if he

comes within range. Had Georges come within range of the ambush, he observes, “it

would have been quite irrelevant for Philippe’s decision [whether to kill him] to know

that Georges was at the same time innocent of something else that he was accused of.

So now in his role as an executioner he might be considering whether his act would

amount to the same as his ambush would have amounted to.” Philippe’s moral

reasoning as executioner, like all moral reasoning, Kovesi argues, must be reasoning by

analogy: he must ask whether this unusual case more nearly parallels other cases of

murder or other cases of taking life to promote military aims. The deductive argument:

“To do this would be murder, and I ought not murder, therefore I ought not do this”

offers Philippe a reason for refraining from executing Georges only given he accepts the

premise that his executing Georges would indeed count as murder. But it is the

acceptability of this premise – the question whether the description murder applies to

the execution – that is the key moral question. The suggestion that Philippe might do

well to murder arises only if the execution’s amounting to murder is presupposed, and it

is not from any deductive argument but only from an argument by analogy that a claim

that the execution amounted to murder could be justified.

These examples introduce a key passage in Moral Notions where Kovesi develops his

earlier assertion that the formal and material elements of a notion are inseparable. He

says: “By analogical reasoning I do not mean that we have certain paradigm cases that

we know to be good or right, and then by analogy we work out what to do in similar

cases.”42 This he says, is the view he had earlier criticised in objecting to the J.A.K.

Thomson translation of Aristotle’s suggestion in the Nicomachean Ethics that the way

to explain the meaning of the word “good” might be by analogy, part of which Kovesi

42 Op. cit., p114. 21

quotes in translation as: “As sight is good in the body, so is rationality in the mind”.43 “I

pointed out there that far from knowing the meaning of ‘good’ already, we are trying to

elucidate what it is,” Kovesi says. He argues that:

Things, happenings and situations differ from and resemble each other in many

ways; what we regard as the same depends on the formal element of our notions.

But sometimes the appropriate formal element is precisely what we are looking for.

We can direct our attention to the appropriate formal element by trying to consider

what we would or would not regard as instances of the same something. By trying

to think of another instance of a situation that would be the same we are trying to

think what makes the situation to be what it is. In the extraordinary situations our

predicament is exactly this: we have no principle to help us because our situation

has not been brought under a formal element which could enable us to form a

notion of what it is. Without a notion and a term corresponding to it in our

language we cannot formulate a principle. Looking for a principle is looking for a

formal element.44

Kovesi then replies to the possible objection that he had just contradicted his earlier

claim that we can think of another example of the same thing only by the help of a

formal element.

I am not saying, however, that first we find other instances of the same thing which

will then enable us to discover the formal element; but only that the process of

finding the formal element is the process of finding what would or would not be

instances of the same thing. [The emphasis is his.]

Having offered this, I am in a position to make a parallel point about how I think

comparisons must be conducted. I said above that somebody can justify their

comparative judgment to somebody else only by agreeing upon the reason why we are

conducting the comparison and showing how our judgment is justified in terms of that

reason. Given that, as I have also said, that reason will comprise the formal element of

the comparative concept, we can see that the process of justifying a comparative

judgment might not be so straightforwardly a matter of, first, finding the reason why we

are conducting the comparison and, second, justifying the judgment in terms of that

43 The earlier criticism is at Moral Notions pp32-4. The passage from Aristotle Kovesi says is at 1096b12, but the relevant paragraph appears to be the next one, at 1096b27ff. 44 Moral Notions, p115. 22

reason. Rather, Kovesi’s argument implies that, at least in difficult cases, there will be

some to-ing and fro-ing in our attempts to justify comparative judgments, so that what

we give as our reason for comparing may be modified as we argue our way to a justified

judgment.

While this might sound like a process of equivocation, it must be remembered that when

we give reasons to other people we must do so in language, and that where the

comparison takes place in the course of practical reasoning, the simplest way in which

we could give the point of the comparison is also the most general: we are attempting to

judge what it would be better that we do. But where there is disagreement about what

would count as a justified judgment, we can promote agreement by redescribing the

point of the comparison in a more specific way, perhaps in a way that more clearly

reflects the particular situation in which a choice must be made. It should not surprise us

that we might benefit by modifying such a redescription in the course of seeking

acceptance for our justification. But while anybody must agree that the point of the

comparison is to judge what it would be better that we do, whether anybody agrees to

some possible redescription will be a matter of their being convinced by it.

1.9 Parallels, and calculation

Before concluding this chapter, I will outline briefly some parallels with the work of

other authors and comment on a point Griffin makes about calculation.

The general tenor of the discussion thus far seems to me to be broadly sympathetic to

views on comparability expressed relatively recently by Elijah Millgram and Fred

D’Agostino, in so far as both writers emphasise that what might appear to be

incommensurable can come to be commensurated through a process of

commensuration. Millgram, attending to the way in which a person might seek to

commensurate for him or herself what may have appeared to be incommensurable

options, argues that: “Commensurability is not the precondition but the product of

successful deliberation.”45 D’Agostino, attending more to how commensuration may be

institutionalised, agrees but argues that “it is standards, not options, which may be

incommensurable”, and which may be made commensurable by a project of what he

45 “Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, pp151-169; 158. The emphasis is Millgram’s. 23

alludes to in upper-case type as COMMENSURATION, which develops a technology

of commensuration.46 I argue that whenever we compare items we must compare them

as instances of some single concept, and that we can understand this concept and infer

from it the standards against which we justify a judgement of the comparison only by

examining the reasons why we have formed it. Hence, both standards and options are

incommensurable in so far as they are formal elements of concepts, which Kovesi

argues count as standards in either case. What D’Agostino calls a project of

COMMENSURATION will therefore involve formulating another concept in either

case – whether or not we invent a new term to denote the new concept.47

46 Incommensurability and Commensuration: The Common Denominator, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; p32. The argument is outlined in the preceding three pages. 47 D’Agostino makes much of his proposal that what he calls the locus of incommensurability lies at the level of standards, rather than options. His underlying point appears to be that given a standard against which to evaluate options, the options may be evaluated, and their evaluation justified against the standard. Hence, given the standard, the options always will be commensurable. As I have suggested, this point has clear parallels with my view. However, D’Agostino thinks apparent incommensurabilities arise when two or more standards for which no rates of cross-substitution have been determined are appropriate to the evaluation of a set of options. And he goes on to argue that in such cases, rates of cross-substitution always can be determined, and sometimes properly, by a suitable project of COMMENSURATION (op. cit. p34). I will discuss these claims briefly to help distinguish our accounts.

The suggestion that rates of cross-substitution can be determined for unique standards by a project of COMMENSURATION allows the inference that the rates are somehow implicit in the standards. While I don’t think this is D’Agostino’s considered view, it is nevertheless a view worth examining. How could the cross-rates be implicit in the standards? Only if the standards were related analytically: for example, as the penny was related to the shilling under the British imperial monetary system: by definition, one shilling was substitutable for 12 pence. But if the relationship is analytic, then obviously the standards were commensurate all along. In which case the appearance of incommensurability must have been very illusory. But if it is not analytic, then any rate of cross-substitution must be imposed on the standards commensurated. I think this would be D’Agostino’s considered view. But then, the imposition of the rate becomes inescapably a matter of convention, rather than merely a matter of logical analysis. But if it is to be a matter of convention, then nothing but possible convenience could require us to commensurate these standards – rather than solving the problem simply by agreeing to abandon one of them, or alternatively, by agreeing to abandon all of them and commensurating the options directly via the development of a new standard that bears no relation to the old. For the point of having the prior standards was to allow us to commensurate relevant options, and hence to commensurate the prior standards by convention is to commensurate the relevant options by convention: at either level, nothing but convention ranks the options. To locate the prior incommensurability only among the standards, and deny that it was also among the relevant options, would be to deny the only implication of the prior absence of rates of cross-substitution, which was that the options, and not merely the standards, appeared incommensurable.

Kovesi’s analysis alerts us to our implicit reliance on standards for our use of the very terms with which we describe options: these are the standards against which we would justify to ourselves or to others a claim that a term properly describes an aspect of our experience; they are what Kovesi refers to as the formal elements of our concepts. On my account, therefore, the appearance of incommensurability arises at the level of options no less than at the level of standards; for it arises from our attributing to the options conflicting standards that we infer from the options’ descriptions. It is because we infer them from the options’ descriptions that these standards appear “appropriate”, to use D’Agostino’s term. But, I argue, we do not need to attempt to compare options against pregiven standards that are inferred from their descriptions; and nor need we attempt to reconcile those standards. That is because the standard against which we justify our evaluation of options must be inferred, not from the options, but from the reasons we have for comparing them: in Kovesi’s terms, from the formal element of the comparative concept. D’Agostino’s preoccupation with the locus of incommensurability appears to have led him to sidestep nearly all of the arguments I examine below. 24

It is where we do not formulate a new term for the new concept – taking it that IQ tests

measure intelligence, for example, or that a formula which counts refereed publications

measures the quality of an academic’s research activity – that we run the risk of creating

confusion that can be exploited – deliberately or unconsciously – by technical experts or

other elites. D’Agostino’s discussion of how commensurative interfaces can entrench or

extend what he terms, after Foucault, domination is relevant here.48 I shall argue that

confusion of this sort at both the theoretical and the practical level lies at the root of our

puzzling about how values that cannot be quantified in terms of resources, as Bernard

Williams put it, can be compared with the value of money.49

D’Agostino cites approvingly Elizabeth Anderson’s pragmatic approach to value and

value commensurability, quoting her thus:

[V]alue judgments are justified by showing that they can perform their practical

function well. This is done by showing that it is rational to use them to guide our

deliberations and attitudes. So instead of saying that it is rational to value

something because it is good, pragmatism says that it is good because it is rational

for us to value it.50

Because Kovesi offers an essentially functional account of concept formation – we form

and share concepts for reasons, and these reasons spring from human needs – it may

appear as though my approach to questions of incomparability will be pragmatic at its

core. Obviously, there will be parallels. But Kovesi interposes the conventions of

language between our human needs and our descriptions of what we need to pick out

and distinguish: he reminds us that the quantifier “something” which Anderson uses in

the quotation above will be replaced in discussion of specific cases by a description, and

a description that has been formed from the point of view of our valuing or disvaluing

whatever the description describes.

Both the parallels and the distinction between my approach to comparisons and

Anderson’s will be well illustrated if I offer another quotation from the article

D’Agostino has cited. Anderson writes that: 48 Op. cit. The discussion is introduced at Chapter VI and developed at Chapter VII. 49 Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980; p102. 50 D’Agostino, op. cit., p62. The quote is from Anderson’s “Practical Reason and Incommensurable Goods”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, Cambridge,

25

Pragmatism implies that goods are incommensurable whenever we have no reason

to compare their values in practice. Sometimes it is boring or pointless to compare

them, other times it makes sense to leave room for the free play of nonrational

motivations like whims and moods, and sometimes goods play such different roles

in deliberation that attempts to compare them head to head are incoherent. All of

these cases generate incommensurabilities, but in ways that do not confuse

practical reason, since they are its own conclusions.51

As I have indicated, I will take a different but nevertheless related line. Rather than

taking goods to be incommensurable when we have no reason to compare their values, I

argue that items often appear to be incommensurable when we do not appreciate the

reason(s) why we want to compare them – and in particular, when the descriptions we

give to the items lead us to presuppose conflicting reasons for our comparing them.

Such presuppositions are invited by a phraseology that appears very commonly in the

debate on value comparability: we are asked how we could compare the value of item A

with the value of item B. The question invites us to consider what value A might have

prior to, as it were, the particular comparison at hand, and when we consider that, we

are extremely likely to consider A under its own formal element: we will look to the

reasons why people have wanted to pick out and share the concept A, which in Kovesi’s

terms will be the reasons why we value (or disvalue) A. We then puzzle over how we

could weigh these reasons against the reasons why we value (or disvalue) B: this is why

the attempt to compare may seem incoherent. We can render it coherent, I argue, if we

recognise that when we judge any comparison, our judgment assigns value to the

compared items A and B, and that the formal element of the concept of value under

which we assign it will be supplied by the reasons we have for comparing.

It will emerge as an implication of my argument that it is not helpful to distinguish

whims and moods as “non-rational” motivations: our reason for comparing two items

may simply be to judge which one we prefer. Rationality enters the picture when we

attempt to explain our comparative judgment to ourselves – so as to enhance our

capacity to judge consistently – or to others, so as to persuade them to accept our

conclusions.

Harvard University Press, 1997; p92. Anderson develops and applies a pragmatically based expressive theory of rational action in Value in Ethics and Economics, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993. 51 Anderson, “Practical Reason and Incommensurable Goods”, p91. 26

Griffin, in introducing the article I have cited, argues strenuously and convincingly

against the view, which he believed to be prevalent at the time it was written, that “the

computational approach to social and moral questions” was responsible for the

devastating character of United States intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. He

points out that any of the decisions made by those leading US policy at the time could

have been justified on grounds that had little or nothing to do with utilitarian ethics and

their calculative approach. “In any case, even if a true Benthamic calculator in Vietnam

would have accepted the death of thousands of peasants in return for victory … that

does not show that those who did decide to devastate the countryside did so because

they were Benthamic calculators,”52 he concludes.

Griffin is right about this. But he is too hasty in dismissing arguments for

incommensurability. For although the question whether values are commensurable can

always, as I will argue, be answered affirmatively, in so far as we may commensurate

particular instances of them as instances of some single concept, all this does is move us

on to the question of what is that other concept. For it is only in terms of the standard

supplied by that other concept that our evaluative judgment can be justified. Anybody

can judge, and if necessary calculate, whether apples are better than oranges, whether an

act claimed to be courageous is better than an act claimed to be kind, an endeavour

claimed to be productive better than an endeavour claimed to be compassionate, a

particular A better than a particular B. What is more difficult is explaining the judge’s

notion of what it is to be better in any particular case, why anybody else should accept

that notion, and why anybody who does accept it should also accept a claim that the

judge has satisfied it in reaching his judgment.

52 P42.

27

28

2. Comparisons and reasons

Examples where compared items are given similar descriptions often seem more

straightforward than examples where compared items are given diverse descriptions.

This is because, in the former case, we are more likely to presuppose a reason why we

are comparing.

2.1 General and specific comparative concepts

WHICH is bigger, 10 or 100? You might be tempted to reply that the answer is obvious:

that 100 is clearly a bigger number than 10. But what if I set the first number in 18-point

type, like this, 10, and the second in 12-point type, like this, 100. Now, which of these

is bigger? Is it still obvious that 100 is bigger than 10?

Well, you may reply, perhaps not. I hadn’t realised you were talking about the size of

the numbers as they appeared on the page. I had assumed you were asking me which

number represented the bigger quantity, or which number ranked higher on an

ascending scale of natural numbers. Now you seem to be asking me which number

occupies the most space on the page. If that is the question, and the 10 is in 18-point

type and the 100 in 12-point type, then it is obvious that the 10 is bigger. But you need

to be more precise about the question you are asking.

Ah, I say, I am glad you raised that point. Because when I asked you whether 10,

printed in 18-point type, was bigger than 100, printed in 12-point type, I didn’t really

want to know which number occupied the most space on a page. What I wanted to know

was which number would be narrower if the two were arranged one above the other in a

column. I wanted to construct a table in which the column heads were all the numbers

between 10 and 19 and would be printed in 18-point type, and I wanted to know

whether columns just wide enough to accept these heads would also be wide enough to

accept a value in each cell that ranged between 1 and 199 and was printed in 12-point

type. Now I will ask you again, which is bigger, 100 or 10?

At this point you might feel a little frustrated – indeed you might even feel exasperated,

and excusably so. “Well,” you might say, “I am glad you finally got around to telling

29

me the reason why you asked me that question. It is very hard to answer a question like

that correctly unless I know the reason why you want to know the answer. Now that you

tell me you want to know which of those numbers, printed in 18-point and 12-point type

respectively, would require the wider column in a table, I can see that the answer is not

so obvious after all. Even if I look hard at the two when placed side-by-side on a page,

it is not clear to me which would require the wider column.

“And,” you might continue, “if that is why you wanted to know, other things might

become relevant as well as the width of the numerals. We would need to know whether

the 100, being in smaller type, would remain clearly legible and elegant even if it were

afforded a little less space between it and the vertical rules of the table. And we would

want to know also what typeface you were going to use for your table, because in some

typefaces the numeral 1 is very narrow, like that, whereas in others that numeral is quite

broad, like this, 1, and will occupy proportionally more space in a column, compared

with the zeroes of the smaller type, as it is scaled up. In fact, the reason why you ask the

question is crucially important to what the right answer is. Unless I know why you have

asked it, the question about which is bigger is so ambiguous as to mean nothing – or

rather, it is so general it could mean anything. It seems to mean something in particular

only when I assume I know why you asked the question, as I did in the first place.”

It is often supposed that comparisons are straightforward, at least in principle, when the

two things to be compared are of the same kind. The above imaginary conversation

shows that this is not strictly true; indeed, it shows it is not strictly true even when the

two things are both numbers – surely, on its face, a paradigm case of easy comparability

of things of the same kind.1 We saw above that we can be sure that we have answered

appropriately the question whether 100 is bigger than 10 only after we have specified

the particular reason why we want to know the answer in this case. That is because what

is the correct answer to the question – or, as I will suggest later, what is a justified

judgment of the comparison – will change according to the reason why we wanted an

answer.

1 It might be argued that no reader should have assumed in the first place that the numerals 10 and 100 represented natural numbers. That it would be perfectly understandable if, nevertheless, they did, is one of the points of this chapter. Arguably, no one should have assumed either that the ink stains on the page represented numerals, but that too is an assumption understandable in the circumstances.

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Of course, every comparative question will tell us something about the terms in which

the comparison is to be made: the problem is that it may not tell us enough. In the case

offered above, it was clear from the outset that the comparison was to be made in

respect of the bigness (or size) of the two things in question, and not in respect of their

smell or their colour. Even after I had finished explaining why I wanted to compare the

two numbers, the comparison was still to be made in respect of the numbers’ size. But

we needed to know more specifically why I was making the comparison before we

could understand what I meant when I asked which was bigger, and hence could see

clearly how I was seeking to compare the two things.

The same point can be made in terms of Kovesi’s division of concepts into formal and

material elements. Kovesi, as we have seen, argued that we cannot understand a concept

fully until we understand the reasons people had or have for developing and sharing that

concept. To grasp those reasons is to grasp the formal element of the concept. It is only

through understanding those reasons that we can understand why the instances of a

concept all come under that concept, he argued. Similarly, I have suggested, it is

through understanding the formal element of the concept under which we are comparing

any two things that we come to be able to make the comparison. We understand the

formal element when we understand why we want to make the comparison: what point

the comparison will serve. When I explained that I wanted to compare the size of the

number 10 set in 18-point type with the size of the number 100 in 12-point type so that I

could discover whether the two numbers would fit in a certain way into a table, I

specified the formal element of the concept of size that I wanted to draw on in making

the comparison.

To compare things is, fairly obviously, to assess them according to a common set of

criteria. When we ask whether 100 is bigger than 10, we must investigate by assessing

the size of each number under the same set of criteria. We cannot answer a question

whether 100 is bigger than 10 if we stipulate that in the case of 100, bigger means

ranked higher on an ascending list of natural numbers, and in the case of 10, bigger

means occupying more space on a line of type. We need the criteria against which we

assess the size of the numbers to be the same in each case, and if there is more than one

criterion we need to know how their differing results may be reconciled – through

averaging or weighting of some kind, for example. How we reconcile the different

criteria will also depend on the reason why we want to make the comparison.

31

I want to be clear here about why I think that initial question – whether 100 was bigger

than 10 – might have seemed on its face to have had an obvious answer. It was not that

100 and 10 were things of the same kind – numbers – and therefore were comparable in

respect of their size. It was, rather, that when I asked the question, it was easy to assume

that when I referred to the sizes of those numerals I was referring to them under the

concept of the size of natural numbers, and it was that familiar concept which supplied

criteria according to which anyone could investigate the numbers and rank them in

order of their size.2 It is part of the concept of the set of natural numbers that it is an

ordered set – indeed we might easily take it to be one of the paradigm cases of an

ordered set – and when ordinarily we talk of the size of a number we often intend by

that a reference to the number’s place in that ordered set. Because that is the concept of

size most often used when referring to the size of numbers, it would have been

understandable for a person to assume that was what I meant in this case. But in this

case the assumption was wrong.

One reason why we need to be particularly careful about specifying the formal element

of the concept under which we are attempting any comparison is that comparative terms

such as bigness and coldness and even cleverness may easily be so general as to support

a broad range of more specific meanings, many of them derived metaphorically from

the more commonly understood meanings of the term. In so far as we are comparing 10

and 100 under their conception as natural numbers, references to the numbers’ bigness

and smallness refer to the numbers’ places in that ordered set. But that is not what we

commonly mean by the bigness of something. Commonly, if we were referring to how

big something was, we would be referring to how much space it occupied. But our

concept of size has metaphorical links with magnitudes of many different kinds. It is

only when we are clear about the concept under which we are comparing the size of any

two things that we can be clear about whether we are to attend to a common meaning of

size or to one of its more metaphorical meanings when we make our assessment.

Sometimes it is more obvious that the generality of a comparative question has rendered

it ambiguous. If I asked who was the bigger star, Kylie Minogue or Paulini Curuenavuli,

and you knew a bit about each Australian singer, you might well respond immediately

32

that the question was ambiguous. Kylie is famously petite; the little-known Paulini,

when a finalist on the commercial television program Australian Idol, was castigated for

having worn a dress that made it too obvious she was not petite. If you knew these

things, you would be less likely to make assumptions about whether you should use

metaphorical or literal criteria when assessing who was the bigger star. You would be

more likely than in my original example using numbers to take it that on its face, there

was no determinate answer to the question I was asking. It is only after I explain why I

want to know – because I have a costume for each and need to know whose is the larger

size – that you see that the answer I am looking for is that Paulini is the bigger star.

Now, is the question whether Kylie Minogue or Paulini Curuenavuli is the bigger star

fundamentally different in its logical structure from the question which of those singers

is the better star? My suggestion is that the latter question, like the former, is a question

so general as to support a range of justifiable judgments. Justifying any particular

judgment whether Kylie or Paulini is the better star will turn on our understanding the

concept of betterness – well, goodness, or value – under which we are to make the

comparison.

2.2 Comparing similar goods

The force of these comments may become clearer if I apply them immediately to an

example given by Donald Regan that was intended to show that comparisons of goods

of a similar kind were relatively straightforward. Regan gave the example in an essay

arguing that ultimately, any goods could be compared and ranked according to their

value: it was just more obvious that goods of the same kind could be so ranked.3 The

claim is particularly well suited for expanding our discussion because it makes a

hypothetical comparative assertion about the size of two things and infers from it a

comparative claim about their values. It will be instructive for us to examine why we,

like Regan, will tend to find the inference obviously valid.

2 It is possible that a reader who thought the initial question had a determinate answer was making some other assumption which had that implication. I am simply explicating one example of such an assumption. 3 “Value, Comparability and Choice”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; p134.

33

Regan writes that:

Comparisons between goods of the same kind are relatively unproblematic.

Nobody, I think, would baulk at the idea that an extensive knowledge of Hittite

archaeology is more valuable than a paltry knowledge of the same topic, even if the

person with only a smattering knows a few isolated facts that have escaped the

expert (so that there is no relationship of strict inclusion between the goods being

compared).4

The example appears to begin with a comparison between two people in respect of the

quantity of their knowledge of Hittite archaeology. One, it is asserted, has an extensive

knowledge of the topic, the other a paltry knowledge. The implicit premise Regan

invites us to accept is that when it comes to knowledge of a topic, more is better: that

the person with the extensive knowledge obviously has the more valuable store of

knowledge of the topic. Regan’s claim is that because we are dealing with two goods of

the same kind, declaring valid the inference from quantity to quality is relatively

unproblematic. He does not spell out what he means when he says that the goods to be

compared are of the same kind, but it appears he means that each is knowledge, and of

the same topic.

Now, I proposed above that an apprehension that two items are of the same kind will

not in itself render any comparative assessment of them unproblematic. We always

evaluate under a certain description, Kovesi reminds us, which is to say that it is only by

taking two things to be of the same kind that we can make a comparison at all. The

problem is that the result of the comparison will depend on just what kind of things we

take them to be, and I have argued that we cannot know what kind until we appreciate

the formal element of the comparative concept: that is, until we know the reason why

we are making the comparison.

This suggests that it is question-begging of Regan to say that the two goods being

compared in this case are of the same kind, if what he means is just that both are

knowledge of a certain topic. The fact that 10 and 100 were both natural numbers did

not on its own ensure we could supply a helpful answer to the baldly stated question

whether 10 or 100 was the bigger number. We needed to ask what the very general term

4 Loc. cit. The interpolation is Regan’s.

34

“bigger” should be taken to mean in the particular case at hand, and we needed to

compare the two numbers under this concept.

In Regan’s case we have two comparative judgments in play. It appears that in the first

instance Regan is reporting a comparison that has been made under the concept of the

extent of the knowledge of Hittite archaeology held by each of two people. And that

having investigated the two people’s knowledge of the topic under the concept of their

extent, he thinks it unproblematic to infer that the more extensive store of knowledge

was also the more valuable store.

Let us begin with the first judgment. How would Regan justify a claim that a certain

person had a more extensive knowledge of Hittite archaeology than another? The

argument I offered above suggests he would need to fill out in rather more detail the

concept of the extent of knowledge that he was using in this case. Given that he has not

offered the detail, we must suspect we have made an unwarranted assumption if we

thought we knew what Regan meant by the claim that one person’s knowledge of a

topic was more extensive than another’s.

But of course, we do think we know what Regan means. Extensive is an adjective in

very common use for describing knowledge that a person has. When someone says of a

person that they have a more extensive knowledge of a topic than another person has,

we rarely feel confused.

Notice, however, how confused we would feel if somebody told us that one person had

a much more extensive knowledge of a topic than another, but that the other person had

the better knowledge of the topic. Or similarly, if a professor marking exams in Hittite

archaeology remarked of one student’s paper: “He has a very extensive knowledge of

the Hittites but his knowledge of them isn’t very good.”

Why would this confuse us? Because when ordinarily we talk about knowledge, we use

the adjectives extensive and good as synonyms. Unlike, say, pasture, knowledge is not a

concept that, in its ordinary use, admits of a distinction between its quality and its

quantity. I might have a lot of pasture which isn’t very good, and another person might

have a little bit of pasture which is very good indeed. But to have a lot of knowledge

about a topic is, colloquially, to have a good knowledge of it, and to have a poor

35

knowledge of something is not to know very much about it, in our ordinary way of

speaking.

Now, let us look at the second judgment, the judgment that one of the two people has

the more valuable knowledge of Hittite archaeology. How would Regan justify that

claim? Again, the argument I offered above suggests he would need to fill out in rather

more detail the concept of degree of value that he was using in this case. He would need

to tell us what reason he had for wanting to assess the knowledge of Hittite archaeology

held by each of two people in terms of its goodness. Given that he has not done so, we

might reasonably suspect him of presupposing a reason of the sort people commonly

have for making such judgments. Perhaps the grading of university students, or the

selection of archaeological staff. In either case, and in most others in which such

judgments typically will be made, a person with a broad general knowledge will be

more effective than a person with a narrow and specific knowledge in pursuing the sort

of project that such knowledge will be intended to serve. So in general, our reasons for

assessing the goodness of someone’s knowledge of the Hittites will be the same as our

reasons for assessing its extent. And that underpins our colloquial usage.

Hence, if it seems straightforward that an extensive knowledge of Hittite archaeology is

better than a paltry knowledge of the topic, that is because we ordinarily use the terms

“extensive” and “good” synonymously when describing knowledge. Indeed, something

of this colloquial equivalence has crept into Regan’s example, where the person with the

extensive knowledge is contrasted with a person who has a paltry knowledge. The term

paltry is not primarily an adjective of quantity but an adjective of quality: many

dictionaries give its primary meaning as worthless.

When Regan tells us it is unproblematic that an extensive knowledge of Hittite

archaeology is better than a paltry knowledge of it, we tend to agree reflexively because

we tend to presuppose a reason why we would want to compare the values of these

items, and we are likely to presuppose a reason of the sort sketched above. But Regan

has not said anything that justifies such an assumption. And it is perfectly plausible that

an amateur archaeologist who knew a great deal less about the Hittites than a

professional archaeologist nevertheless knew something about them that rendered his

knowledge better in some particular case.

36

More obviously, the inference from more to better is not straightforwardly valid

whenever two items compared are the same in some way. Bigger cars are not

straighforwardly better cars, and nor are longer arguments straightforwardly better

arguments.

Immediately after offering the purportedly unproblematic comparison that we have just

examined, Regan contrasts two other examples: “But how can we compare a knowledge

of the Hittites and a knowledge of the halides?” he writes. “Or harder still, how can we

compare, say, a friendship and research on beetles? Such different things may both be

valuable, but how can we possibly say one is more valuable than the other?”

I would be doing Regan a disservice if I failed to remind the reader that the contrast he

has offered here is intended rhetorically. His own position is that ultimately, the values

of all things are comparable: that they are comparable in terms of Moorean good. I

agree with Regan about this, up to a point. That is, in so far as Regan can specify what it

would mean to say of two things that one was Moorean better than the other, by

explaining why one would want to attempt the comparison, a comparative judgment

could be reached and a justification for it offered in respect of any two things. But I

have sought to refute the rhetorical claim that it is less problematic to compare the

values of things of the same kind, in Regan’s sense, than the values of things of

different kinds. And I have sought to refute the claim without appealing, as Regan has,

to the notion of Moorean good.

Examples comparing items given similar descriptions often appear more straightforward

than examples comparing items that are given divergent descriptions, but that is because

in the former case, one is more likely to presuppose a reason for making the

comparison, even if it has not been specified.

2.3 Making fine distinctions

The other reason why we need to be very careful when specifying the formal element of

the concept under which we are attempting any comparison is that the concepts under

which comparisons are conducted will often be understood in very specialised senses by

the people conducting the comparison, and those people may be seeking to discriminate

very finely.

37

Kovesi observes that it is difficult to give precisely once and for all the formal element

of a concept even in the case of a concept as apparently straightforward as that of a

piece of furniture such as a table. He proposes that, disregarding anachronism, “the

word ‘table’, with our formal element, could not have played a role in the life of the

Romans, except as a descriptive phrase in an inverted commas sense: ‘This is what

some people in some parts of the world call “table”.’”5 A contemporary Australian and

an ancient Roman, no matter how expert in their own cultures’ uses for furniture, might

well reach different conclusions if asked whether a particular piece of furniture was

indeed a table, simply because they had divergent understandings of what tables were

for. That is not to say that their understandings would have nothing in common – if that

were so, then the Latin term mensa would never have been translated as table, for

translators would never have recognised as tables the objects to which the term mensa

referred. Disagreements between ancient Romans and contemporary Australian time-

travellers about what is and what is not a table could arise, however, as the margins of

the concept were neared; or to put the same idea in another way, they could arise over

where were the margins of the concept. Even a small divergence in what was largely a

common understanding could lead to disagreement in marginal cases.

It is not only two people from different cultures who may diverge in their concepts of

the same sorts of things: any two individuals will so diverge in so far as the reasons

which they have for using concepts described by the same term diverge, and it does not

seem likely that for any two people those reasons will ever converge absolutely. This

suggests that Kovesi might not have gone far enough when he said that it was difficult

to give precisely once and for all the formal elements of some concepts: it implies that

nobody can give precisely and once and for all the formal element of any concept, if by

precisely once and for all we mean that there is nothing further anybody could ever say

which would help us understand what anybody would ever mean when they used the

concept. However, in our ordinary usage of many terms this does not matter very much,

for often a relatively imprecise shared understanding is enough to do the job.

In matters of comparison, the import of divergence in people’s grasp of the formal

element rises dramatically. That is because often the point of a comparison will be to

make fine distinctions. Wherever two people have divergent understandings of the

5 Moral Notions, p5.

38

comparative concept, their capacity to agree about fine distinctions made under that

concept will diminish as their understandings of the concept diverge.

If my wife says to me that we need a new dining table, we will be sufficiently in

agreement about the concept of a dining table that I will know well enough what she

means. If she asks me to go out and buy us a dining table, there is a good chance I will

bring back something that she agrees is a dining table, just because most pieces of

furniture that are sold as dining tables are dining tables uncontroversially in the culture

within which they are offered. A more precise specification will only be helpful where

we might need to carefully delineate the margins of what is a dining table and what is

not. Perhaps, for example, if my wife commissions a dining table from a maker of art

furniture, the potential may arise for her to greet the artists’ presentation of the work

with the exclamation: “But that’s not a dining table!”

Consider, however, the potential for misunderstanding if my wife asks me not just to

buy any dining table but to compare the goodness of dining tables: I am to go out and

buy a very good dining table. It would be a foolish husband who, before setting out on

the errand, did not initiate a discussion of how one should attempt to rank dining tables

by their goodness. For when my wife asks me to purchase a very good dining table, it

may be that she does not mean I should look for a dining table that anybody would think

was very good for them – and indeed, it may be there is no such table. A solid oak

dining table that will seat 16 people might be very good for a couple with a big house

who were fond of entertaining, but it might not be very good for my wife and me who

share a pleasant but small flat accessed only by four flights of stairs. If I am to compare

dining tables, then, and come home with a table my wife agrees is a very good one, I

will need her to specify a set of criteria against which she would like me to compare

dining tables for their goodness.

She cannot do this, however, by specifying the material elements of what she thinks is a

very good dining table – its colour, composition, size, shape et cetera – because that will

not enable me to compare tables. The point parallels Kovesi’s assertion that it is the

formal element of a concept that enables us to follow a rule in applying it. If my wife

merely wants a particular table, or a table from a particular maker produced in a

particular size, material and colour, then she has conducted the comparison herself and

wants me to purchase the result of her comparison. If she wants me to survey the

39

available dining tables and come back with one she will agree is very good for us, then

she will need to give me the formal element of the concept of goodness in dining tables

under which she wishes me to conduct the comparison. And to do that is to give me her

reasons for why she wishes me to rank the tables for goodness and select one which is

very good, rather than coming back with just any table. The more precisely she can

specify these reasons, the more precisely I will be able to make the comparison while

being confident that she would agree with my judgement in the matter.

Lest it be thought I am implying that only a woman would know how to select a very

good dining table, let me emphasise that the point of my discussion with my wife is that

I, the buyer, understand what she means by a very good table. It may be that I disagree

with her, and that is the very point I am seeking to make. The two of us are not likely to

disagree about what is a dining table, except in so far as we are dealing with pieces

about which people in general would doubt whether it is a dining table. But we are very

likely to disagree about what is a very good dining table, because here the

discrimination that we are attempting to make is much finer. That will often be the case,

when we think of ourselves as setting out to make a comparison.

Where a comparison of two things seems to have no determinate answer, it may be that

our specification of the formal element of the comparative concept is insufficiently

precise to give us a basis for discriminating between them. Similarly, where people

disagree about the results of a comparison, it may be that their understandings of the

comparative concept diverge: a disagreement about whether Kylie or Paulini is the

better star may arise from a divergence in the disputants’ understanding of what

goodness means in this case.

This analysis will help us understand a puzzling proposition about comparability made

by Ruth Chang. Chang proposes that the assessments better than, worse than and

equally good do not exhaust the possible results of a comparison of the values of two

things: that there is a fourth possible result she terms on a par with. In order to see what

she means by this, we will need to look more closely at what philosophers in general

have meant by a comparison of value, and more particularly at what they have meant by

the incomparability of values.

40

3. Incomparability

Incomparability outlined, arguments for it from the diversity of values examined and the

nominal–notable objection to such arguments analysed. The nominal–notable objection

succeeds because it widens the range of reasons for comparing that might be

presupposed by somebody considering a hypothetical comparison.

3.1 Overview

As a starting point for our investigation of value incomparability, we cannot do better

than the overview offered by Chang in the collection she has edited of essays on the

topic.1 There Chang offers what she terms a rough specification of incomparability, and

then outlines seven kinds of argument she says have been advanced to support the

proposition that there are incomparable values. As her list seems comprehensive,2 and

brings order to the range of ways in which people have attempted to tackle the question,

I shall begin this chapter by giving the rough specification and elaborating upon it. I

will then go through the various arguments, showing how I think Kovesi’s insights, if

indeed they are valid, would bear on them. Chang thinks four of the arguments fail and

three have problems but might nevertheless be made to succeed. Kovesi’s analysis

suggests that in most cases the arguments do not so much fail as miss the point, as I

shall seek to demonstrate over the next five chapters.

In this chapter I shall examine two of the argument forms: arguments from the diversity

of values, and arguments from bidirectionality. In Chapter 4, I shall examine arguments

from calculation, and arguments from multiple rankings. In that chapter I will also

defend my decision to treat the terms incomparable and imcommensurable

synonymously, and will discuss vagueness in comparative concepts. I will deal briefly

with arguments from the irresolvability of conflict there also, observing that much of

what I would have to say about these will be implicit in chapters 5, 6 and 7. In Chapter

5, I will focus directly on the implications of my analysis for how we justify choices.

The argument Chang thinks most successful, which she calls the argument from small

improvements, I shall examine in detail in Chapter 6, offering two refutations. An

argument developed by Joseph Raz, that some goods are constitutively incomparable

1 “Introduction”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason. 2 Cf Hsieh, Nien-hê, “Incommensurable Values”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007).

41

with others, will be singled out for a more detailed examination in Chapter 7. I shall

offer a reconstruction of that argument in Chapter 8.

3.2 Incomparability outlined

Chang’s rough specification says that two items will be incomparable if no positive

value relation holds between them.3 That somewhat cryptic definition expands as

follows. Whether a value relation is positive turns on whether it says something

affirmative about the relation between the two items. To claim that, for example, x is

better than y is to claim that a positive value relation holds between x and y; whereas to

claim that it is not the case that x is better than y, or that x is not better than y, is not to

claim a positive value relation. A key point here is that a claim that x is not better than y

does not imply the positive claim that y is at least as good as x, as it leaves open the

possibility that x is not comparable with y.

The second point of expansion lies in the notion of a relation of value. Chang asserts

that every comparison must proceed in terms of a value, elaborating without, I suspect,

adding a great deal of light that: “A ‘value’ is any consideration with respect to which a

meaningful evaluative comparison can be made.”4 The two claims together tell us that

every comparison must proceed in terms of a consideration with respect to which a

meaningful comparison can be made, which seems to say nothing more than that we

cannot make a comparison unless to do so means something. As obvious as this may

sound, it is nevertheless a profound observation if we read it as telling us that

comparisons have a point and can be understood only in so far as we understand what is

that point.

Chang, however, does not pause to make this observation, perhaps having her gaze

firmly fixed on the puzzle of how two dissimilar things can be brought together in an

evaluative process. She immediately elaborates that we can give a name to the

consideration she refers to, calling it the covering value of the comparison. She lists a

range of possible covering values but does not intend it to be exhaustive: among them

are generosity, kindness, dishonour, cruelty, prudence, moral goodness, tawdriness and

pleasingness-to-my-grandmother. Most of these, she says, can be broken down further

3 Chang, op. cit., p4. 4 Op. cit., p5.

42

into values that contribute to them: “The contributory values of philosophical talent

include originality, clarity of thought, insightfulness, and so on.”

Chang further tells us that some value relations are generic while others are specific. By

‘generic’, she seems to mean that the comparative term is ambiguous unless a more

specific covering value is specified or assumed. Thus:

Generic relations, like “better than”, “as valuable as”, and “worse than”,

presuppose a covering value. They are strictly three-place; x is better than y with

respect to V, where V ranges over values. When V is specified, the generic relation

is thereby relativised.

In contrast:

Specific value relations, like “kinder than”, “as cruel as”, and “tawdrier than”, have

their covering values built in.5

This leads her to propose it as plausible that every specific value relation has a

relativised generic equivalent: kinder than would be equivalent to better than with

respect to kindness.

The import of all this is delivered via an example:

A bald claim that philosophy is better than pushpin6 … cannot be fully understood

without reference to some respect in terms of which the claim is made. Philosophy

may be better in terms of gaining a kind of understanding or intrinsic

worthwhileness but worse in terms of providing relaxation or developing hand-eye

coordination. Although the respect in terms of which a comparison is made is not

always explicit, some value must always be implicit for there to be any comparison

to be understood.7

Where does this leave us? Chang’s intent seems to be to tell us that some comparative

questions are framed in terms too general to admit of a determinate answer. That, of

course, is compatible with the argument I am offering. But she has attempted to explain

5 Loc. cit. 6 A trivial children’s game.

43

this result by classifying evaluative terms according to how specific they are: we have

general evaluative terms (goodness, for example) requiring, if they are to be fully

understood, less general terms as covering values (moral goodness, for example), which

in turn have less general terms as contributory values (presumably the next level in this

example would be terms describing generally accepted kinds of moral goodness:

kindness, generosity, courage and so forth). But then some comparative terms are

specific terms (kindness is cited as one), and these are distinguished by having their

covering values built-in.

The difficulty with this analysis is that it is far from clear why a term such as kindness

should represent the end of this chain, for surely people can be kind in different ways

just as they can be good in different ways, so that a question whether Joe is kinder than

Jane will not necessarily be easier to answer than a question whether Joe is better than

Jane. It is true that a focus on kindness seems to narrow down the question of goodness

– Kovesi points out that the concept of good represents a limiting case in its field in so

far as it is the most general and universal formal element in its field8 – but the

difference in the precision of the two terms seems to be a matter of degree: we cannot

say that while no comparison framed in terms of mere goodness will be determinable,

every comparison framed in terms of mere kindness will be.

Nevertheless we have a better grasp of what, in Chang’s terms, it might mean for a

positive value relation between two items to hold: it means in essence that we can say

meaningfully of the two items that one is better than the other in some respect, or that

each is just as good in that respect, or that they are positively related in some other

evaluative way in that respect. It is not obvious how two items could be positively

related in any other evaluative way, but Chang’s suggestion here is that we could say

each is on a par with the other in that respect, and other theorists, notably John

Broome,9 have proposed we need to reserve the opportunity to say simply that the

covering value in respect of which we are making a comparison is vague, and that

because it is vague, some particular comparisons made under it will be indeterminate

where fine distinctions are required. (Yet other theorists have proposed that two items,

7 Op. cit., p6. 8 Moral Notions, pp34, 35. 9 E.g. in “Is Incommensurability Vagueness?” in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1997; 67-89.

44

while not equally good, might be roughly equally good. I do not address this suggestion

specifically, for reasons which will become obvious in Chapter 6.)

It may seem that people such as Chang and Broome are splitting hairs here if they want

to distinguish parity or fine indeterminacy due to vagueness as different value relations.

Surely, one might say, these three relations are all but identical: each is equality but in

the first two forms it is specified that the equality may be of an imprecise kind whereas

in the third it is not. That these authors nevertheless take the distinction very seriously

should alert us to the likelihood that the precision with which a comparison can be made

is one of the key issues underlying the comparability debate. Some people who think

that some values are incomparable with others – that is, some incomparabilists – take it

that one of the marks of two things being incomparable in a certain respect is that they

do not seem susceptible of being compared with absolute precision. Nor are these

authors mere pedants, for one of the points of making any comparison is to draw a

conclusion from it, and if a comparison can be made only in terms so vague that no

conclusion can be drawn, then clearly one might reasonably doubt whether it can be

made at all. Further, any comparison which requires us to exercise judgment – that is,

any which is not carried out on merely formal grounds, as a comparison of the numbers

two and three might be carried out under the concept of which ranks higher in the set of

natural numbers – will be one in which there is the potential for this question to arise.

To adapt an example from Raz:10 it may be that I can compare a warm cup of coffee

with a cold cup of tea in respect of the pleasure I shall derive from drinking either, and

can say that the warm cup of coffee is more pleasant. But given that, up to a point,

raising the temperature of the drink raises the pleasure I take in drinking it, can I

compare the pleasure values of a warm cup of tea and a warm cup of coffee? If I think

they are just the same, then will warming the tea further by one degree Celsius allow me

to conclude that one is better? If it does not – that is, if I think their values are still just

the same – then what am I to conclude about my capacity for comparing the values of

the two drinks? Do I say just that it is imprecise in this range, or do I say that in this

range I am not able to compare the drinks?

The example is trivial, as Raz points out, but only because not much hangs upon how I

justify my choice of one drink rather than the other: for example, not much hangs upon

whether I can claim that in deciding to drink the coffee, I made a rationally supportable

10 The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986; pp328-329.

45

choice that was based upon my comparison of the goodness of the alternatives. If an

incomparabilist such as Raz can show that I could not make this claim, either, about

many of the more significant decisions that we make, then he will have good evidence

to support the proposition that on some significant questions, human practical reasoning

cannot take a consequentialist form. He could argue persuasively that on these

questions, we cannot reach conclusions about how to act merely from comparing the

goodness of consequences, for the comparison will not permit us to rank them

according to their goodness – even though they are consequences that differ from one

another in ways we find significant.

I will have much more to say below on what is at stake in the comparability debate.

Here I have simply attempted to show why the precision with which a comparison may

be made is so germane to the question of whether it is a comparison, and hence why the

admissibility of parity or vagueness is controversial. Both parity and vagueness are

offered as resolutions to problems posed by incomparabilists on the basis of what Chang

calls the Trichotomy Thesis. This thesis proposes that any two items are comparable

with respect to a covering value if and only if it is true that with respect to that value,

one of the items is better than or worse than the other or it is just as good as the other.

It might not be immediately obvious how this could be false of any two subjects of a

comparison. As I implied above, the possibility that it could be nevertheless arises if we

demand of the judgement just as good as that it be extremely precise. Given that we do

demand it be so precise, the possibility of a comparison failing to give one of the results

called for by the Trichotomy Thesis is well illustrated by another example from Raz

designed to introduce this very point. (Given that Raz here uses the term

incommensurate, however, I need to point out that he has earlier stated that he will take

incommensurable and incomparable to be interchangeable terms.) 11 “I value a walk in

the park this afternoon more than reading a book at home,” Raz writes.

But one can successively change the odds, making the park a little windier, the

book accompanied by a glass of port, until one would say that neither is better than

the other. At this point it is almost always possible to imagine a small but definite

improvement in one option which will not be sufficient to make the improved

option better than the other. Imagine that I am indifferent as between a walk in the

11 On p322. I will discuss in Chapter 4 the wisdom of Raz’s course.

46

park and a book with a glass of Scotch at home. It is possible that though I will

definitely prefer (a) the book with a glass of port to (b) the book with Scotch, I am

indifferent as between either and (c) a walk in the park. This establishes that I

regard (a) and (c) as incommensurate.12

That is, (a) is neither better nor worse than (c) as I am indifferent between them, but

neither is (a) just as good as (c), because (a) is better than (b) but (c) is not better than

(b). Therefore (a) and (c) are incomparable. So the argument goes.

Chang proposes that each of what she categorises as the seven types of incomparabilist

argument appeals to a different ground for incomparability that the argument claims is

sufficient. The first such ground is the diversity of values.

3.3 Arguments from the diversity of values

3.3.1 The great-artists example

The idea underlying arguments for incomparability that appeal to the diversity of values

is that some items are so different from one another that there is no common basis on

which a comparison can proceed.13 However, any comparison, in so far as it is

expressed through the use of a comparative term of some kind, is presented in terms of

what is common between the two items – in Chang’s language, it is presented as a

comparison under a covering value. Such arguments therefore should be understood as

turning on the diversity of the values contributing to this covering value, Chang thinks.

As an example, she offers an attempt to compare Mozart and Michelangelo with respect

to their creativity: Mozart and Michelangelo would be incomparable with respect to

creativity if the contributory values of creativity borne by each were so different that

comparison was impossible. A contributor to Mozart’s creativity, for example, might be

his sensitivity to aural harmony, while a contributor to Michelangelo’s might be his

sensitivity to visual harmony.14 The question the incomparabilist poses is how we are to

say whether Mozart’s sensitivity to aural harmony is better, worse or just the same as

Michelangelo’s sensitivity to visual harmony. And the same goes for any other

12 Op. cit., p328. 13 Chang, op. cit., p14. 14 These examples of contributors to creativity are mine.

47

contributory values which differ. If we cannot say, then the Trichotomy Thesis fails to

hold for this comparison and hence these artists are incomparable with respect to

creativity.

3.3.2 The nominal–notable objection outlined

The objection Chang raises to such arguments, an objection she finds compelling, is

based on what she refers to as nominal–notable comparisons. A bearer of value is

notable with respect to that value if it is an exceptionally fine exemplar of that value,

and nominal if it is an exceptionally poor one. By definition, notable bearers of value

are always better than nominal ones with respect to the value which they bear nominally

or notably. Mozart and Michelangelo are notable bearers of creativity. Chang proposes

that we consider the position of Talentlessi, a much less gifted painter than

Michelangelo, who she says bears the value of creativity only in a nominal way. “Now

suppose that Talentlessi bears the same contributory values of creativity as

Michelangelo – only in a nominal way,” Chang writes [my emphasis].

Both, for example, bear the value of technical skill, but Talentlessi bears it in a

markedly nominal way. If Mozart and Michelangelo are incomparable in virtue of

the diverse contributory values of creativity they bear, then so too are Mozart and

Talentlessi. But we know that Mozart is better than Talentlessi with respect to

creativity. If Mozart and Michelangelo are incomparable with respect to creativity,

it cannot be for the reason that they bear diverse contributory values.15

The same argument has a further implication. As Chang also points out, we can reach

the same conclusion by incrementally increasing the creativity of Talentlessi until it

equates to that of Michelangelo, and asking where on that scale of creativity Talentlessi

moves from being comparable with Mozart to incomparable, and on what grounds.

Unless grounds can be found, the implication is that wherever a value borne in a notable

way can be compared with an allegedly divergent value borne in a nominal way, it must

also be comparable with the allegedly divergent value when that value is borne in a

notable way.16

15 Op. cit., p15. 16 Ibid.

48

The nominal–notable argument appears to present a powerful objection to the claim of

incomparability, but what is it really doing? After all, it is essentially a critical tool only:

the question of how one might compare the creativity of Mozart with that of

Michelangelo remains open, even if it has begun to look as though a divergence in the

values contributing to their respective creativities cannot be the reason why the

comparison appears difficult to resolve.

What I suggest the nominal–notable argument has shown is just that the alleged

divergence of contributory values interferes with the precision with which those values

can be compared. We are told that the notable creativity of Mozart can be judged greater

than the nominal creativity of Talentlessi, but we still have difficulty deciding whether

it is greater than the notable creativity of Michelangelo, even if – given that we accept

the nominal–notable objection as valid – we can no longer give a satisfactory

explanation of where the difficulty lies in the latter case. (Similarly, we could still have

trouble deciding whether the creativity of the dauber Talentlessi was greater than that of

a merely nominally creative garage-band member.)

Chang’s suggestion presumably would be that Mozart and Michelangelo were on a par

for creativity; or we could propose that the comparative phrase “more creative than”

was vague, and that the artists’ levels of creativity, while perhaps not just the same,

were nevertheless so close that no one could discern which was the greater.17 What is

peculiar about the strategies of parity and vagueness is that neither is necessary unless

the core incomparabilist intuition that the creativities of Mozart and Michelangelo

cannot be just the same in value is accepted.

I shall have more to say about parity and vagueness shortly, but it will be helpful for us

first to look at the problem from the perspective of Kovesi’s analysis of concepts. From

that perspective, we can see that this argument for incomparability seeks to ground our

difficulty reaching an intuitive judgement about whether Mozart or Michelangelo

displayed more creativity in a claim about the kinds of creativity each displayed: that it

is allegedly because each displays creativity of a different kind that they cannot be

compared, or at least not very precisely. This is the import of the claim that the values

contributing to the creativity of each artist diverge. But this, of course, is just the reverse

of the rhetorical proposition from Regan that I examined in Chapter 2, and it makes the

17 I examine John Broome’s discussion of vagueness below.

49

same mistake, failing to recognise that while differences in the kinds of thing we are

comparing may affect our reasons for wanting to make a comparison, it will be

irrelevant for whether we can make the comparison once we have specified the reason.

That is because that reason will supply the formal element of the comparative concept

according to which we are to judge the two things, and unless each is judged under that

same concept – becoming therefore things of the same type in so far as they are being

subjected to judgement – then we are not comparing.

Chang is right, therefore, to object that the argument does not demonstrate

incomparability. But once we recognise that items must be compared under a single

comparative concept, her objection from nominal–notable comparisons becomes

redundant. Her insight that items must be compared with respect to a covering value

might have alerted us to the likelihood that rendering that covering value in terms of

qualitatively different contributory values for each artist was a logically illegitimate

move. For a covering value that is composed of qualitatively different contributory

values in respect of each artist (aural harmony on the one hand, for example, and visual

harmony on the other) is not a covering value at all: it is two covering values, one for

each artist, and any attempt to compare any two things while using different criteria for

judging each thing is bound to fail. That does not mean that the things are

incomparable: it just means that we have not attempted to compare them, for to compare

them is surely to judge each by the same set of criteria.

3.3.3 The nominal–notable objection analysed

Does Kovesi’s analysis nevertheless give us an enlightening perspective on the force of

the objection from nominal–notable comparisons? We can see that it does if we

remember the reason why it seems that things of the same type can be compared more

easily than things of different types: it is because where no reason is given for making a

comparison, what we mean when we say that things are of the same type is that we do

not have to look very far to find a reason why someone might want to compare them, a

reason which we can then assume gives us the point of the comparison. Given the

numerals 100 and 10 printed on a page and the question which was bigger, it was not

difficult for us to leap to the conclusion that the question had been asked for rhetorical

reasons, and to assume that we were intended to take the numerals as representing

natural numbers and to state the obvious by saying which ranked higher – or to make

50

one of a range of assumptions that would support the same conclusion. It is through the

same process of assumption that we imagine we know what is meant by the assertion

that Michelangelo is a more notable bearer of creativity than the dauber Talentlessi: we

assume that the conclusion has been determined through an analysis of the quality of

their painting, and that to bear more creativity is just to produce paintings of higher

quality, and that the quality of the artists’ paintings has been judged according to criteria

for assessing the quality of paintings that are widely accepted among art critics, art

historians, gallery curators and possibly even artists. Crucially, these criteria will permit

people to distinguish paintings of nominal quality from those of notable quality for a

broad range of reasons – most of which will have only tenuous links with reasons why

we might want to assess two painters’ creativity as such.18 The hitch is that criteria

which seem precise enough for us to agree that Michelangelo was more creative than

Talentlessi might need to be refined a great deal if they were to be used to assess the

creativity of two painters of notable quality. If asked to compare the creativity of

Michelangelo with that of Van Gogh, for example, we might easily find it just as

difficult to say which was the more creative as to say whether Michelangelo was more

creative than the musician Mozart. Moreover, an incomparabilist could give very

similar explanations for why the difficulty had arisen in each case: that the values we

were seeking to compare were of different kinds, or that like Michelangelo and Mozart,

Michelangelo and Van Gogh were creative in different ways.

If we were asked whether Michelangelo was more creative than Van Gogh, then, we

would be much less likely to leap to an assumption about why the question had been

asked that would permit us to give a determinate answer. In contrast, asked whether

Michelangelo was more creative than the dauber Talentlessi, we could assume a big

range of relatively general reasons why the question had been asked, and could believe

that in responding that Michelangelo was the more creative we were right. Nothing,

however, in the bald question of which is the more creative painter, rules out the

possibility that the person asking had wanted to know how many children each painter

had and that Talentlessi, with 17 offspring, was the more creative. The bald claim that

Michelangelo is more creative than Talentlessi tells us only a little more than the kind of

18 After all, there are very few reasons why we might want to assess the artistic creativity of any two painters, and most of those would become redundant after either of the painters died, for they would have to do with predictions about the kind of work the painters might produce – for example, so that we could come to a conclusion about which painter would do the most innovative work if we hired him to decorate the Sistine Chapel, or supported him through state patronage. After a painter’s death, arguments about his

51

claim Chang has criticised earlier, that philosophy is better than pushpin. The

comparative phrase “more creative than” is nearly as general as the phrase “better than”.

If the bald claim that a notable painter is more creative than a nominal one is so general

as to be confusingly ambiguous, so will be a bald claim that a notable musician is more

creative than a nominal painter. And yet once again, when Chang specifies her example

we tend to swallow the bait. What we need to consider here is why we thought we knew

what Chang meant when she told us that “…we know that Mozart is better than

Talentlessi with respect to creativity”. From the perspective of Kovesi’s analysis, given

that no formal element for the comparative concept of goodness of creativity has been

specified, the answer can only be that we were able to leap to an assumption about its

formal element which would allow us to accept reflexively the answer that Mozart was

better. That is, we could leap to an assumption about the reason the comparison had

been made which would give us that result. And once again, we can see that there is a

relatively big range of general reasons we might have which would give us grounds for

determining that Mozart was more creative than Talentlessi. Notice, however, that each

of these reasons, like the reasons why we might want to know whether Michelangelo

was more creative than Talentlessi, would supply us with a single set of criteria for

determining the creativity of each artist, notwithstanding any differences in the forms

their art took. Hence, if those criteria could enable us to distinguish Mozart from

Talentlessi, then one might infer that they could also enable us to distinguish Mozart

from Michelangelo. That inference, however, overlooks the issue of precision: the

criteria might be precise enough for accomplishing the former task but insufficiently

precise for the latter.

Nominal–notable comparisons, then, operate by diluting the degree of precision with

which a comparison needs to be made in order to determine a result, and that dilution

expands the scope we would have for supplying an unwarranted assumption about the

comparative concept which would allow us to justify a result. The reason, then, why we

might find it more difficult to compare the creativity of Mozart with that of Talentlessi

as the creativity of Talentlessi approached that of Michelangelo, is that as Talentlessi’s

creativity increases, the range of assumptions which would justify a particular outcome

shrinks. If asked to nominate the two most creative artists since the birth of Christ, we

creativity are likely to be conducted mainly for academic reasons, most of which would demand that a specification of “creativity” be given before the argument about creativity was presented.

52

might comfortably conclude that both Mozart and Michelangelo were likely candidates

but a merely nominally creative, in an artistic sense, Talentlessi certainly was not. There

is no shortage of criteria we might turn to if asked to justify our conclusion. And all

sorts of reasons why we had been asked to nominate such a duo would allow us

comfortably to exclude Talentlessi. That does not mean we would know he should be

excluded – again, the possibility remains that the intent was to name the two artists who

had the biggest number of children. It just means that when presented with the task, it is

understandable that we should leap to an assumption about the concept “most creative”

which would exclude Talentlessi. But we would be much less likely to leap to such an

assumption which would accept Mozart and Michelangelo as possible candidates but

would exclude a TalentlessiG whose creativity was just the same as Van Gogh’s. We

would be more likely to suspect we had not been given enough information to make a

reasoned choice. We would be more likely to seek more detail about what the person

making the request meant by “most creative”. It would help if that person told us why

he wanted the nominations. It might be, nevertheless, that he could not give a reason

which implied only criteria that removed from our judgment every possibility of its

being disputed. In any case, deciding whether Mozart was more creative than

Michelangelo would be no harder than deciding whether Michelangelo was more

creative than TalentlessiG, or TalentlessiG more creative than Mozart, or whether two of

the three should be rejected in favour of Jackson Pollock. Or rather, the task would not

be made more difficult by the fact that Mozart was not a painter.

Arguments for incomparability grounded in alleged divergencies of value, then, fail

because they misconceive what is happening when we make a comparison. They fail to

recognise that we can make a comparison only by bringing the two things to be

compared under a single concept, and that we can follow a rule in judging the result of

the comparison only if we can specify the formal element of the comparative concept,

which requires us to give the reasons for which that concept was formed – that is, the

reasons for which the comparison was undertaken. Nominal–notable comparisons

appear to expose the weakness of this kind of argument for incomparability but do so

only by widening the range of unwarranted assumptions about the comparative concept

that we are likely to leap to in reaching a judgement. The real difficulty for

distinguishing the goodness of the creativity of a Mozart from that of a Michelangelo is

in coming up with a concept of goodness of creativity that is sufficiently precise to give

the comparison a determinate result we can justify.

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3.3.4 Increasing the precision of comparative concepts

It needs to be said here that to come up with such a concept that does give such a result

in a case such as this one is far from impossible. In so far as it is possible, Mozart and

Michelangelo are distinguishable with respect to the goodness of their creativity. What

may remain controversial, however, is how well the comparative concept under which

they may clearly be distinguished matches what people ordinarily believe they mean by

goodness of artistic creativity.

Let us explore this proposal. Something we need to remember at the outset is that even

according to the Trichotomy Thesis, one determinate result of such a comparison would

be the result that Mozart and Michelangelo were just the same in respect of creativity. It

is the validity of this result that the argument from diverse values seeks to deny. That

argument asks how we could conclude that these two artists were just the same in

respect of their creativity when the art that they produced was so different. But this is

just the argument I have dismissed above as misconceived, on the grounds that it fails to

recognise that comparisons are always made under a single comparative concept. Of

course Mozart and Michelangelo expressed their creativities differently. But that will be

true of any two artists, even two working in the same genre of the same art form. It will

be true, for example, of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his Pre-Raphaelite

colleague William Holman Hunt, even though their work seems much more obviously

similar than the work of, say, Rossetti and Pollock. Nevertheless, if we can compare any

artists in respect of their creativities, we can surely compare two representatives of this

narrow genre such as Rossetti and Holman Hunt. We do so by finding a concept of

goodness of creativity that abstracts from what distinguishes their creative expression

and permits us to judge the two under a common set of criteria. If the set of criteria has

more than one member, then if the comparison is to have a determinate result, it will be

part of our comparative concept that the criteria can be rationalised determinately.

I want to anticipate something of what I shall say in Chapter 4 under the head of

Arguments for incomparability from calculation by pointing out that if a determinate

comparison is to be made, then the concept of goodness of creativity under which we

make it must be a concept whose instances vary only along a single evaluative

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dimension,19 a phrase whose import can be captured fairly well in the alternative

formulation that the instances must vary only by quantity and not also by quality. That

is what it means to say that a set of comparative criteria can be rationalised

determinately. The point of comparing things is to rank them, and a comparison which

results in multiple rankings is not a single comparison but many. Hence, if we have

devised a concept under which we may compare the creativities of the seven founding

members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and thereby give them a determinate

ranking for creativity, it must be a concept under which the creativity of each varies

from that of the others only in terms of its quantity. To say that Rossetti was the more

skilful painter and Holman Hunt the more earnest is to announce the result not of a

single comparison but of two: it is to say that we have compared the two in respect of

how skilful and how earnest each was and have found on the one hand that Rossetti was

the more skilful but Holman Hunt the more earnest. Even if skill and earnestness were

the only values contributing to artistic creativity, to simply state the results of those two

comparisons would not be to compare the two artists in respect of their creativity. To do

that would require the further step of determining how each comparison will contribute

to a ranking in respect of creativity. How we do that will depend on the reason why we

want to do it.

Is creativity the kind of value which admits of being judged precisely enough to give a

determinate ranking of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood with respect to creativity? Well,

that depends. It is perfectly plausible that we might come up with a weighted set of

criteria that would supply a determinate ranking, and call it the test for ranking

creativity. The problem which then arises is whether people generally are prepared to

agree that what the test assesses really is creativity. This will not always be a merely

academic question.

Let us take a contemporary example from a field other than art. Could we compare the

German motor racing driver Michael Schumacher with his contemporary British rival

Jensen Button with respect to driving skill, or are the two drivers incomparable in so far

as their skills will inevitably be contributed to by values that diverge at least

marginally? The nominal–notable test suggests we can compare them, for it seems

uncontroversial to propose that Schumacher, having won a record seven Formula One

19 Adopting the terminology used by D’Agostino (Incommensurability and Commensuration: The Common Denominator).

55

world drivers’ championships at the time of writing, is a more skilful driver than I am,

notwithstanding the likelihood that the values contributing to his driving skill will

diverge from those contributing to mine if they diverge from those contributing to

Button’s.

My analysis from Kovesi makes the nominal–notable point differently: given that I have

not specified the formal element of the concept of degree of driving skill under which

the comparison is to be made, it is understandable that one might leap to the assumption

that it is a near match for that measured by the F1 world championship, and conclude it

is likely that under that concept Schumacher is more skilful than I am. (Under some

comparative concepts of driving skill, nevertheless, I might be a more skilful driver than

Schumacher: it is likely, for example, that I could drive from one landmark to another in

my Australian city of residence more rapidly than Schumacher if we were required to

obey local speed limits and prohibited from consulting a street directory.) My analysis

from Kovesi also proposes that whether we can justify a judgment that the driving skills

of Schumacher are greater than, or less than, those of Button will depend on how

precisely we can specify the formal element of the concept under which the comparison

is to be made – that is, how precisely we can specify the reason why we want to perform

the comparison. If I can say that the reason I asked the question was that I wanted to

know who finished higher in the 2004 F1 world championship for drivers then clearly

anyone could reply justifiably that Schumacher was the more skilful driver, for he won

the championship, accumulating 148 points in the course of the season, and Button

finished only third with 85 points.

The F1 world championship, then, offers a method for distinguishing driver skill levels

with a high degree of precision: clearly Schumacher and Button are very notably skilful

drivers and yet the results of a comparison under this concept show Schumacher to be

the more skilful by a considerable margin. Moreover, we have no need to resort to

anything but the classic trichotomy of value relations in reporting the result of the

comparison, for it will show Schumacher to be better or worse than Button with respect

to driving skill or – should each accumulate precisely the same number of points during

the season – just the same as Button with respect to driving skill.

My point in producing this example, however, is to help us examine how accurately

criteria permitting very precise comparisons of value to be carried out match people’s

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ordinary understandings of the concept the comparison nominally measures. We can see

that in this case the comparison, while comprising an extremely elaborate system of

tests, under which the drivers participated in 18 three-day evaluations over eight

consecutive months, from which an intricate scoring system permitted the result to be

calculated, nevertheless provides a ranking with which we can agree only to a very

limited extent. It remains far from clear, for example, that Schumacher would be more

likely than Button to survive decades of driving on public roads without crashing, or

without being convicted of infringing the law by exceeding a speed limit, both

legitimate components of driving skill as we might take it to be ordinarily conceived. If

both drivers applied for jobs with a London taxi service whose personnel officer had

been enjoined to employ the most skilful driver, it is again far from clear that she should

employ Schumacher. And if the two were to end a future F1 season each with the same

number of points, it would remain open to motorsport enthusiasts to deny the

implications of that result – by claiming, for example, that the comparison did not

compare what it was purported to compare, and that a more adequate comparison of

driver skill would show that Button was the more skilful driver, even though

Schumacher was at least as good at winning F1 world championships. (Indeed, it would

remain open to them to do so in any case.)

It appears then that at least in the cases of some concepts, the devising of criteria which

yield very precise results from comparisons under those concepts may come at a cost:

that the gain in precision entails a loss of meaning, or more accurately a restriction of

the significance of any result to a narrower range of contexts than those to which the

concept ordinarily applies. If a comparison under an ordinarily very broad concept is to

be given in terms that are extremely precise, then it may be that as a practical matter, the

result is determinable precisely only in a very specialised context. A question which

may then arise is how accurately a result determined in this context might be

generalised to other contexts. An example might well be the concept of driving skill.

Kovesi’s analysis gives us another way in which we might understand this effect.

Following his terminology, we might say that driving skill is a concept whose formal

element is quite prominent, in that the number of examples we can give of driving skill

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is very great.20 What Chang might term the contributory values of driving skill – ability

to win F1 championships, ability to avoid crashes over long periods of driving on public

roads, ability to find one’s way around the streets of a city, etcetera – we might take to

be material elements of the ordinary concept of driving skill. These material elements

may themselves be analysed into formal and material elements: for example, among the

material elements of the ability to win F1 championships might be the ability to win on

slow, narrow circuits such as Monaco and the ability to win on fast, open circuits such

as Spa Francorchamps. In so far as I want to make a comparison under the comparative

concept of degree of driving skill, however, I must analyse its formal and material

elements in a different way: the formal element will not be the reason why those who

share a certain language and culture have a concept of driving skill but the reason why

some people in particular want to compare drivers under the concept of its degree. How

precisely those particular people can distinguish drivers according to the degree of

driving skill they display is a practical question which will depend on how reliable –

that is to say, how accurate – we want the distinction to be, and that in turn will depend

on the reason why we want to make the distinction.

In the case of the F1 world championship, the main reason why the organisers want to

conduct the comparison is to provide an enthralling spectacle of a certain kind. Hence it

does not matter a great deal that the precision with which the results are specified may

be greatly at variance with their accuracy: for example, that a driver’s performance in

any particular year tends to be a poor predictor of his performance in later years is held

to enhance, rather than diminish, the quality of the championship as a spectacle. What is

important, however, is that this comparison be determinable in a way easily justified:

that there is likely to be only one winner and it is obvious who it is. Hence the

comparison is constructed in such a way as to emphasise minor differences in the

drivers’ performances. A driver earns 10 points for winning a race and only 8 for

finishing second, even if he finishes second by mere hundredths of a second. The

scoring system was not designed with the reliable prediction of performance in mind: its

intent was firstly to enhance the spectacle by giving the second-placed man in any race

a good reason to attempt to overtake the leader.

20 Moral Notions, p35: “In cases where we can exemplify something in a greater variety of ways, the more prominent the formal element is; the less variety of examples we can give of a thing, the less prominent the formal element is.”

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3.3.5 A case-study: testing intelligence

Lest it be thought that in introducing an example from motor racing I have strayed too

far from where I began with Chang’s example of the creativity of notable artists, let me

briefly allude to another kind of case that may bridge the gap. Prior to 1892, when

Francis Galton published Hereditary Genius,21 almost anybody but Galton might have

considered it no less difficult to compare Mozart and Michelangelo with respect to their

intelligence than to compare them with respect to their creativity. Each was a genius,

and each gave expression to their prodigious mental capacities in dramatically different

ways. But while today a hypothetical comparison with respect to creativity does an

excellent job of illustrating an argument for incomparability from the diversity of

values, Chang would have had more explaining to do had she prepared the example

with respect to the artists’ intelligence. And that is because the development over the

20th century of precise methods for allegedly comparing people with respect to their

intelligence leaves us with the clear possibility in principle of performing a comparison

that would tell us whether Mozart was more or less intelligent than Michelangelo or just

as intelligent as Michelangelo. I mean that we have tools at hand that could permit us to

compare determinately with respect to intelligence almost any two notable

contemporary artists drawn from any fields of artistic endeavour. Certain considerations

might be claimed to dilute the validity of these tools – it may be, for example, that we

would hold the results to be valid only where the two artists shared their native language

and cultures – but nevertheless we could compare the filmmaker Steven Spielberg with

his contemporary the musician Joni Mitchell with respect to intelligence, and given their

cooperation and good health, we could expect to learn whether one was better than the

other or whether they were just the same with respect to intelligence. We could do so by

asking each to undertake tests which determined their intelligence quotients.

Of course, just as in the example of driving skill, it would be open to anyone doubting

the result to express scepticism about whether intelligence as we ordinarily think of it is

what any IQ test measures. The sceptic could draw support for their position from the

observation that a range of tests had been developed for testing intelligence and that a

person who scored higher than another person on one test might well score lower than

them on another test. But a sceptic familiar with Kovesi’s theory of concept formation

21 Galton, Francis, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into its Laws and Consequences, London : Collins, 1962 (first published 1892).

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could point to a deeper reason for doubting the results of any test: they could point out

that the concept of intelligence predated Galton’s book, and that Galton was the first

person to point convincingly and publicly to the possibility that intelligence might be

the sort of thing that could be the subject of precise interpersonal comparisons. The

onus was on the developer of any comparative method, then, to show that what the

method compared was indeed intelligence and not something more or less than

intelligence or something quite different from intelligence. But then, any developer

attempting to do that would first have to give a general description of what intelligence

was, and then show that whatever their test compared matched that description.

It is an implication of Kovesi’s analysis that any developer attempting to give a general

description of intelligence must do so by specifying the formal element of the concept

of intelligence, which would be to specify the reasons why we have come to share such

a concept. Inevitably however, given that the concept was developed before it was

widely thought that precise interpersonal comparisons of intelligence could be made,

the formal element of the concept as it was conceived before the advent of intelligence

testing would not include a need to make very fine distinctions between individuals in

respect of the degree to which they possessed the quality to which the concept referred.

In so far as a test was able to make fine distinctions, then, what it tested could not be

conceptually identical with that prior concept of intelligence. Rather, what it tested

could only be clearly described through a specification of its own formal element, which

must appeal specifically to the reasons for which the test was developed.

When we examine the history of intelligence testing from this perspective, we learn that

Alfred Binet constructed the Binet-Simon scale with Theophile Simon after the French

Ministry of Public Instruction commissioned him in 1904 to develop techniques for

identifying children whose lack of success in normal primary school classrooms

suggested the need for some form of special education.22 That scale is widely

considered to be the forerunner of modern intelligence tests. Its construction offers us an

example of what Fred D’Agostino has termed a project of COMMENSURATION.23

22 See Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man, New York, WW Norton, 1996 (first published 1981); p176. 23 Incommensurability and Commensuration: The Common Denominator. The example with which D’Agostino introduces the concept is the development of ways to measure distances between planets or stars (p4), but he argues that such projects are commonly undertaken and that their results are so pervasive as to be largely unnoticed once established.

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What we need to note is that the scale was developed as a tool for predicting

performance of a particular kind. The question whether it was effective would turn

therefore not on anyone’s assessment of how well what it tested matched prior

conceptions of intelligence, but on how well it predicted the performance of children in

other tests that had been developed for other reasons and were administered to their

pupils by the schools of the day – tests of arithmetic ability, spelling ability and so on. A

modification of this test, developed by Stanford University professor Lewis Terman and

called the Stanford-Binet test, became the standard intelligence test in the United States

for decades after its publication in 1916.24

What should we make, then, of a contemporary claim that Spielberg was just as good as

Mitchell with respect to intelligence because (hypothetically) each had achieved just the

same score on a modern intelligence test? Would the identical scores justify the claim of

identical intelligence? How could we reconcile the claim that the intelligence of each

was just the same, with the observations that they had expressed their intelligence in

very different ways and that clearly each was equipped better for certain mental tasks

than the other?

We could do so, I suggest, by recognising that the modern IQ test, like other

technologies of commensuration, is a tool for promoting consistency and agreement.25

There is nothing preventing anybody from ranking any number of other people for their

intelligence, talent, height, weight or beauty. That is to say, anybody may make

judgments about these things, and without the aid of IQ tests, standard metres or

weighing scales. But people will tend to differ from one another in their judgment of

such matters. The IQ test offers a method for assessing intelligence that can reasonably

be expected to produce results that do not vary significantly with the person

administering it. That suggestion is compatible with a generalisation D’Agostino offers

about the purpose of any technology of commensuration:

Obviously, we want [a technology of commensuration] to give us, in whatever

form is appropriate to our specific task, ratings of options, reflecting relevant

standards, that are determinate enough to guide our choices among these options. ...

24 Gould, op. cit., p204ff. 25 Cf D’Agostino, op. cit., p165: “A technology of commensuration is, in other words, ‘a technology of trust’... The phrase is quoted in summary of a proposition attributed to Theodore Porter (Trust in Numbers, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995; p90).

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In particular strangers enacting roles and subject to audit will have to be able to

deploy this technology in their transactions with one another.26

So if Spielberg and Mitchell were to record identical scores on a modern IQ test, we

could justify, for example, the conclusion that they were equally good as candidates for

some task – or for some special training – for which it had been agreed that the test

would be the tool for selecting candidates.

But can we justify a bald claim that the result shows Spielberg and Mitchell to be

equally intelligent, and to a very high degree of precision? Kovesi’s analysis suggests

we could do so only by demonstrating that the formal element of the test is the same as

the formal element of the ordinary concept. That identity will not be complete except in

so far as familiarity with IQ testing has changed our understanding of the ordinary

concept. That is to say that if, as has been cynically suggested, today intelligence is

whatever IQ scores measure, then it becomes analytically true that the intelligences of

Spielberg and Mitchell are very precisely equal if they record identical scores on such a

test.

However, if we think that the concept of degree of intelligence as it is understood today

is not just the same as the concept under which intelligence tests generally are

performed – that is, if we think that we may have different reasons for sharing the

concept than we have for performing the tests – then the claim that two people with

identical test scores are just the same with respect to intelligence must be qualified by

the divergence in those reasons.

Here is an entry point for what D’Agostino characterises as Foucauldian dominance,

which he argues can result from – and sometimes may even be the point of – the

introduction and dissemination of technologies of commensuration.27 Somebody (let us

call him the Advocate) seeking to argue that, for example, a person is more intelligent

than are some other people who do better than she does in standard intelligence tests,

may confront the demand that he demonstrate this superiority. The difficulty he faces is

how to demonstrate it more effectively than the test demonstrates her inferiority. In the

absence of any other widely accepted standard for measuring intelligence, the Advocate

might find it very difficult to refute, for example, the accusation that his assertion of her

26 D’Agostino, op. cit., p70.

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superiority is a matter of mere personal opinion, where the tests’ demonstration of her

inferiority is a matter of established fact. The Foucauldian dominance arises in the

extension of the fact about how well the subject did in her tests to a fact about the

degree of intelligence she possesses. We can see, I hope, that it can never be more than

a matter of convention whether we refer to whatever the tests measure as intelligence or

as something less than, or even different from, intelligence. The refutation available to

the Advocate is to argue that the convention(s) under which the results of standard

intelligence testing count as facts about the degrees of intelligence people possess are

not relevant for the assessment at hand. Alternatively, he may point out that to accord

those results the status of facts about degrees of intelligence is to presuppose that by

“intelligence” we mean only whatever the tests measure. His opponent may have an

interest, however, in refusing to acknowledge that presupposition, or in denying that it

could be significant. In so refusing or denying, the opponent, if he is able to make the

refusal or denial stick, blocks or freezes, in the terms D’Agostino quotes from Foucault,

otherwise potentially mobile relations of power.28

A 1953 paper advising school teachers on how to interpret intelligence tests

recommended that they realise that “the intelligence test is still in an early phase of

development and that the intelligence quotient cannot be considered as precise, as

consistent or as true a value as is a unit of measure from the thermometer or the

weighing scale.”29 Even though most readers probably took the advice simply as a

general warning not to take test scores very seriously, it is not well expressed in so far

as it focuses on the precision and consistency of the test, and fails to explain what might

be meant by the “truth” of a value. It also leaves open the inference that there is a truth

to be had in absolute terms about the relation of people in respect to the degree of their

intelligence, if what we mean by that is that a test might be developed which captured

everything people generally agreed came under the concept of intelligence and ranked

people very precisely for that. Of course there is not, and this is not just because

intelligence is a concept we have begun attempting to find quantities for only relatively

recently.

27 The argument is given in chapters VI and VII of Incommensurability and Commensuration. 28 D’Agostino, op. cit., p182. 29 Johnson, Granville B, “Factors to Be Considered in the Interpretation of Intelligence-Test Scores”, The Elementary School Journal, 54:3 (November 1953); pp145-150.

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Analogies with thermometers and weighing scales miss the point for another reason,

which is that the analogy should not be from the IQ test to the thermometer, but from

the relation of intelligence with IQ to the relation of warmth with a scale of temperature.

The peculiar nature of relations of that kind is brought out clearly if we think about the

relation of our ordinary notion of distance to scales of distance. If I travel 32km west of

Perth, Western Australia, I will be at Thompson Bay, the main settlement of Rottnest

Island, Perth’s offshore resort. If I travel 32km south-east I will be at Armadale, an

outer suburb of Perth. Using satellite-navigation aids (a very precise, and recently

developed, technology of commensuration), doubtless I could locate to within a

precision of tens of metres two points 32km from Perth, one at Thompson Bay and one

at Armadale. I could then compare these points with respect to their distance from Perth,

and could say that, given the most precise measure of distances of this kind available,

one point was just as distant from Perth as the other. If someone were to ask me, then, to

compare these two points with respect to their degree of distance from Perth, I could tell

them that they were equal in this respect. But what can we make of my answer, true

though it may be? It is also true that by public transport, Armadale is half an hour from

Perth whereas Thompson Bay is 90 minutes away on a day calm enough for the ferries

to operate. It is true that by car in moderate traffic, Armadale is 40 minutes from Perth

but Thompson Bay cannot be reached. In more general terms, we can say that for most

people living in Perth, Thompson Bay is much less accessible than Armadale. A tourist

who was hoping to spend a morning visiting Thompson Bay, and who had been to

Armadale, would not look back fondly on a Perth resident who told him Thompson Bay

was just as far away as Armadale. He would think that the resident had been excessively

economical with the truth.

The point here is just this: if you ask me how distant Thompson Bay is from Perth

compared with Armadale, I can reply truthfully that it is just as distant. But that may not

be the only justifiable answer: that will depend on why you wanted to know, on the

formal element of the concept of distance under which the particular comparison was to

be made. The same point holds for comparisons of intelligence, creativity and just about

anything else. But the establishment of technologies of commensuration can result in

our neglecting to notice this point, or perhaps (if it suits us) declining to acknowledge it.

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3.4 Arguments from bidirectionality

A common thought among incomparabilists is that if one item is better in some

respects of the covering value but worse in others, the items must be incomparable

with respect to the covering value. Commuting to work by car is more relaxing

than going by train in that it is more reliable, but going by train is more relaxing in

that one need not worry about negotiating freeway traffic.30

So Chang introduces the second ground for arguments purporting to show

incomparability, calling them arguments from bidirectionality. She claims that nominal–

notable arguments also pose a successful objection to arguments of this kind.

We should recognise that if nominal–notable arguments pose insuperable obstacles to

the validity of arguments from the diversity of values, then they will do so also for

arguments from bidirectionality, since they are essentially the same arguments. We can

recast the argument above in the form of an argument from the diversity of contributing

values, simply by proposing that the values contributing to how relaxing is commuting

by train diverge from the values contributing to how relaxing is commuting by car.

(That proposal directly parallels the proposal that the values contributing to the

creativity of a musician diverge from the values contributing to the creativity of a visual

artist.) Among the values contributing to relaxing train travel, for example, is the release

from responsibility supplied by having someone else drive. Among the values

contributing to relaxing car travel is the autonomy of driving oneself. How, an

incomparabilist might ask, can these divergent contributory values be compared? Well,

as Chang suggests but in slightly different terms, we can say that if the value of being

released from responsibility is borne only nominally by train travel – because those

running the trains do such a poor job that the passengers must constantly be alert for

hold-ups, misidentifications, cancellations and the like – while the value of the

autonomy of driving oneself is very high, because there is very little other traffic on the

journey to be accommodated, then clearly commuting by car will be more relaxing.

Hence the two modes are not incomparable. But we are still left with the difficulty of

comparing the relaxing qualities of a well-run train system with that of a moderately

patronised road system.

30 Chang, op. cit., p17.

65

Once again, the nominal–notable comparison enlarges the scope we have for making

assumptions about what we mean by the comparative concept “more relaxing”, by

opening up a bigger range of reasons for why a comparison might be made that reached

a particular conclusion. The general question of whether commuting by train is more

relaxing than commuting by car is ambiguous until we know why the question has been

asked. It is perfectly plausible, for example, that a frustrating and unreliable train

commute might be more relaxing than a reliable car commute through only light traffic

– if the person attempting the comparison had had his driver’s’ licence suspended for a

string of traffic offences and had been told that if he was caught driving while

unlicensed he would certainly be jailed. The alleged incomparability of this kind of

argument arises, like that of the previous similar argument, because the question was

asked in a way that was insufficiently precise to permit anybody to determine justifiably

a general result.

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4. Calculation, commensurability and vagueness

Because comparisons of value must always be judged under a single concept,

arguments for incomparability from calculation fail. John Broome’s discussion of

indeterminacy in comparisons under allegedly vague concepts shows that comparative

judgments may stand in need of justification.

4.1 Arguments for incomparability from calculation

4.1.1 Overview

Chang gives arguments proposing to demonstrate incomparability from calculation the

following form:

1. comparison is simply a matter of adding and subtracting quantities of a unit of

value;

2. if comparison is quantitative in this way, then proper deliberation about which to

choose must take the form of “calculation”, “balancing”, “weighing”, or “trading

off”;

3. in some situations, proper deliberation cannot take this form;

4. therefore, some items are incomparable.1

She says such arguments confuse comparability with commensurability. I shall have

more to say about commensurability below.

In objecting to arguments of this form, Chang makes the peculiar assertion that “there is

no general equivalence between betterness with respect to a value and a greater quantity

of it”,2 although she concedes that the two expressions may sometimes be equivalent.

Let us examine this claim before going further.

1 “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p18. 2 Op. cit., p19.

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4.1.2 Betterness and quantities of value

The argument that to have more of a certain value is not necessarily to be better with

respect to that value is given in a digression Chang makes when discussing the earlier

argument from diverse values. The point she is addressing specifically is the claim that

value monism entails comparability: that if, ultimately, every kind of value is reducible

to a single “supervalue” – happiness or utility, for example – then all values will be

comparable in terms of the supervalue. The discovery of any incomparable values

would then seem to show that value monism was false. Chang argues against this that

values have qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions, attributing the original

observation to J.S. Mill.3 Mill indeed asserted that “It would be absurd that while, in

estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of

pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.”4 [My emphasis.] Chang

also refers us to a paper by Amartya Sen for support,5 and in a recent work Hilary

Putnam approvingly quotes an observation by John Dewey to the effect that pleasure is

a qualitatively diverse concept.6 The example of a qualitatively diverse value which

Chang chooses is pleasure also:

Although pleasure is one value, there is the luxurious, wallowing pleasure of lying

in the sun and the intense, sharp pleasure of hearing much-anticipated good news.

Thus, there may ultimately be one supervalue, but like all other values, it may have

qualitative dimensions that could, in principle, give rise to incomparability among

its bearers. Accordingly, there could be sophisticated, monistic forms of

utilitarianism that allow for incomparability.7

Kovesi’s analysis makes it even more obvious than it already should have been that

what Chang is referring to as the qualitative dimensions of values is simply the division

of one concept of value into subsidiary concepts of more specialised kinds. Recall again

Kovesi’s observation that “good” was the most general and universal formal element in

its field. To say that the value “good” has qualitative dimensions as well as quantitative

3 Chang, op. cit., p16. 4 Utilitarianism, London, George Routledge; Ch 2 (pp15-16). But Chang may have drawn much more from this than Mill intended: his aim was to show that one might validly distinguish higher from lower pleasures. 5 “Plural Utility”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81 (1980-81); 193-215. 6 The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002; p51. The attribution is to Dewey, The Middle Works, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, University of Southern Illinois Press, 1978), p.257. 7 Chang, op. cit., p16.

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dimensions is just to say that acts or states of affairs or experiences or whatever else we

might want to call good are not merely more good or less good than one another but are

also good in a wide variety of ways. Alternatively, we could say that various instances

of the concept “good” may be qualitatively different from one another (that is, their

material elements may vary). Indeed they may: that is why we may refer to them with

different subsidiary terms (pleasures and achievements may each be good). In pointing

out that values have both qualitative and quantitative dimensions, Chang is telling us

only that this process can be continued: that pleasures may be divided into kinds of

pleasure. The making of finer and finer distinctions in this way can go on until no good

can come from continuing it.8

Nevertheless, a supervalue with qualitative dimensions which gave rise to

incomparability among their bearers surely would be a supervalue no longer. For if the

qualitative dimensions were not reducible to one another and nor to the supervalue, then

what we would have are just plural values. Indeed, we can say that there is a supervalue

that has these properties and we know what it is called: it is just “good”. When we

speak of a value we surely mean no more than a kind of good, and similarly to have

value is just to be good in some way. Good is a value which admits of qualitative as

well as quantitative dimensions, and every other value is just a kind of goodness, but no

one takes it to be a very helpful ethical offering from a philosopher if he says only that

we should always act so as to maximise goodness. Anybody would be right to sneer at

so ambiguous a moral precept: it is content-free unless the philosopher can also tell us

something about what goodness is and how it might be maximised. In so far as crude

utilitarianism has more content than an imperative that we act to maximise goodness, it

is because in specifying human happiness or pleasure or utility as the supervalue, it

seems to be telling us something about what goodness is – and just as pertinently, about

what it is not. Nevertheless, if pleasure is to be the supervalue of a value-monistic

ethical system, and someone argues that the values of some things cannot be reduced to

their role in diminishing or enhancing pleasure and that therefore our valuing of these

things casts doubt on the completeness of that system, it does not refute the argument to

point out that there might also be kinds of pleasure which are not comparable with one

another.

8 Pun intended.

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Chang argues next that it is a mistake to assume that all quantities of a single value are

comparable. “Something can be ‘more V’, where V ranges over values, in an evaluative

or a nonevaluative sense,” she asserts. Only the nonevaluative sense is quantitative,

“and is the same sense in which one item can be ‘more N’, where N ranges over

nonevaluative considerations like length or weight. This stick is longer than that one if it

has a greater quantity of length.”9

It is not quite clear how Chang could justify ruling out length as an evaluative

consideration: that is, why length could not be a covering value for a comparison of

value, given that she thinks philosophical talent could be. Nevertheless, this is another

example showing how ambiguous an apparently simple comparison under a nominated

value can be. For we can understand what might be meant by the length of a stick in at

least two ways: as the shortest distance from one end of the stick to the other, or as the

shortest path along the surface of the stick between one end and the other. Unless the

stick is perfectly linear and one-dimensional, these may be different lengths.

Now take Chang’s contrasting example:

Items that bear quantities of a value like friendliness are thereby nonevaluatively

comparable with respect to that value; the one with a greater quantity of

friendliness is more friendly. But a greater quantity of a value is not necessarily

equivalent to betterness with respect to that value; a greater quantity of friendship

may be worse with respect to friendship – one can be too friendly. Thus, while a

greater amount of a value makes something ‘more valuable’ in a nonevaluative

sense, it need not make it ‘more valuable’ in an evaluative sense.10

If the example indeed exemplifies the claim Chang is trying to defend, then the defence

seems to rest on a slide in meaning – in this case a slide in the meaning of friendliness

and friendship towards a rather narrow sense in which one can be more friendly while

being less attentive to the needs and desires of the person one allegedly is being more

friendly with. The inescapable conclusion once again is that the comparative concept in

use, in this case the concept of degree of friendliness, could have a range of meanings,

so that the term friendliness at the one extreme refers to a person’s capacity for

befriending someone and at the other approaches a simple antonym for shyness or

9 Op. cit., pp16-17. 10 Ibid.

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timidity in personal relations. If we take it that befriending someone involves, as for

example Aristotle puts it in the case of perfect friendship, desiring the good of the friend

for the friend’s sake,11 and acting in accordance with that desire, then if to be more

friendly is to have a greater capacity for befriending someone, we must take it that a

more friendly person will be better for their friend than a less friendly person would be.

In this sense, then, one cannot be too friendly, and the more friendly one is, the better.

On the other hand, if to be friendly is simply to assume that other people desire one’s

company, then of course one can be too friendly, but here we are not so much talking

about a value as about a vice, for we might well say that it was better not to be assuming

in this way at all – that is, it is better to assume neither that people desire one’s company

nor that they do not desire it. “Too friendly” in this sense, then, is an ironic usage that

simply means too assuming, and the example fails to illustrate Chang’s point. I suspect

no example will do so, except by exhibiting a slide of a similar kind.

Chang concludes that:

Comparability does not require that comparison be a matter of quantities of a value,

let alone quantities of some unit of a value. To think that comparability requires a

single quantitative unit of value according to which items can be measured is to

mistake commensurability with comparability.12

Does value comparability require that comparison be a matter of quantities of a value? I

have argued above that a comparison must judge under a single set of criteria the two or

more things compared, and that what is to be determined will always be which of the

items is the greater and which the lesser with respect to the criteria. We could express

this in another way by saying that a qualitative comparison will always be made in

terms of a single quality, or perhaps more neutrally, in terms of a single evaluative

dimension, or again (in my preferred terms following Kovesi) that we must compare the

two things under a single comparative or evaluative concept. Chang is right, I think, in

so far as it is not clear that the instances of the evaluative concept must always be

distinguished in quantitative terms: that will depend on whether the comparative

concept is a quantitative concept. Whether we take it to be so will be a matter of how

we understand the comparative concept, which will turn on the reason we have for

making the comparison: it might be, for example, that we want to compare two items in

11 Nicomachean Ethics, Bk VIII, 1156b2-23.

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terms of which of them meets a certain standard that does not admit of degrees. But still

it will be under a single evaluative concept that we make the comparison, and if the

comparison is not performed explicitly in terms of quantities it will in most cases use an

analogous term: the point, once again, will be to produce a ranking of some kind.

If the concept is a degree of a quality, it will not matter whether we take the quality at

issue to be composed of subsidiary qualities: in that case we must either reconcile the

subsidiaries so as to arrive at a determinate ranking or we must find a way to make the

judgement that does not require us to aggregate the subsidiary qualities. Chang, for

example, lists “pleasingness to one’s grandmother” as a possible covering value for a

comparison. If this can be a covering value, then surely so too can “pleasingness to

one’s grandparents”, and we might take this to be some weighted average of

“pleasingness to one’s grandmother” and “pleasingness to one’s grandfather” – or we

might say instead that the way to judge the comparison is not to interview each

grandparent and combine their responses but to devise an assessment of their joint

response that is not an aggregation of the responses of each but nevertheless responds to

the reasons we have for making the judgment. Either way, the comparison will be made

in terms of quantities of a single value.

The further question of whether the comparison, if it is quantitative, must be made in

terms of a unit of the quantity is more complicated, and Chang is far from the first

person to attempt to distinguish comparability and commensurability in this context.

This is an appropriate time, therefore, to examine that distinction.

4.1.3 Comparability and commensurability

4.1.3.1 Relative strengths

One accepted non-specialist meaning offered for the term commensurable, taken as an

adjective, is measurable by the same standard or scale of values.13 Given that I have

argued that to compare is to judge by a single set of criteria whose results must be

reconciled to form a single scale or ranking if the comparison is to have a determinate

result, it should be clear I think that whatever are comparable determinately will also be

12 Op. cit., p19. 13 Oxford English Dictionary Online.

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commensurable in this sense. For my purposes, then, I might propose that the term

commensurable be taken as meaning comparable determinately.

The problem with doing so is that just as the term ‘commensurate’ can be understood as

an adjective or as a verb, so the term ‘commensurable’ could mean that the things

compared either were commensurate or that they were susceptible to being

commensurated. Once this is understood, it becomes clear that the term comparable is

no less ambiguous. And hence even to go the long way around and state that two items

were comparable determinately would be to leave the reader open to confusion about

whether I meant it was obvious how the two things should be compared determinately

or that, while it was not obvious how the things should be compared, nevertheless they

could be made the subjects of determinate comparisons.

The source of the ambiguity seems to lie in our ordinary and non-technical usage of the

verb to compare. What does it mean, in the ordinary sense, to compare two (say)

things? Does it mean merely to line them up side-by-side and look at them

(metaphorically speaking)? Or does it mean to reach a conclusion about how each is

related to the other in a certain respect? In our ordinary usage of the term it could mean

either of these things, and the former meaning is sufficient. Anybody would know what

you meant if you said you had spent days comparing the merits of two houses but still

could not say which was better or whether each was just as good as the other. And we

would also know what you meant if you said this of any other two things – of a puddle

of oil and a cow, for example. But this cannot be what philosophers mean when they

claim that two things might be incomparable, because clearly no two things could be

incomparable in the sense that no one could even consider whether they might be

compared. One must consider whether two things might be compared, after all, before

pronouncing them incomparable. A philosopher, then, who claims that things are

incomparable in a certain respect must mean that they are not comparable

determinately: that there is no way of comparing them in that respect which yields a

result. But then, that is just what I originally proposed using the term incommensurable

to signify, and I did so, so as to be able to distinguish the incomparable from the merely

incommensurable.

It seems that the degree of ambiguity which each of these terms carries overshadows the

reasons why we might want to distinguish them. A very valiant attempt by D’Agostino

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to explain what he thinks lies behind distinctions which some other writers have made

shows the difficulties one can get into, and this despite his explicit recognition of a

further ambiguity of the term commensurate that permits two meanings to be

understood from only its verbal sense. D’Agostino proposes that to commensurate two

items, or (as he prefers) two standards, can mean to find an established method through

which they can be commensurated and to use it, or it can mean to develop a new method

through which they might be commensurated and to defend it. He distinguishes the two

senses typographically through having the term set upper-case whenever he intends it to

be understood in the latter sense:

We have a problem of COMMENSURATION when we do not know how to go

about determining the relative merits of options, and need to develop and

implement an effective technology of commensuration in order to do so. For

instance, we might have known how to measure terrestrial distances pretty well but

have been stymied, early in the history of astronomy, by the problem of measuring

distances between planets or to nearby (or far distant) stars. Solving this problem

was a work of COMMENSURATION. Once it had been solved, we had routine

application of the technologies of commensuration which this project made

available – e.g. the geometry of parallax.14

Armed with this distinction, D’Agostino sets out to offer a reason why some theorists

have wanted to use the terms incommensurability and incomparability synonymously

(for example Raz, as I have noted), and others have wanted to suppose that

incommensurable items may nevertheless be comparable.15 He writes that:

Options (or standards) which are incommensurable may, for that reason [i.e.

because they are incommensurable], be incomparable, but, because what is

incommensurable can be COMMENSURATED, these very options (or standards)

may be made comparable with one another. Theorists who assert some conceptual

link between incomparability and incommensurability are focusing, I believe, on

one aspect of what is usually a temporally extended project, whereas theorists who

deny the existence of this link are attending, though not I think entirely wittingly,

14 Incommensurability and Commensuration: The Common Denominator, p4. 15 D’Agostino (0p. cit., Chapter 2, endnote 51) cites James Griffin in Well Being (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986), p83: “Incomparability is, I think, too strong. We do not find values that are strictly incomparable. So we should look at weaker forms of incommensurability.” Clearly Chang also, in criticising arguments for incomparability from calculation, is claiming that items may be incommensurable while being comparable, and indeed wherever the two terms are distinguished, ‘incomparable’ is represented as the stronger term.

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to the potential inherent in the project itself – viz. to render comparable what was

incommensurable.16

Now D’Agostino’s broader point about the potential for what he calls

COMMENSURATION is extremely penetrating – here he seems to have set out in

detail an analysis which other writers have been groping towards.17 Nevertheless, to say

that options which are incomparable because they are incommensurable may be made

comparable by a process of COMMENSURATION is to side with Raz and treat the

terms “incomparable” and “incommensurable” as synonymous. For if the options (or

standards) are incomparable because they are incommensurable, then surely they were

just incommensurable all along. That is, if incomparability is to be stronger than

incommensurability, then no two options can be incomparable because they are

incommensurable and it would be incoherent for any writer seeking to distinguish the

terms in this way to think that they might be. Indeed, this is the very point Chang is

seeking to make about arguments from calculation: that they can establish only

incommensurability, which can never guarantee incomparability. D’Agostino does not

point out that writers distinguishing the terms in the way he suggests some have done

are seeing a distinction where there is none, whether from kindness or for other reasons

I cannot say.

4.1.3.2 Pythagoras and plurality

How else might the terms be distinguished? Michael Stocker gives a Pythagorean

example. “The side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable but comparable,” he

writes. “Indeed, the diagonal is provably longer than the side.”18 But it is hard to see

how this example helps us understand the import of a claim that two items could be

incommensurable in value but not incomparable in value. It is hard to think of a case in

which an incommensurability of value of this kind would matter.

I isolated Stocker’s example because I think it demonstrates well just how little is at

stake in distinguishing the terms. But here it is with some context added:

16 D’Agostino, op. cit., p43. The emphasis is his. 17 In particular, Millgram in “Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning”. 18 “Abstract and Concrete Value,” in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; p203.

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Some think incomparability is a simple consequence of plurality, holding that if

values are plural, they must be incommensurable; and if incommensurable,

incomparable. I agree that if values are plural, they must be incommensurable,

since I understand ‘plural values’ to mean pretty much the same as

‘incommensurable values’. But incommensurables can be comparable. The side

and diagonal of a square are incommensurable but comparable. Indeed, the

diagonal is provably longer than the side.19

Taking his essay as a whole, it appears that what Stocker means when he says that he

understands the phrase “plural values” to mean pretty much the same as the phrase

“incommensurable values” is that it is a feature of the plurality that it cannot be reduced

to singularity. If we are to say that the values of attending a performance by Bruce

Springsteen and a film directed by Steven Spielberg are plural then we cannot say that

attending two performances by Springsteen would be just as good as attending nine

films by Spielberg or any other number of them: they are incommensurable values and

that is part of what it means to say that they are plural.20 But on the other hand, I think

Stocker would hold, we can still say we would rather see a performance by Springsteen

than a film by Spielberg: the values, while plural and incommensurable, are still

comparable. What Stocker seems to be warning against is the assumption that, given

this comparability, and given an opportunity to add a certain number of films to

Spielberg’s output by doing something which would (merely)21 ensure Springsteen

never performed again, there must be some number at which the increase in Spielberg’s

productivity would alone make it the case not only that silencing Springsteen was the

better thing to do but also that we would have nothing to regret if we did silence him. Or

to look at the same argument from a different perspective: he is proposing that if after

carrying out that act a sense of loss accompanied our sense of gain, we could understand

that experience only if we recognised that the values of the two artists’ work were

incommensurable, in so far as they were irreducibly plural.

My point in outlining this argument here is to show that the incommensurable-

incomparable distinction it explores is only distantly analogous to the classical

distinction given in the example of the sides and diagonal of a square, and to suggest

that it is not easy to see just how it is analogous at all. For a direct analogy with the

19 Ibid. 20 The example is mine. 21 I mean that the in considering the case, we are to take account only of Springsteen’s non-performance among the consequences of the act.

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square example would suggest to us only that it was impossible to specify precisely how

many extra Spielberg films would justify Springsteen’s early retirement as a performer,

just as it is impossible to specify precisely the length of the diagonal of a square as a

multiple of the length of its sides without resorting to the use of an irrational number.

That is far from what Stocker thinks is at stake in his argument about value plurality. He

would want (I believe) to tell us that in deciding whether to enhance Spielberg’s output

at the expense of Springsteen’s, we would have good reason to attend to what he calls

the concrete values of the work of each artist and not just to their values as abstracted

from these and aggregated for a value-maximising calculation. That is an interesting

point. But I doubt that making a distinction between incommensurability and

incomparability helps us to understand it.

Chang alludes to this Pythagorean example of incommensurability also in introducing

her overview of comparability.22 While she says in an endnote that this is not an

example of incommensurability “by modern lights”,23 she offers no other clear and

simple example of what the term might mean, and concedes that there is disagreement

about what it does mean. Of the two main ideas of incommensurability she thinks are

relevant for the discussion we are having, one is just that incommensurability means

incomparability.24 The other is that “incommensurable items cannot be precisely

measured by a single ‘scale’ of units of value.”25 The emphasis here must surely be on

the adverb “precisely”, but in practical use the concept of precision is a relative one:

measurements may be more or less precise or they may meet absolutely a finite standard

of precision, but they will never be absolutely or infinitely precise.26 Precision will only

ever be absolute in ideal or analytical senses. This suggests that according to this idea of

incommensurability, two items will be incommensurable in a certain respect unless in

that respect each varies in a way that is logically equivalent to the way in which the

other varies. So, for example, the creativity of Mozart is incommensurable with the

creativity of Michelangelo, because the creativity of Mozart is not logically equivalent

to the creativity of Michelangelo: one is a musical creativity, the other a visual

creativity. A scale of millimetres is precisely commensurate ideally with a scale of

centimetres because by transitivity and the definitions of each unit, it is true that one

22 Chang, op. cit., pp1-2. 23 Ibid., endnote 1. 24 Chang, op. cit., p1. 25 Ibid. 26 Pollock, W.J., makes a similar point very tellingly in “Wittgenstein on The Standard Metre”, Philosophical Investigations 27:2 April 2004; 148-157.

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centimetre is equivalent in length to 10 millimetres. But while we might measure

Mozart’s creativity on a scale of musical creativity and Michelangelo’s on a scale of

visual creativity, we cannot see how to commensurate the two scales in this sort of way.

There is no logical path through which we could show that musical creativity was

commensurate with visual creativity.

The flaw in this analysis can be seen from the way I framed it, writing that: “…

according to this idea of incommensurability, two items will be incommensurable in a

certain respect unless in that respect each varies in a way that is logically equivalent to

the way in which the other varies.” We need only to recognise that when I say that two

items will be incommensurable in a certain respect, what I mean by the phrase I have

emphasised is just in a certain way, and if both are to vary in a certain way then they

must vary in the same certain way, a way which necessarily will be logically equivalent

to itself. If I want to compare a table with a refrigerator in a certain respect, I cannot do

so by saying that I will compare the two in respect of their bulk, and then attempting to

compare the area of the tabletop with the mass of the refrigerator. To compare them in a

certain respect – or with respect to a certain covering value, in Chang’s terms – is just to

compare them in ways which are logically equivalent. It is, indeed, to compare them

under a single comparative concept. I have argued that this is the only way we can

compare anything: that this is what it means to compare something. It follows, then, that

according to this idea of incommensurability, no items ever will be incommensurable

unless they are incomparable. That is to say that, according to this idea of

incommensurability, if two items can be compared determinately, then they will be

commensurable.

4.1.3.3 Units of value

This leads us straight back to the other idea about incommensurability to which Chang

alludes, which is that incommensurability means incomparability. This is not

necessarily so: each of them can mean so many things that it is perfectly plausible we

should take each to mean different things. But even though the terms can be

distinguished – any of us might stipulate Humpty-Dumpty-like that each term means

whatever we say it means – I do not think that to distinguish them helps us understand

any argument for incomparability. The potential for confusion about just what they

mean is too great. I believe Raz was wise to say explicitly that he would use the terms

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interchangeably. That is the policy I shall follow also, though preferring incomparable

because it is more in line with common usage. That does not mean that I think other

writers who distinguish the terms see a distinction where there is none to be found. It

means I think the terms are sufficiently ambiguous in common usage to require writers

to stipulate definitions for each where they are using them to refer to distinctions arising

in specialised contexts.

That implies that I think it is not helpful of Chang to have attempted to dismiss

arguments for incomparability from the inadmissibility of calculation with the

conclusion that they mistake incomparability for incommensurability. That is so. But

what of the role of units of value: does it make any difference whether a comparison can

be performed in terms of units of some kind? That is the question I set out to examine in

this section. The answer is that it makes no difference.

In any comparison between two items, we can take one of the items as denoting a single

unit of the comparative concept under which the two are being compared. Whether we

say that the comparison is asking which of the two items is the greater, or which ranks

higher, or whether we say we are asking whether the other item possesses more than one

unit of the comparative concept, makes no difference to our ability to determine the

comparison. The question whether the units are commensurable does not arise, of

course: they must be, as each will be expressed in terms of the same comparative

concept.

Let us return then to the argument outline Chang offered as characteristic of arguments

from calculation. It was:

1. comparison is simply a matter of adding and subtracting quantities of a unit of

value;

2. if comparison is quantitative in this way, then proper deliberation about which to

choose must take the form of “calculation”, “balancing”, “weighing”, or “trading

off”;

3. in some situations, proper deliberation cannot take this form;

4. therefore some items are incomparable.

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Chang has attempted to attack the first premise, arguing that comparison is not a matter

of adding and subtracting quantities of a unit of value. I have argued that the first

premise should stand: that except possibly in cases where a comparison is a matter of

judging items to see whether they meet a standard, comparison is indeed a quantitative

matter, and that the question whether the quantity can be expressed in terms of units is a

red herring. But I also said early in the chapter that I would defend the proposition that

no items were incomparable if we could specify their formal element precisely enough

to permit a determinate result for a comparison to be justified. If I do not think the flaw

in the above argument outline lies in the first premise, then where do I think it lies?

It lies, I think, in the inference from premise three to the conclusion: the inference that

in some situations, proper deliberation cannot take the form of calculation, balancing

and the like, and that therefore some items are incomparable. In the articles by Elizabeth

Anderson27 and Steven Lukes28 which Chang cites as examples of arguments from

calculation, it is on the question of what is proper deliberation that most of the authors’

emphases are placed. Lukes makes the point explicitly that by “incommensurable” he

shall mean “not properly comparable”, and defends the claim that some comparisons

may be inappropriate, “revealing those who make them to have a poor, distorted, or

corrupted understanding of the value of what it is they are seeking to compare.”29 The

question of propriety in making comparisons I will address in chapters 7 and 8 as it

seems to me it is closely related to the question of whether it might be constitutive of

certain goods that they are incommensurable with others.

4.2 Arguments from constitution or norms, and from the rational irresolvability of

conflict

The best known argument from constitution is that advanced by Raz to show that it is

part of what we mean by some goods that they are incomparable with some other

goods.30 His example was that friendship was for this reason incomparable with money:

it was constitutive of friendship that a friend would not compare the value of a

friendship with the value of money. An analysis of this argument will occupy chapter 7.

27 “Practical Reason and Incommensurable Goods”, in Chang, R,, ed,, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp90-109. 28 “Comparing the Incomparable: Trade-offs and Sacrifices”, in Chang, R,, ed,, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp184-195. 29 Lukes, op. cit., p185. 30 The argument is developed at length in The Morality of Freedom, Chapter 13.

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Chang lists arguments from the rational irresolvability of conflict among her seven

types, but gives no examples of them. In their absence, I will take it that she is referring

to arguments of the kind Stocker gives in his article cited above: they rely on claims

about the irreducibility of plural values. But that is to say that they rely on claims about

the incomparability of values of different kinds, claims which I have addressed at length

above. In so far as they are held to be more sophisticated versions of those arguments,

arising from what Martha Nussbaum describes as the “wrenching” nature of certain

choices,31 what further I have to say about them will be implicit in what is to follow in

chapters 5–8, but I will state my position briefly and simply in the concluding chapter.

4.3 Arguments from multiple rankings

“Perhaps items are incomparable if there are multiple legitimate rankings of them and

none is privileged,” Chang writes. Her example is an attempt to compare Eunice and

Janice with respect to philosophical talent:

There are multiple contributory values of philosophical talent: originality,

insightfulness, clarity of thought, and so on. But perhaps there is no single correct

way to ‘weigh’ these aspects of philosophical talent; each contributory value

contributes to the covering value in multiple, alternative ways.32

Since there is no one correct comparison, the argument goes, and since the two might

possess contributory aspects to different degrees, the two must be incomparable in

respect of philosophical talent. Chang offers a refutation of such arguments which we

need not go into here, and then proposes that while they do not establish that items are

incomparable, they do give us reason to think that none of the trichotomy of value

relations holds between such items: that they may be on a par, or at least that there is

good reason to believe there is more to comparability than one might think.

I doubt anyone who has read this far will have difficulty spotting the problem with this

kind of argument: once again it relies on ambiguities in the comparative concept, as the

example shows. The concept of degree of philosophical talent could mean all sorts of

things, depending why you want to know. The formal element of the concept – the

31 E.g. in Love’s Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990; p37.

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reason why the comparison is being made – will imply appropriate weightings for the

contributory aspects of philosophical talent; or will be satisfied by a method for

judgment that does not aggregate contributory aspects but assesses on other grounds:

number of publications in peer-reviewed journals, for example; or it may imply that the

question is easily settled by some decision procedure such as a ballot.

4.4 Comparability and vagueness

Chang offers a second way of understanding the argument from multiple rankings

which suggests it is, as she puts it, an argument “from the vagueness of covering value

concepts”. This way of looking at the argument observes that while there may be no

correct judgment of the degree of philosophical talent Eunice and Janice possess, there

will be “sharpenings” of the covering value, under which each of the contributory

aspects is given a weighting, at least some of which do yield determinate outcomes.

Hence, the indeterminacy of the comparison under the unsharpened covering value may

be due to vagueness in the covering value.

A detailed analysis of the implications of vagueness in comparative concepts is

provided in an article by John Broome titled appropriately: “Is Incommensurability

Vagueness?”33 Broome opens his article with the question whether Salisbury Cathedral

is more impressive than Stonehenge, and confesses he thinks the question has no

determinate answer. The reason, he thinks, is that the comparison involves several

factors or dimensions and it is indeterminate exactly how the factors weigh against each

other. He elaborates:

The impressiveness of a building depends on some combination of its size, its

importance in the landscape, the technological achievement it represents, and more,

and it is indeterminate how these factors weigh against each other. Many

evaluative comparatives are indeterminate for this reason.34

However, some comparatives are indeterminate for other reasons, Broome says.

“‘Redder than’ can also be indeterminate, even though it presumably does not involve

32 “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p22. 33 In Chang, R, ed., Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp67-89. Chang refers her readers to Broome’s piece for an analysis of the issue. 34 Op. cit., p67.

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several factors. Compare some reddish-purple patch of color with some reddish-orange

patch, and ask which is redder. The answer may be indeterminate.” 35

But, Broome says, some comparatives are not like either of these in respect of

indeterminacy. “Without doubt, there are comparatives that have no indeterminacy.

‘Heavier than’ is one.”36

The example of the allegedly fully determinate “heavier than” follows a careful

classification of the kinds of indeterminacy comparatives might display. Broome,

however, says very little about “heavier than” and its ilk, so I cannot be sure why he

thinks fully determinate comparatives are so determinate. Given this, I can be guided

only by the example he offers. It seems to me, however, that if “redder than” is

indeterminate, then “heavier than” is indeterminate in just the same way. There is

something to be learned about comparability, I think, from examining this hypothesis.

First, let us see how Broome’s discussion is set up. He defines indeterminacy in terms

of the Trichotomy Thesis:

[W]hen I say a comparative “Fer than” is indeterminate, I mean that for some pairs

of things, of a sort to which the predicate “Fer” can apply, there is no determinate

answer to the question of which is Fer than which. Neither is Fer than the other,

nor are the two equally F.37

He then tells us he cannot think of a comparative that is indeterminate between every

pair of things.38 So for example: “For some pairs of color patches, it is indeterminate

which is redder than which, but for other pairs, one of the pair is determinately redder

than the other. A red patch is determinately redder than an orange patch, for instance.”39

So “redder than” is like other comparatives in being sometimes determinate. Broome

tells us that for most comparatives Fer than, we can form whole chains of things, each

of which is (determinately) Fer than the next in the chain. “For instance, we could form

a chain of color patches, each redder than the next, starting from a pure red and running

35 Loc. cit. 36 Op. cit., p83. 37 Op. cit., p67. 38 It is an implication of this view that nominal-notable comparisons would always succeed. 39 Op. cit., p68.

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through orange, to a yellow with no red in it at all.”40 By definition, the chain displays

no indeterminacy in respect of “redder than”. We are told that each patch in the chain is

redder than the next.

Now we are asked to take a chain of this kind ordered by Fer than, and then take

something that is not included in the chain, and compare it with each of the things that

are in the chain, to see which is Fer. “It may turn out that there is no determinate answer

for any member of the chain,” Broome proposes.41 Given, for example, a chain of

determinately more impressive churches, where in the chain of impressiveness would

we place Cantor’s diagonal proof, he asks. Broome wonders whether the impressiveness

of things so different from one another as churches and proofs might be indeterminate

because of that difference, but notes that lesser differences seem to permit greater

determinacy. “Things that are very different from the members of a chain are less likely

to be comparable to these members than are similar things. But things that are not too

different will normally be comparable to some extent.”42 He continues with an example

which he will set up as a paradigm:

For instance, take a reddish-purple patch and compare it with the chain of patches I

described that runs from red to yellow. The purple patch will be determinately

comparable with some members of the chain. Patches at the top of the chain are

redder than the purple patch, and the purple patch is redder than patches at the

bottom of the chain. But somewhere in the middle there may well be patches where

the comparison is indeterminate.43

Broome derives from this example his paradigm type of example of comparative

indeterminacy, which he calls a “standard configuration”:

Here is one of the type. Take a chain of color patches ranging from red through

orange to yellow, each patch redder than the next. In fact, let the patches form a

continuum: a smooth band of color graded from red at the top to yellow at the

bottom. Compare small patches or points of color from this band with a single

reddish-purple patch, and consider which is redder. At the top are points redder

than the single patch, and at the bottom points that the single patch is redder than.

40 Loc. cit. 41 Loc. cit. 42 Op. cit., p69. 43 Loc. cit.

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A standard configuration for a comparative “Fer than” consists of a chain of

things, fully ordered by their Fness and forming a continuum, and a fixed thing

called the standard that is not itself in the chain. At the top of the chain are things

Fer than the standard, and at the bottom things the standard is Fer than. I shall refer

to the things that make up the chain as “points”, whatever sort of thing they are.44

Broome then clarifies that the standard configuration allows that there may be a zone of

indeterminacy between the members of the chain that are Fer than the standard and

those that the standard is Fer than, but it does not require that there be such a zone. He

also clarifies that the continuum of points may not exist in fact; we may simply imagine

it – as we might attempt to imagine a continuum of churches – and rather than attempt

to define a continuum he leaves that explicitly to a reader’s intuition.45

I have given an account of Broome’s standard configuration in detail because I want it

to be clear that in showing how the comparative “heavier than” may appear to be

similarly indeterminate to “redder than” I am using an example of a type which parallels

Broome’s. Let us imagine, then, that the example of the comparative “Fer than” which

we are working with is “heavier than”. We are to imagine a chain of things, each

determinately heavier than the next, forming a continuum. The continuum may be

imaginary rather than actual. We need something we can imagine concretely so that we

can get to grips with the example. I propose we imagine a series of steel cubes lying

side by side on a bench at a height that provides easy access to them. Each steel cube is

heavier than the one on its left by a single gram. That represents our continuum. Now

we need a standard, a thing which is not itself in the chain. I propose that we take a

leaden cube, which will be denser than the cubes which make up the continuum. It will

be clear that extending from the extreme right of the chain towards the left there will be

a zone of steel cubes with the property that they are heavier than the leaden cube and the

leaden cube is not heavier than them. Also, extending from the left of the chain towards

the right, there will be a zone of steel cubes with the property that the leaden cube is

heavier than them and they are not heavier than the leaden cube. Here then is our

question: is there more than one steel cube in the chain such that it is not heavier than

the leaden cube and the leaden cube is not heavier than it. If there is no more than one

44 Loc. cit. The emphases are Broome’s. 45 Op. cit., pp69-70.

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such cube, then the comparative “heavier than” has no indeterminacy, as Broome

claims. If there is more than one, then “heavier than” is indeterminate.

Conventional wisdom tells us that Broome is right: that there will be no more than one

such steel cube, and that the comparative “heavier than” therefore has no indeterminacy.

What I want to point out here is that it could be quite difficult to determine whether

there is no such steel cube (that is, whether the heaviness of the leaden cube falls

between two of the steel cubes), or one such cube, and if there is one, no less difficult to

determine which it is. In fact, it seems to me that without the aid of a sensitive balance

or scale, an ordinary person would have just as much difficulty determining whether

there was one such cube and identifying it, as they would have determining whether

there was a point on the red-orange spectrum which was just as red as a given patch of

purple, and identifying it. And that is even without the complications which arise when

we remember that the cubes are supposed merely to represent points on a continuum of

heaviness.

Regan, discussing Broome’s example, tells of asking a friend of his, who painted,

whether she thought she would be able to identify a point on the red-orange spectrum

that was exactly as red as a given red-purple patch. “Her answer was yes,” Regan

reports.

She pointed out that painters who are critiquing each other’s work discuss this sort

of question all the time. … She said that of course another painter, given the same

red-purple patch, might initially pick out a different point on the red-orange

spectrum as the “equally red” point. But she suggested that further discussion

between them … could be expected to bring them closer together, and perhaps to

agreement. Finally, she said that even some residual disagreement would not

convince her that there was no right answer to the question which was the equally

red point on the red-orange spectrum.46

Regan derives from his friend’s comments the suggestion that, given that perceptions in

most areas are subject to a great deal of education and refinement, we should be slow to

jump from the fact that we cannot see how to make a comparison to the conclusion that

it cannot be made. I want to make a bolder suggestion: that whether we can determine

46 “Value, Comparability and Choice”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; p137.

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the result of a comparison may turn on nothing other than how we are to justify a claim

that we have determined a result. Regan’s painter friend – let us call her P, for

convenience – in effect denied Broome’s claim that his example demonstrated

indeterminacy in the comparative “redder than”. How is Broome to refute her denial?

He could deny that he could determine a result for the comparison, but this could just

show he was less expert in the matter than P. He could propose that if P were to attempt

to repeat her determination on a subsequent day she would choose a different place on

the spectrum, but P could retort that this just showed the colours looked different to her

on different days. He could remind P of her observation that another painter might pick

a different spot, and propose that yet other experts might pick other spots. But it is hard

to see how this would show that no result could be determined for the comparison – it

could show instead that most experts thought it obvious a result could be determined.

Broome’s best option would appear to be an attempt to qualify what it might mean for a

comparison to be determinate: he could say, for example, that the mere fact of one

person or even several claiming that they could reach a judgement would not be enough

to show determinacy, that the comparison was indeterminate unless most expert

observers independently reached the same judgment about the result. But he would need

to justify adding this qualification. It would seem to be a particularly difficult

qualification to justify in the case of colour perception, if it is to be justified simply as a

condition of any comparison being determinable at all. But such a qualification might

be justifiable for particular comparisons or even for particular kinds of comparison if we

knew the reason why the comparison was being carried out. That is to say that it might

be part of the formal element of the concept under which the comparison was performed

that anyone claiming to have determined a result would be required to justify their

conclusion to other people, and part of it also that what reasons offered in justification

could be good ones were prescribed, at least in a rough and ready way. It could be part

of the formal element of a comparative concept, for example, that a determination could

be justified only through a demonstration that convinced most qualified judges. In such

cases, it could additionally be specified who could count as a qualified judge: this might

be any expert or it might be any rational person.

This might be the sort of thing Broome implicitly has in mind when he seeks to

distinguish “redder than” from “heavier than” in terms of their indeterminacy as

comparatives. One thing that sets the two examples apart is the ready availability, for

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comparisons of heaviness, of what D’Agostino calls a technology of commensuration,

designed to generate, with sufficient accuracy and precision for most practical purposes,

determinations with which most people will agree. It may be that in classifying “redder

than” as having indeterminacy and “heavier than” as not having indeterminacy Broome

was relying, without realising he was, on the difference the availability of such a

technology makes. Again, when we ask a comparative question without saying why we

want to know the answer, it is easy to make assumptions about what a determinate

answer would involve. Broome’s energetic attempt to draw fine distinctions between

the kinds of indeterminacy which different comparative terms might display would

benefit from an attempt to specify what tests a claim to have determined a comparison

must pass in order to be deemed justified. But the latter attempt would need to attend to

the strong possibility that the tests would be different in different particular cases or

kinds of cases, and that the differences would correspond to differences in the reasons

why the comparisons were being made.

4.5 Arguments from small improvements

Chang thinks arguments from small improvements the most promising arguments for

establishing incomparability. Essentially they follow the pattern of the basic argument

for incomparability given by Raz and outlined in section 3.2, which drew on the

phenomenology of a person’s preferences for taking a walk in the park or reading a

good book at home, but they attempt to elevate the significance of the choice without

spoiling the argument. Chang here adapts another popular example devised by Raz

which asks us to compare two options, each of which will commit an agent to a

different career: on the one hand to a career as a clarinettist and on the other to a career

in the law. If the agent is equally suited to either career and has an equal chance of

success in each, it could be (so the argument goes) that neither option is better than the

other. Suppose this is the case.

We can improve the clarinetist career a little with respect to goodness of careers,

perhaps by increasing the salary by ten dollars. Are we thereby rationally

compelled to judge that the improved music career is better than the legal one? It

seems rational to resist this conclusion. If it is rational, then the original careers

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cannot be equally good, since if they were, a small improvement in one must make

it better than the other. Therefore they must be incomparable.47

As I suggested above, and as Chang’s outline also indicates, arguments of this kind turn

on the question of how we are to justify choices. In the next chapter I will develop the

proposal I alluded to in examining Broome’s discussion of vagueness, that the reasons

admissible as justifications for comparative determinations may be inferred from the

formal element of the comparative concept, which will be the reason why we are

making the comparison. That will set up my analysis in Chapter 6 of the argument from

small improvements.

47 Chang, op. cit., pp23-24.

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5. Significant incommensurability and justifying choice

We can justify being indifferent between options supported by similarly weighty but very

different reasons, if we have a still weightier reason for choosing either rather than

continuing to deliberate.

5.1 Significant incommensurability: Raz’s case for its possibility

5.1.1 Overview

In a much-discussed example that he presents as establishing the possibility of

significant incommensurability,1 Joseph Raz offers a hypothetical case in which a

person has to choose between two options, one of which commits him irrevocably to a

career in law and the other irrevocably to a career as a clarinettist.2 “He is equally suited

for both and he stands an equal chance of success in both,” Raz writes.

It seems to me that this is the sort of decision that anyone facing it quite rightly

cares a lot about. It is a choice that one ought not be indifferent to, or unconcerned

about. To be indifferent to this kind of choice is not to have a proper respect for

oneself.

Raz continues:

Furthermore, I can be certain of all I have just written while not knowing whether

or not either the legal or the musical option is better than the other. Assume, for

example, that neither is better than the other. It hardly needs arguing that in that

case they are incommensurable. The suggestion that they are of exactly the same

value cannot be entertained seriously. One would still be greatly and rightly

concerned about the choice. It is one of major significance for one’s life.

1 That this is the role of the example is explained after the example is given, in introducing the following section on p335: “The argument so far was meant to cut through the conceptual fog and to establish the possibility of significant incommensurability. It did little to demonstrate its existence or to explain why it arises, and what if any positive role it plays in our practical thought.” 2 In The Morality of Freedom, pp332-3.

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Raz gives the example to distinguish incommensurability from rough equality.3 His aim

is to show that one might have no reason to prefer one option over another while yet

having very good reason to care about which one chooses. If two incompatible options

were equal or roughly equal in value then one might have no good reason to prefer

either but on the other hand it would not matter much which one chose. And that would

be the justification for taking either path: it would be rational to take either since they

were equally valuable. In contrast, if two options were not roughly equal in value but

incommensurable, Raz thinks, then one might have no good reason to prefer either but

here it could matter which one chose. Hence: “Incomparability … marks the inability of

reason to guide our action, not the insignificance of our choice.”4

Has Raz really managed to construct an example showing a significant

incommensurability? It will be observed that it is this example which forms the basis for

Chang’s demonstration of arguments for incomparability from small improvements,

with which I concluded the previous chapter. Can the analysis from Kovesi help us see

a clearer picture of this alleged case of incomparable options? It will show us that once

again what is claimed to be a case of incommensurability turns out to be a case where

the concept under which the comparison is attempted has been ill-specified, and where

there is no obvious similarity of kind that could lead us to presuppose a more precise

specification of the comparative concept. And we can draw from this a more general

refutation of arguments from small improvements. In particular, we will see that, contra

Raz, reason can guide our choices in cases of this kind: that they are, after all, cases of

equality. My conclusion therefore will be compatible with suggestions offered by

authors such as Regan and Millgram in discussing this example, but it will fill some

gaps in their accounts.5

3 In this context, it is peculiar that he denies explicitly that the value of the two options could be “exactly the same”, rather than denying that their values could be roughly the same. It is clear however from the discussion of rough equality immediately preceding this example that his target is rough equality and not “exact” equality. Presumably the reference to “exactly the same” is an allusion to the Trichotomy Thesis, which Raz (unlike, e.g. Chang) thinks does hold. 4 Op. cit., p334 5 Regan, Donald, “Authority and Value: Reflections on Raz’s Morality of Freedom”, Southern California Law Review 62 (1989); pp1056-1075; and “Value, Comparability and Choice”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp129-150. Millgram, Elijah, “Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning,” in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp151-169.

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The analysis of this example will form the first half of this chapter, setting up a firm

foundation for the second half, which explores the implications this analysis has for

how we understand the justification of choice.

5.1.2 Raz’s careers case analysed

In constructing his argument for the incommensurability of a choice between two

dramatically different careers, Raz proposes that two options are of roughly equal value

if and only if one is right to be indifferent between them.6 He then offers an argument to

the conclusion that all incommensurable options are of roughly equal value. Finding the

conclusion unsatisfactory, he rejects one of the premises of that argument, modifying it

so that it implies only that some incommensurable options are of roughly equal value.

The initial argument is as follows:

1. Two options are of roughly equal value if and only if it does not matter

which one is chosen, if it is right to be indifferent between them.

2. What rightly makes one care about which option to choose is that one is

better supported by reason than the other.

3. There is no reason to prefer either of two incommensurable options.

Therefore, all incommensurables are of roughly equal value.7

A word of explanation is needed here about the second premise, which is the premise

Raz will modify. As formulated by Raz it is ambiguous between two senses in which

we may care about which option to choose. One may rightly care about which option to

choose in so far as we care about the choice itself, because it is the kind of choice that,

before we have even begun to consider which option is better, we recognise as being a

choice of a significant kind. Obvious examples are a choice of whom one shall marry, a

choice whether to have a child, or even a choice of what career one shall pursue. But

also, one may rightly care about which option to choose because, even where the choice

itself is not obviously of great moment, one of the options is nevertheless much better

than the other. Examples here are a choice between strawberry and liquorice ice-cream

6 Raz, op. cit., p331. 7 Loc. cit. The emphasis is Raz’s.

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if one detests the flavour of liquorice and is delighted by strawberry, or a choice

between watching a horror movie and watching a romance if one abhors horror movies

but adores romances. It is this ambiguity that allows Raz to modify the premise in the

way that he does. In its original form, stated above, the premise seems to be giving a

reason of the second kind for caring about which option to choose: it is telling us that

what rightly makes one care which option one chooses is that one is better supported by

reason than the other. That is, if neither option is better supported by reason than the

other, then it does not matter which option one chooses, and hence one would be right

to be indifferent between them.

Raz, however, wants to avoid the conclusion that incommensurability is just rough

equality. He attempts to do so by modifying premise 2. On reflection, he says, it turns

out that (2) is false, and owes its intuitive appeal to a confusion between it and:

(21) What rightly makes one care about which option to choose is that each is

supported by weighty, and very different reasons.8

The intention here is to allow a clear distinction between having no reason to prefer

either of two options and being indifferent between the options, opening up a space for

incommensurability. I might have no reason for preferring one option to the other but

nevertheless I might have very good but different reasons for choosing either option.

Such a choice might be far from clear-cut but nevertheless very significant, Raz thinks.

Because the reasons for choosing each option are both weighty and very different, it

would be wrong (or at least foolish) to be indifferent between the options. What I want

to point out here, for exploration in more detail later, is that this modification moves the

mode of caring from the latter of the senses I have described above to the former of

those senses: the modified premise gives a reason why we would care about a choice

even before we knew which of its options was better or whether either was better – it is

that each is supported by weighty reasons, and hence the choice is not a trivial one.

Under the revised formulation, then, it is the divergence of the reasons on each side that

makes the options incommensurable, and it is both this and the reasons’ weightiness

that makes the choice significant. But when we return to the example Raz gives, we see

this cannot be the whole story. For having set up his hypothetical choice, Raz, as we

8 Op. cit., p332.

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have seen above, takes a further step, proposing we assume that neither the musical nor

the legal option is better than the other.9

While he does not say so directly, it must surely be implicit in this assumption that the

reasons supporting each option are not only different and weighty but also similarly

weighty. For if this were not so – that is, if the reasons supporting one option were much

weightier than those supporting the other – then it is hard to see why those weightier

reasons would not decide the case. That is, after all, the point of using the “weighing”

metaphor when comparing reasons: more weighty reasons will tip the balance of a

decision in their favour.

We can accept the metaphor, however, only if we ignore the difficulties we must face

when we try to explain what we might be doing when we are “weighing” reasons. If I

say I have a weighty reason for doing something then I can only mean that I have a very

good reason for doing it, and similarly a lightweight reason for doing something must

be a trivial reason. So far, the metaphor holds. It does not seem controversial to think

that when we have a very good reason for doing one thing and only a trivial reason for

doing another that we should do the thing we have very good reason to do. If it were the

case, say, that the agent in Raz’s example had been recognised at the age of 15 as a

virtuoso clarinettist in the making and that there was nothing he loved to do more than

practise and perform on his clarinet, while on the other hand he had no better reason for

wanting to practise law than that a big law firm had a branch office in his suburb of

residence and he might get a job with them when he had completed his studies and

therefore would not have far to travel to work, one might think it clear enough that he

should choose a career as a clarinettist over one in the law. The agent’s unusually great

capacity for, and devotion to, playing the clarinet seems to offer a weighty reason for

pursuing a career as a clarinettist; the proximity of his home to the offices of a big law

firm only a lightweight reason for taking to the law. The reader may notice that this

example of mine follows the pattern of the nominal-notable comparison. But even

though, following this pattern, we seem to have generated an example in which the

reasons for doing one thing clearly outweigh the reasons for doing another, attempts to

assign weights to reasons are far from straightforward. I have classified one of these sets

of reasons as weighty and the other as lightweight, but if I were called upon to justify

that classification I would need to say a great deal more. Why, for example, do I appear

9 In the second of the block quotations with which I introduce this chapter.

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to think it very relevant that the agent has a strong desire to play his instrument? On its

face, that would seem to suggest I think a person has a very good reason for doing

whatever he has a strong desire to do. And yet every moral theory makes it plain that at

least sometimes, having a strong desire to do something counts only as a trivial reason

for doing it when compared with reasons one might have for doing something else.10

People cultivating the Aristotelian virtue of courage, for example, must take it that they

sometimes have overridingly good reasons for facing a danger even when they also

have a strong desire to run away from the danger. Even a morality which exhorted its

followers always to do what they had the strongest desire to do must teach them how to

recognise and rank desires: for example, how a desire for shelter which only a month of

disciplined house-building could satisfy should be reconciled with persistent immediate

appetites for basking in the sun.11 If I have a very good reason for doing one thing and

only a trivial reason for doing another, then of course I would be wise to do the thing

that I have a very good reason to do. But that is to beg the question of what is a very

good reason and what is a trivial reason, and how one can know the difference in

particular cases.12 If I am wisest to do what I have the best reason to do then that is only

because what I have best reason to do is just what I am wisest to do. Wisdom does not

consist in knowing that it is better to do what one has best reason to do: any fool can

know that. Wisdom consists in being able to determine what one has best reason to do.

Nevertheless, Raz goes some way towards explaining how the reasons for choosing

either option could be similarly weighty when he says that his agent is equally suited to

either career and has an equal chance of success in each. For in general terms these are

two questions which anybody lucky enough to have an opportunity to choose their

career would be wise to consider. First, does the career involve activities that I believe I

will enjoy doing and be good at and find satisfying over the course of my working life?

And second, do I believe I will become proficient enough to compete successfully with

other people seeking to exploit the limited opportunities to become a successful

10 Raz in later work denies that a desire to do something is at all a reason for doing it; rather, he thinks, we desire to do what we have reason to do. See his “Incommensurability and Agency”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997; 110-128. 11 Cf Raz, “Incommensurability and Agency”, p124: “The problem we encounter in taking desires as reasons is not that we cannot make sense of the notion that desires have strength but that we have no reason to take their strength as desires as indicating their weight as reasons,”; and Millgram in “Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning” in the same volume, p153: “So a sane instrumentalism must supplement the raw claim that practical reasoning consists in finding ways to satisfy one’s desires with an explanation of how conflicts between desires can be resolved.” 12 The point is developed further below in a discussion of Millgram’s essay.

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practitioner, in whatever terms we take as the appropriate measures or standards of

success? If somebody seeks answers to these questions in respect of two careers which

they have the opportunity to pursue, and concludes that they would find pleasure and

satisfaction and success in each to a similar degree, then we might well conclude that

neither of these similarly weighty sets of reasons for pursuing either course was better

than the other – all else being equal.

But here we have a problem: if indeed it is the similarity of the reasons’ weights that

could allow Raz to say that neither option was better than the other, then how are we to

take it that the values of the options are incomparable.13 I cannot see what else but a

similarity in the reasons’ weights Raz could be alluding to when he proposes that we do

assume neither option is better than the other. It cannot be the simple fact that the

reasons for pursuing either option are different that permits us to say that neither option

is better than the other. As we have seen above, reasons can be different and yet

divergent also in importance. It is sometimes difficult to see which of two different acts

we have the better reasons to do, but it is not the case that whenever the reasons for

doing each act differ, then it is neither better to do one act nor to do the other. At least, it

is easy to think of examples in ordinary life where anybody would take it that given

different reasons for doing different things, it was clearly better to do one of the things.

I offered above the example of a person cultivating the Aristotelian virtue of courage.

More obviously, if I am enjoying reading a novel and my young child is about to probe

a live electric power socket with a screwdriver, anybody would take it that I have a

better reason for rescuing my child than for continuing to read the novel, even though

my reasons for doing each will be very different in Raz’s sense. To say then that neither

the option of embarking on a career as a clarinettist nor the option of embarking on a

career as a lawyer is better than the other must be to say more about them than merely

that different reasons support each. It is to say something about the relative importance

of those reasons, to say indeed that each set is of similar importance: that the reasons on

each side are of similar weight. But then, that is surely to compare the weights of the

reasons and to find them similar. It appears then that the weights of the reasons for

taking either option are comparable, even though the reasons are different. Why could

not the values of the options be similarly comparable, even if they were qualitatively

disparate?

13 Remembering that Raz has said (on p322 of The Morality of Freedom) that he will use the terms “incommensurable” and “incomparable” interchangeably.

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The argument I have developed in prior chapters will suggest part of the answer I will

give to this, which is that a qualitative disparity between the options being compared

cannot in itself render the options incomparable. That it does render them incomparable

is clearly the point which Raz is looking for. It is a point he emphasises in offering the

first of three clarifications for why he thinks the choice between these two careers

would be so significant:

First, notice that not only the importance of the reasons for the options, but also the

degree to which they differ, determine the significance of the choice. Suppose

one’s choice is between a post with Slaughter & May and one with Freshfields.

Each is as comprehensive a choice as the one in our previous example. But,

different as those much respected firms of solicitors are, the differences between

the reasons for the options pale into insignificance compared with the ones in the

other example. Consequently the choice itself is much less momentous, even

though, precisely because the reasons are more of a kind, one of the options is

much more likely to be a better one than in our other case.14

Here, the emphasis is mine. Although now the focus is on the significance of a choice

rather than the comparability of the options, we are back to the issue of whether things

being compared are of the same kind. This time, whether they are of the same kind is

acknowledged tacitly to be a matter of degree: Raz says the reasons in the second

example are more of a kind. Even this does not stand up to scrutiny. The original

options were of the same kind in the sense that both were careers, and hence the reasons

for doing either were of the same kind also, in so far as each set of reasons was a set of

reasons for pursuing a career. In this second example, both options are jobs with a firm

of solicitors, and the reasons for pursuing either are reasons for pursuing a job with a

firm of solicitors. It is not clear why the reasons in the second case are more of a kind

than the reasons in the first. Or let us admit that there is a sense in which they are: it is

not clear that it is this sense that would be most relevant to assessing the degree of

significance the two choices would have for the agent. It might be, for example, that he

could live well and happily whether he worked as a lawyer or as a clarinettist. But that,

as he happens to be diffident, his life would take a sharp turn for the worse if his first

job as a solicitor were with the highly competitive partners at Slaughter & May, and for

the better if it were with the much more nurturing crew at Freshfields. That would seem

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to make the choice of the second example more significant for the agent than the choice

of the first. And that seems to fit with how many of us, at least, experience the decisions

which we make: it is often difficult to determine in advance, from what appear to us to

be the features of a choice, how significantly what is chosen will affect one’s well-

being, let alone the well-being of others whom one cares about. That is one of the things

that makes it difficult to guide one’s actions just by attempting to assess the

consequences of those actions for one’s well-being, or for the well-being of others, in

each particular case.

We must return, then, to what I have argued previously: that a comparison must assess

items to be compared under a common set of criteria, or as I have also put it, that we

must be clear about what is the comparative concept under which we are to conduct the

comparison. In Raz’s original example, the agent is blessed with the opportunity to

choose a career from two attractive but incompatible alternatives. Raz’s claim is that

even though the choice is a very significant one in the life of the agent, neither option is

better than the other but nor is each just as good as the other. We need to ask: better as

or for what? What is the point of the comparison? We can assume, I think, that it is to

choose the better career. But Raz gives us no guidance about what criteria we should

use when assessing the goodness of careers in this case. We are not even told whether

the best choice here would be the choice which was best for the agent or best for his

community (or, as some would have it, for the universe), or whether we are to take it

that what is best for the agent necessarily will be best for his community. Nor are we

told who is to be the judge of what is best. But even if all these things had been

specified, how does anybody go about assessing the goodness of a career, and the

degree to which one has succeeded in a career, and how does Raz think the two should

be assessed in this particular case? If we cannot answer, it is not surprising that we find

this choice between two careers difficult to resolve.15 If we do have an answer, then we

can compare the careers according to the relevant criteria and conclude either that one

option is better than the other, or that as nearly as we can make such judgments in

advance, each would be just as good.

14 Op. cit., p333. The other two clarifications need not concern us at this point. 15 Regan seems to think this might be a central problem for cases of this kind, proposing that there is very little in Western culture to guide people when choosing life projects. “Authority and Value” pp1060-61. As will be clear from what follows, I believe there is a great deal in the culture to guide people, but the capacity to make very precise predictions about such complicated matters is one that requires a lot of cultivation.

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Raz might respond that this is just the point which he is making: that the goodness of

each career must be assessed by different criteria and this is what makes the values of

these options incomparable. This won’t wash, however. For he has told us that his agent

stands an equal chance of succeeding in each career. Yet, if the criteria for the goodness

of each of these careers must be different, then surely the criteria for success in each

must be different also.16 And of course they are: how well one can perform on the

clarinet will be irrelevant to any assessment of one’s success as a career lawyer, just as

one’s demonstrable ability to argue well in court could not be accepted as even partial

justification for a claim that one had succeeded as a career clarinettist. How then could

Raz justify his foundational assertion – one he says he might be certain of17 – that his

agent stands an equal chance of succeeding as a clarinettist or as a lawyer? Well, he

could do so by appealing to standards for career success that abstract from the particular

activities which practitioners of different careers engage in and that attend instead to

indicators which could be common to the two careers in question or indeed to any

careers. Criteria such as the degree of respect which others pursuing the same career

hold for the person’s performance, or the level of comfort on which he can live from his

career earnings, or the esteem in which he is held, as a practitioner of that career, by

people generally (whose opinions might differ from those of one’s colleagues), or the

degree to which he looks forward each morning to engaging in the activities which the

career requires him to perform. It is criteria of this sort that lie behind such everyday

observations as “Jane the freelance journalist has not been nearly as successful in her

career as her brother Joe the real estate agent has in his,” and it is to criteria such as

these that one would appeal in justification of such observations. Further, if we were to

attempt to make very precise comparisons of this sort, then we would need to specify

these criteria very carefully and show how they would be judged and, if the judgment

was not based on criteria that anybody could be expected to reach the same conclusion

about, we would need also to specify who the judges would be. Raz, as I have said, has

done none of this. In accepting the bald assertion that we are to take his agent as having

the same chance of success in each career, we must therefore conclude that if he thought

the condition meant anything, that would be because he was assuming – wittingly or not

– that readers would think he was referring to the criteria which underlie comparisons of

this kind that are commonly made. These criteria, however, are not well specified,

become controversial when attempts are made to specify them, and are frequently

16 This is a point Regan makes. See my discussion below. 17 In the quoted paragraphs with which I introduced this chapter.

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divided into sub-criteria which are appealed to independently. Thus it is not unusual for

somebody to point out that grounds for claims of career success need to be

distinguished: for example, that while Joe the real estate agent is very successful

financially, his other sister Mary, a gardener, is better regarded by her clients and seems

more satisfied and more delighted and more secure in her work, and a discerning person

might therefore judge her to be more successful than Joe, even though she makes less

money even by the standard of other gardeners’ earnings. When Raz, then, asserts that

his agent stands an equal chance of succeeding as a clarinettist or as a lawyer, we can

have only a hazy notion of what he might mean by that, and the equality which he is

asserting is simply stipulated abstractly. What we must nevertheless recognise is that he

must be appealing to criteria for success, however hazy, which are the same for each

career. They are criteria for what it is to be successful in any career, or at least in each

of these two, and not criteria for what it is to be successful in particular careers.

Now if Raz can make a statement which implies there are criteria against which we can

determinately compare the chances a person has of succeeding in different careers, how

is it that he wants to assert in the same passage that there are no such criteria against

which we can determinately compare the values of different careers, especially if what

he means by the value of a career is just its capacity for contributing to the well-being of

a particular agent (as I suspect strongly he does)? Or to put this in another way: if his

agent’s chances of succeeding in either career are exactly the same, how is it that Raz

thinks no one could take seriously the idea that each career option could be exactly the

same as the other in value?

5.1.3 Raz’s equivocation

What we have here is an equivocation between two understandings of how a

comparison might be undertaken. When Raz specifies his agent’s chances of succeeding

in each career, he does so on the implicit basis that those chances will be assessed

according to a set of criteria for career success that is common to the two careers. He

does not specify what those criteria will be, but we can reflexively accept the claim as

plausible because we commonly do compare different people’s success in different

careers and we have rough but ready criteria at hand for doing so. Those criteria are

suggested by our reasons for wanting to do so. And they in turn are suggested by the

reasons why we share the concept of “success in a career” in the first place: by the

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formal element of the concept. A career is not an object but a project, and a project

designed to fulfil certain ends. Those ends are broadly the same from one career to the

next: the development and exercise over a long period, relative to the length of a human

life, of a specialised set of skills and capacities which are recognised socially as

contributing to the well-being of the person’s community, and the securing of

psychological and material rewards through that process.18 Assessments of a person’s

success in a career are judged according to how well their pursuit meets those ends, and

they may be made in an absolute sense – Steven Spielberg has made a success of his

career – or in a relative sense – Joe the real estate agent has been more successful in his

career than his sister Jane the journalist has been in hers. When Raz examines the value

of each career option, however, he does not do so even on the implicit basis that their

values will be assessed according to a common set of criteria. Indeed, what he wants to

assert is that there is no such set that each career has in common. Of course there is: in

so far as we understand clarinet playing and legal practice to be careers, each has in

common the reasons why people attribute value to their pursuit of any career. But Raz

directs our attention away from this. Implicitly he is saying that the value of a career as

a musician cannot be just the same as the value of a career as a lawyer because we have

good reasons for understanding them to be different careers: that is, careers of different

kinds, careers grouped under distinct categories. Intra-category comparisons of career

value would thus be permissible, or almost so: it is much more likely, Raz thinks, that

we could justify a claim that a job with Slaughter & May would be better than a job

with Freshfields, and if he believes this then we can take it that he would also believe it

to be much more likely that either job could be just as good as the other. Both are

careers in the law and hence their values can vary just in degree. But the values of

careers in music and the law cannot vary just in degree, he thinks: there is no career as a

clarinettist that will be just as good as any particular career as a lawyer. Their difference

in kind prohibits this. Such inter-category comparisons of value are prohibited because

they fail to attend to the significance of the disparate classifications. Careers of different

kinds are valuable not just in different degrees but in different ways.

This is true, but it is a trivial truth: one might say the same about apples and oranges. In

this sense, the values of any two options, things, acts or concepts will be incomparable

if the items are classified under different descriptions. The value of a sword in this

18 I am taking it that when the career is not recognised as contributing to the community – as in the case of a criminal career, for example – then the term “career” is being applied ironically.

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sense, for example, will be incomparable with the value of a dagger, because swords

and daggers are valuable not just in different degrees but in different ways. The values

of different swords may be comparable merely in degree – this sharp sword might be a

better sword than that blunt one – but the values of a sword and a dagger must vary

qualitatively as well. They do, but only because in calling the two sharp, hilted blades a

sword and a dagger respectively we are distinguishing them according to these

qualitative differences. We have reasons for classifying these blades under the different

concepts “sword” and “dagger” and those reasons comprise the formal elements of each

concept: they are the reasons to which we must attend when attempting to determine

whether a particular blade is a sword or a dagger. But while we can classify different

blades under these concepts, we can choose not to. We can choose instead to classify

both under the same concept, and to compare them, for example, as weapons. Here there

is no difference of kind to attend to, no qualitative variations whose significance must

be attended to, except in so far as the items’ differing qualities enhance or diminish the

degree to which each item might be effective as a weapon. In comparing the value of a

particular sword with the value of a particular dagger as a weapon, we will be using

common criteria that are suggested by the reasons why we have the concept of a

weapon, and these reasons will comprise the formal element of the concept “weapon”.

It will be observed that if one were to be marooned on an uninhabited island with one’s

choice of only one sharp blade, one might have reason for comparing swords and

daggers not as weapons but with blades of other kinds merely as blades or cutting tools.

And it will be observed also that given foreknowledge of a particular situation in which

one would wish for a weapon, one’s judgment about whether a particular sword would

be a better than a particular dagger might vary from one’s judgment given a different

particular situation.

Kovesi, in arguing that concepts could usefully be understood as comprising formal and

material elements, was drawing our attention to a feature of language: he was pointing

out that the conceptions shared through language were shared for reasons. In applying

Kovesi’s analysis to questions of comparability, I am making a related point but not the

same point: I am saying that comparisons are made for reasons, and can be determined

only according to common criteria, explicit or implicit, which serve those reasons. But

Kovesi’s analysis of concepts and mine of comparisons share more than the common

thread that each can be well understood only through attending to the reasons we might

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have for having or making them. The other link is that we get so used to classifying

certain features of human experience under particular concepts that we may lose sight of

the fact that we have reasons for doing so. That is why we might think it easier to

compare items when we recognise them as both falling under an established concept – it

is why it may seem easier to compare things when we take them to be things of the

same established kind, or in Kovesi’s terms, to be instances of the same concept. But

when we compare, we are not restricted to comparing under established concepts. We

are perfectly capable of devising and, at least in principle, sharing new comparative

concepts, in so far as we are capable of understanding new reasons for making

comparisons, or of refining generally understood reasons so that they supply more

precise answers in particular cases. Further, and the significance of this point will

emerge more fully as my argument develops, it is only through sharing the concept

under which I have made a comparison that I may justify the result of that comparison

to others.

Nevertheless, when we recognise items as falling under the same established or familiar

concept, comparing them seems more straightforward. As I have said, that is because

the implicit reasons why we take it that both items fall under that established concept

supply us with implicit common criteria according to which we can compare the items.

We are inclined to agree that we can much more easily compare the value of a career

with Slaughter & May with the value of a career with Freshfields, but that is because we

recognise each to be a career in law and there is implicit in our concept of a career in

law criteria against which the goodness of that career for the person pursuing it may be

judged, if imprecisely. We struggle to compare the value of a career as a clarinettist

with the value of a career as a lawyer while we fail to recognise that both are careers

and may be compared as such. Once we do recognise this, we can appeal to commonly

understood, if roughly specified, criteria for career value against which people

ordinarily judge the value for them of pursuing different careers. In other words, we can

assess the value for Raz’s agent of pursuing these different careers in a similar way to

that in which Raz implicitly has assessed the agent’s chances of success in each and

judged them to be the same. The more precisely we want to do this, the more we need to

know about the physical and psychological make-up of Raz’s agent – about what kind

of a person he is. But as with the predictions of success, at least in a rough sense it may

be done.

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Why did it not immediately occur to us to do this? Because Raz has taken most of these

criteria out of play in setting up his example. He says that his agent is equally suited to

either career. This is saying a great deal. What is it to be suited to a career? Among

other things, it is to have the intellectual, creative, physical, temperamental and other

capacities required to do well as a trainee and later as a practitioner of the career. It is

also to be the kind of person who will derive satisfaction and pleasure from the rewards

the particular career brings. And given that one will never achieve the latter rewards if

one does not have the former capacities, we can sum this up by saying simply that to be

suited to a career is to be the kind of person whom the pursuit of that career will reward.

It seems a small stretch from here, if it is a stretch at all, to give this an alternative

formulation and to say that to be suited to a career is to be the kind of person who will

experience the pursuit of that career as good or valuable. What then of a person who is

equally suited to two different careers? That seems to mean that they would find either

career equally rewarding. Is that not the same as saying that the person would find either

career equally valuable, according to the kind of cross-career criteria for judging the

values of different careers that I alluded to above?

5.1.4 Raz’s careers case resolved

In case doubt remains about this conclusion, let us turn around Raz’s formulation. He

says his agent is equally suited to either career. Does not this imply that each career will

suit the agent equally well? But this is just the kind of thing one might say if one was

indifferent between any two options: asked whether I would rather have the red car or

the green car, a job with Freshfields or a job with Slaughter & May, a career as a lawyer

or a career as a clarinettist, I could express fully the idea that I had considered both

options and was indifferent as to which I took, simply by saying that either suited me

equally well. That is the sort of thing a father might say to his daughter if she asked him

whether he would like the chocolate croissant or the apple Danish, or the sort of thing a

fast bowler might say to the captain of his cricket team if asked whether he would prefer

to bowl downhill and into the wind or uphill with the wind behind him. Crucially, it is

also the sort of thing an air force commander might say if he were asked whether he

would prefer to drop a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki first or Hiroshima, given that he had

spent long hours pondering just those two options and had concluded that, on the

information available to him, neither course offered a discernible advantage over the

other. “They suit me equally well,” he might reply, meaning that he is indifferent as to

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which is bombed first. However, in saying that he is indifferent, I do not mean to imply

that he has become so callous that he no longer recognises the gravity of a decision to

drop so destructive a weapon on either densely populated industrial city. We can

imagine that even a very hard-bitten air force commander might not attempt to bomb

such a city unless he had very weighty reasons for doing so, and we can also imagine

that the reasons for bombing Nagasaki first might be very different from the reasons for

bombing Hiroshima first – the age profiles of the cities’ populations may differ, they

might make contributions of different kinds to the enemy’s war effort, and so on. Those

weighty and very different reasons might indeed, as Raz says, rightly make the

commander or any decent person care a great deal about which option to choose. But to

care about which option to choose does not prohibit the agent from being indifferent as

to which option is chosen. Caring about which option to choose motivates an agent to

pay careful attention to the options in an attempt to discern which course would be best.

But it does not prevent an agent who has paid the options careful attention from

concluding – for a range of reasons, as we shall see – that he could rightly or

appropriately be indifferent between them.

Raz is wrong to claim, then, of his agent’s two career options that “The suggestion that

they are of exactly the same value cannot be entertained seriously”.19 Not only can it be

taken seriously, but in setting up his example he has told us that, at least from the point

of view of the agent, the two career options are indeed of the same value: he is equally

suited to both. We can equivocate here about how precisely to understand the identity

alluded to in the phrase “exactly the same”, but of course, that will depend purely on

how we understand Raz’s condition that to either career the agent would be “equally

suited”. One thing that must be clear is that if the agent were not equally suited to either

career then the two options would not be of the same value to him and he would have

good reason for choosing the career to which he were better suited. So how we are to

understand the exact similarity of value which Raz denies, will depend simply on how

precisely we think an agent – or whoever is to be the judge of his suitability – can

reconcile competing reasons. He will be equally suited to either career when, after due

consideration, whoever is to be the judge cannot see that his capacities and character fit

him better for either. How much consideration would be due in such a case? Well it is

just this, and not whether it would be proper to conclude that one is indifferent between

the options, that is determined by how significant for one’s life (or for other lives, if this

19 Op. cit., p332.

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is relevant) one believes the choice to be. If the significance is very great, then it would

be proper for one to give the decision a great deal of attention; if the significance is

trivial then one would be wise to reserve one’s limited time and energy for more

significant choices.

In either case, a person who is to live well must be capable of reaching a conclusion,

and within an appropriate period, either that one option is better than the other, or that

neither offers much advantage over the other and that therefore it does not matter a great

deal which one chooses, given all the other choices which a human who is to survive at

all will be pressed to make. The importance of that last condition which I have

emphasised will emerge below. Someone who after due consideration reaches the

conclusion that it does not matter a great deal which career he chooses does not lack

self-respect. He is not indifferent to the choice in the sense of failing to be alive to its

significance for him; he is aware that the life of a clarinettist will be very different from

the life of a lawyer. It is just that he thinks either life, as nearly as he can judge in

advance and given the broader context in which he is making the judgment, would be

equally good.

It would be open to Raz to respond that in saying that his agent was equally suited to

either career, he was saying less than that each career would be equally valuable for

him. That would be to say that even though a person was equally suited to either of two

careers, there could be something extra that was not captured by the phrase “equally

suited” and that differentiated the values of each career for the agent. It could be argued

that it was this something extra that rendered the two options incomparable. I agree that

there might be more to the value of a career for an agent than its suitability for him: I

can see that, by observing that I did not object immediately that it was redundant of Raz

to have claimed that a person was equally suited to either career and that he stood an

equal chance of success in each. It seems that it might make sense to claim that while a

person was equally suited to either of two careers, he should take the career that offered

him the best chance of success. Even if this were so, however, and the evaluative

possibilities were not exhausted, either, by adding in the concept of career success, any

extra feature could be handled comparatively in just the same way as the comparisons of

career suitability and career success have been handled, through an appeal to the reasons

why we are attempting to compare the value of the two careers. My point about Raz

telling us that his agent was equally suited to either career does not turn upon whether

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that is the same as saying his agent would find either career equally valuable, although I

think a good case can be made for the proposition that it is the same. My point was that

Raz’s telling us this distracts us from recognising that there are obvious and established

criteria under which we do compare the values of careers of different kinds. The

concept of a person’s suitability for a career captures most, and perhaps all, of these, but

Raz nonchalantly puts that to one side in advance, and asks us to attend to what

remains.

5.2 The justification of choice

5.2.1 Aims

I want here to show how what I have said above fills gaps in some perceptive prior

discussions of this example and the issues it raises, and how it thereby clarifies our

understanding of how reason can guide a choice between alternatives where the

consequences of each appear to be formidably complex and serious.

5.2.2 Consistency

In one of the earliest of these discussions, Regan observes, as I do above, that Raz

seems to take it that people’s pursuits of different careers are comparable in terms of

their success.20 He thinks this is inconsistent of Raz, writing:

Even if we can make sense of degrees of success as a clarinetist (and similarly of

degrees of success as a farmer), how can we compare “this much success as a

clarinetist” with “that much success as a farmer”? Raz does seem to assume that

this sort of comparison is a possible ground for choice. But I do not see how it can

be. The value of success depends on the value of what one succeeds in.21 If the

20 Regan cites a different passage from the same work by Raz as supporting the point, however. At pp343-344 of The Morality of Freedom, Raz claims that: “When we compare the lives of two people, with very different styles of life, who were each moderately successful and contented in whatever they did … the only ground for judging that one had a better life than the other is if one style of life is intrinsically better than the other. It is often not the case that one person’s well-being was greater, less or equal than that of another. They are simply incommensurate. We lack any grounds for judging a career as a graphic designer to be intrinsically better or worse for those engaged in it than a career as a livestock farmer or a gliding instructor, assuming that they are likely to be equally successful and content in them.” [My emphasis.] 21 It is not clear whether Regan endorses this claim or whether he is merely attributing it to Raz. In a footnote he does attribute it to Raz, op. cit., p298. Raz states there that: “The fourth difference between well-being and self-interest is that a person’s well-being depends on the value of his goals and pursuits.”

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values of the clarinet and of livestock farming are truly incommensurable, as Raz

claims, then so should be the values of success as a clarinetist and of success as a

farmer (nor does supposing “greater” success at one, in its own terms, establish a

ground for commensuration).22

Regan was right to point out the inconsistency. I have sought to show above just how

Raz has been inconsistent, and also how we can and indeed do compare degree of

success as a clarinettist with degree of success as a farmer (or a lawyer).

5.2.3 Why we resist coin-tossing

Regan next turns to Raz’s contention that to be faced with a choice between

incommensurables is to be faced with a choice that reason cannot help one make, asking

why, if this is the case, Raz thinks self-respecting people should agonize over such a

choice rather than expressing indifference as to the outcome or even merely tossing a

coin to decide it. He concedes the obvious, that some choices are significant and

demand care, but argues:

Of course I agree that in general the choice of a career is a choice one ought to care

a lot about. And I agree that failure to care might well manifest a lack of proper

respect for oneself. But Raz is not talking about the choice of a career in general.

He is talking about the choice that remains after we have narrowed the field to two

possibilities, and after we have decided that those two possibilities are

incommensurable, that practical reason offers no further guidance. To say that we

ought not to be indifferent, or that proper self-respect requires us to go on

agonizing, is to say that practical reason requires us to go on deliberating beyond

the point where the relevance of practical reason has been exhausted. That makes

no sense. It seems to me that at this point it is perfectly appropriate to flip a coin.23

For reasons I shall give below, it is not entirely clear that flipping a coin would be

appropriate, but one could justify doing so. That is not because the choice in this

example is a choice between incommensurables. It is because it is a choice between

goods of equal value. The equality might not be “exact”. (In the following chapter I

shall examine in detail the relevance of this qualification.) Nevertheless, we could put

22 “Authority and Value: Reflections on Raz’s Morality of Freedom”, Southern California Law Review 62 (1989); pp1062-63. 23 Op. cit., p1063.

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things more colloquially by saying just that this is a choice about whose outcome the

chooser, after giving it due consideration, has decided that he is indifferent. We know

this, I have argued, because it is implicit in what Raz has told us about the case.

Regan continues: “I do not actually recommend flipping a coin, which would seem

outrageous, because I do not think we ever get to the point Raz assumes, of being

convinced we are faced with incommensurable alternatives.” There is more to this

observation, for it is not only a conviction that we are facing incommensurable

alternatives but also a conviction that we are facing equally valuable alternatives that

would seem to make flipping a coin a proper decision procedure. And yet even if, as I

have suggested, the career options of Raz’s example are equal in their value to the

agent, like Regan we would tend to resist the proposition that the agent should decide

between them by flipping a coin. Why would that be, if it is rational to choose any one

of two or more options that are equal in value?

Part of the problem here is that we are making the mistake Raz makes when he says that

to be indifferent to such a career choice would be to lack self-respect. Not to care about

which choice was better would be to lack self-respect. Not to care which of two equally

valuable options we chose would be perfectly compatible with self-respect – indeed, if

the alternative was to agonise over the choice, then it would be a mark of self-respect

that one did not do so. We could be justified in making the choice by flipping a coin if

we had decided that either of two career options would be equally good. What our

intuition resists is not this, but the proposition that two career options – or any other two

options of apparently great significance and complexity – could be equally good. The

reason we resist this proposition is not – I claim – because we think the options

incommensurable, but because we suspect that given the complexity of the decision,

there must be some consideration, however small, that would tip the balance of reasons

towards one option or the other. We resist tossing a coin because we suspect that if we

go on examining the question, we will discover what that consideration is.

A couple of points about this are worth making. The first is that in deciding I shall make

a choice on the toss of a coin, on the grounds that either option is just as good as the

other, I am deciding that there is no reason more relevant than the fall of the coin that

could be the basis for my choice. That is to say, I am concluding that all the relevant

considerations are balanced so finely that I am justified in basing the choice on a

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consideration that is not relevant at all. It seems to me that this is a ridiculous position to

take. It suggests I think I can judge complex sets of opposing reasons with an

implausibly fine degree of precision. Any other reason for making the choice would be

just as good a reason as the fall of the coin, and any reason I think at all relevant to the

value of the choices would be more relevant than the result of the coin toss.24

The second point is that people generally tend not to base choices for which they alone

are responsible on the toss of a coin. My previous observation might explain why this is

so. We are familiar with the idea that people do base choices on the toss of a coin, and

we might suppose that we might be inclined to do so in cases where we are convinced

that the values of two options are incommensurable, or equal. But in practice, the use of

a coin-toss as a decision procedure tends to be reserved for cases where two parties have

rival claims about what decision would be best. The coin toss is a decision tool useful in

settling disputes or in awarding small but indivisible advantages in sporting contests.

One who commonly used it for making difficult choices for which they were solely

responsible would be viewed as eccentric or lazy (and possibly as culpably negligent).

Exceptions might be cases where circumstances restricted a person to a patently

insufficient period for considering a complex question, or to patently insufficient

information upon which to base the decision. By deciding the question with a coin-toss,

someone in these circumstances might seek to demonstrate that he felt the

circumstances were so unfavourable to his making a good decision that he should not be

held responsible for the decision he did make. But there the coin-toss is used as a form

of protest, and does not signify that the chooser is convinced there must be no best

choice.

5.2.4 Equally good options might not have equally good consequences

5.2.4.1 Distinguishing options from their consequences

This gives us some perspective on a claim Raz makes in delivering his second

clarification of his careers example, in which he asserts (in direct contradiction of his

rejected initial premise 2) that the significance of a choice turns out to have little or

24 The force of this observation is brought out when we consider that where a person does resort to tossing a coin or some similar procedure in resolving a choice, they will often decline to respect the result. The coin toss functions to make them aware that they do, after all, have a preference for one of the options, and they choose that option even though the result of the coin toss indicated the other.

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nothing to do with the fact that one option is better than the other and – by implication –

everything to do with the weightiness of the reasons for taking either option and their

degree of disparity. Having made this point, he claims: “It follows that if there are no

significant choices between options of exactly equal value that is because there are no

options of equal value among those supported by weighty and very different reasons.

This seems to me correct. But that is another story.”25

If my explanation above for our intuitive resistance to coin-flipping is right, then we can

give a subtly different explanation for this observation from Raz. We can adapt Regan’s

suggestion and propose that we never get to the point of being convinced we are faced,

not with incommensurable alternatives, but with alternatives of exactly equal – that is,

identical – value.26 We may become convinced that we cannot see clearly what the best

option would be, and we may even become convinced that nevertheless, we will not

gain from investigating or analysing the options further. But that is not the same as

being convinced that the options are of equal value, if what we mean by this is that the

values of the consequences of either choice are exactly equal. To become convinced that

I will not gain from investigating or analysing the options further is, rather, to become

convinced that anything I gain from considering the options further will be less than

what I shall lose from considering them further.

There may be a range of explanations for this conviction: the choice may be only

trivially significant for my life, and therefore not worth much attention; or I may

recognise that I have all the information I am likely to get and have analysed it

rigorously, and so have nothing to gain from further deliberation; or it may be that the

consequences of delaying a choice are so dire that nothing could be more important than

avoiding them through choosing immediately any available option that would avoid

them; or the explanation might involve a balance between these sorts of considerations.

In any of these cases, however, a judgment that I am indifferent which option to take is

not the same as a judgment that I would be indifferent between the consequences of the

options if I knew what those consequences were.

25 The Morality of Freedom, p333. 26 Unless we set them up artificially, as Raz does in his careers example.

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5.2.4.2 A trivial example: ice-cream portions

Some examples will help make this clearer. Michael Stocker, in a related context, gives

an example of a person offered the alternatives of taking this portion of vanilla ice-

cream or taking that equal portion of the very same vanilla ice-cream.27 He offers this as

a trivial example in which the choice is between two top-ranked incompossible acts. By

top-ranked he means that there is no different and better option that would make this

choice redundant – the option of selecting a third and larger serve of ice-cream, for

example. By incompossible he means the options are exclusive: we must choose one

option or the other and may not choose both. Note that the equality of the two portions

is pre-judged: we are told that they are equal. That pre-judgment serves Stocker’s

purpose, but it is important for mine that we notice that in practice, and assuming he

cares, a person offered a choice of ice-cream servings will have to decide for himself

whether the portions are equally good. Is such a person likely to become convinced of

the same conclusion which Stocker supplies about the portions: the conclusion that they

are equal portions? I think not. Rather, and given that he would prefer the best portion,

our agent in this case will decide that the choice is nevertheless trivially significant for

his life and therefore not worth much attention. Further, even brief observation will

show that the portions are similar in size, and therefore likely to be similar in value.28

He could go to the trouble of putting each on a sensitive balance so as to learn which

weighs more, on the principle that the value of each serving is in proportion to its

weight, but he thinks the costs of doing that would exceed the benefits – the ice-cream

may melt, observers would think him peculiar, and so on. He chooses the portion he

thinks is better, while being aware that the other portion might be better. The

consequences of choosing the poorer option do not concern him. The key point here is

that he never becomes convinced that the two similar-sized portions are equally

valuable. He chooses one when he is convinced that the disvalue to him of deliberating

further is greater than any value he may fail to capture in not deliberating further. That

he becomes indifferent which portion he chooses does not mean he thinks the

consequences of either choice would be exactly equal in value. Importantly, nor does it

mean that he thinks any difference in the values of the consequences will be

significantly less than the difference between choosing now and delaying making the

27 “Abstract and Concrete Value”, in Chang, R, ed, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason; pp197-198.

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choice. Rather, it means he thinks that whatever he will gain from deliberating further

about what those values are likely to be, will be significantly less than whatever he will

lose from not doing so. And that is so, even though this case appears to be neither

complex nor of great significance for the agent’s life.

5.2.4.3 A significant example: Raz’s careers case

Raz’s careers case offers us an example of contrasting significance and complexity.

Again, rather than accepting Raz’s prejudgment that his agent is equally suited to either

career and stands equal chances of success in each, let us take it that the agent does not

know to which career he is better suited or in which he is more likely to succeed, and so

these considerations become part of his decision about which option is the more

valuable for him. (I have argued that, understood comprehensively, the question of

suitability constitutes the whole of the question of value. But as I have also said,

whether it does will not matter.)

When the agent first considers the choice, we can take it that he does not recognise

either option as the more valuable. This could simply be prudent circumspection: even

an agent who was tone-deaf might want to reserve their decision until they knew a bit

more about what either career would involve. But as Regan says, from the way in which

Raz presents this example we seem justified in assuming that the agent has narrowed

down his choice of career to just these two. That is to say that he thinks either career

would be better than any other career: the question is which of these two would be best.

We can take it, then, that the agent thinks either career would be quite valuable by

comparison with any other, but he doesn’t know which would be more valuable. That is

his starting point. From here he begins to consider which would be more valuable.

There is no standard process by which this consideration takes place. That is, it seems to

me that people have a range of ways in which they attempt to reach decisions on

questions of this kind, some doubtless more effective than others. But we can propose

that there is a rationally defensible order to the decision making which we could apply

to any comparison on complex grounds, one which happens to fit well with what I have

had to say about how we compare. That is, the first step is to look to the reasons why

28 Assuming that the context rules out as very unlikely the possibility that one might be poisoned, or one might have been built on a mould so that it is hollow inside, or that there might be some other hidden

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one wants to make the comparison – which in this case involves examining oneself in

respect of what one wants or needs in a career. The second step is to judge both

alternatives under a single set of criteria which serve these reasons – in this case, to

examine the two careers in respect of how well each could supply these wants or meet

these needs. I won’t defend this order at length here: it seems to me that it is obvious.

To attempt to list the ways in which each career would be good while having no sense

of what one wants from a career would be to apply oneself to a task that will never yield

a result. A person who went about their choice in this way would never narrow the

choice down to just two careers, for he would have no basis upon which to narrow it. To

go about a choice of motor car in this way would be to list the features of every car on

the market before examining how much money one wished to spend on a car or whether

one wanted transport just for oneself or for a family of seven. Nevertheless, as the

choice narrows, one might wish to modify the comparative criteria, reflecting in more

detail upon one’s needs, just as one investigates in more detail the features of each

option.

Our agent, then, having narrowed his career choice down to two, will be attempting to

assess in more detail how well each meets his needs and wishes, while from time to

time re-examining those needs and wishes. At first it will not be clear that either career

option is better than the other for him. As he learns more about either career and about

himself, it may become clear that one is better than the other, as it does for the agent in

an example of practical reasoning which Millgram gives,29 or it may be that even

though the agent gains a clearer understanding of how either option has value for him, it

remains unclear which is better.

How does this process end? I doubt it ever ends with the agent becoming convinced that

the options are of exactly equal value, again if what is meant by this is that the

consequences of either choice are of equal value, considered on their own. What he may

recognise is just that even after he has put considerable effort into investigating his

needs and wishes and the options in light of those, it remains unclear to him which is

better. There could be a range of reasons for this. One might be that the options are

indeed very similar in respect of their value for him. Another might be that his access to

distinction of value that he would be wise to attempt to discern. 29 Millgram discusses a possible reasoning process in which a person who is on a slimming diet but tempted to eat cake reasons to the conclusion that it would be better for her to forgo the cake. (“Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning”, pp159-160.)

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information upon which to base the choice is severely restricted. As Millgram points

out, with the help of an example in which an agent must choose between dull and tidy

or witty and untidy room-mates,30 it is often impossible to determine the value which an

option has for you until you have experienced the results of choosing that option. It

might be very hard to know how well one would like working as a lawyer until one had

worked as one, and even then one might hesitate to reach a conclusion from just a day’s

work or even a year’s. The same might be true of the life of a professional musician. It

should not surprise us, then, if uncertainty about which option would be best persists in

the agent. What is perhaps unfortunate for him is that to be uncertain about which

option to pursue is not the same as to be certain that the consequences of each would be

equally valuable, and nor can one justify inferring the latter certainty from the former

uncertainty.

It will also be the case that if he considers his decision for long enough, he must reach a

point, if he is to live well,31 and assuming to take either option would be better than

none, where he believes the value foregone in choosing either option will be exceeded

by the value foregone in continuing to deliberate. This will obviously be the case where

he has a deadline for his choice, after which neither option would be available. At best,

each of us faces such a deadline in death. But the belief could also be reached before

any deadline arrived that was imposed explicitly from without. When the belief is

reached, the agent will choose one of the options. He will do so while recognising that,

provided he deliberated well in narrowing his options to these two, either option would

be a good option. He will recognise also that he may never know which would have

been the better choice. He believes, however, that he has nothing to gain from

deliberating further.

Thus the careers case turns out to be like the ice-cream case: the point is never reached

at which the agent becomes convinced that the values of the consequences of either

choice are exactly equal; what he becomes convinced of is just that the value he will

lose through deliberating further is greater than the value he will lose through making

either choice now. I suspect that all our difficult choices are like this.

30 Op. cit., pp160-161. 31 The point of this interpolation is just that it is not inevitable any agent will reach the point where he believes it would be better to mistakenly take the poorer option than not to take either. An ability to devote appropriate time and energy to deliberation is a useful attribute but not everybody has it.

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5.2.4.4 An example exposing the costs of deliberation

In many cases it will be dramatically obvious that the costs of dithering past a certain

point will be very high. I will give one example, because it will help us see the

distinction I am drawing here between being indifferent about which option one chooses

and being indifferent about the consequences of either choice.

You are running for your life down a narrow alley in neighbourhood with which you are

not very familiar. Mere metres behind you is a gang of thugs who have left you in no

doubt that if they catch you they will beat you to death. You see that the alley ends in a

T-junction with another alley, and as you reach the T it becomes clear to you that in

effect the intersection is not so much a T as a fork: your alley branches into two

laneways here and you must choose whether to take the left path or the right. That is,

the alleys form a figure something like this:

The shape of the intersection prevents you from seeing more than a few metres down

either tine of the fork. Which tine do you choose? It is clear, I think, that even though

you may care a great deal about the consequences of your choice – a poor choice, after

all, may lead to your soon being beaten to death and a good one to your escape – you

are nevertheless right to be indifferent about which path you choose.32 That is not

because it is clear to you that the consequences of taking either path will be equal in

value. Nor is it clear to you that any difference in the values of the consequences will be

significantly less than the difference between choosing now and delaying making the

choice. If one of the tines of the fork turns out to be a blind alley, then the consequences

of taking that tine or deliberating further will be about the same: you will be beaten to

death, in the former case after a further few seconds of exertion. What is clear to you is

that you don’t know which path would be better or whether neither would be better, but

32 I am leaving to one side here the possibility that, in Stocker’s terms, the two paths are not top-ranked – that is, that there is a third possible choice that would be better than to take either path. For example, if one were an exceptionally capable fighter, one’s chances of escape might be greater if one turned and faced the pursuing gang before taking either path, for this could possibly gain one time to investigate the paths further. But in this case, the agent is not a particularly good fighter, but is just a highly motivated runner.

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that whatever you will gain from deliberating further about the value of choosing either

path will be significantly less than whatever you will gain from not doing so. If you

investigate either path before choosing it, you will be caught. If you do not investigate

then you will gain nothing from agonising about which to choose. And if you

investigate or agonise, you will lose a great deal for you will immediately be beaten to

death. In these circumstances, it is appropriate that you are indifferent which path you

take. It does not matter that, unbeknownst to you, one of the paths is blind while the

other leads immediately to a main street on which is parading a squad of police.

Could we generate a plausible case in which an agent becomes convinced he is choosing

between two options whose consequences are of exactly equal value? It is tempting to

offer as an example a choice of whether to pay for a service with this $5 note or that $5

note. Surely the reason why we do not care which of the pieces of fiat currency in one’s

wallet we part with in return for a service is that we recognise the (dis)value of our

giving up either note of the same denomination to be exactly equal. Further reflection,

however, suggests this may not be so. One might hold back a shiny new note for the

pleasure of holding it in one’s wallet for longer. If one does not distinguish between the

consequences of giving up notes of equal face-value, this will not be because one is

convinced their value is exactly the same, but rather because one is convinced that any

difference in their value will be negligibly small. This gives a clue to how I will go

about refuting, in the next chapter, the argument for incomparability from small

improvements.

5.2.5 Justifying a choice between equals

In a more recent essay on the same general topic, Regan criticizes a recent claim by Raz

that a person facing a choice between incommensurable options might do so on the

basis of “brute wants”, selecting one of them even though they could have no good

reason for doing so (or no reason that is not very peculiar, as Raz would have it).33 Raz

argues for this claim because it could explain how a person faced with

incommensurable options might nevertheless choose between them – an explanation

that is needed if incommensurability indeed marks the inability of reason to guide our

action, as Raz says it does. He argues for what he calls a classical conception of

33 The claim is made and argued for in “Incommensurability and Agency”. The allusion to very peculiar reasons arises on p124.

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practical reasoning, in which an agent’s reasoning renders eligible one or more options

from which the agent then chooses one just because he wants it (which is alleged to be a

reason of a different and peculiar kind), and against a rationalist conception, according

to which an agent’s reasoning will always select one option as better than the rest (or

possibly, although Raz does not say so, might assess two options as being equally

good). The rationalist conception appears incompatible with widespread

incommensurabilities of value as Raz represents incommensurability. The distinction

Raz takes pains to draw between reasons for action and desires allows him to argue that

desires may remain as influences on choice after reasons for making one choice rather

than another run out. Regan argues against Raz that this never happens: that even

though, as Raz claims, one always desires something for a reason rather than simply

because one desires it, those reasons may be quite trivial: I might want a banana just

because I like its taste. Regan writes that however trivial they may seem, these reasons

nevertheless count as reasons justifying choice.34 “Where there is no adequate reason

for preference, there can be no real choice,” he argues. “A decision to go one way rather

than the other will be something that happened to the agent rather than something she

did.”35

I sought to explain above why we almost never use coin-tosses as decision procedures

when making choices for which we are wholly responsible. The explanation was that

we never reach the point of being convinced that each of two options is just as valuable

as the other. Except in artificial cases advanced to illustrate philosophical arguments,

when we say we are indifferent between two options, we do not mean that we think they

are equally valuable. We mean that even though we don’t know which is more valuable,

we are satisfied that it would be better to take even the poorer option than to continue to

consider the matter. This is not a situation in which reasons have run their course. It

may be a situation where reason has rendered either option eligible. But that doesn’t

mean reason must have run out, in the sense that all that remains for guiding our choice

is something other than our rational capacities.

“A want can never tip the balance of reasons in and of itself,” Raz claims. “Rather, our

wants become relevant when reasons have run their course.”36 Implicit in that claim is

the proposition that reasons can run their course and can do so before wants have run

34 “Value, Comparability and Choice”, pp144-150. 35 Op. cit., p144.

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theirs. This is what Regan denies, arguing that what Raz seeks to isolate under the title

“wants” can only be more reasons for acting, and that there is nothing terribly peculiar

about them. In the trivial case Regan chooses as the basis for his discussion, for

example, to say that I just want to eat a banana rather than its alternative, a pear, is very

likely to say that I just believe I will derive more pleasure from eating the banana. As

Regan points out, that is a perfectly good reason for eating it.37 He considers a range of

other possible ways in which wants might be supposed to motivate action independently

of reasons and concludes that none is credible:

In sum, I see no way to make choice between incomparables intelligible by

elaborating the suggestion that when reasons have run their course, I choose what I

want or feel like. What is needed, if such a suggestion is to work, is a kind of

“want” that is both reason-grounded (since reason-groundedness is the source of

intelligibility) and available to step in after the deciding force of all relevant

reasons has been exhausted. The very specification of the need virtually compels

the conclusion I have been arguing for: that there is no sort of want that can do the

trick.38

We can see now, I think, that Regan is right. For Raz, to recognise that reasons have run

their course while leaving the choice undecided is to recognise either

incommensurability of value or equality of value. Incommensurability is marked by the

denial of equality along with the denial of superiority: it arises when the Trichotomy

Thesis fails to hold, when it is true of two options that neither is better than the other but

nor are they equal in value. My overriding theme in the previous chapters and this one is

that incomparabilists have poor grounds for the denial of equality, for those grounds

always seem to amount to an assertion of a difference in kind between the two options,

a difference which cannot support the denial of equality. So we must leave open the

possibility that two options are equal in value. What we cannot do in practical cases,

however, is to assert that the consequences of two options are equal in value. All we can

say is that we think there is a better reason for taking either option now than for

continuing to deliberate. That is not to say that reasons have run out. It is to say that

36 “Incommensurability and Agency”, p125. 37 “Value, Comparability and Choice”, p145. 38 Op. cit., pp149-150.

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unfolding events have influenced the choice we are making, forcing us, if we are to live

well (or perhaps to live at all) to give priority to a different choice.

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6. The argument from small improvements

We can justify judging non-identical options to be equally good only on the grounds

that their values do not differ significantly. The argument for incomparability from

small improvements shows only that some stipulated improvements could be

insignificant.

6.1 Overview: Small improvements and parity

The examination of Raz’s careers example in the previous chapter gives us the tools we

need to analyse the argument for incomparability from small improvements. This is the

argument Chang thinks most powerful. But she also thinks it is vulnerable to criticism,

and on at least two counts. One of those counts she attributes to Regan: it is grounded in

the proposition of his which I developed in the second part of the preceding chapter,

that we never reach the point of being convinced that we are faced with an

incommensurability. Chang calls this the epistemic objection, but claims that the

phenomenology of comparative judgments casts doubt on its validity.1 Her other

suggestion is that the argument from small improvements shows that the Trichotomy

Thesis does not hold for some comparisons, but the argument does not show

incomparability. That is because the Trichotomy Thesis does not describe every positive

value relation, she thinks. Rather, it must be supplemented by a fourth relation which

she terms parity. Hence, even if two items are neither better nor worse than one another

but not just as good as one another, they might each be on a par. This, Chang thinks,

could have consequences for how we justify choices.

My response will be compatible with Regan’s epistemic objection and also with two

more recent suggestions, noted below, for how the argument from small improvements

might be accommodated while retaining the Trichotomy Thesis. It will extend the

argument of the previous chapter, proposing that a comparative judgment of equality is

justified if the compared items do not differ significantly. Hence, the Trichotomy thesis

stands and parity, as a fourth value relation, is redundant. (As indeed is rough equality

in this sense.)

1 “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, pp24-25.

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The question which then arises is what is to count as a significant difference. I argue

that this will depend on what is the point of the comparison. I shall have something

further to say about the phenomenology of choice also.

6.2 The argument from small improvements: Two refutations

But first, the argument from small improvements. Recall that in illustrating this

argument, Chang adapts the careers example from Raz. An agent is comparing the value

of two options, each of which will commit her to a different career: on the one hand to a

career as a clarinettist and on the other to a career in the law. If she is equally suited to

either career and has an equal chance of success in each, we might rationally judge (so

the argument goes) that neither option is better than the other.2 Suppose we have made

that judgment.

We can improve the clarinettist career a little with respect to goodness of careers,

perhaps by increasing the salary by ten dollars. Are we thereby rationally

compelled to judge that the improved music career is better than the legal one? It

seems rational to resist this conclusion. If it is rational, then the original careers

cannot be equally good, since if they were, a small improvement in one must make

it better than the other. Therefore they must be incomparable.3

There are two approaches we can take to showing the fallacy here. Here is the first.

Given that (as I have argued) the careers’ difference in kind is not a ground at all on

which to rule out the possibility that their values for the agent are equal, and given that

no other ground has been advanced for ruling this out, then the supposition that neither

is better for the agent than the other is a very good ground for concluding that their

values for him are indeed equal. Any small improvement in one of the options –

provided it is an improvement which the agent considers relevant for his choice –

therefore will make that option better than either of the original options. It is not

rational, then, to resist this conclusion. Therefore it is not the case that the two options

must be incomparable.

The other approach does not rely on my argument for the irrelevance of differences of

kind. Rather, it points out that the argument from small improvements relies on a hidden

2 The expression “rationally judge” is Chang’s. 3 Chang, op. cit., pp23-24.

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asymmetry in the standards of precision which it assumes. Take two options A and B,

rationally judged to be neither better nor worse than one another. The argument from

small improvements postulates an option A+ which is a small improvement on A. It

observes that it is not clear whether one must rationally judge A+ to be better than B.

And it concludes from this that A and B cannot have been equally good. The asymmetry

is between the comparison of A+ with A and the comparison of A+ with B. The latter

comparison fails because it is not clear that A+ must be rationally judged to be better

than B. The former comparison succeeds because the question whether A+ must be

rationally judged to be better than A never arises: we know A+ is better than A because,

and only because, it is defined as being better. Our capacity for judgment and its

limitations play no part in the comparison on this side, and a key part on the other side.

The argument from small improvements makes no explicit stipulation about how small

an improvement A+ may be over A, and no such stipulation is implied. In the absence of

such a stipulation the only limit to how small the improvement from A to A+ may be is

the logical limit that A and A+ may not be identical. But whereas the comparison

between A and A+ has a pre-defined result, the comparison between A+ and B is subject

to all of the limitations of the human capacity for judgment, just as the original

comparison between A and B is. All that is required for a demonstration of the

argument, then, is an improvement from A to A+ that is logically an improvement but is

too small to be judged an improvement in practice. Given that people’s capacities for

making precise and accurate judgments have practical limits, a practical example

demonstrating the argument can always be found.

The argument from small improvements, then, confuses the question of comparability

with the question of when a difference between two items shall count as a significant

difference. In practical cases, to say that two items are equal in a certain respect is not

necessarily to say that they are known not to differ at all in that respect; it is merely to

say that they do not differ significantly in that respect. For many standard kinds of

comparison, the question how to know whether a difference is significant is answered

explicitly; in other cases, whoever is conducting the comparison, if they are to reach a

conclusion of equality, must infer an answer to that question from the reasons why the

comparison is made. If anybody was required to justify their use of a particular criterion

for the significance of a difference – or as I shall call it, a particular standard of

significance – they would do so by showing how that standard serves those reasons.

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6.3 Equality and standards of significance for difference

R.E. Ewin gives the following pair of examples showing how we must attend to context

when making a judgment of equality:

The instructions say “Take two pieces of equal length,” and the two pieces that I

have differ in length by one millimetre. I am making a Rolls-Royce engine, so I

send the parts back.

The instructions say “Take two pieces of equal length,” and the two pieces that I

have differ in length by one millimetre. I am making a rabbit hutch, so I take up the

two pieces and get on with the job. I have followed the instructions.4

I want to point out here that the reason why the judgment of equality varies between

these two cases is that different standards for the significance of difference are

appropriate to each. In the former case the standard is likely to have been specified

explicitly: people building an engine for any contemporary car maker are very likely to

have standards for the significance of difference specified in the form of tolerances. The

latter case offers a contrast: builders of rabbit hutches likely will be left to infer an

appropriate standard, according to how they want to balance the competing goals of

symmetry in the product and time-efficiency in its completion. Anybody could demand

the same tolerances for the frame of a rabbit hutch as Rolls-Royce demanded for its

various engine parts but it is hard to see what point there could be in doing so, and easy

to see that, unless we were building a rabbit hutch for extraordinary reasons, we would

live better if we did not require a standard of equality that was this precise here.

Similarly, if it were to be a condition of anyone building a Rolls-Royce engine that the

lengths of each connecting-rod be demonstrably identical, then no Rolls-Royce engines

would be built: the claim that some undiscerned difference might remain could not be

refuted.5

Ewin generalises the point about equality by saying that the words “same” and “equal”

are formal words and must have their criteria supplied. “Nothing could simply be equal

4 Liberty, Community and Justice, Totowa, NJ, Rowman & Littlefield, 1987; p38. 5 It could be argued, of course, that at some point any difference that remains undiscerned does not matter. But that is part of what I do argue below.

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or unequal independent of the context in which the question was raised or the point of

raising it,” he observes.

Before we can say whether two things are equal we need to know the respect in

which equality is being claimed (is it a matter of their height or their weight?) but,

more than that, we need to know the point of the inquiry. What is equal in respect

X in one case need not be equal in respect X in another case.6

The observation, which Ewin advanced in defence of Hobbes’s claim that all people are

equal, can be seen as a specific case of the more general proposition about comparisons

that I have sought to develop. To make a claim of equality is necessarily to make a

claim about the result of a comparison – the claimant is saying either that two (or more)

things have been compared and found equal, or that if they were compared they would

be found equal. I have argued that we cannot justify determining the result of a

comparison until we know what are the common criteria against which we shall judge

the items being compared. It is an implication of that argument that we cannot justify a

claim that two things are equal unless we know these criteria. But the focus here on

what it would mean to say that, in practice, two things were equal suggests I need to go

further than this if I am to give the conditions for deciding whether two compared items

are equal. It suggests we can know the common criteria against which we shall judge

items being compared without knowing enough to say whether the items are equal. That

this is very likely right can be seen if we reflect on the effectiveness of the nominal-

notable comparison for generating counterexamples to arguments for incomparability

based on the diversity of values. Against the claim that one could not show that Mozart

was more or less creative than Michelangelo but nor that they were equally creative, it is

pointed out that one could claim plausibly that Mozart was more creative than an

amateur dauber. It would help explain why the nominal-notable comparison is so

effective if it were partly because something is missing from our understanding of what

it is for two items to be compared and found equal, but that the nominal-notable

comparison, unlike the comparison between two great artists, does not force us to

confront this gap. Incomparabilists insist that what is missing is the recognition that the

items concerned are incomparable: the argument from small improvements is an attempt

to bolster this insistence by sidestepping the implications of nominal-notable examples.

Now I can offer an alternative account.

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What was missing when we attempted to compare the creativity of two great artists, we

can see now, is an explanation of how anybody could conclude in practice that any two

compared items were equal, rather than being marginally divergent. And the

explanation is that in practice, it is only with the help of a standard of significance for

difference, explicit or implied, that we can say whether any two things are equal, or

even whether they are roughly equal. Equality, then, is not something we perceive in

items being compared, and nor is it a judgment that we can reach just on the basis of

what we do perceive about the items. The judgment that we reach from perception is

just that the items are similar in the relevant respect. Equality is what we call the further

judgment that they are so similar in this respect that any difference there may be

between them is not significant: that given the reasons why we are conducting the

comparison, it does not matter; that we are right to be indifferent between the items in

that respect.7

6.4 Reversing the inference: From indifference to equality

This proposition has a stark implication for how the result of a comparison guides

choice in practical cases. If it is accepted, then in practical matters, it is not from a

judgment that two items are equal in some respect that we conclude that it is right to be

indifferent between them in that respect, but the reverse. That is because the formation

of the standard of significance for difference must precede the conclusion of equality in

any particular case. And we construct that standard of significance by considering how

small must be the relevant difference between two items before it would be right or

appropriate to be indifferent between the items. For some practical comparisons, the

question of how small this must be will have been considered by others and an

appropriate standard supplied; in other cases, whoever is judging the comparison must

decide that question, consciously or unconsciously. Importantly however, the question

only becomes relevant if someone judging the comparison thinks the difference might

6 Op. cit., pp37-8. Ewin acknowledges prior attention given to the point in respect of “same” by Wittgenstein in Part I of Philosophical Investigations. 7 Cf Joshua Gert’s defence of the Trichotomy Thesis in “Value and Parity”, Ethics 114 (2004); pp492-510. Gert proposes that valuations be represented with ranges, suggesting that “we use the word ‘better’ to mean something like the following: ‘to be chosen, on pain of having made a mistake’” (p499). That suggestion is obviously compatible with my proposal here, as is Gert’s conclusion that all the phenomena Chang takes to support the existence of parity can be explained without adding to the traditional value relations of the Trichotomy Thesis.

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be insignificantly small. That is why we can give the result of a nominal-notable

comparison even where this question has not been thought about.

Whether or not an appropriate standard has been supplied, the judgment that one is right

to be indifferent between options must precede a conclusion that when judged against

the relevant criteria, the options are equally good. The inference runs from the

judgment that it is right to be indifferent between the items to the conclusion of their

equality. Two pieces of wood are of equal length when, given the reason why I am

comparing them in respect of their length, I am right to be indifferent as to whether one

is longer – that is, when I have good reason to believe their lengths differ so little that it

doesn’t matter whether one is longer. Two automobile-engine connecting rods are of

equal length if and only if they differ so little that I am right to be indifferent about

whether one is bigger. As Ewin says about the cases of the Rolls and the rabbit hutch:

“In these cases, the pieces are equal in length if the difference between them does not

matter for the job in hand.”8

In order then to reach a conclusion that two items are equal in a certain respect, we need

on the one hand a standard of significance for any difference between the items in that

respect, and on the other enough information about the items to be able to judge

whether their difference falls inside that standard. Equality is what we call the judgment

that, given that standard, and given the relevant information about the items, we are

right to be indifferent between the items. We are not in a position to reach that judgment

unless we have both the relevant information about the items and a standard of

significance, explicit or implicit, for their differing. Importantly, unless we can make the

standard explicit we are not in a position to justify a judgment of equality or inequality.

The argument from small improvements fails to specify a standard from which we can

judge the equality that its conclusion denies. Nor have we good grounds for inferring a

standard, for only the reasons why the comparison is being made can provide such

grounds, and the argument never gives these in enough detail. If it did, it would

collapse, and we shall see how.

First however, it is worth noting that once we understand what a claim of equality

amounts to in practice, we can see clearly that while the argument from small

improvements does not give grounds from which appropriate standards for significance

8 Op. cit., p38.

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can be inferred, it nevertheless asserts founding conditions from which we can infer that

the original options are indeed equal in the relevant respects. For among the argument’s

founding conditions is the supposition that given original options A and B, A is not

better than B and B is not better than A. This is a statement giving the result of a

comparison, and while we do not know specifically why the comparison has been made,

we do know the general reason: the comparison was made to determine which option

was better. In order to interpret the given result, we do not need to know more precisely

what “better” means in this case. We can assume that whoever constructed the example

knows just what are the criteria relevant to judging the goodness of the options, and

knows just what standards of significance for difference are appropriate, and has enough

information about the options that they can judge whether any relevant difference is

significant. We can assume, therefore, that in specifying this founding condition,

whoever is giving the example is telling us that neither option is significantly better

when all of the relevant criteria have been considered. We can assume this because, if it

were not the case, then we would have good reason for doubting the founding claim that

neither was better, and this would gravely damage the argument. But the judgment that

neither option is significantly better than the other, given relevant criteria, appropriate

standards of significance for difference and sufficient information, is a judgment which

justifies our being indifferent between the options, which in turn justifies a conclusion

that the options are equally good. Contra Chang, it is not true that if the original careers

of her example had been equally good, then a small improvement in one must make it

better than the other. This claim is too strong. If it were admitted, then in practice, no

two items could ever be judged equal in any respect.9 If the concept of equality is to

9 That Chang’s claim is too strong becomes obvious when we apply the argument to a comparison of two very similar things. In a reciprocating internal combustion engine, connecting rods, also called conrods, join the pistons to the crankshaft, and in a typical multi-cylinder engine, the more similar the conrods are in length and mass, the better. By paraphrasing the small-improvements example Chang gives, we can come up with an example alleging the incomparability of connecting rods from a Rolls-Royce engine in respect of their lengths. The paraphrase goes as follows: “Take two Rolls-Royce conrods, conrod A and conrod B. Suppose we rationally judge that A is neither longer nor shorter than B. Now take conrod A1, which is longer than A by 10-27 millimetres. Are we rationally compelled to conclude that A1 is also longer than B? It seems rational to resist this conclusion. If it is rational, then the original conrods cannot be equally long, since if they were, a small increase in the length of one must make it longer than the other. Therefore they must be incomparable.”

Of course, it seems less clear in this case that it is rational to resist the conclusion that A1 is longer than B. But this is just the sort of conclusion Chang thinks it is rational to resist when A and B are careers of different kinds. We can see now that what is relevant to whether we should resist it is not whether A and B are described differently but whether the precision with which we specify their length is considered under different standards. We said that conrod A had been rationally judged to be neither longer nor shorter than B. If we meant by this that A was absolutely not longer than B and not shorter – as we can do only when giving an example in which we are abstracting from practice – then clearly, and contra Chang, it is not rational to resist the conclusion that if A1 is longer than A then it is also longer than B. But if we meant only that they were equal as nearly as anybody could judge, and if nobody could make

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play any role in practical reasoning, then Chang can justify only a weaker claim: the

claim that if the original careers are equally good, then a significant improvement in one

must make it better than the other.

6.5 Inferring standards of significance for goodness

6.5.1 Overview

If this is so, then why did the example through which Chang offered the argument

appear to show incomparability? It is because her proposed small improvement was not

a significant improvement. We can see why if we supply, hypothetically, grounds from

which we can attempt to infer standards of significance for the comparison and criteria

for judging it. But before we do, we need to look a bit harder at the concept of a

standard of significance for difference and how it might be inferred. The examples I

quoted from Ewin suggest that the standard can be inferred only in respect of its being

appropriate for a particular task or project. While that is broadly so, it leaves out a kind

of case that is quite common and that is particularly relevant for judgments about

courses of action, where often what we mean when we talk of the best course is just the

course we think will have the best consequences.10 What is of particular importance for

our understanding decisions of this type is that judgments of consequences are

essentially predictive in character. The predictive character of these judgments has

implications for the degree of precision with which the judgments may be made. That in

turn has implications for how we think about the nature of choices of this kind that we

face. In the examples given above, where we were building a rabbit hutch or a Rolls-

Royce engine, it was assumed that we were capable of gathering all the information we

needed to make a judgment of equality: in either case the standard of significance for

difference, stated or implied, exceeded our capacity to judge accurately the criterion

such judgments to a precision finer than ±5x10-6 millimetres, then it is indeed rational to resist the conclusion that A1 is longer than B, for nobody could judge that A1 was longer than B. Of course, it would also be rational, on the same grounds, to resist the judgment that A1 was longer than A, except that it is given in the argument as a premise. If we accept that premise, the argument from it to the conclusion that A is not just as long as B looks intriguing. But we should not accept that premise. For we can accept it as true only if we accept a standard of precision whose denial forms one of the other premises from which we reach the conclusion. That is the premise, unstated in the argument as it is usually given, which gives the criteria for equality: in this case, that nobody can make such judgments to a precision finer than ±5x10-6 millimetres. 10 Note that we do not have to be committed to a utilitarian ethical position or even to a narrowly consequential one in order to represent some decisions in this way. If I am making a cake and I have the choice of flavouring it with sugar or salt, it is not controversial that I shall base my decision on a judgment about what consequences for the flavour of the cake I think either option is likely to have.

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under which the comparison was being made. We should not assume that this will

always be the case.

I noted above that if Rolls-Royce had demanded similar engine parts be demonstrably

identical in the relevant respects, then no Rolls-Royce engines would have been built.

This, and the knowledge that Rolls-Royce built its reputation on demanding the highest

practicable standards, gives us a clue to something anybody would need to think about

when setting standards of significance for difference in new situations, such as when

designing an automobile engine of a new kind. That is that the standards must be

achievable. There is no point in specifying publicly for any purpose a standard of

significance for difference which no one can meet. There is no point, either, in requiring

such a standard privately, although here one may do so while avoiding public ridicule.11

Standards of significance that are intended for use by others, then, will in general be

promoted only if they are achievable. This naturally leads us, when we focus on

standards of this kind, to think that they will tell us only whether observable differences

between options are significant: that is, that the standard will always be set at a less fine

level of discrimination than what is achievable. Where we are doing something that

does not demand particularly fine discrimination between different options – building a

rabbit-hutch, for example – we may attend merely to what is prudent in setting them:

the important thing here is to recognise that the optimum level of discrimination will

indeed be less than what is achievable. Even in the case of Rolls-Royce engine parts,

where the finest practicable manufacturing tolerances might be sought, the tolerances

would be set not at the maximum possible level of discrimination but at the maximum

level that could be achieved reliably. But in some cases it might be that we want to

discriminate between options with the maximum possible degree of precision. Indeed,

as we shall see below, this is just what people attempting to make comparative

judgements are trying to do in the circumstances which small-improvements examples

outline. The examples do not specify a standard for the significance of a difference

between the items. The argument they illustrate relies on the claim that if two items are

equally good, then if one of the items is improved it must become better than the other

item. Implicit in that claim, I have argued, is the condition that the improved item must

not only be better but must be recognisably better than the other item. If we simply

cannot judge whether improved item A+ is better than original item B, then we cannot

11 The publicly observable consequences of requiring such a standard privately may invite ridicule, however.

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conclude from our inability to do so that these two items are equally good, the argument

tells us.

I have argued earlier in this work that we cannot infer from the recognition that we

don’t know which of two options is better the conclusion that they are equally good.

Can we infer, then, from the recognition that we cannot know which of two options is

better the conclusion that they are equally good? It will be a central plank of the

refutation which I offer here that we can do nothing else. I have argued that the equality

of two items is something that we infer from a judgment that it is right or appropriate to

be indifferent between them. Now I want to argue that if I cannot know which of two

options is better, then I am right to be indifferent between them – and therefore, I am

right to conclude that they are equally good.

The trick here is to understand just what it is that we are being indifferent between. To

say that I am indifferent between two options does not necessarily mean that I know

what the consequences of choosing either option will be and I am indifferent between

those consequences. I could be indifferent between two options while believing that the

consequences of choosing one option will be dramatically better than the consequences

of my choosing another. Here is an example showing that to be so. In many respects it

parallels an example I offered in Chapter 5; however in this example the consequences

of the two options are known.

6.5.2 The lady or the tiger

I am facing a red door and a green door and must open one of them, and I know that

behind one of the doors is a beautiful woman and behind the other a hungry tiger. I

know that it would be better to open the door that conceals the woman. But I do not

know which door that is. Clearly it is better, all else being equal, that I open neither

door. But all else might not be equal: I might have good reason to believe that if I do not

open one of the doors within the next 15 seconds then I and my parents, spouse and

children will immediately be tied to a stake and burnt to death. Whereas if I do open one

of the doors, the rest of my family will not be harmed. I know that I would rather be

killed by the tiger than to burn at the stake with my family. I recognise that I do not

know which door it would be better to open, and that, because only 15 seconds remain

for my decision, I cannot investigate further. Of course as I open one of the doors I

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experience a good deal of anxiety. I am not indifferent about my choice in the sense that

I do not care about whether I have made the better choice. But it would be perfectly

rational of me to judge that I was right to be indifferent about which door I opened. This

is a reason to be indifferent in the sense which Raz’s original premise 2 invoked: I

would be right not to care which option I chose, because neither option is better

supported by reason than the other.12

Crucially here, the reasons supporting either option are reasons for opening the green

door or for opening the red door, and not reasons for opening the door concealing the

tiger or the door concealing the woman. That one door conceals a tiger and the other a

woman can be reasons for my caring about the choice as a whole, but given that I do not

know what either door conceals, they cannot be reasons for me caring which door I

choose. Those latter reasons must be based on information I have that permits me to

distinguish the doors – that one is red and the other green, that the deep grunting I have

heard from time to time seems to be coming from nearer the red door than the green,

that if I press my nose against the green door I smell manure and against the red one I

smell perfume, and so on. It may be that from an analysis of this information I can

derive a good reason for preferring one of the doors, in which case I should not be

indifferent which door I open but should open the door I prefer. But it may be that I

cannot see a better reason for opening either door. In that case, given that I must open

one within 15 seconds or be burned at the stake with my family, I would rightly be

indifferent about which I opened. And that would be so, even though I knew that the

consequences of opening one door would be dramatically better for me than the

consequences of my opening the other.

A quick word here about the power of rational analysis. It may be that someone with the

observational and analytical capacities of a Sherlock Holmes would have concluded

correctly within the allotted period that the red door concealed the woman, but that I had

not reached that conclusion. That indicates that from the available information in this

case the better choice could have been inferred in the period available for deliberation.

But it does not make it wrong or inappropriate, in the sense I am seeking to bring out

here, for me to be indifferent which door I choose, given that I must choose before I

have concluded correctly which door is better. If the period of deliberation had not been

constrained, then it might have been inappropriate of me to have decided I was

12 See Chapter 5, at 5.1.2.

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indifferent between the choices and to have made the poorer choice: I might pay a price

here for deciding with undue haste, and others might say I had been inappropriately

hasty in deciding. No one could rightly say I had been hasty, however, if I had

deliberated for the maximum available period.

The example has shown that I can be rightly indifferent about which option I choose

even when I know that the consequences of choosing one of the options will be

dramatically better than the consequences of choosing the other option. That will be the

case when, even though I know that one of the options is better, I don’t know which it is

and must choose while not knowing. If this is admitted, then it must also be admitted

that I can rightly be indifferent about which option I choose even when I do not know

whether the consequences of choosing either option will be dramatically different. (To

see that, we need only alter the example above so that I am told that one of the doors

conceals a woman and the other might conceal a tiger but might also conceal a woman.)

But if I am right to be indifferent about which door I choose, then if we accept my

argument that a judgment of indifference justifies a conclusion of equality, I am also

right to think during my last 15 seconds of deliberation that as nearly as I can judge, the

options of opening either door would be equally good. And further, what must underlie

my indifference, if it is indeed to be appropriate, is that, given my capacity for making

judgments of this kind and the informational and temporal constraints within which I

am working, I judge that none of the sets of reasons I have for opening either door is

significantly better than the other.

6.5.3 Significant differences and the limits of human judgment

The question which arises here is how I can infer a standard of significance for

difference against which I can decide that these sets of reasons are not significantly

different. In the cases of the rabbit hutch and the Rolls-Royce engine, a standard of

significance could be inferred from what was prudent or what had been specified by

others. On what grounds do we infer such a standard here? What we need to recognise

is that this is a case where neither prudence (at least as it is ordinarily thought of) nor

the views of others are very relevant: we are simply attempting to exert our powers of

discrimination to the maximum possible degree in an attempt to discern whether either

course is better. The analogy here with an attempt to discern physical differences is with

an employee given two Rolls-Royce connecting rods and being asked to determine in

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whatever way he pleases which is the longer. He may line up the rods side-by-side and

say that as nearly as he can judge, neither is longer. He may adopt a measuring

instrument through which he can discern differences not apparent to the naked eye, but

even with the help of this instrument he might not be able to conclude that one of the

rods is longer. He may seek out the most sensitive measuring instrument available, but

might still be unable to conclude that either of the rods is longer. Even if he is given as

long as he pleases to devise and construct new and more sensitive instruments, he might

still be not able to conclude that one of the rods is longer, in which case he might take

the question to his grave. But if at any time during his life an answer is demanded of

him, he can say with justification not only that he does not know which rod is longer but

also that – if he must answer now – he cannot know. If Rolls-Royce has any reason for

choosing the longer rod, and must base its choice on its employee’s investigations, it

would be perfectly appropriate in these circumstances for it to be indifferent about

which rod it chooses. Indeed it can do nothing else but be indifferent about this. In this

case, however, the standard of significance against which the indifference must be

justified is just the standard of what is discernible at the time the choice is made. If the

employee could judge that a choice of one of the rods was better supported by reason

than the other, then he would do so. But he cannot make that judgment. Given that he

cannot judge that the reasons for choosing one rod are better than the reasons for

choosing the other rod, he is right, if he must recommend one rod now, to say that he is

indifferent between the rods in respect of their length. And that is to say that the rods, as

nearly as the employee can judge at the time, are equally long.

We need to note here that what justifies the indifference is the transition from

recognising that one does not know which conrod is longer (or which option is better) to

recognising that one cannot know which conrod is longer (or which option is better).

The above example allows me to make some observations about this transition. The first

is that there is a big range of reasons that might precipitate it. The second is that these

will all be reasons why it would be better to choose now (while not knowing) than to

continue to investigate or deliberate. In the example I gave of the red and green doors,

the reason was that the consequences of choosing the poorer option were clearly better

than the consequences of not choosing in the period the choice was available. In the

example of the similar Rolls-Royce conrods, I left open the particular reason why the

firm would want an answer at any particular time. What we need particularly to

recognise about this is that in this case (and others like it), where the aim is to

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discriminate in the finest possible degree, if we are to justify a conclusion that the rods

are of equal length (or that two options are equally good), then we must have some good

reason for choosing between them now rather than continuing to investigate and

deliberate. It is only when we have such a reason that a conclusion that two compared

items are equal in the relevant respect can ever be justified. Any conclusion that

compared items are equal, then, may be justified only through an appeal to such a

reason for making the choice now rather than continuing to investigate or deliberate.

Where a standard for the significance of difference is pre-specified by other people, it

supplies such a reason for the chooser. But whoever devises the standard will do so on

this same basis.

6.6 The significance of Chang’s small improvement

We can now examine the significance of the small improvement of Chang’s example,

by filling in (hypothetically) some detail from which such a standard can be inferred.

The person comparing the two careers is trying to determine which would be best for

her. By best “for her” we shall mean just that she is in the situation of most people in

western industrialised countries, so that although she is formally required to ensure that

her career activities do not flout the law, there are no other formal public standards

against which she must justify the goodness of the career she chooses. Of course, there

will be a range of informal standards which she may think relevant for her decision and

which are more or less public: the esteem in which practitioners of particular careers are

held by others just because they practise that career might be relevant, as might the fears

and wishes of her parents for her. However, it is ultimately a matter just for her

judgment how much she attends to these aspects of her choice, and how much she

attends to inescapably private aspects such as what degree of pleasure or displeasure she

expects she will experience when carrying out certain career activities. Ultimately also,

a good deal of what exercises her judgment will be inescapably predictive in nature. She

may have good grounds for predicting that her mother will immediately be pleased

much more if she becomes a lawyer than if she becomes a musician, because the

experiences which the choice brings the agent may not immediately interfere with her

mother’s prejudices. But the agent might easily be uncertain about which decision

would please herself more even in an immediate sense, and because a career is a long-

term project, she would need to predict not only this but which decision would please

her more as the career developed. Moreover, the only test of the goodness of the career

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is how much it does please her, all things considered. That is, a career is better just if the

agent believes it is better, having considered everything that the agent thinks is relevant

to the goodness of the career. Any judgment about the relative goodness of these two

careers, then, must refer primarily to the judgment and beliefs of the agent who is

choosing between them.

It will be observed that even if we asserted the unlikely (although not implausible)

condition that the agent thought the only consideration relevant to the goodness of her

choice was her salary, she would be making a prediction about the far future even in

deciding which career would offer her the better salary. If the choice had arisen because

she had been offered two entry-level jobs, and if the offered starting salaries for each

job were just the same, any prudent person would look beyond the starting salaries and

attempt to predict how quickly her salary in each career would rise. But given that she is

not working in a command economy in which salaries rise with seniority in a publicly

prescribed way, that prediction will depend not only on typical salary scales for the

careers but also upon the agent’s beliefs about how effectively she could pursue rises in

salary in either career. Nor is there any guarantee that the agent’s progress up the salary

scales in either career will develop as the agent believes it will.

Now we are told to suppose that neither career is better than the other. What can we take

this to mean, given the hypothetical conditions outlined above? We must take it to mean

that the agent believes that neither career is better than the other. What grounds could

she have for this belief? It can only be her own judgment of the goodness of either

career for her. Can she judge the goodness of each career for her so precisely that she

can say with certainty that neither career would be better? Given the unavoidably

predictive nature of some of the relevant considerations, of course she cannot: as I

remarked when discussing Raz’s treatment of a related example, such a judgment would

be implausibly precise.13 Until she has better reasons for choosing than for continuing

to deliberate, then, all the agent can conclude is that she does not know which career is

better. Therefore when we do as the example tells us, and suppose that neither is better,

what we are supposing must be just that the agent does not know which career is better

but must choose nevertheless. (It could not be the alternative, that we are stipulating the

judgment from an omniscient viewpoint and therefore are stipulating that either career

13 In Chapter 5 above.

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would be absolutely as good as the other for the agent, because if we were, then from

the same viewpoint it would be clear that an improved career would be the better one.)

Chang’s proposal that the clarinettist career is improved by $10 of salary is ambiguous

in that we do not know whether she is referring to weekly, annual or career earnings,

which would make a difference of significance. But let us be charitable and propose that

the improvement is $10 a week of salary. The agent, as I have just argued, did not know

which of the original careers was better when the time came for her to make her choice.

If the clarinet career is improved by $10 a week, must she now judge the clarinet career

to be better? Clearly she may do so, but just as clearly she may not. That is, it is

plausible, if not likely, that this improvement would make the clarinet career the better

one in the judgment of the agent. But it is also plausible, and I think rather more likely,

that it would not. That it plausibly would not is one of the points of the argument from

small improvements and so barely needs arguing for, but I shall give a brief analogy

showing it nevertheless. Imagine you want to buy either a Rolls-Royce car or a Cadillac

but do not know which would be better. The Cadillac dealer offers to reduce the price of

the car by $10. It is perfectly plausible that this small improvement of the Cadillac

option will not give you a good enough reason to conclude that the Cadillac option

would be better, just as it is also plausible that it will. That is, you might plausibly

choose the Cadillac, or you might plausibly remain unable to judge either option the

better one.

Now it seems to me that in both the careers case and the parallel cars case, the question

of whether the small improvement is a significant improvement can be answered only

by looking at whether it is big enough to enable the agent to judge that the improved

option is better than the unimproved alternative. That is, if the $10 price cut convinces

you that it would be better to buy the Cadillac, then it was a significant improvement. If

the $10 salary rise convinces the agent in Chang’s example to choose the clarinet career,

then it was a significant improvement. We can see that some possible salary rises might

well convince the agent: if she were told that the clarinet career would earn her $10,000

a week more than before, then it is very plausible she would choose the clarinet career,

and very plausible therefore that such an improvement would count as significant. But if

the $10 salary rise did not convince the agent to choose the clarinet career, then it was

not significant. She still does not know which career is better. If she is required to

choose now, then given that she does not know which career is better, it is appropriate

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that she is indifferent between the options. Therefore, the options are equally good. Just

as the unimproved options were.

It may be objected that this conclusion would justify hand-wringing or coin-tossing in

all the situations I have described as cases where the options are equally good, whereas

a much more likely outcome in practice is that the agent will choose one of the items

when pressed. That is, the person faced with choosing between the equally unattractive

red and green doors will simply choose one of them prior to his deadline, Rolls-Royce

will choose one of the equally long conrods and the agent of Chang’s example will

choose one of the equally good careers. My response to this is foreshadowed by what I

said in the previous chapter in refuting Raz’s claim that in this sort of situation reason

had run its course. What reason tells us in each of these situations is that it would be

better to choose either option than to delay the choice further. And if in such a situation

we don’t know which option is better, then it doesn’t matter which we choose. We can

base our choice on any trivial reason – that we prefer the colour red to green, perhaps.

Or we can toss a coin mentally. What is not justified, however, is hand-wringing: that

would be to resist the conclusions that reason compels us to reach, that it is better to

choose either option than to delay choosing, and that given we do not know which

option is better, it does not matter which we choose. (Of course, the first of these

conclusions also is a matter of judgment. If one meets serious internal resistance to

choosing one of the options, it may be worth reconsidering whether one might be right

not to choose either option and to accept the consequences of not doing so.)

To avoid misunderstanding, I need also to point out that there will be very many

practical cases where I can and do decide that one option is clearly better than another,

and where I reach that conclusion well inside any prudential or imposed deadline I

could conceivably face. Very often it is obvious that one course of action is better than

another, just as often it is obvious that one object is longer than another. This is just

what nominal-notable examples rely on. The remarks above apply to cases where it is

not obvious which option is better.

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6.7 Small improvements and moral dilemmas

It may be worth labouring this point a little in order to show its applicability to another

example offered in demonstration of the same argument, this time an example alleged to

show the incomparability of some moral requirements. The example is offered by

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in defence of a claim that the inexactness of moral rankings

underlies what he calls limited incomparability – which is the incomparability of, in his

case, moral requirements over a limited range of strengths.14 He means that while

nominal-notable comparisons may show that two moral requirements – for example, the

requirement to avoid causing another person pain and the requirement to save the life of

another person where one may do so at reasonable cost to oneself – are comparable,

nevertheless some pairs of these options may be incomparable. He offers the following

explanation:

Although inexactness is usually admitted, it is rarely seen that such inexactness

yields limited incomparability. This can be shown by a simple example of a

conflict between pain and death. Suppose a doctor must decide whether to operate

on an elderly patient who is incompetent to decide for himself and who has no

relatives who could decide for him. He will die without the operation, and the

operation is very likely to save his life, so the doctor has a strong moral reason to

perform it. On the other hand, even a successful operation will leave the patient in

intense but intermittent pain for the few remaining years of his life, so the doctor

has a strong moral reason not to perform it. Suppose these are the only relevant

moral reasons. They are also moral requirements, since it would be wrong for the

doctor not to save the patient or to cause the pain if he had no justification.

Death is clearly worse than a small amount of pain, so some moral requirements of

these kinds are comparable. However, some pain can be so intense, long and

certain that death is not worse in a morally relevant way. But the pain also might

not be worse. If neither is worse, neither moral requirement overrides the other.

But they are also not equal in strength. If death were equal to the exact amount of

pain that the patient would suffer after the operation (say 1000 units), then a small

increase in the amount of pain would tip the scale. However, if the patient would

suffer slightly more pain (say1001 units), it might still be true that neither moral

14 Moral Dilemmas, Oxford, Blackwell, 1988. The argument is given over pp 66-9. I am not very sure what a moral requirement would be; here I am merely reproducing Sinnott-Armstrong’s term.

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requirement is stronger. And then any reason to claim that death is equal to the

smaller amount of pain would also be a reason to claim that death is equal to the

slightly larger amount of pain. But the different amounts of pain are still not equal,

since the moral requirement not to cause the greater pain is stronger. Thus, death

cannot be equal both to the smaller amount and to the larger amount, because

equality must be transitive. Since death cannot equal both amounts, and there is no

reason to claim that it equals one amount rather than the other, this is a strong

reason to believe that death does not equal either amount of pain. And this implies

that the moral requirements in the above case are not equal but incomparable.15

It will be seen that a great many conditions have been inserted in order to isolate what

Sinnott-Armstrong alleges are the two competing moral requirements. But if we can

accept what I have said above about equality, we can see at least that one of the claims

he makes in the above passage is dubious. That is the claim that “death cannot be equal

both to the smaller amount [of pain, 1000 units] and to the larger amount [1001 units],

because equality must be transitive”. The difficulty with this claim is that Sinnott-

Armstrong gives us little from which we can gauge how much pain “one unit” might be.

That leaves open the possibility that a rise in the intensity or frequency of pain of one

part in 1000 might be insignificant. And from the premise that equality must be

transitive we can deduce only that “death” cannot be equal both to a given amount of

pain and to a significantly larger amount.

From what do we infer a standard for the significance of difference in this case? Well

first we can observe that, as is usual with small improvements examples, no standard

has been specified explicitly. Second, we can observe that this will be another case in

which what counts as significant will be whatever the judge of the comparison

recognises as significant. And third, we can point out that, given normal circumstances,

the ultimate and most accurate judge of a comparison between the intensity of pain

experienced and the worthwhileness of living must be the person who is experiencing

the pain and doing the living: that is, the patient. The question of whether the pain he

experiences is so intense that he would rather be dead is a question only the patient can

answer, and if we want to know whether a change in the intensity of pain is significant

then if the patient does not think so, the doctor is not in a position to disagree.

15 Op. cit., pp 66-7.

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Of course, if the doctor does not operate then the patient will not survive to make this

assessment. Nevertheless, from the way in which Sinnott-Armstrong has set up the

example, it appears we are to take it that the test of whether the doctor has acted well or

badly is how the patient assesses his own well-being if he does survive. That is, what

would justify the doctor inflicting a life of intermittent pain on his patient is that the

patient would experience this life of pain as worth living, on balance. Whereas if the

patient survives but experiences life as so painful that he would rather have died, then

the doctor would have been justified in refraining from operating. Whether the doctor is

actually justified in doing either of these things will also depend on how he could justify

any judgment he makes about the likelihood of either outcome. But in either case the

key question for the doctor to ask is how the patient will experience life after the

operation.

The doctor, therefore, will be weighing the likelihood of three possible outcomes of his

successful intervention:

1. The patient survives and after an appropriate period of convalescence reports to

the doctor that he is delighted to have been given his new lease on life and that

the pain, while it is indeed severe, has never been so severe that he has wished

he had died.

2. The patient survives but reports to the doctor that he has spent most of his time

since the operation writhing in agony and in his short periods of relief had done

little but plead to be relieved of his suffering permanently through death.

3. The patient survives but reports to the doctor that his experience has fallen

between these two extremes. That is, sometimes he is glad he has survived (we

can guess that this is when he is not experiencing the pain) and sometimes he

wishes he had died (that is when he is experiencing the pain, or is anticipating its

experience).

Now in Sinnott-Armstrong’s terms, outcome 1 represents the case where experiencing

the pain is better than dying, and outcome 2 represents the case where experiencing the

pain is worse than dying. How are we to understand outcome 3? It seems to me that we

can only understand it as representing the case where the elderly patient does not know

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whether experiencing the pain is better or worse than dying. Certainly he equivocates

over the question. We can easily imagine that, if he does not believe that committing

suicide is always wrong, he might, while refraining from doing so, take a keen interest

in how he might do so. If he has good reason for thinking he should make a decision

about this by a certain deadline – perhaps a legal loophole effectively permitting

assisted suicide in cases like his is about to be closed – then as the deadline approaches,

he may realise that he won’t know by the deadline whether he would prefer to live on or

to die. It would not be entirely misleading to say as the deadline approaches that he is

indifferent whether he lives or dies. Of course he is not insensitive to the gravity of the

decision – it is his life that is in question after all. But while the prospect of dying soon

is frightening when the pain is absent, the prospect of having no option but to live for as

long as his body wants to torture him is no less dreadful when the pain is present. And if

this is the case, then it does not seem to me misleading, either, to say that he judges the

prospect of living and the prospect of dying to be equally good.

It is an interesting feature of this example that the pain is intermittent, for it allows us to

see clearly what might be less obvious if the pain were constant. That is, that quite

plausibly, the range of intensities and frequencies of pain that the patient would report

as outcome three is quite broad. Certainly it is implausible to think that the range will be

extremely narrow, so that a marginal diminution in the pain’s intensity will induce the

patient to report outcome 1 while a marginal increase will induce him to report outcome

2. Whether it is better to be dead or to experience intense pain intermittently is not the

sort of thing we could expect anybody to judge with a very high degree of precision, let

alone with the infinitely high degree of precision that small improvements arguments

seem to demand if a conclusion of incomparability is to be avoided.

Having seen this where the pain is intermittent, we are in a better position to assess a

situation where the pain is constant. Obviously, pain of lower intensity will here be

sufficient to drain all the joy from living. But it is far from clear that any patient would

find the margin between clearly wanting to live and clearly wanting to die to be sharp. It

seems much more likely that over a range of intensities of constant pain, a person would

not know whether they would rather live or die. And in this case, if an opportunity to

hasten their death were irrevocably about to pass, it is even clearer that in the

appropriate sense, such a person might rightly judge they were indifferent whether they

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lived or died, and that we could rightly conclude therefore that they judged living in

pain of this intensity and dying to be equally good.

Given that this is the situation of the patient, and that the doctor must base his decision

on a prediction about what the patient would report, it is perfectly plausible that the

predicted value for the patient of living and the predicted disvalue for him of

experiencing pain should be comparable even though the comparison was not sensitive

to changes in the intensity of pain amounting to only one part in 1000, or to a lesser

proportion. The doctor might still face a difficult choice. But that will not be because

“pain” and “death” are incomparable over narrow ranges. It will be because

comparisons of this kind are necessarily imprecise in practice.

This discussion gives us some perspective on some remarks that Sinnott-Armstrong

makes immediately after the paragraphs I quoted above. He writes that:

An opponent might respond that death is equal to a range of amounts of pain (say

800-5000). It seems odd to equate a range of amounts with a specific occurrence

like death. But even if equality with a range makes sense in this case, it does not

imply equality with any particular value in the range. And if death is not equal to

any particular amount of pain within the range, the particular requirements in my

example are not equal. It is particular moral requirements rather than ranges that

conflict in moral dilemmas, so equality between particular requirements is all that

must be denied for the possibility of limited incomparability and moral dilemmas.16

We can see first that it is not at all odd that “death” should be equal to a range of

amounts of pain, for it is not the specific occurrence of death that is being compared

with the pain but the experience of living. When we say that pain is worse than death,

we mean just that our suffering is so severe that our desire to avoid it is stronger than

our desire to continue to experience whatever it is that we find good about our life. As I

have said, it is nothing but plausible that over a range of severities we should be

uncertain about whether to live on in pain would be better than to cease to live at all,

and highly implausible that the transition from wanting to live to wanting to die should

be sharp.17

16 Loc. cit. The emphasis is Sinnott-Armstrong’s. 17 Again, cf Gert, op. cit., especially pp503-507.

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Second, we can see also that, in common with others arguing for incomparability from

small improvements, Sinnott-Armstrong is setting unacceptably strong conditions for

comparability. For he says that “if death is not equal to any particular amount of pain

within the range, the particular requirements in my example are not equal”. Given that

he does not qualify that condition, we would be justified in asking him to how many

significant figures he intends us to take his proposition that death might be equal to the

“exact amount of pain the patient would suffer after the operation (say 1000 units)”. For

we would normally take the quantity 1000 units as specifying a quantity somewhere in

the range 999.5-1000.5 units. This is a smaller range than the alternative of 800-5000

units that Sinnott-Armstrong thinks is odd, but it is still a range. Unless some standard

of significance is specified, then the claim that death must be equal to some particular

quantity of pain if death and pain are to be comparable is a claim that would deny that

any two items could ever be comparable as a matter of practical judgment.18

6.8 Small improvements and the phenomenology of choice

At the outset of this chapter I noted Ruth Chang’s claim that the phenomenology of

choice casts doubt upon Regan’s objection to arguments for incomparability from small

improvements, which essentially was that given option A, option B and improved option

A+, then if A+ is better than A but not better than B we were never in a position to

conclude that A was neither better nor worse than B. All we could have done, the

objection says, is conclude that we did not know whether A was better or worse than B.

I have said that my argument would be compatible with that objection, which Chang

calls the epistemic objection. In light of my argument, we can now look at this claim of

Chang’s against the objection and see whether it still has any force.

Chang presents the claim as follows:

Suppose you are a member of a philosophy appointments committee whose task is

to compare Eunice, a metaphysician, and Janice, a moral philosopher, with respect

to philosophical talent. You and your colleagues have agreed that the candidate

with the greater philosophical talent will be offered the vacant chair in your

department. Imagine that, in conjunction with your fellow committee members,

18 In “Equality, Clumpiness and Incomparability,” Utilitas, 17 (2005) 180-204, Nien-hê Hsieh goes a long way towards the conclusions that I offer here by observing comparative concepts may be “clumpy” – in

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you have researched both candidates thoroughly, discussed and examined at great

length their written work, canvassed considered opinions from across the country,

evaluated letters of recommendation, and so forth. It is possible surely that after

careful, cool-headed deliberation you, and people whose judgment you respect,

rationally conclude that Janice is not more philosophically talented than Eunice and

that Eunice is not more philosophically talented than Janice. The judgment made is

not one of uncertainty; it is not that you do not know which is better. Rather, the

care and length of deliberation and the authority of expert opinion provide the

positive evidence needed rationally to conclude that neither is better. At the very

least, the judgment that neither is better has some warrant. And yet it is plausible in

such a case to think that a small improvement in one of the candidates will not

decide the case.19

The foregoing discussion should alert us immediately to a problem with this claim. The

problem is located in Chang’s assertion that:

The judgment made is not one of uncertainty; it is not that you do not know which

is better. Rather, the care and length of deliberation and the authority of expert

opinion provide the positive evidence needed rationally to conclude that neither is

better. At the very least, the judgment that neither is better has some warrant.

We can see that the judgment cannot possibly have any warrant if it is intended in an

absolute sense. Just as we can never conclude in practice that neither that piece of steel

nor this piece of steel is absolutely longer, but can conclude only that we cannot discern

which is longer, so we should never respect the judgment of anyone who tells us

solemnly that neither this philosopher nor that philosopher is more philosophically

talented, and intends us to take the judgment in an absolute sense. For in an absolute

sense, all anyone could ever judge in practice is that he does not know which

philosopher is more talented. A person could competently judge that neither philosopher

was more talented only in the sense that neither was significantly more talented. And

one may judge accurately that neither philosopher is significantly more talented, while

leaving open the possibility that a small improvement in one will not decide the case –

for the small improvement might not be significant.

which case their values will not be divisible infinitely. Also, again cf Pollock in “Wittgenstein on The Standard Metre”. 19 “Introduction”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, pp24-25. Chang seeks to make the same point with a very similar example in “The Possibility of Parity”, Ethics, July 2002 (112;4); pp659-689.

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How do we know whether an improvement is significant in this case? Well once again,

an improvement here is significant if and only if it does decide the case. That is, if at

decision time the members of the philosophy appointments committee each decide that

they do not know which candidate is more talented philosophically, and if they know

enough about the candidates to believe it would be better they chose one of them now

than investigate further, then it must be the case that the committee members are

indifferent which candidate is chosen. We can infer from this that the committee

believes that, as nearly as it can judge, the candidates are equally talented. It would be

appropriate for them to put both names in a hat and appoint the philosopher whose name

they drew out. An improvement of one candidate would be significant if, given the

improvement, the selection process did not reach this point, but rather the committee

displayed a preference for the improved candidate.

Chang’s critical claim fails, then, to diminish the refutation I have offered above of the

argument for incomparability from small improvements.

6.9 Implications for adding parity to the value trichotomy

The failure of Chang’s critical claim leaves intact both my argument and the

Trichotomy Thesis itself – the thesis that only the positive value relations “better than”,

“worse than” and “equally good” may hold between any two items. And if my

refutation is intact, then the argument for incomparability from small improvements is

refuted. And yet it is on the strength of that argument that Chang bases her proposition

that we need to invoke a fourth positive value relation – a relation she terms parity – so

that we can understand as comparable two items in respect of which the Trichotomy

Thesis fails to hold. It appears, then, as though addition of parity to the trichotomy may

be redundant. In a recent article that argues specifically for the status of parity as a

fourth positive value relation, Chang offers a very similar example to that of the

philosophers Eunice and Janice as a critique of the epistemic objection20 – an objection

to which she says no incomparabilist has adequately responded as far as she knows.21

But here she offers also a more abstract version of the small improvements argument

which she says is not vulnerable to “skeptical worries” such as those the epistemic

20 “The Possibility of Parity”, p670. The main difference is that the competing philosophers’ names this time are Aye and Bea.

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objection presents. It is, unfortunately, vulnerable to the objection which I have offered

above. For it relies, Chang says, on the observation that:

In general, it is plausible to think that for at least some [evaluatively diverse] items

of a certain kind [such as paintings or careers], certain small improvements given

by a dollar, a pleasurable tingle and so on cannot effect a switch from an item’s

being worse than another to its being better.22

This is true, but again we have the explanation that some conceivable improvements

may not be of practical significance. Let me quote at full length Chang’s abstract

version of the argument, which goes as follows:

[T]ake an arbitrary pair (X,Y) of evaluatively diverse items. For at least some (X,Y)

we can create a continuum of X-items by successively adding or subtracting dollars

(or pleasurable tingles, etc.) from X. If we add enough dollars, we get an X-item,

X+, that is better than Y, and if we subtract enough dollars, we get an X-item, X–,

that is worse than Y. Now according to our abstract intuition, adding a dollar,

pleasurable tingle, and so forth cannot make a difference to whether one item is

better or worse than another item evaluatively very different from it. Therefore,

there must be some X-item, X*, in the continuum between X+ and X– that is neither

better nor worse than Y. But what relation holds between X* and Y? Suppose one of

the trichotomy always holds. Then since X* is neither better nor worse than Y, it

and Y must be equally good. According to our intuition that a dollar can’t make a

difference, however, this is impossible. For if we add fifty cents to X*, we get an

item that is better than Y; if we take away fifty cents from X*, we get an item that is

worse than Y. And the difference between X* + fifty cents, which is better than Y,

and X* – fifty cents, which is worse than Y, is a dollar. Thus X* and Y cannot be

equally good. Therefore, we must reject the assumption that one of the trichotomy

always holds; X* is not better than Y, not worse than it, and the two are not equally

good.23

Chang allows that this argument might be claimed to rely on a sorites-like premise, a

criticism she defends it against. Whether or not her defence is successful, we can see

that it is vulnerable to just the same refutation that I have offered above of other

incomparabilist arguments from small improvement examples. Essentially Chang’s

21 Op. cit., p668. 22 Op. cit., pp671-672.

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abstract version here says that given X+, significantly better than Y, and X–,

significantly worse than Y, there must be an X-item, X*, that is neither better nor worse

than Y. The problem with the argument is that it assumes there can be only one such

item on the continuum. If the question whether X-items are better or worse than Y is to

be judged in practice, then the thesis that logically there will be only one X-item, X*,

that is neither better nor worse becomes irrelevant. There will be a range of X-items on

the continuum of which any judge would say they didn’t know whether the particular X-

item was better or worse than Y, and none about which any judge could claim justifiably

that it was absolutely no better and no worse than Y. The claim, then, that if we add 50

cents to X* we get an item which is better than Y is false: we know that X* plus 50 cents

is better than X* but we do not know whether it is better or worse than Y because we do

not know whether any particular candidate for X* is better or worse than Y.

Alternatively, if we stipulate that we can judge that X* is absolutely no better and no

worse than Y, then we must abandon our abstract intuition that adding a dollar cannot

make a difference to whether one item is better or worse than another item evaluatively

very different from it. And if we abandon that intuition, then we abandon a premise that

Chang’s abstract version of the argument from small improvements cannot do without.

Chang’s case for our adding parity to the trichotomy of positive value relations

therefore fails. The argument from small improvements is refuted if we accept that a

judgment that two compared items are equally good, like a judgment that one of the

items is better, is justified if it can be demonstrated to the people for whom the

comparison is being conducted that it satisfies the reason why the comparison is being

conducted. Two compared items are equally good if it can be shown that they are not

significantly different. A demonstration of their identity is not required, and could never

be given. The Trichotomy Thesis withstands Chang’s challenge.24

23 Op. cit., p672. 24 This conclusion is obviously compatible with the defence of the Trichotomy Thesis offered very recently by Hsieh (“Is Incomparability a Problem for Anyone?”, Economics and Philosophy, 23 (2007); pp 65–80). However, unlike Hsieh’s, my defence does not require us to distinguish the justification of choice from the comparability of alternatives.

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7. Constitutive incommensurability

Joseph Raz argued for constitutive incommensurability on the grounds that it explains

observable social patterns exhibiting loyalty. On inspection it turns out to explain

fickleness just as effectively. We can remove some confusion by disentangling

competing senses of having.

7.1 Overview

Certain judgments about the non-comparability of certain options and certain

attitudes to the exchangeability of options are constitutive of relations with friends,

spouses, parents, etc. Only those who hold the view that friendship is neither better

nor worse than money, but is simply not comparable to money or other

commodities are capable of having friends.1

This claim from Joseph Raz seems to lie at the heart of what Chang calls the argument

for incomparability from constitution or norms.2 Unlike Chang, I think this is the most

interesting of all the arguments for incommensurability, even if it is not the most

difficult to refute. The claim is also of particular relevance for the broader aims I have

in this thesis. If it could be supported, then the argument which supported it would seem

both to explain popular intuitions about the value of money – it would show why it was

that money could not buy love, for example – and to give us a significant clue as to how

we might resolve long-standing puzzles about whether and how we could distinguish

financial value from value in a more general sense.

In this chapter and the next I give an analysis of Raz’s argument that helps bring out

how we make this distinction. My analysis does not support the above claim as Raz has

stated it. It is not plausible that a person’s capacity for friendship should depend on their

holding the view, stated baldly as Raz does, that friendship is simply not comparable

with money or other commodities. That it is not plausible has been pointed out by

others, most notably Chang.3 In order to lend plausibility to his claim, she finds herself

forced to stipulate that by “money or other commodities” Raz must mean cash and

1 The Morality of Freedom, p352. The emphasis on capable is Raz’s. 2 “Introduction”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p19ff. 3 In “Against Constitutive Commensurability or Buying and Selling Friends”, Nous-Supplement 11 (2001); pp33-60, and summarised in “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, pp19-21.

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trivial or luxury goods but not goods which are “instrumental to some significant

intrinsic good such as human life, freedom, health, or [indeed] friendship”;4 and that by

“friendship” we must mean tokens of friendship – that is, particular friendships – so that

we can distinguish between an intimate friendship and a “superficial and banal

friendship I might have with the local butcher”.5 Thus diminished, the argument offers

too narrow a foundation for the grand implications Raz wants to draw from it.

There is more to be said about both of these problems. But Chang misses a third

difficulty – somewhat inexplicably, given her insistence, in her introduction to

Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, that every comparison

must proceed in terms of a covering value.6 What should we take as the covering value

here? Once we seek to answer this question, we run into two others that turn out to be

just as important: to whom must such a comparative judgment be justified, and how.

Raz’s argument for constitutive incommensurability turns out to be more complex than

those previously examined, with the resolution from my development of Kovesi’s

analysis turning on justification rather than judgment. The appearance of

incommensurability arises once again from our misleadingly inferring from the

descriptions of the compared options conflicting criteria for judging the comparison.

But here the conflicting criteria are not, primarily, criteria for judging the comparison;

rather, they are criteria for justifying any judgment reached. When we confront a

comparison of the value of anything with the value of money, I will argue, we infer

misleadingly that it is a comparison whose result the holder of the money is required to

justify to nobody but himself. In contrast, I will propose, the relevant constituent of

friendship is not, as Raz would have it, a resistance to comparing certain items, but the

recognition that a friend is required to justify his practical comparative judgments to his

friend(s).

It is our implicit assumption of these contradictory justifying conditions that makes the

comparison of money with friendship appear either incoherent or a comparison no

friend will make. But if we take it that friends must justify their practical comparative

4 Chang prefers the term “mere market goods”, but adds: “such as a new car, luxury cruise or fine meal”. “Against Constitutive Commensurability or Buying and Selling Friends”, p36. The interpolation is mine. 5 Op. cit., p56. 6 Pp5-6.

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judgments to one another, a friend can, after all, judge all the comparisons that Raz

alleges he cannot.

Raz thinks a friend, if she is to be capable of friendship, must decline to consider

comparing friendship with money, and typically will do so indignantly.7 In Chapter 8,

we will see how such comparisons could proceed after all. I will argue that what Raz

represents as an indignant refusal to compare can be understood more accurately as a

judgment that, given the choice situation one faces and its point, the description of one

of the options as financially valuable is not very relevant. That is a judgment that might

very well be expressed indignantly. But it is not a judgment about the comparability of

the options. We will be able to relax the restrictions Chang places on Raz’s claim and

therefore extend its significance when recast. We will also see how a counter-proposal

Chang offered, that some tokens of friendship may be emphatically better than money –

that is, better than any amount – is redundant.8

In this chapter, I prepare the ground for what follows by undertaking a detailed critical

examination of Raz’s argument for constitutive incommensurability. My aim is not only

to refute comprehensively, and without invoking Kovesi’s theory, the argument as Raz

offered it; but also to tease out some of its tangled threads, so that we can see more

clearly how the intuitions it appeals to might apply to the circumstances in which

friends make practical comparative judgments.

So, let us examine what support Raz offered for his claim.

7 Raz observes at several points that the refusal he is alluding to will typically be an indignant one. See, for example, p349, where Raz proposes that a person offered a sum of money just on condition that they leave their spouse for a month fairly typically “will feel indignant that someone supposes that they are willing to trade the company of their spouse for money from a stranger”, even though not everyone will react in this way. 8 That is her conclusion in “Against Constitutive Commensurability or Buying and Selling Friends”, and it is restated in “Introduction”, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p21.

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7.2 Raz’s argument for the constitutive incomparability of friendship with money

7.2.1 The argument outlined

How does Raz argue for the conclusion that friendship is constitutively incomparable

with money – the conclusion that: “Only those who hold the view that friendship is

neither better nor worse than money, but is simply not comparable to money or other

commodities are capable of having friends”? The peculiar thing is that Raz offers very

little detail in support of such a strong claim. The overall argument seems to follow the

form of an inference to the best explanation, except that little is said to explain why we

should think the explanation Raz offers is indeed the best. What is to be explained is

something which Raz points out as being observable, which he describes as people’s

unwillingness to answer certain kinds of question which require them to compare

certain items, and their typically indignant reactions to certain kinds of proposal which

also invite the comparison of such items. The indignation might also arise when such a

person is pressed to make a comparison which they are not willing to make. Raz’s

explanation is that such people believe that the items they are being asked to compare

are not comparable. Indeed, he offers that they may even say that the items are

incomparable or incommensurable.9

The problem for Raz here is that even if we accept this explanation for the behaviour

exhibited, it tells us only what the people exhibiting the behaviour believe. We have no

obvious reason to accept that just because certain people believe two things to be

incomparable, they are incomparable. Here is where Raz makes his most interesting

move. He says that the belief that two things are incomparable, if it is commonly held,

can account for the formation of certain ways of living. The belief affects the believer’s

behaviour.

Money and friendship here enter the argument as examples of constitutively

incomparable things. That they are constitutively incomparable is not so much argued

for as argued from. We can only infer, I think, the reason why Raz thinks we should

accept that they are incomparable. It is because these are examples of things which

9 E.g. p337: “Judy’s reply is that she does not mind taking time off and answering the question about the comparative value of her friendship and the money. All she meant is that they are incommensurate, and that is the answer.” See Section 7.3.6 below for a discussion of this otherwise puzzling sentence in its original context.

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people plausibly would say are incomparable: they allow Raz to generate conceivable

cases which exhibit the behaviour he is trying to explain. When people are asked to

compare with a sum of money the value of a friendship, or of a parental relationship, or

of the companionship of one’s spouse, Raz asserts at several places in the course of his

argument, they will typically refuse to do so, may become indignant if pressed, and may

even say that such things are not comparable.10 Moreover, he thinks, we can see why, in

these cases, the belief that they are incomparable is essential to the formation of

significant social patterns.

From here, Raz takes such examples of incommensurability for granted and puts them

to work in support of a bigger argument which takes a transcendental turn. Ultimately,

he wants to show that the widespread exhibition of the significant social patterns to

which he is pointing resist explanations from consequentialist theories of the rational

maximisation of value. The transcendental logic runs like this. The first premise is that

these social patterns (or social forms, to use Raz’s term) are observable and

widespread.11 The second is that they would not arise unless people participating in

them treated certain items as incommensurable. The conclusion is that therefore, it is

widely the case that people treat certain items as incommensurable.

The conclusion has the implication that people making certain choices whose outcomes

contribute to the formation of these patterns will not make those choices by comparing

the options available to them and selecting the better option. It is that implication which

Raz thinks rational maximisers will have difficulty explaining, and which he thinks they

must explain if consequentialist theories of practical reasoning are to give a complete

account of how people make choices, or even of how we make significant choices.12

We need to be clear that Raz’s tilt at consequentialist rational maximisation does not

aim to show that it would not be possible to make every choice by predicting the

consequences of the options, comparing those consequences and selecting the option

10 Friendship, a parental relationship and spousal companionship are treated at p337, pp346-348 and pp348-349, respectively. 11 Something Raz does not say explicitly but which must be implicit in his argument is the further premise that the social patterns he is alluding to are good social patterns. If a recognition of incommensurability underlay only social patterns that were widely regarded as pernicious – if they were necessary only for the establishment and maintenance of criminal gangs, for example – then Raz’s conclusion that our societies would look very different if people did not recognise incommensurabilities would have rather different implications. 12 Pp356-7.

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whose consequences appeared to be best. He is arguing from empirical grounds for the

weaker claim that even if it were possible, that is not how most or all people live. Here

is how he puts it in outlining the argument:

I will argue that significant social forms, which delineate the basic shape of the

projects and relationships which constitute human well-being, depend on a

combination of incommensurability with a total refusal even to consider

exchanging one incommensurate option for another. The argument relates to social

forms as we know them. It will not show that others, not committed to

incommensurability, are inconceivable. But it will establish that a society based on

them will be radically different from any society known to us.13

And here in his conclusion, where the reference to exchange is omitted:

So much for the arguments [sic] for the existence of constitutive

incommensurabilities. It did not establish that they must exist for human life to be

possible, nor did it establish that they should exist according to sound moral

principles. It comes close to doing the latter. If these incommensurabilities are as

pervasive a feature of life in our culture as was here suggested, then life according

to commensurate principles will be radically different from our own. It is a mistake

to think of it as life in our society and culture differing from our present existence

only in being more thoroughly rational. It will involve a radical change in our

society and culture.14

7.2.2 The key role of exchange

Astute readers will have observed that what has been missing from the account so far is

an explanation of just how the recognition of an incommensurability shapes a social

form. That is, what difference do indignant refusals to compare make to how people can

be observed to behave – apart from triggering audible snorts of indignation? The

answer, according to Raz, is that what accompanies the refusal to compare is the refusal

to exchange alluded to in the former of the quotations immediately above. It is this

which, we can guess, does the shaping of the social form. Raz appears to think the

refusal to exchange is foundational of loyalty, something without which we would not

observe people sticking by one another through thick and thin. “Regarding a particular

13 P348.

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relationship as a proper subject for an exchange damages or even destroys it,” Raz says

in a passage in which he attempts to explain the part which constitutive

incommensurabilities play in conventions of fidelity to relationships and pursuits.15 And

after making the claim with which I introduced this chapter, the claim that only people

who hold the view that friendship is not comparable with money are capable of having

friends, he adds: “Similarly, only those who would not even consider exchanges of

money for friendship are capable of having friends.”16 Earlier, when introducing the

very concept of constitutive incomparability, Raz’s first move is to outline its

consequences for exchanges:17

First, if A and B are incomparable options of this kind then if an agent is in a

situation in which option A is his and B can be obtained by forgoing A he will

normally refuse to do so. Similarly if B is his he will not exchange it for A. Agents

tend to remain in the position they are in. Second, they obtain between options

which have special significance for people’s ability successfully to engage in

certain pursuits or relationships: the refusal to trade one option for the other is a

condition of the agent’s ability successfully to pursue one of his goals.

I have resisted examining the issue of exchange until this point because I wanted to

show how the argument would look without it: that is, if the focus were on the

recognition of incommensurability alone. We could see that it would be insufficient for

Raz’s purposes: that he must show how that recognition affects people’s behaviour. In

the argument as Raz gives it, the exchange element, as I say, is there from the

beginning. Refusals to exchange are also directly observable, at least in some cases –

people do explicitly decline some offers to exchange certain possessions with the

possessions of other people, for example – so Raz can support the assertion that some

people decline opportunities to make exchanges. Also, it is at least plausible that loyalty

might be understood as requiring a refusal to make an exchange of some kind – a refusal

to exchange one master for another, for example. All this, however, will not be enough

for Raz’s larger argument, for while it is allegedly the refusal to exchange that shapes

the significant social forms which Raz points to as evidence for the widespread

recognition of incommensurabilities, it is only the incommensurabilities that would

resist explanation from rational maximisation. Rational maximisers have no problem

14 Pp356-57. 15 P 356. 16 P 352. 17 P 345-6: Chapter 13; S 5: Constitutive Incommensurabilities. The passage quoted is at p346.

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explaining refusals to exchange: they could simply say, for example, that the agent

thinks it is better not to exchange. Raz does not give a convincing account of why his

alternative explanation, that the agent has recognised an incommensurability of value, is

a better one. Hence he has not offered adequate support for the crucial second premise

of his core argument: the premise that the social forms he points to would not arise

unless people participating in them treated certain items as incomparable. The link

between a person’s belief that two items are incomparable and their refusal to exchange

the items is not established. That Raz is not very clear about why there should be such a

link becomes plain when we look carefully at his description, in the quotation

immediately above, of the exchange that is resisted. For Raz talks about the exchanging

of options. It is not at all obvious that an option is the sort of thing that can be

exchanged in the way Raz suggests. And, it turns out, this matters.

7.2.3 A tell-tale slip: Exchanging possessed options

Let me be clear here. Over several pages Raz explores explicitly the issue of the

exchangeability of incommensurables through the example of parental relationships and

money.18 He is attempting to show that the resistance to exchange here works both

ways: that just as many parents resist giving up children to get money, so they resist

giving up money to get children. His claim is that if the reason people resist giving up

children to get money is that they think the children are better than the money, then they

should be willing to give up money to get children.19 That they are not so willing, he

thinks, shows that the reason for their resistance is not that they think children better

than money but that they think children and money incomparable. This is an unfortunate

example for a range of reasons: among the chief of these is its vulnerability to the fairly

obvious objection that very many people who have children believe that in a strong

sense, they have given up money to do so.20 But there is a general reason why the

18 Pp346ff. 19 P 347. 20 Moves in several Western countries to make separated fathers legally responsible for the upkeep of their children have brought a renewed focus on the question of how the financial costs of raising a child might be quantified. A recent report to the Australian Government calculated the direct cost of supporting a three-year-old child in modest circumstances at $6500 annually, or $17,620 if a parent needed to pay to have their child cared for while they took paid employment. The opportunity cost of paid employment forgone by parents who did not have their child cared for by others was not calculated. My point here is not that the figures are accurate but that what generated the research was widespread acceptance of the notion that parents give up money to have children, and that in cases where the parents separate this sacrifice should be shared. (“Honey, We Can’t Afford the Kids”, by Peter Martin, Sydney Morning Herald online, June 22, 2005. The article cited a study by Paul Henman of the University of Queensland, conducted as part of a recent review of the Federal Parliament’s Child Support Act.)

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example fails. It is that it does not illustrate the point Raz has sought explicitly to make.

He has claimed that people will refuse to exchange incommensurable options. But his

argument in support of this claim relies mainly on this example focused on the buying

and selling of children. What he has failed to recognise is that a refusal to sell one’s

child is not the same as, nor analogous to, a refusal to exchange incommensurable

options. That Raz thinks it is shows that, as I shall argue, he has conflated a refusal to

exchange options with something rather like a refusal to exchange possessions. This is

why he makes the peculiar assertion that “… if A and B are incomparable options of this

kind then if an agent is in a situation in which option A is his and B can be obtained by

forgoing A he will normally refuse to do so. Similarly if B is his he will not exchange it

for A.”

What is peculiar about this assertion is its distinguishing of the options in terms of

which is the agent’s. That is a distinction Raz cannot justify. For options, in the sense

needed here, are just possible choices. To say of an agent that option A is his is just to

say that it is possible for him to choose A. Similarly, to say that option B is his is just to

say that is it possible for him to choose B. Hence, to say that an agent could obtain

option B, which is not his, by forgoing option A, which is his, would be to say that the

agent could, by forgoing option A, make it possible for him to choose B when it is not

possible that he choose B. And that is patently absurd. If it is not possible that an agent

choose B then it is also not possible that he make it possible that he choose B.21 That is

what we mean when we say that an agent does not have option B: we mean it is not

possible that he choose B, however he may attempt to make it so. Conversely, and this

is the point, if it is possible that an agent choose either option A or option B, then both

options are his, and equally so.

21 Care is needed when assessing this claim. Assertions along the lines “A’s doing X made it possible for him to do Y” are commonplace, and this might lead the reader to think that my claim contradicts statements that are commonly made and are generally accepted without demur. For example, one might say that A’s successful pursuit of a medical degree made it possible for him to become a country doctor. The contradiction, however, is only apparent, for claims of this kind, although commonly accepted, use modal language in a misleading way. We can see this if we consider that it was perfectly possible, before he began his medical degree, that A should become a country doctor. Hence it cannot be true that it was doing the medical degree which made this possible for A. His completing the medical degree merely helped make this possibility actual, and people may rightly accept the claim only if that is what they take it to mean. That is to say, his completing the medical degree was one of very many conditions necessary for his actually becoming a doctor. Conversely, it was not a condition necessary for his possibly becoming a doctor, and it was certainly not a condition sufficient for this. If it had not been possible beforehand for A to become a country doctor, his doing a medical degree would not have made it possible.

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We can excuse Raz for loose language if that is all this is. But it is not all, for we cannot

make him clear without adjusting his argument dramatically. How else are we to

understand the reference to an agent being in a situation where an option is his? We

cannot ignore the reference because it is presented as the key practical implication of the

form of incomparability Raz is describing. As he elaborates immediately after this

passage: “One may say that the special context of these incommensurabilities is that

belief in their existence contributes to an attitude which is a barrier to exchange.”22

How does the barrier operate? Well, it discourages the believer from exchanging an

option which is his for an option which is not. The significance of the his here becomes

starkly plain if we recognise that it supplies a reason, and the only reason, why someone

faced with incomparable options should prefer one to the other. Without it, we might

justify a conclusion that someone faced with incomparable options should have no

reason to prefer either of them, and hence no reason not to choose either. Without the

reason represented by the his, then, a person facing a choice between the

incommensurable options representing friendship and money could have no better

justification for choosing the friendship than for choosing the money, on Raz’s own

account that reason has nothing to say on the question of which of two incomparable

options is better. But Raz thinks people will prefer one of these options: an agent will

prefer the option which is his over the option which is not. This is why the recognition

of a constitutive incommensurability explains loyalty rather than fickleness. Hence, if

we are to understand how the recognition of a constitutive incommensurability affects

someone’s behaviour, we must understand what Raz means when he says of an agent

that an option A is his, and how we are to distinguish this relation of the agent to A from

his relation to option B which is not his. But if we cannot, as we have seen, take these

references literally, it is not at all obvious how we are to understand him.

What makes it plain that any interpretation must be extremely subtle is that, as I have

said, the claim that an agent will typically refuse to forgo A for B has the implication

that the agent prefers option A, and for a reason, Raz’s reason being that this option and

not the other one is his. Given that, if the options are incomparable, the agent has no

good reason for preferring B, then A’s being his gives him a better reason for choosing

A than for choosing B. But if the agent has a better reason for choosing A than for

choosing B, then the options obviously are comparable. If we confront this observation

squarely, then we have generated from Raz’s account another absurdity. For if an

22 The Morality of Freedom, p346.

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agent’s options A and B are incomparable, then A is neither better nor worse than B and

neither is A just as good as B. But if the agent has a better reason for choosing A than for

choosing B, then fairly clearly A is better than B. Hence, if the options are incomparable

but the agent has a better reason for choosing A, then A is not better than B and A is

better than B. There is no reason Raz could supply for the agent choosing A which

would permit him to escape this result.

Remarks Raz makes in discussing constitutive incomparability allow us to consider

what reason he might nevertheless have had in mind as the reason the agent prefers A if

A is his. The only obvious inference is that A represents the status quo – this is the no-

change option, and that is what Raz means when he says of an agent that option A is his.

This inference would be supported by his elaboration that “Agents tend to remain in the

position they are in”. But of course, the position he is in is just that he has options A and

B, if we are to take literally his references to options. Given that this won’t help us, we

might hypothesise that when Raz writes of an agent having option A, which is his, and

option B, not his, he is thinking not of options at all but of outcomes or consequences.

Hence, outcome A is an agent’s if that is an outcome he already has, in so far as

choosing it does not alter the situation he is in. Perhaps Raz is proposing, then, that if an

agent faces a choice which has two possible outcomes, and if the outcomes are

incomparable, then the agent will tend to choose the no-change outcome. Hence, for

example, if an agent is in a situation where he has a friend, and he has an opportunity to

gain money which necessitates his losing the friend, then if he believes that friendship

and money are not comparable he will forgo the opportunity and will remain in his

original position, where he has the friend but not the money.

While this replacement of Raz’s references to options with references to outcomes

seems compatible with examples Raz gives, we need to ask why it should make a

difference that an outcome is the no-change outcome. There are two obvious

possibilities but neither is satisfactory. Here is the first: we take it that if an agent has

the opportunity to choose no-change outcome A, then if he refrains from choosing

incomparable outcome B he is refraining from choosing at all. That would explain why

the agent typically retains A even though he believes that A and B are not comparable.

But of course, this is to misrepresent the choice he faces. A is describable as the no-

change outcome not because it represents an outcome in which nothing changes but

because it represents an outcome in which the particular change which B represents is

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rejected. In other words, while we might describe A loosely as the no-change outcome,

it would be more accurate simply to describe it as the not-B outcome. Our agent, then,

faces a choice between B and not-B. Even if we accept that not-B might be

incomparable with B, we cannot accept that an agent can choose not-B while not

choosing at all. It would be ridiculous to say, for example, of a public official who is

offered a bribe, that in rejecting the bribe he is declining to make a choice.

Even if we concede that the agent faced with no-change outcome A and outcome B

cannot refrain from choosing one of them, perhaps he could have a reason for choosing

A which we could distinguish from reasons associated with the comparability of the

outcomes. This is the second way Raz might avoid the above absurdity. Thus, rather

than saying that in retaining A he is refraining from choosing at all, we could say that

the agent chooses A but that he does so just because that is the situation he is in. That

would seem to divorce the reason for the choice from the features of the two outcomes.

It would permit Raz to claim that what is better about A is, for example, just that the

agent is familiar with it, and that this has nothing to do with the merits of the outcomes.

That is, the agent displays a natural resistance of some kind to change itself:

metaphorically speaking he has a certain amount of inertia when it comes to choosing

outcomes. The reason he sticks with A is just that A’s incomparability with B leaves him

with no good reason for rejecting A. But to take this path is to allow Raz to be hoisted

on his own petard. For Raz’s central claim is just that the reason the agent prefers A is

that he believes A and B incomparable. It is this belief in the outcomes’ incomparability

which contributes to the attitude which allegedly is a barrier to their exchange. The

judgment that they are incomparable, however, must have everything to do with the

merits of the outcomes. And it is indispensable if we are to pick out the perception of

incomparability as a reason why change is resisted. For inertia considered on its own is

a reason for why the agent would resist any change. Just as it could explain why the

agent resists choosing B, which it is alleged he thinks incomparable with A, so it could

also explain why he resists choosing C, which he recognises is not only comparable

with A but, considered independently of his inertia, very much better. In the latter case,

we would say that the agent’s belief about the comparability of outcomes A and C does

not present a barrier to his choosing C but the inertia does. In contrast, in the former

case Raz would want to say that the agent’s belief about the comparability of outcomes

A and B does present a barrier to his choosing B because it prevents him overcoming his

inertia. This won’t do, for (on this interpretation) it remains the inertia that is providing

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the barrier. Without it, constitutive incomparability would explain fickleness more

plausibly than it would explain loyalty. With it, loyalty is explained not by constitutive

incomparability but by agent inertia.

Interpreting Raz’s reference to the option which is the agent’s as a reference to the no-

change outcome raises a further problem in any case: which outcome this is, and indeed

whether it is either outcome, seems merely to be a matter of how we describe the choice

we are facing. Depending on how the choice is described, then, a belief that two

outcomes are constitutively incomparable could imply that either is typically chosen or

that neither is. Incomparability generally, because it has nothing to say about which of

two incomparable outcomes typically will be chosen, does not display this troubling

result. In so far as it is held to apply to possible courses of action, it tends to be

represented as the failure of the Trichotomy Thesis to hold between two options, each

of which represents change. In the more trivial examples, one is considering whether to

drink a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, or whether to read a book by the fire or take a walk

in the park. In the more complicated examples one is considering whether to embark on

a career in the law or a career as a clarinettist, or whether to appoint Eunice or Janice to

a teaching post at a university. No-one has claimed that its implications for choice vary

according to whether I am already by the fire with a book when I consider whether to

take a walk, or whether Eunice is an external candidate or an internal candidate for the

teaching post. But on the interpretation offered above, this does matter if the

incomparability is constitutive. Yet in many cases, if not in all of them, the choice could

be represented in either way. Take, for example, the decision whether to appoint Eunice

or Janice. If their selection will be based just on their philosophical talents, and if their

philosophical talents are incomparable, then a selection committee cannot justify a

decision to select either. But that will be the case whether Eunice and Janice both are

external applicants for a newly created position, or whether Eunice’s contract with that

philosophy department is about to expire and she has been asked to reapply for the

position. However, if their philosophical talents are constitutively incomparable, then it

seems to matter whether Eunice is incumbent in the job, and if she is, whether we

consider her reappointment to be a no-change outcome. If she is and we do, then it will

be an implication of her constitutive incomparability with Janice that she keeps her job;

if she is but we do not – perhaps we think that both her reappointment and Janice’s

appointment would represent change – then Eunice’s constitutive incomparability with

Janice does not imply that Eunice is reappointed. Why should this shift in our point of

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view attach such dramatically different implications to the incomparability of two

candidates?

The situation does not improve when we consider an example where the

incomparability is alleged actually to be constitutive. Take children and money, a case

we will look at in more detail below. If my child is kidnapped, I might think it prudent

to consider paying a ransom for his release. But some parents believe that having

children and having money are constitutively incomparable, Raz thinks. Let us say that I

am such a parent. On my interpretation above, this implies that when faced with a

choice between having children and having money, it will be the no-change outcome

that I will tend to choose. But what is the no-change outcome here? Is it that I live with

my child as I did before he was kidnapped? In that case, given the incomparability, I

will tend to pay the ransom. Or is it that I have just as much money as I did before my

child was kidnapped? In that case, given the incomparability, I will resist paying the

ransom. Or is it the case that both paying the ransom and not paying the ransom are

outcomes representing changes? In that case, the alleged constitutive incomparability

presents no barrier to my taking either decision.

Raz has failed to explain, then, why the belief that two options are constitutively

incomparable should contribute to a refusal to exchange them, and nor is it obvious how

we could understand the explanation if it were offered more plausibly in terms of

outcomes. Is there any other way we can make sense of his claims about what would be

the practical implications of a person believing that two options were incomparable?

Perhaps if we examine the examples he gives we can understand what he intended with

his abstract specification. I think it turns out we can, and that while his observations

about the way people make choices might not have all the implications he has claimed

for them, they have significant implications nonetheless.

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7.3 Constitutively incomparable items: Raz’s examples

7.3.1 Money and children

The most detailed example Raz offers is that alluded to above, in which he considers the

buying and selling of children. The example is given immediately after he introduces

the concept of constitutive incommensurability, and follows his elaboration that belief

in the existence of incommensurabilities of this kind contributes to an attitude which is

a barrier to exchange, or an obstacle to trade-offs. “The barrier is not absolute,” Raz

writes:

It is as if trade-offs involve a heavy price. The very willingness to exchange such

incomparables has grave consequences to the life of that agent. It undermines his

ability to succeed in certain pursuits. One such case is that of some parents who

maintain that there is no way in which the value of having children can be

compared with money, material position, status or prestige, etc. (I deliberately

hedge and refer to the attitude of some such parents, since others may have perhaps

superficially similar attitudes which none the less differ fundamentally from the

one I will use as an example of this kind of incommensurability.) For such parents,

having children and having money cannot be compared in value. Moreover, they

will be indignant at the suggestion that such a comparison is possible. Finally, they

will refuse to contemplate even the possibility of such an exchange.23

What we need to understand is how this example exemplifies the kind of

incomparability Raz is attempting to illustrate. And in particular, we need to understand

what is the possible exchange that parents of this kind will refuse to contemplate. Given

the paucity of detail thus far, we can say little but that the exchange is an exchange of

children with money. This is a very vague description: all sorts of things could count as

such an exchange, and very many of them would not be likely to raise an eyebrow even

among the most committed and conscientious of parents. To offer a trivial example

which nevertheless makes the point, if I place a $5 note on my dining table, and if I then

pick up the $5 note and rest my infant child on the table in its place, I have exchanged a

child with a sum of money. The exchange is an exchange of place. Raz needs to say

more if we are to make anything of his example.

23 Ibid., p346. The interpolation in parentheses is Raz’s.

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He says more soon afterwards but what he says then is more revealing than

enlightening. For Raz elaborates by considering the objection that examples like that of

children and money trigger not judgments that the options cannot be compared but

rather the judgment that one option is better than the other to a degree which puts it

beyond compare. In this case, the judgment would be that: “Keeping one’s child is

better than any amount of money, or anything that money can buy.”24 Demurring, Raz

concedes that many people might hold the view which the objection expresses. “But,”

he says,

my example concerns the others, those for whom it is equally unacceptable to buy

a child as to sell one. For them it is not the case that having a child is worth more

than any sum of money. If it were then they would not object to buying children

when they want them.25

The elaboration indeed offers some detail which might make it clearer what Raz has in

mind when he refers to the exchanging of children with money. What is astonishing is

that this detail is not offered as one possible example of such an exchange but rather it is

implied that this is just what Raz has meant all along. That is, when Raz observed that

some parents would refuse to contemplate even the possibility of exchanging their

children with money, what he meant was that some parents would refuse to contemplate

selling their children but also would refuse to contemplate buying them. If this is what

he meant, then when he talks of the constitutive incomparability of money and children

contributing to an attitude which is a barrier to their exchange, he is alluding to an

exchange of a very specialised kind, and only to an exchange of that kind.

Talk of buying and selling a child, then, narrows down dramatically the kinds of

exchange which would be eligible to stand as exchanges generally resisted by anyone

who believed having children to be constitutively incomparable with money.

Nevertheless, the description remains vague. In modern Western cultures, children are

not commonly described as having been sold, and so there is no typical transaction

which we can point out as a paradigm case of the selling of a child. Nor are children

commonly bought. (And indeed, it now seems to be an implication of Raz’s argument

that resistance will be widespread in any culture to the sale and purchase of anything

that in that culture is commonly held to be constitutively incomparable with money.)

24 Op. cit., p347.

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There are various ways, therefore, in which we could fill in the detail of just what

selling or buying a child would involve. Am I selling my child, for example, if I offer

her services as a home-delivery agent to the local newspaper for a fee? Or must it be her

sexual services that I would offer to others for a fee? Or do I sell her only if I insist, in

return for a fee from a third party, that she depart bodily from my household and enter

the household of that third party, just as if I were selling a piece of furniture? If I did

that, would it make a difference whether I showed concern for her welfare as a member

of this other household, so that I would engage in the transaction only where I had good

reason to believe that she would be treated very well? Would her willingness or

unwillingness to be part of the deal matter? And similarly, if I am to buy a child, could I

be described as having done so simply because I had paid for her services? Would it

matter what those services were? Must my purchase involve her moving in with me, or

could my paying a family in another country a certain sum monthly on the

understanding that it would feed, clothe and educate one of their daughters amount to

my buying a child? Do I buy a child when my sexual partner conceives one after I have

paid for medical treatment designed to enhance my fertility?

Raz’s further remarks on the subject cloud this issue rather than clarifying it. He offers

what he suggests is a finer description of the two options: “In the one case the question

is whether or not to give away a child one has in exchange for money or other goods. In

the other the question is whether to get a child and give away money or other goods.”26

Here the vagueness is simply transferred to the “giving away” and the “getting” of a

child: we need to know what the giving away of a child amounts to. He next describes

the view of a parent who believed having children was incomparable with money as the

view that: “having children is more important than having money but that they are not a

commodity which has a price in money or in other commodities”.27 The vagueness here

is transferred to the having of a price: we cannot say whether something has a price until

we know what it would mean to say that it had been sold. The idea that children are not

a commodity looks more promising, but Raz does not draw out the implications of this.

Instead, he elaborates that such parents “deny that having money is more important than

getting a child”. As an outright denial this could only be a very foolish one, for

obviously it must be relevant how many children and how much money one has. In the

normal circumstances of people in contemporary Western cultures, if one has 13

25 Loc. cit. 26 Loc. cit.

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children and no money then only the very imprudent would deny that it was more

important to act so as to bring it about that one has money than to act so as to bring it

about that one has another child. Raz’s further elaboration suggests he is thinking only

about people who are in the converse position, having more than enough money to live

on but no children. “They will forgo promotion, take a cut in their income, undertake

expensive medical treatment in order to have children.”28 Yes, but in the absence of a

reason for ruling them out, any of these things could be represented as the exchanging

of money for children, which is something which Raz thinks anybody will resist if they

believe that having children is incomparable with money. Raz next attempts to

distinguish “naked exchanges” of children with money from other kinds of exchanges

of children with money, but fails to tell us how we might distinguish an exchange which

is naked from one which is clothed.29

Raz concludes his exploration of how some people will resist exchanges of children for

money with a paragraph which he admits explicitly only deepens the mystery. I quote it

here in full:

For many, having children does not have a money price because exchanging them

for money, whether buying or selling, is inconsistent with a proper appreciation of

the value of parenthood. In a way which calls for an explanation, both their

rejection of the idea that having children has a price and their refusal even to

contemplate such exchanges are part of their respect for parenthood, an expression

of the very high value which they place on having children. Since the value of not

exchanging children for money derives from the value of having children it is

misleading and distorting to say that of these two they value having children less.

These remarks merely deepen the mystery. How can one both refuse, for good

reasons, to exchange children for money and vice versa and deny that there is a

price for having children?30

It can be seen that none of this helps us understand what could count as the exchange of

a child for money, nor what must be ruled out as an exchange which a belief in the

constitutive incomparability of children and money would lead one to resist. Here,

however, is where Raz’s exploration of this example ceases. Apart from mere passing

27 Loc. cit. 28 Loc. cit. 29 Loc. cit. 30 Op. cit., p348.

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references to the value of parenthood, this is all he has to say about the constitutive

incomparability of children and money.

This example, then, tells us only that what Raz seems to have in mind, as the kind of

exchange which is discouraged by a belief in a constitutive incommensurability, is the

kind which can be described as a sale or a purchase. This fits with the general tenor of

Raz’s other examples of incommensurable pairs of this kind, in all of which,

significantly, money features. But we need to know more, because it is not clear what

we may take to be the sale or purchase of a child, given that it is not usual in Western

cultures for transactions involving children and money to be described in this way.

We have reason to suspect, however, that what Raz means in his general specification,

when he says that an agent who believes he faces a choice between constitutively

incommensurable options will tend to retain the option which is his, is just that an agent

will tend to retain whatever is his in the way that a child or a sum of money can be

thought of as being his. This again needs further explanation, not least because there is a

clear and very commonly understood sense in which a child can be mine that does not

leave me the option of exchanging that child in any way for anything, except perhaps

through his death: that is the biological sense in which I am the child’s parent (if a child

is mine in this sense then I have no choice about whether he continues to be mine in this

sense). The further explanation will be part of the elaboration of what we mean by the

sale or purchase of children, for in order to understand what we mean by a sale we need

to know how what we “have” after the sale differs from what we had beforehand.

Nevertheless, in so far as this sense of having shows us what Raz means when he says

of an agent that he will tend to resist forgoing the option which is his, it seems to be

connected more closely with the idea of resisting loss of possession than with the idea

of resisting change in a more general sense.

7.3.2 Money and spousal companionship

Can we learn more by examining other examples Raz gives? The only other example

offered in his section specifically discussing constitutive incomparability is one in

which a person is offered a sum of money specifically on condition that they leave their

spouse for a month. The example is advanced in support of a qualification Raz offers in

an attempt to pin down more carefully the kind of exchange which will be resisted. The

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qualification is that the exchange with money must be direct. This is because a direct

exchange will have a symbolic significance that an indirect exchange may not have. It is

not spelt out very carefully what “leaving” a spouse will involve here, but we might

reasonably infer, because a disanalogy is made with a person leaving their spouse for a

month in order to earn money from a job which they do not like, that their absence is

just a physical one: it is never suggested that the spouse is told that the marriage is over

or suspended. What makes the two cases disanalogous is that in the former case the

exchange is called a direct one whereas in the latter, where the trip taken in the course

of paid employment, it is implied that the exchange is indirect or less direct.

Raz proposes that many people who would accept the job offer nevertheless would

refuse indignantly the direct offer of even a bigger sum of money just on condition that

they left their spouse for a month.31 It is not obvious he is right about this: surely the

latter offer might well be accepted if it were offered in a benevolent spirit. But this is a

point Raz is coming to – he concedes that a person might accept a direct offer that they

believed was offered out of friendship32 – and it is a point which has significant

implications for how we are to understand the kind of exchange which a belief in the

constitutive incommensurability of two options will lead one to resist. For Raz admits

that a person accepting either offer could be accused of having set a price on the

company of their spouse. But acceptance of the direct offer has a symbolic significance

that acceptance of the job offer does not, he says, and therefore would not be perceived

as equally objectionable. “An action has symbolic significance in virtue of social

conventions which determine its meaning,” he elaborates. “Its symbolic significance

transcends an action’s ‘real’ impact in the world. Hence actions which are otherwise

similar may differ in their meaning.”33 And as well, there is the question of motive. As

Raz puts it, “people are sensitive to the motives behind various offers”.34

Why should motive and symbolism matter if it is simply the exchange of

incommensurable outcomes or goods or items or options that is resisted? Raz’s

insistence that it does matter, while clearly warranted, forces us to reassess his claims

about constitutive incommensurability. He writes that: “In our example, the symbolic

significance of the fact that one cannot trade companionship for naked money but one

31 Op. cit., pp 348-49. 32 Op. cit., p349. 33 Op. cit., p349. 34 Loc. cit.

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can for a job is that while companionship is not up for sale, it is but one ingredient in a

complex pattern of life including work.”35 But the job here is a job one does not like,

Raz has told us, and while it may be that nevertheless one sees it as worthwhile and

believes for that reason that it is important that one does it, Raz does not say this nor

anything else to suggest that the job is undertaken for any reason other than for money.

If we think it is undertaken just for money, what is it that is more “naked” about the

money in the exchange he describes as the more direct one? Why is the “direct”

exchange described as the trading of companionship for money and the other described

as the trading of companionship for a job? Raz elaborates somewhat obscurely that

“actions which are otherwise similar may differ in their meaning”. The elaboration is

promising, but again it is not developed. It is difficult to see how an action could be

similar to another action in every way but its meaning. What Raz may be observing,

however, is that acts meriting different descriptions may be similar in many respects: in

Kovesi’s terms, they may have similar material elements. A woman’s boarding a flight

for foreign climes where she will earn money might be a material element of her

abandoning her spouse or of her supporting her spouse. But her motive might be the

earning of money in either case.

7.3.3 Pinning down Raz on exchanges

We can begin to resolve the puzzle of just what kind of exchange Raz is thinking of,

even if we cannot immediately clarify all of his puzzling remarks, when we see that in

both the buying and the selling which featured in his previous example, and in the

exchanging of companionship for money which features in this one, what is described

as an exchange can be understood, from the point of view of a particular agent, as

specifying an act and the reason for the agent performing that act. In an exchange of this

kind, an agent is taken as having given up something and received something else in

exchange for it. In these cases, in contrast to mere exchanges of place and the like, we

are to take that phrase in exchange as indicating that the receiving supplies the reason

for the giving up.

When I sell a bicycle for $10, I might describe the sale by saying that I received $10 in

exchange for the bicycle. That seems to be the kind of exchange Raz is talking about.

But where the exchange is taken as describing a sale, to say that I received the $10 in

35 Loc. cit.

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exchange for the bicycle is to say that the reason why I relinquished possession of the

bicycle is that I received the $10.

Consider, in contrast, a set of circumstances in which somebody steals the bicycle from

my front porch, but as he makes off with it he fails to notice a $10 note fall from his

pocket onto my porch steps – a note that I later find and add to my wallet. If I were to

give an account of how my possessions that evening differed from my possessions that

morning, I could say that a bicycle had been exchanged for $10. But I could not say

accurately and literally that I had sold a bicycle for $10. I could say I had sold the

bicycle only if my receipt of the $10 had been the reason why I had relinquished the

bicycle.

Consider also my example above where I picked up a $5 note from the dining room

table and put my infant on the table in its place. This too is an exchange of my infant

with money. But it is not an exchange of the kind that interests Raz, because my picking

up of the money might not have supplied me with a reason for my putting my infant on

the table. It may have done – perhaps if the whole performance was part of the sale of

my infant. But that is the point I am making: Raz is not talking about people resisting

exchanges generally but only about them resisting exchanges of a special kind. We can

now say something about what distinguishes these exchanges from other kinds: they are

exchanges where what is received supplies the reason for the giving up.

An exchange of the relevant kind, then, is an exchange in which someone gives up

something for a reason, and that reason is that they shall get something in exchange for

what they have given up. Raz seems to be arguing, then, that when what would be given

up is a friendship, a child, spousal companionship or something relevantly similar,

somebody who believes these things to be constitutively incomparable with money will

resist giving them up where the reason why they would give them up is that they would

gain money in exchange for the giving up. (And similarly, such a person would resist

giving up money when the reason they would give up money is that they would gain

one of these things in exchange.)

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7.3.4 Reconciling competing ways of having

Let us now examine how exchanges of this kind will look to an agent who is

contemplating making one of them. In particular, let us attempt to pin down the

comparison he will be judging. I propose that there are (at least) two ways in which we

could represent the comparison. The first is the way Raz represents it: an agent is

comparing the value of X with the value of Y, where his having X is incompossible with

his having Y.36 Hence his comparison of the value of X with the value of Y amounts to

his judging whether it would be better for him to have X or Y. We can add reasons to the

picture if we say that for the agent to judge whether it would be better for him to have X

or Y is for him to judge whether his reasons for having X would be better than his

reasons for having Y. Raz’s argument seems to be that if the person already has X, and if

the value of X is not comparable with the value of Y, then his reasons for having X will

be neither better nor worse than, and nor just as good as, his reasons for having Y, and

therefore he will typically retain X; that is, he will not give up X for Y.

Representing in this way the comparison facing the agent introduces several sources of

confusion, some of which can be eliminated if we use the alternative representation that

I am about to suggest. One is that the value of X for the agent seems inextricably bound

up with the notion of his having X, but it is ambiguous what it would mean to say that

an agent had X. This could lead to us attempting to compare two items each under a

different criterion – a common source of confusion when thinking about comparisons,

as I have argued. Another is that we seem to be talking here not about reasons for doing

something but about reasons for having something, and hence the ambiguity of the

notion of having contaminates our thinking about the goodness of the reasons which we

are judging. In so far as they are reasons for doing something – reasons for action – they

are explicitly reasons for giving something up, but we are led naturally to think about

giving something up as merely ceasing to have it, rather than focusing on what act or

behaviour would result in our ceasing to have it. Finally, this has a confusing

implication for the question we think our comparison is to help us decide. For it appears

to be a question about whether we shall have X or Y. And indeed it is commonplace for

us to think of decisions we make when engaged in buying or selling as decisions about

whether we would rather have X or Y. But that is because the institution of the market

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facilitates trivial commercial transactions so effectively that we are apt to forget that our

obtaining Y does not happen by magic but requires us to act, and that if we are to have Y

only on condition that we give up X, then what it is to give up X is just to perform that

act which we believe will get us Y. Let us call that act φ. Rendering the comparison in

terms of whether we shall have X or Y, or even in terms of whether we shall give up X

for Y, permits us to leave obscure what is that act, φ. But when a question arises whether

an agent’s belief that he will gain Y would give him good reason for forgoing X, it will

be crucially important what is φ, his means to Y.

Again a simple example makes the point. I am fond of Ferrari sports cars. Even though I

have never driven one, I am attracted by their shape, by their founder’s pursuit of a

certain kind of excellence, by their reputation for sparkling performance, and the like.

As it happens, however, my personal vehicle is a Toyota Corolla that is long past its

prime. Now if you were to ask me whether I think it would be better for me to have my

Toyota or, say, a new Ferrari 612 Scaglietti (a four-seater V-12 which has been

reviewed very favourably), I would not hesitate to reply that I thought it better for me to

have the Ferrari. Similarly, I might even think it good to give up my Toyota on

condition that I got the Ferrari, or that I had good reason to exchange the Toyota for the

Ferrari. But here is where the confusion begins to seep in, for I have not been told what

my giving up of my Toyota comprises. I tend to jump to the inference that I will simply

hand the key of my Toyota to somebody who owns the Ferrari and that person will hand

me in return the key to the Ferrari, and perhaps will add to this assurances that neither

of us will accuse the other of fraud or theft in relation to the transaction if I drive the

Ferrari home and leave it in my garage. But my giving up of my Toyota could comprise

other things. If it were a matter of my driving my Toyota through the window of the

local Ferrari dealership at 3am, I might resist the exchange after all. That is because I

might not think that the prospect of my getting the Ferrari gave me a good reason for

doing this, even though I would think my having the Ferrari was clearly better than my

having the Toyota.

Where an agent is contemplating an exchange of X with Y of the kind which interests

Raz, then, we are likely to confuse our thinking about the comparison he faces if we

represent it as a comparison between the value of (his having) X and the value of (his

36 I have preferred the term Stocker used, incompossible, here to the alternative incompatible, so as to avoid any confusion that might arise from the more similar sounds of the terms incompatible and

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having) Y. One source of the confusion is that X and Y may be had in different senses;

another is that it can be left obscure what act is required of the agent. My suggestion for

avoiding the confusion is to take one sort of having out of the picture and to

simultaneously put the act in. We can do this if we remember that the giving up of X for

Y can be described in terms of the agent performing an act, φ, which would result in (his

giving up X and) his having Y. The comparison can then be rendered in terms of

whether the agent has good reason for φ-ing, and more specifically, in terms of whether

the prospect of his getting Y would give him good reason for φ-ing. That is, the options

he faces are his φ-ing and his not φ-ing, and what he is comparing is the goodness or

weight or strengths of his reasons for choosing either option – for behaving in that way

or for not doing so.

Rendering the comparison in this way helps us see more clearly how it is a comparison

of reasons for performing or not performing an action. And that offers us a very useful

tool for understanding what Raz could be driving at when he talks of symbolism and the

agent’s motivation affecting whether or not an exchange for money is direct.

7.3.5 Exchanges, actions and symbolic significance

Let us return now to the contrasting examples of a person leaving their spouse for a

month to do a job or just for money. Raz writes that: “In our example, the symbolic

significance of the fact that one cannot trade companionship for naked money but one

can for a job is that while companionship is not up for sale, it is but one ingredient in a

complex pattern of life including work.” I have pointed out that he has not shown why,

if the job is taken just because it will pay, it ensures that the money is decently clothed.

We can now go some of the way towards making the appropriate distinction, by asking

what act φ the agent must perform as a condition of his getting the money. For we can

see that in the second case, where (say) the husband leaves his wife for a job, it is open

to us to infer his leaving her has nothing to do with his getting the money; whereas in

the first case, we cannot but conclude that it has everything to do with his getting the

money. In the second case, the husband will get the money on condition that he does the

job, and it is not specified that, for example, his wife was not given the option of

accompanying him to his temporary workplace (but declined for reasons that seemed

good to her).

incomparable.

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Part of the significance of the departure being for a job, then, is not so much what it

symbolises as what it fails to exclude: it fails to exclude the possibility that if the

husband leaves his wife for a period, the reason why he leaves her will not be the

prospect of his gaining money but some other reason – perhaps she has a job of her own

to attend to elsewhere.

But this brings us to consider why a person would refrain indignantly from accepting an

offer of money just on condition that they did leave their spouse for a month, whether or

not the condition included their doing a job while they were away. Raz admits that even

a direct offer of money on that condition but made out of friendship would not provoke

an indignant response. He also thinks that where the indignation does arise it will be a

consequence of the person believing the value for them of spousal companionship and

of money to be incomparable. However, when we look at the example in terms of what

act the agent would be considering and what reasons he might have for behaving that

way, we can see that the comparison he will be judging will be not so much a

comparison between the having of money and the having of spousal companionship, but

a comparison of the reasons he has for leaving his spouse with the reasons he has for not

leaving her. Raz’s claim then amounts to the claim that the goodness of these reasons

will not be comparable. In his terms, they will be weighty but very different reasons –

on the one hand, perhaps, reasons associated with conventions about how a person who

has proper respect for a spousal relationship treats their spouse, and on the other hand,

reasons about what benefits the gaining of money can bring someone.

Redescribing the comparison in these terms gives it a rather more familiar face: we can

see that the allegedly constitutive incomparability relies on a difference of kind between

the respective reasons for choosing alternative options. I have argued that this cannot

ground a claim of incomparability: that a judgment that one of the options is better will

be justifiable provided we know what is the comparison’s point. In so far as a person

might indignantly think it obvious, then, that he would judge it better to refrain from

leaving his spouse for a month even though he would forego an opportunity to gain

money in so doing, what we need to ask ourselves is what would be the point of a

comparison that we think he would be right to judge in this way. And rather

importantly, as it turns out, we need to ask ourselves to whom, if anybody, he must

justify his judgment.

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7.3.6 Raz’s third example: Money and friendship

That this is so becomes yet more obvious when we consider the third of Raz’s examples

and the only one which deals directly with the question of the comparability of money

with friendship that is not necessarily spousal. In fact this is the first example he gives,

and he has given it prior to his direct discussion of constitutive incomparability, in an

attempt to show that a refusal to compare can be taken as displaying a certain attitude to

the status of the items one has been invited to compare. Raz proposes that a person,

Judy, is asked whether she values her friendship with another person, John, more or less

than she values $1 million. She refuses to make the judgment, and Raz offers a

discussion of what we could take her refusal to imply. He rejects one possible

interpretation, which would be that she believes she could judge the comparison but that

she values not thinking about it. He says she might disagree that this accurately

reflected her attitude:

Judy’s reply is that she does not mind taking time off and answering the question

about the comparative value of her friendship and the money. All she meant is that

they are incommensurate, and that is the answer. There is no thought she refuses to

entertain. Only an a priori commitment to commensurability can lead one to

misrepresent her belief in the incommensurability of two options as a negative

valuation of a third option. Later on we will see that an emotional response to

attempts to press on one comparisons of incommensurable options is a natural and

justifiable concomitant of some judgments of incommensurability, as is the reply

that one of the incommensurable options “is not an option one would even

consider” as an alternative to the other.37

Now it should be plain from what I have argued above that one problem for Judy is that

she could have no good reason for thinking she knew what this question meant. For she

has not been told what is its point. And again here, we have the slide from an invitation

to make a comparison to the rejection of an option. What options are they that Judy

thinks incommensurable? We have no way of knowing what they are, but we can make

an educated guess as to the sort of thing they might be.

37 The Morality of Freedom, p337.

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What is likely is that it has not occurred to Judy that she is being asked whether the

friendship is more beautiful than the $1 million (in Chang’s terms, more valuable with

respect to beauty), or whether it is more convenient than the $1 million for the

repayment of her mortgage (more valuable with respect to convenience in the repaying

of her mortgage). Rather, just because the comparison is with money, Judy will tend to

think, like Raz thinks, that its point is the kind of point that our comparison of the value

of a consumption commodity with the value of money might have in a typical market

exchange. She will be thinking that she is being asked how much she would accept in

something like a sale of her friendship. And given that it is hard to see how she could

transfer her friendship with John to another person intact, she will probably focus on the

giving-up aspects of the typical market exchange of commodities, and will therefore

imagine that she is being asked whether $1 million would compensate her for giving up

her friendship with John.

This, of course, is what Chang takes the question to be, when she explores the responses

available to a person who is offered $1 million by an eccentric billionaire on condition

that she gives up a friendship with a close friend.38 But what neither Raz nor Chang

confront squarely is that it is ambiguous what Judy’s giving up of her friendship

amounts to. Just as in the case of a person having a child, it is not at all clear that Judy

has her friendship with John in the same way that she would have the $1 million. The

way I have suggested we can resolve this ambiguity is to redescribe the choice she is

offered in terms that make it easier for us to distinguish the ways in which the

friendship and the money are had. Hence, we can say that Judy is being asked whether

she thinks she would do better to φ or to refrain from φ-ing, where her φ-ing would

result in her giving up her friendship with John and her having $1 million.

We are now in a position to see what might lie behind an indignant reaction from Judy

to the invitation that she say whether she values her friendship with John more or less

than she values $1 million. For it is obvious that a range of acts φ might be taken as the

giving up of a friendship, and that which of them may be so taken will depend on how

strongly we want to understand the condition that a friendship has been given up.

Perhaps Judy’s φ-ing would simply comprise her moving to a different locality where it

would be difficult for her to meet John. But in that case, it is not obvious that Judy has

38 In “Against Constitutive Commensurability or Buying and Selling Friends”.

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anything to be indignant about: she might easily reply calmly that a payment of $1

million would or would not compensate her for relocating.

Here, however, we confront Aristotle’s observation about friends who are asleep or

separated by distance, that “although they do not express their friendship in action,

nevertheless [they] retain the disposition to do so; because distance does not break off a

friendship absolutely, but only in its active realisation”.39 That is, it is not obvious either

that Judy’s moving would necessitate the sort of giving up Raz thinks a friend must

resist. What act or acts φ, then, would obviously necessitate such a giving up?

It is if Judy is thinking along these lines that we can see why she might respond

indignantly to the invitation that she compare. For as Neera Kapur Badhwar has

observed, it is a feature of personal friendships that a person often will forgive his friend

for her doing what he believes has wronged him, and Badhwar also argues well that

given a person has admitted she has acted badly and sought forgiveness, it could show

vice in a friend that he withheld his forgiveness from her.40 Personal friends also will

commonly overlook trivial wrongs: one might easily accept in one’s friend, for

example, a propensity for occasionally making tactless remarks. So if Judy is thinking

about what acts φ would be sufficient for her giving up her friendship, she might very

reasonably be taken as thinking about what she could do which she believed would

require her to seek forgiveness from John if they were to remain personal friends, and

about whether she would do that, and never seek his forgiveness, in return for $1

million.

7.4 Friendship, money and blame: an outline

How else could we describe such acts in a way that distinguished them from any acts

that would not necessarily end a friendship? I will argue in the following chapter that

they will be acts which both Judy and John believe it would be blameworthy of Judy to

perform, and I will go on to suggest that what acts both consider to be blameworthy,

both will consider unjust – in the most general sense of injustice. Hence, we could avoid

attributing to Judy a belief in constitutive incomparabilities and explain her indignation

39 Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, 1157a24-b20. 40 “Friendship, Justice and Supererogation”, American Philosophical Quarterly, v22, 2, April 1985; 123-130. Much of what Badhwar says about personal friendships is also applicable to impersonal ones, such as alliances between nations.

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in much more familiar terms. We could say that Judy’s indignation, when she is invited

to compare the value of her friendship with $1 million, will arise from the imputation

that she might act unjustly in return for $1 million – and it will be a resistance to

treating her friend unjustly, and not to comparing friendship with money, that, in Raz’s

phrase, is constitutive of friendship. But I will also seek to show how Judy’s resistance

to treating her friend unjustly could be a resistance to doing what she judges she would

do better to refrain from doing, and hence how it could be a resistance, not to comparing

the value of options, but having compared them, to pursuing the option that she judges

has the lesser value. And that this could be so no matter how much money that option

would gain her.

How will that demonstration proceed? I will propose that if Judy is John’s friend, then

she must recognise herself as being required to justify to John her judgment whether she

would do better to φ or to refrain from φ-ing. And I will argue that it is a feature of

exchanges for money as they are commonly thought of that the holder of the money

does not need to justify to anybody but herself her judgment whether she would do

better to exchange the money for something else or to refrain from doing so. Hence, the

resistance which Raz is attributing to Judy’s recognition of an incomparability will turn

out to be a resistance to acting on practical comparative judgments that Judy believes

she cannot justify to her friend. It will be a resistance, that is, to taking it that her

practical comparative judgments are justified just because they are judgments she

reaches; to taking it that whether anybody else thinks her judgments justified is never

relevant for her thinking them justified.

I want to make two comments about these suggestions before putting some foundations

under them in the next chapter. The first is that what is both confusing and effective

about Raz’s claim for the incomparability of money and friendship is that it inserts a

wedge between personal and legal conceptions of justice. If I am to resist ending a

friendship for money, then I am to resist acting unjustly for money. But I may treat a

personal friend unjustly without breaking the law (for example, I may break promises to

her which are not legally binding contracts), just as I may treat a personal friend justly

while breaking the law (for example, two friends might consensually perform with one

another sexual acts that the law prohibits). Raz has pointed out, in effect, that friends

sometimes will resist doing in return for money what they might legally do in return for

money. He does so partly because, I suspect, it is too obvious that all sorts of people

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will resist doing for money what they might not legally do. And also partly because,

even though this is so, it may be argued against the sort of conclusion Raz wants to

draw that what is behind their resistance is not a belief in an incomparability but a

desire to avoid any punishment with which the law is enforced. Nevertheless, we are

now in a position to see that we need not posit any eccentric billionaire in order to

construct an example where a person considers whether she shall give up a friendship

for $1 million. We need only to consider that, for example, John has $1 million and

Judy is in a position to relieve him of it in a way that both John and Judy would

consider fraudulent. It is not difficult to see that if Judy is John’s personal friend then

she will resist doing this, whether or not her doing it would be criminally fraudulent;

and conversely, that if she does not resist then nobody would say she was John’s

personal friend. But we are distracted from seeing this by the likelihood that many ways

in which she might do it would be criminally fraudulent.

The second comment is that my making this point in terms of justice is both effective

and confusing. It is effective because justice is a familiar concept that allows me to

make the point in a familiar way. But it is confusing because the concept is used in a

range of specific senses. Hence we have Aristotle’s distinguishing between justice as

the whole of virtue and justice as a part of virtue;41 and Badhwar’s observing that

contemporary writers discussing friendship have tended to diverge from Aristotle’s

claim that the demands of justice increase with the intensity of friendship, arguing, for

example, that justice involves universal principles whereas friendship implies

partiality.42 And indeed, I invite confusion when I suggest above that I may treat a

personal friend justly while breaking the law, for if I am breaking the law then what I

am doing is obviously unjust in a legal sense. I would invite confusion also if I

substituted for unjust the term vicious, because that term too tends to be applied in a

range of senses, not all of which imply injustice: a car might skid viciously on a greasy

road. That is why, in the next chapter, I shall substitute for unjust the term blameworthy.

Kovesi argued that what distinguished our moral notions from other notions was their

having been formed from the point of view of praising and blaming, and so in adopting

the term blameworthy I am being consistent with Kovesi’s terminology. I am also using

the most general available term of condemnation that we apply to people and their

behaviour but rarely to animals or objects or to their behaviour. Because we typically

41 Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, sections i and ii (1129a3-1130b30). 42 Badhwar, op. cit.

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withhold the term blameworthy from objects, we will be less inclined to focus

confusingly on competing notions of having when constructing an argument that

explains the social patterns Raz points to – and that explains them not as resulting from

people’s resisting making certain practical comparative judgments, but as resulting from

their making such judgments.

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8. Friendship and money

The relation of money to friendship turns not on a friend’s resistance to comparing but

on her resistance to believing that her preferences provide a sufficient basis for the

justification of her comparative practical judgments.

8.1 Overview

I ARGUED in the previous chapter that Raz’s account of constitutive incomparability

could not explain the social patterns he had pointed to in its support, because

somebody’s belief that two items were constitutively incomparable could not account

for their resisting exchanging one item for the other. I also argued that Raz’s

representing the comparative practical judgments people face when choosing between

items in terms of a choice of which item to have tended to confuse us, because on the

one hand the items might be had in different senses, and on the other it left ambiguous

what act was required of an agent giving up one item in return for the other. I said that

where the exchange was with money, we could exorcise some of the confusion by

representing the choice as between someone’s φ-ing and their refraining from φ-ing,

where their gaining money was conditional upon their φ-ing. And I suggested, in

closing, that if we wanted to generalise about what acts friends, in so far as they were

friends, would resist performing in return for money, we could distinguish such acts by

saying that they were blameworthy acts – or more familiarly, but confusingly, unjust

acts, in the sense in which justice is the whole of virtue, and of blamelessness.

That suggestion allowed me to explain the indignation with which Raz says some

people will respond to invitations to compare friendship and money, without attributing

to them a belief in the incomparability of the items. The indignation arose from an

imputation such invitations carried, that the person invited to compare would treat their

friend in a blameworthy manner (or more familiarly, unjustly) if their financial incentive

for doing so was big enough. That is an imputation defamatory of the invitee’s

character: our invitee Judy, for example, might easily think it imputed that she was a

blameworthy (or unjust, or vicious) person.

This explains the indignant response in a way that is more familiar. But it also moves us

on to facing a puzzling comparison of a more familiar kind. For we seem now to be

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saying of Judy that she will decline to treat her friend in a blameworthy manner even

where she could gain a big sum of money – $1 million, perhaps – from doing so. While

this is not implausible, it seems to suggest that just as Raz argues of friendship, there is

something special about the value that avoiding treating her friend in a blameworthy

manner has for Judy that will lead her to resist comparing the value of acting in a

blameworthy way with the value of money. Or alternatively, that there is something

sacred or lexically superior about the value of acting blamelessly that for some people

would make doing so, as Chang suggests of some friendships, emphatically better than

gaining money – that is, better than gaining any amount.

But then, as Chang has observed, $1 million could purchase a surgical operation that

saves the life of a close friend or relative.1 And thus, the comparison Judy faces seems

to parallel directly a kind of comparison that is familiarly offered as a challenge to the

utilitarian ethical outlook. To offer an example that I will examine in detail in the

following, concluding chapter, it seems to parallel the comparison facing surgeons who

have an opportunity to kill an innocent recluse who happens to be unconscious on their

operating table, and to use his organs to save the lives of five patients who are urgently

in need of various transplants.

In this chapter I offer a way in which we can understand Judy’s resistance to treating her

friend in a blameworthy manner in return for money, not as her valuing her

blamelessness over money, but as her judging justifiably that the blameworthy act

serves her ends less effectively than its blameless alternative, even where the

blameworthy act would gain her a big sum of money. I will argue that if Judy is a

friend, then her ends must be more general than her gaining of money, because she must

share an end with at least somebody else. Given the generality of her ends, she will be

able to justify a judgment that she would do better to resist acting to gain money in

some cases, no matter how big the sum she might gain, on the grounds that it would

disserve them.

I will do so by returning to Raz’s argument and seeking to explain what I have said he

neglected to explain: what he might have meant by the value of money, and by the value

of friendship, and what would be the covering value for the comparison between

friendship and money that he thought friends must resist.

1 In “Against Constitutive Incommensurability or Buying and Selling Friends”.

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8.2 Money

I shall tackle money first because, perhaps surprisingly, it is the easiest of the three

omissions to remedy in a way that will serve for the argument. When Raz refers to the

value of money, what he is referring to is very obviously the value that money has for

the person who holds it. Of course this depends on what money will buy, and so in

going only this far it may appear as though I am begging the very question which I am

seeking to answer. But I do not need to go much further, because what money can buy

from other people is not very relevant for the question of how its value features in

decisions friends make about how they will treat one another. As Chang observes,

money can buy the sorts of goods she describes as intrinsic goods. And while her

exemplifying the possibility that money could buy a life-saving surgical operation

makes her point well, the surgical operation counts as intrinsically good only in so far as

it preserves a human life, and hence we cannot rule out the possibility that money’s

capacity to purchase even so ordinary a commodity as food renders it capable of

purchasing an intrinsic good, in so far as food too is essential for human life. The reason

none of this is very relevant for the question we are examining is that it is not the extent

of money’s capacity for purchasing commodities that is the primary issue here. What is

primary is the question what could justify a person’s judgment that he does better to do

whatever will secure the money for himself, or the judgment that he does better to

refrain from doing that. And it turns out to be central to Raz’s notion of the value of

money that anything could justify that judgment, provided it is the judgment of the

person who will hold the money.

The value of money then, in the sense Raz’s argument assumes, will be the value for its

holder of being his own judge of whether it will be exchanged for something else and,

conversely and crucially for Raz, of whether something else will be given up in return

for money. It is the value of having something as one’s personal property or secure

possession, the value of asserting the distinction between mine and thine that David

Hume thought would be rendered unnecessary in prospect by universal benevolence,

and that he claimed was rendered unnecessary in practice by marriage.

“It is easy to remark,” Hume wrote in expounding upon the origin of justice and

property, “that a cordial affection renders all things common among friends; and that

married people, in particular, mutually lose their property, and are unacquainted with

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the mine and thine, which are so necessary, and yet cause such disturbance in human

society.”2 Even if we think Hume went too far here, we can appreciate that if in some

marriages couples do consider that they hold much of their property jointly, then

explicitly or implicitly, each will be in a position to require that the other account to

them for any disposal or exchange of their joint holdings to outsiders. That one party to

such a marriage could have good reason to complain if the other gave them a very

expensive gift makes the point, for unless the two divide their holdings among

themselves at least notionally, then the gift-giver has taken it upon himself to exchange,

for the gift to the other, property that was already part of the holdings of the gift’s

recipient. Further, even if the pair were mutually to decide that either could exchange

some part of their joint holdings with outsiders without justifying the goodness of the

exchange to the other, that prior decision would itself count as the justification for such

an exchange being made.3

In contrast, where property is not held jointly, then the exclusive holder is ordinarily

conceived of as not being required to justify to anybody his disposal of the money or

other property to another in exchange for any amount of anything else.

I say ordinarily conceived because there will be many social constraints on our disposal

and acquisition of money and other property that are not typically thought of as being

part of our judgments about prices. I may be called to account publicly if I exchange my

money for recreational drugs whose private possession is a criminal offence, and I may

be called to account privately if I always claim to be too poor to shout my friends a

round of drinks but drive to the bar in my Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. But to notice this is to

anticipate some of what is to come. When we consider in isolation a person’s financial

evaluation of some commodity which may be legally held, we tend to think that their

comparison of the value of that commodity with the value of money – that is, the

judgment whether their having the commodity is better than, worse than or just as good

as their having some financial sum – is a comparison whose result that person does not

2 A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part 2, Section 2. 3 In Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), Stephen Buckle draws out carefully the implications for natural law property theory of Samuel Pufendorf’s distinction between negative and positive community in property. Property held in negative community is available for use by any member of the community in – with circumstantial restrictions – any amount. In contrast, property held in positive community may be appropriated by any particular member only with the explicit consent of the other members. The distinction is no less relevant for how property might jointly be held in a marriage – because it is only after a couple has chosen to hold their assets either in positive or negative community (or of course, not to hold it communally at all), that it can be seen clearly what would count as a justification for either spouse’s disposal of some of the property.

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need to justify to others. The person buying or selling is the only proper judge of the

commodity’s financial value for him: as economic theorists like to put the matter, the

consumer is sovereign. Hence, when Raz refers to somebody comparing the value of

(having) A with the value of (having) money, he has it in mind, I suggest, that the

question whether it is better to have A or to give it up for the money is a question that

whoever has A may answer on any basis he chooses.

We can see this reflected in the way Raz phrases his example where he proposes that

Judy is asked to say whether her friendship with John is worth more or less than, or the

same as, $1 million. What Judy may refuse to judge, Raz thinks, is “whether she values

her friendship with John more or less than she values $1,000,000”.4 The emphasis, only,

is mine. Hence, when any of Raz’s hypothetical agents is considering whether to

exchange a child, or spousal companionship, or friendship for money, what she is

considering is whether she values the child, companionship or friendship more than she

values the money. And Raz assumes, while not saying so, that her evaluation is not

susceptible to demands from others for its justification, if it is to be an evaluation in

financial terms.

That Raz has made this assumption becomes glaringly obvious when we recognise that

all his examples fail if we permit their agents to discuss with the child, spouse or friend

who would be the object of an exchange whether it would be better to make the

exchange, and to take it that the agent makes the exchange only if the two agree that it

would be better. The allowing of discussion also raises the possibility of the two sharing

the financial proceeds. (And while a child might not be a good judge, in that case we

could take it that the agent puts himself in the place of the child and considers in a

disinterested way whether the exchange could be good for the child). For if the agent is

to proceed only on this basis – that is, the basis that the object of the exchange agrees

(explicitly or putatively) that it would be better to make the exchange than not to – then

it is hard to see how an agent who is a friend, a good spouse or a good parent could

plausibly be required to resist any of the exchanges in question.

To elaborate: the exchange of a child for money, whatever it amounted to, is not the sort

of thing anybody would think a parent must resist if they accepted as well-founded the

parent’s conclusion that it would be good for the child. That is why many parents will

4 The Morality of Freedom, p337.

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collude in obtaining paid employment for their children, or will act as agents for

talented children who are sought after by casting agencies or professional football teams

that are willing to contract them for a fee, and we do not think this necessarily shows a

failure to respect the parental relationship. It might be objected that to sign such a

contract on behalf of a child hardly amounts to the selling of a child, and that what Raz

thought good parents would resist was the selling of a child. But is it that good parents

will resist selling a child, or that only what good parents will resist can count for Raz as

selling a child? Obviously the latter holds: it is only among those exchanges which good

parents will resist that we will find exchanges that Raz would count as the selling of a

child, in so far as he wants to take the resistance to be coextensive with the description

of the transaction as a sale. And none of those will be an exchange that would be easy

for the parent to justify to others – or to the child when she has grown to adulthood – as

being good for the child.

Consider now the exchanging of spousal companionship for money, which will be

clearer in so far as we credit the spouse with knowing as well as anybody else what

behaviour from others it would be in her interests to endorse. Recall that Raz thinks

some people would react indignantly if it were proposed that they leave their spouse for

a month for money. Again, Raz must assume that they are not offered the opportunity to

put the proposal to their spouse. He must assume this, because there could be little cause

for indignation if that opportunity were explicitly tendered. Suppose somebody says to

me: “Do you think your wife would mind your taking a holiday to Paris, all expenses

paid, for a month, if I also threw $10,000 your way? Unfortunately she couldn’t go with

you. Please ask her, and accept only if she would be comfortable that you go.” Unless I

suspect it has been offered from malicious motives, that is not a proposal that merits

from me an indignant retort, no matter how respectful I am of my spousal relationship.

It might merit an indignant retort if I suspected that something sinister lay behind it – in

particular, if I thought it was designed to create an opportunity to do harm to my wife.

But if it is, then it is not the comparison of the value of companionship with the value of

money that I will resist but the harm or other sinister purpose. Conversely, if my wife

thinks it would be good for me to have the holiday and she is quite happy to fend for

herself while I do, and delighted that we will benefit jointly to the tune of $10,000, and I

am of the same mind and have good reason to believe that nothing sinister lies behind

the offer, then there is no basis upon which proper respect for spousal companionship

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could require me to resist it. This is why Raz says anybody might accept such an offer if

it is made out of friendship.

Finally, we must take it that whatever is to count as Judy giving up her friendship with

John in exchange for $1 million, it will not be something to which John would agree

(possibly in return for a share in the proceeds). Which is to say that it will not be

something that Judy could justify to John as being better that she do than not do. It will

not be something like this because it is not plausible that Judy’s being John’s friend

could require her to resist doing something that John would accept she would be better

to do than to refrain from doing.5

When Raz writes, then, of a person comparing the value of A with the value of money,

and resisting doing so where A is a child, spousal companionship or a friend, what he is

assuming implicitly is that the person making the comparison may use any justification

she likes for her judgment whether the A or the money is better – or in my preferred

formulation, her judgment whether she would be better to do whatever act φ will result

in her taking possession of the money. For example, she may simply take it to be a

question about which she prefers to have, or what she prefers to do.

The association of money with unjustified judgment is contingent, not necessary. It is

part of the point of money being properly mine that I am not formally required to justify

to anybody how much of it I exchange for anything in particular, if what I exchange it

for may also be properly mine. If I want to pay more than $1 million for a military

decoration posthumously awarded for valour to a soldier of World War I who is not

related to me, as the Australian entrepreneur Kerry Stokes did about the time I was

composing this chapter, then I am not formally required to justify to anybody else why I

judged it better to have property in the medal rather than the money, given that the

money was mine. I may properly say merely that I preferred the medal, or I may say

nothing at all. Nevertheless, I am not prohibited, either, from offering other people a

5 Note that the claims I am making here are claims of sufficiency and not of necessity. If the transaction is good for the child then respect for the child will not require a parent to resist it. But even if the transaction is not good for the child, it will not be necessary that a respectful parent resists it – her circumstances may require her to make a painful decision that involves her risking harm to one child for the sake of protecting her others, for example, and while the choice may be morally problematic it is not necessarily a decision that no respectful parent would make. Similarly, that my spouse or friend agrees that I would do better to act in a certain way is sufficient for my acting that way while respecting them. But it is not necessary that a respectful spouse or friend always resist acting unless there is, or would be, agreement. I shall have more to say about this below.

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justification for my judgments about whether I do better to exchange a certain sum for a

certain A, and there may be many cases where I will choose to offer a justification – and

Stokes offered one to his community generally.

Nevertheless, it is the association of money with unjustified judgments about the

goodness of options which has permitted Raz plausibly to make the argument that he

has made while neither offering a covering value for the comparison – in my preferred

terms, an account of what the point of the comparison would be – nor specifying to

whom the comparative judgment is to be justified.

8.3 Friendship

So much for the value of money. Now, what might Raz have been assuming was the

value of friendship?

The difficulty here is that he could have assumed all sorts of things, because the term

friend has all sorts of meanings in contemporary English. This is what allows Chang to

object that she would not necessarily show an incapacity for friendship just by gaining

$1 million at the price of ending a “superficial and banal” friendship she has with her

local butcher. She takes this to be a friendship even though her interactions with the

butcher never extended past the exchanging of pleasantries and the buying and selling

of meat. A friend could also be simply somebody who is on one’s side, distinguished

from one’s foes,6 and a friend in this sense may well be a person whom one has never

met or even somebody whose existence one knows of only statistically. Or a friend

could be somebody who you like and know very well and who likes you and knows you

very well. It could even be your spouse – indeed, some people will say that their

husband or wife is their best friend.

The variety of relationships that are commonly described as friendships introduces a

good deal of ambiguity into Raz’s argument, and it is this that has led Chang to propose

that Raz’s claims could not apply to friendship as such but only to tokens of friendship7

– that is, to relationships one has with particular people. The idea here is that the value

6 Oxford English Dictionary Online, entry for friend, n & a: “6. a. As opposed to enemy in various senses: One who is on good terms with another, not hostile or at variance; one who is on the same side in warfare, politics, etc.” (The annotation 6. a. distinguishes the entry from definition 6. b.) 7 In “Against Constitutive Incommensurability”.

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of a relationship to either one of its participants will vary according to the depth of the

bond that joins them in friendship, and of course there is a strong sense in which this is

so. Hence, Chang thinks that while one might rightly end the superficial friendship with

one’s butcher for $1 million, it is less obvious that this could apply to her friendship

with a hypothetical close friend, Eve.

However, this is not a helpful way of thinking about friendship if we are to appreciate

what underlies Raz’s argument. It is not helpful because it presupposes the very thing

that Raz’s conception of the value of money assumes: that the question whether it

would be better for me to have the friendship or not to have it could be a matter just of

what I prefer, which is to say that any justification for my judging it better to forgo the

friendship would do if I accepted it. And to presuppose that is to presuppose what we

are investigating here, for we are seeking to explain Raz’s core intuition that a friend

would not value their friendship in this way, and without drawing upon what I have

argued is an insupportable notion, that of incomparability. I have argued that what are

claimed to be problems of comparability turn out to be problems of justification: that we

can justify a judgment that A is better than, worse than or as good as B only with

reference to an account of what we are to take ‘better’ to mean in the particular case.

And, immediately above, I have argued that it is a feature of typical market cases where

a person compares the value of a commodity with the value of money that we conceive

of his judgment as being justifiable merely in terms of his preferences.

8.4 Friendship and the justification of practical judgments

What I will propose is that nobody has a friendship if he conceives of his judgments

about the goodness of his behaviour as being justifiable merely in terms of his

preferences. That it is a necessary condition for somebody’s being a friend that he

recognises that he is accountable to some other person for his behaviour, which is to say

that he sees himself as being required to justify his behaviour to that person. What will

count as an adequate or sufficient justification remains an open question at this point,

but to recognise myself as being required to justify my behaviour to another is to

recognise that it cannot count as a justification merely that my behaviour was in accord

with my preferences. For to say that I am always justified in doing what I prefer to do is

to assert that I am justified in doing whatever I like. And to assert that is to offer no

grounds upon which anybody might challenge my judgment that I would do better to φ

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than to refrain from φ-ing. It is to assert that whether anybody else accepts that I did

better to φ is never relevant to the question whether I did better to φ. And nobody who

asserts that is anybody’s friend, I propose.

Why might it be so that such an assertion is necessarily incompatible with friendship? It

is because nobody can maintain that assertion while having an interest in contributing to

the welfare of another, or at least an interest in refraining from acting so as to diminish

her welfare: I cannot maintain that assertion while caring about the welfare anybody

else. And obviously, if I am to be anybody’s friend, I must care about the welfare of

somebody other than myself.

What is the link, then, between caring for another person and being accountable to them

for one’s practical judgments? This is the most central and elusive part of my argument,

and it is offered tentatively in an attempt to sidestep the multiple versions of

psychological egoism while still distinguishing a person’s acting in a way that takes no

account of the interests of others from their acting in a way that promotes those interests

and because it promotes them – even though the interests of others may rightly still be

seen as forming a part of the person’s self-interest. It is a way, also, of understanding

what Aristotle means when he says in the Rhetoric that friendly activity is a matter of

attempting to bring about what you believe to be good things for another person for

their sake.8 The difficulty in either case is how we are to distinguish somebody’s acting

to promote another’s interests – in Aristotle’s terms, acting for the sake of another –

from his acting to promote his own interests (acting for his own sake), if we are

prepared to concede, as we must, that when he acts to promote another’s interest he may

well also be acting in a way that is or appears to him to be good for him in some sense.9

I suggest we can resolve the difficulty if we credit people generally with each being in a

privileged position when it comes to knowing their own good, as a wide range of

ethical, political and economic theories must (and the various versions of liberalism,

preference utilitarianism and neoclassical economics are obviously among them). For if

I am to take it that, in principle, another person knows things about her own good that I

8 “We may describe friendly feeling towards anyone as wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not for your own sake but for his, and being inclined, so far as you can, to bring these things about.”1380b34-1381b34. I am indebted to John Cooper for drawing to my attention this passage. See “Aristotle on Friendship”, in A. O. Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, University of California Press, 1980; pp301-340. 9 For a detailed critical discussion of the various versions of egoism see Kavka, Gregory, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986; Chapter 2: Human nature (pp 29-82).

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cannot, then it would be inconsistent of me to see myself as acting to promote her

welfare, if I think it must be irrelevant whether she thinks I am promoting her welfare. I

might think she is sometimes wrong about what promotes her welfare, and might do

something for her sake that she thought I would have been better not to do, but this is

not necessarily to dismiss her judgment as never relevant; it may be, rather, to claim that

her judgment is poor in this case.

The distinction here may seem elusively subtle, especially given people’s differing

capacities to understand what would be good for them and their differing degrees of

experience in resolving particular practical problems. An obvious example is the

relation between parent and child, where the child will be in a unique position to know

her own good (a physician will ask the child to tell him whether she feels pain when he

manipulates a part of her body, because she knows that better than he can) and yet very

often a parent will rightly see his judgment about what promotes her welfare as superior

to hers, and so will do things for her sake that she thinks him better not to do. In such a

case, how are we to distinguish his dismissing her judgment as irrelevant from his

claiming that her judgment is poor? We distinguish, I suggest, on the basis that in the

former case the parent does not see himself as being accountable to the child for his

actions, whereas in the latter he does. Remember that in the former case the parent takes

it that the child’s judgment is never relevant, and what it is never relevant for is his

justifying his own judgment that he has acted well. The parent who takes this position

takes it that he acts well just because he judges that he has acted well, and while his

actions might nevertheless promote the welfare of his child, that neither the child nor

anybody else thinks they do cannot count for him as evidence that they might not. In

contrast, in the latter case the parent sees himself as being required to justify to the child

– or perhaps, and putatively, later to the grown child – his overriding the child’s

judgment about what would be good for her, and hence sees the child’s judgment not as

irrelevant in so far as it is her judgment but as relevant and yet demonstrably wrong.

My offering a parent-child relationship as an example may highlight for us the

possibility that what Hume thought of as sympathy could render attention to another’s

judgments unnecessary. And indeed, the idea that a parent sees himself as putatively

justifying his actions to his grown child could have practical application only through

the parent’s sympathising – perhaps today we would prefer the term empathising – with

the child. For it is only in so far as the parent can put himself in the child’s place that he

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can reasonably see himself, when he overrides her judgments, as being capable of

distinguishing her interests from his own, and clearly it is an elementary aspect of good

parenting that he both makes that distinction and sometimes overrides her judgments.

Hence, it might be objected, against my proposition that caring for another person

requires that I justify my practical judgments to that person explicitly or putatively, that

in so far as the justification could be putative then sympathy could replace justification.

And therefore that justification is not required after all.

But to think that the objection counts against my proposition is to misunderstand the

proposition. For the proposition is not that a friend must actually account for his

practical judgments to another, but that he recognise himself as being accountable.

Actual justification is required only where the other demands it, and it is conceivable in

theory, if rather unlikely in practice, that a person could have so much sympathy for

another that he could be her friend while never needing to account for his practical

judgments to her explicitly. This is close to the position Hume takes when he proposes

that material abundance or universal benevolence would render justice unnecessary.10

However, to sympathise with another, in this sense, is also to recognise oneself as being

accountable to that other: when the sympathetic person refrains from infringing upon

the welfare of his friend, it must be because he recognises that she would not think his

infringement justified, and because it matters to him that she would not. Otherwise, the

compatibility of his behaviour with her welfare will merely be fortunate. Of course,

Hume is right to think that our feelings of affection for other adults or for our children

play a big role in motivating us to behave in ways that are compatible with their

welfare, and a person who did not experience these feelings would have difficulty

understanding why other people behaved as they did. It is an added reason why we

abhor exposing young children to overwhelming fear and chronically callous behaviour

– as child soldiers, for example – that we think this will lead to their habitually, which is

to say unconsciously, suppressing their awareness of their tender feelings for other

people and therefore to their growing into brutal and destructively selfish adults.

Hence, much of what I have said about the link between caring for another person and

being accountable to them for one’s practical judgments could be explained in terms of

this Humean notion of sympathy: I could have said that if I care for another person then

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I will sympathise with them in this Humean way, and that this will lead to me behaving

in ways that are compatible with their welfare. However, there are two reasons why I

have taken an alternative course. The first is that Hume builds too much into his concept

of sympathy. For as the example of a parent raising a child again illustrates, we should

not assume that feelings of affection, no matter how powerful, could guarantee

benevolence. What a parent needs, as well as the wish to act for the good of a child, is

knowledge of what that would be, and it is not obvious that people who raise happy

children must have felt more affection for them than did people who we think acceded

to their children’s judgments either more or less than we believe has been good for the

children. More generally, benevolence is not merely a matter of being disposed to help

other people: it is also a matter of having good judgment about what will help them. It

will be a part of developing that good judgment that one is capable of attending to other

people’s judgments about what will help them. Again, we have only to think of how

hindering can be the efforts of an affectionate young child to help her parent to see that

this must be so.

The other reason why I have chosen to emphasise accountability, rather than sympathy

or affection, as being an essential feature of relations between friends, is that doing so

allows me to connect friendship effectively with my thesis about how comparative

practical judgments must be justified. For I have proposed that it is a condition for

somebody’s being a friend that he recognises he is accountable to his friend for his

behaviour, and have said that a friend therefore must see himself as being required to

justify to that person his judgments about what it would be to act well. I have argued

also that a person’s asserting that he may do just as he prefers to do cannot count as

such a justification. If I am right about these things, then I can account for what

underlies Raz’s core intuition by saying, not that a friend will resist comparing the

values of certain options, but that she will not find sufficient a certain sort of

justification for her judgment of those values.

Raz’s intuition is that a friend will not compare the value of a friendship with the value

of money. I have argued that for Raz, to compare the value of any A with the value of

money is implicitly no more than to consider whether it would be preferable to have the

A or the money. And I have pointed out that the question whether to have A or a sum of

10 “Encrease to a sufficient degree the benevolence of men, or the bounty of nature, and you render justice useless, by supplying its place with much nobler virtues, and more valuable blessings.” A Treatise of

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money will inevitably be a question whether or not to φ, where one’s φ-ing is a

condition of one’s gaining the money. Hence for Raz, to compare the value of any A

with the value of money is to judge whether one would do better to φ, where to judge

that is implicitly merely to decide whether one would prefer to φ. But one cannot be

anybody’s friend, I have argued, if one believes that to judge whether one would do

better to φ is nothing but to decide whether one would prefer to φ. Hence, if one is to be

anybody’s friend, one will not believe that to judge whether one would do better to φ is

simply to decide whether one would prefer to φ. Therefore, if one is to be anybody’s

friend, one will not compare the value, not only of friendship, but of any A with the

value of money, given Raz’s implicit assumption about what this comprises.

The conclusion that a friend will not compare the value of any A with the value of

money looks unacceptably strong. It suggests that nobody who lives a normal life in a

community that uses money can have any friends. And that suggests that my alternative

account is not very plausible, since we ordinarily tend to think of friendship abounding

in any money-using community.

There is a way in which the conclusion might be defensible nevertheless, even in its

strongest form, for if we were to model an account of friendship on that given by

Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, and were to accept the most stringent

interpretation of that account, then we would want to say with Aristotle that what he

describes as the friendship of virtue, or alternatively as perfect friendship, rarely occurs,

and it could be argued that the saints and heroes who would be the sole participants in

such friendships must recognise themselves to be accountable to their friends even for

trivial decisions they make in the course of ordinary buying and selling.11 And

conversely, that anybody who imagined that they were not accountable to any others

even for such trivial decisions could not be anybody’s friend in this perfect sense, and

that this would apply to almost anybody but saints and heroes who lived a normal life in

a community that used money. Such an argument, as I say, might be made plausibly, but

that is not the route I propose to take here, although it is closely related to the route I

will take.

Human Nature, Book III, Part 2, Section 2. 11 Aristotle observes that friendships of virtue are rare at 1156b25-32. The suggestion that saints and heroes would be the only perfect friends on this interpretation of Aristotle’s account was made before me by Cooper, op. cit.

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Rather, what I shall point out is that in recasting Raz’s argument I have retained the

assumption I have said is implicit in his conception of what it is for somebody to

compare the value of some item A with the value of money, which is that any

justification will count as sufficient for the evaluative judgment. And I have noted, in

arguing for the hidden presence of this assumption, that I am not claiming the

assumption is justified: I have allowed that the sufficiency of individual preference for

justifying our financial evaluations may well be more apparent than real.

If we can accept that many people take themselves to be accountable to others when

participating in the activities that generate prices, whether or not they always notice that

they so take themselves, then we can accept that friendship may be widespread after all

in many communities that use money. But to accept this will be to accept that, whether

they notice it or not, many people’s financial evaluations – their judgments about when

they would do well to behave in the ways we describe as buying or selling – are not

based only on their individual preferences, but take into account the judgments of at

least some others about what it would be to act well.

So much for the value of friendship. Now, what can we say about the “covering value”

of the comparison which Raz thinks friends must resist?

8.5 Friendship, money and the covering value

I use the term covering value merely to emphasise that what I am arguing about the

importance of articulating a point for any comparison whose result we are to justify to

others is consistent with what other writers have previously observed. Chang has

thought it obvious that any comparison must proceed in terms of a covering value, and

as far as I am aware no one has sought to refute her. I have sought to elaborate upon this

position, arguing that the role of the covering value is not so much to allow a

comparison to proceed as to allow any judge of the comparison to justify to other people

the judgment he reaches. Hence, a person considering whether to exchange what is

properly his for some sum of money may reach a judgment that he would do better to

exchange should the sum reach some minimum, but we tend to think of him as not

being formally required to justify that judgment to anybody but himself. It is because he

does not need to justify the judgment to others that he does not need to articulate what

he took to be the point of the comparison: it could have any point for him, from his

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relative preferences for consumption (the minimum sum is reached when he can

exchange what consumption goods he holds, through an intermediary exchange with

money, for consumption goods that he would prefer to hold) to his kindness (he will

supply some other particular person from his holdings for a smaller sum than he might

obtain for them elsewhere, because he wants to help that person) to his wish to make a

point to himself or to others about the extent of his holdings (he will roll a cigarette

from a $100 note even though the flavour of the cigarette is not materially enhanced

over its flavour when rolled from a proprietary cigarette paper costing no more than one

cent). It is because people considering exchanging what is thought of as being properly

theirs for money are not formally required to justify to others the financially evaluative

judgments they reach that we find ourselves puzzled when we consider how they would

judge the goodness of exchanging for money something we did not think was theirs in

the appropriate sense, or perhaps did not think could be theirs in that sense, such as their

child, the companionship of their spouse or their friendship with another person. The

case of their friendship is particularly confusing, because as soon as we conceive of

somebody assessing the goodness of a possible act of exchange as something that will

depend just on his preference, the very existence of the friendship that is the supposed

object of the exchange is cast into doubt. Nevertheless, I have argued against the

conclusion that friendship and money are therefore constitutively incomparable: the

problem, I have said, is not a problem of comparability but one of justification. What

distinguishes a friend from somebody who could not be anybody’s friend is not that the

friend will resist comparing the value of the friendship with the value of money, but that

the friend will not take his judgment about the comparison as being justified by its

serving a certain sort of point, whereas the person who could not be anybody’s friend

will see his judgment as justified if it serves that point.

So, what is the point of the comparison that a friend will resist – the covering value that

will be rejected? What should be plain from the foregoing is that the covering value a

friend will reject is not, after all, any particular point that might be articulated for a

comparison whether the value of the friendship was greater than, less than or just the

same as the value of a sum of money, but, rather, the proposition that any point he

articulated could justify his judgment that the value of the friendship was greater than,

less than or just the same as the value of a sum of money, just because that was the

point he had articulated. A friend, that is to say, will not think it irrelevant what his

friend takes to be the point of acting well – or as we might also put it, what his friend

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takes to be the end of good action. He may still disagree with his friend about whether

he has acted well in some particular case, but rather than claim he must be right because

it is irrelevant what his friend thinks, he will recognise himself as being required to

demonstrate to his friend why she is wrong in this case, and to attend to her attempts to

show why she is right.

How could such demonstrations proceed? Recall that a comparison whether a person

would be better to have any A or a sum of money can be expressed less ambiguously as

a comparison whether that person would do better to φ or to refrain from φ-ing, where

she believes her φ-ing would gain her money (or avoid its loss). And recall my theme in

this thesis that a comparative judgment can be justified only with reference to the point

the comparison is intended to serve. What will be the point of the above comparison? It

will be whatever is articulated as the formal element of doing better: it will be, in other

words, whatever is taken to be the end of good action. So, how can anybody

demonstrate to their friend that they would do better to φ than not to? Only by showing

how their φ-ing would serve an end of good action. Plainly, however, anybody could

respond to such a demonstration with the retort that, while it showed convincingly that

one’s φ-ing would be an effective instrument for the achievement of that end,

nevertheless they disagreed that the end was good and hence disagreed with the

conclusion that the other would do better to φ. Hence, I can demonstrate to anybody that

I would do better to φ only in so far as they share or approve of my ends.

But here we come to an apparent conundrum, because suddenly it appears to be

ambiguous what it would mean to demonstrate to somebody that I would do better to φ.

For let us say that I show my φ-ing to be a superior instrument for achieving some end,

and my friend retorts that I am right but he neither shares that end nor approves of it. I

have, nevertheless, justified to my friend my judgment that I would do better to φ, given

that end. And surely I am not required to share with my friend every end that I have, nor

to seek his endorsement for every end that I have. I might think it is good to hold a title

to real estate, while that might be an end that my friend neither shares nor approves of,

given that he sees the commitment to a mortgage as the taking on of a yoke which

crushes the spirit of its bearer while abetting the capitalists he despises. But given that it

is an end I approve of, surely I can justify to my friend my strategy for securing a

mortgage, as being better than some alternative strategy. And surely his disapproval of

my aim of securing a mortgage does not necessarily render us ineligible to be friends at

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least in some sense. And hence, even if I am right that friends must recognise

themselves as mutually accountable, all that is needed for friendship is that friends

understand what each other’s ends are, and accept that their chosen means to their ends

are the best means.

Plainly, however, this will not do, for on that basis enemies could recognise themselves

as required to justify to one another (putatively, not explicitly) their strategies for

bringing the other down, as the best available for serving that end, and in accepting such

a requirement would be friends after all. This is ethical relativism in an extreme form,

and one that is obviously absurd. What is the alternative? It is that in saying that a

person is required to justify to his friend his judgment that he would do better to φ, I

cannot mean merely that the person must show that his φ-ing is a better means than his

refraining from φ-ing for the attainment of some end that pleases him. The requirement,

rather, is to show my friend that my φ-ing would serve, not just my good, but the good:

it is to show, in other words, that my φ-ing would be, in a strong sense, objectively

better than my refraining from φ-ing. And it is to show this by appealing to my friend’s

judgment about what is good.

Let me be clear that in saying this I am not attributing to anybody perfect knowledge of

the good, and nor am I suggesting that people could be friends only in so far as they had

such knowledge. What anybody has, if they are thought of as somebody uniquely

qualified to know their own good, is not perfect knowledge of the good but the

necessity of judging what is good, for it is only in so far as they can judge what is good

that they can judge what act would be the better instrument for achieving it. And while

there will always be a sense in which for somebody to judge what is good is to judge

what is good for him, his judging what is good for him will obviously not prohibit his

judging that what is good for another may also be good for himself.

At this point, however, we face again that puzzling distinction between a person judging

that his good and another’s happen to coincide, and his judging that the other’s good is

also good for himself because it is good for the other. The distinction is puzzling

because it is only because the other’s good is good for that other, and for our agent, that

the two people’s goods coincide. And it is that puzzle that I have sought to avoid by

rendering the distinction more transparent through a focus on the accountability of

friends. So, how can that focus help us here? It helps us by focusing on how people

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justify their behaviour to one another. I am proposing that people – and indeed, peoples

– become friends in a minimal sense when they articulate a shared end to one another,

and they remain friends to the extent that each is prepared to account for his behaviour

to the another in terms of how it serves that end, or at least does not hinder it. And given

that each sees that shared end as good, it is an end that for them is objectively good.

And hence what each must do, in justifying to the other a judgment that they would do

better to φ, is to show how their φ-ing serves not any end one thinks good but the good

that both recognise.

The conclusion, then, that we are led to from my linking friendship with reciprocal

accountability, is that friends must share some articulated end that both recognise to be

good if they are to be accountable to one another at all. That it is not a startlingly

counterintuitive conclusion becomes plain when we consider my observation above that

a friend may just be someone who is on one’s side, for what is it to be on somebody’s

side but to share with him at least some end that each of you takes to be an end of good

action. This is why it is said that my enemy’s enemy is my friend: he is my friend

because we share the end of defending ourselves from our common enemy. And while

my ally in a political movement or a war might do all sorts of things that I think he

would be better not to do, while remaining my ally, he must be accountable to me for

his behaviour in so far as it may affect our shared end. My charge against him, if I call

him to account, will be that his behaviour appears to subvert that end, and therefore

appears not to be good.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of intimacy, we have Nancy Sherman arguing very

plausibly, in a commentary on Aristotle’s account of friendship, that “friendship entails

a weaving of lives together into some shared conception of happiness,”12 and if we are

to understand happiness in its Aristotelian sense as comprising a life of good activity,

then to share a conception of happiness is obviously to share a conception of the end of

all good activity. Sherman elaborates that, among those who Aristotle described as

friends of virtue, and who we might more familiarly describe as intimate friends, the

particular ends that each person has at any time must be reconciled with the enduring

and more general end the two share, which will be the happiness or eudaimonia of both.

Hence:

12 “Aristotle on the Shared Life”, in Neera Kapur Badhwar, ed., Friendship: A Philosophical Reader; New York, Cornell University Press, 1993; pp91-107, p96.

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Ends are coordinated not merely within lives but between lives. Thus, just as a

particular choice I make is constrained by my wider system of objectives and ends,

so too is it constrained by the ends of my friend. So, for example, if a contemplated

action of mine precludes a friend from realising an important goal of hers, then that

consideration will figure in my judgment of what is overall best. It may not be an

easy matter to determine whose interests should prevail, and as with any decision

of the mean, deciding what is right will require giving due consideration to all

relevant concerns. But whatever the nature of the solution, the point to be stressed

is that what is relevant to the decision goes beyond the eudaimonia of a single,

isolated individual. The ends of my friend must be taken into account, just as mine

must, in the overall assessment of what is to be done. Indeed, the survival of the

friendship depends upon our willingness to exhibit loyalty in this way.13

Very much more, of course, can be (and has been) said about this. But my aim here has

been to show how my proposition that friendship must entail a sharing of ends might fit

easily with both minimalist and sophisticated understandings of friendship. For if we

can accept that proposition, we can gain a fresh perspective from which to understand

the conclusion I offered in recasting Raz’s argument, the conclusion that a friend will

not compare the value of any A with the value of money, given the presupposition I

have argued is built into ordinary conceptions of what such a comparison entails. And

we gain that perspective once we notice the following: that a friend’s ends must be more

general than her gaining of money. Hence, anybody who is a friend must distinguish the

end of good action from the gaining of money for herself.

Before showing why this must be so and also showing some of its implications, let me

immediately point out that I am not claiming friends must take no interest in

accumulating wealth, whether in monetary or other forms. When I say that a friend must

distinguish good action from financially profitable action, I am not claiming that a

friend must never see her gaining of money as good. What I am claiming is that a friend

must not see her gaining of money as necessarily good. That is, a friend must not take it

that her gaining of money from some behaviour φ could be sufficient to justify her

judgment that she would do better to φ than to refrain from φ-ing.

13 Op. cit., p99.

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Once my claim is stated as baldly as that then it becomes obvious that it is true, and not

just for friends but for anybody, for nobody would survive long who thought her

gaining money would be sufficient to justify her doing just anything. This is part of the

point of the fable about King Midas and his wish to turn whatever he touched into gold,

and even a solitary miser must balance his desire to accumulate money against his need,

in sustaining his life, to give up opportunities to do so. However, the tale of Midas

petrifying his daughter would never have been passed down to us had it not a point that

tended to be overlooked, and it is the question not only whether but how we might

distinguish the value of money from value as it is thought of more generally that is

under investigation both in Raz’s argument for constitutive incomparability and in this

thesis. So, while it might seem obvious, on reflection, that nobody could survive long

who took it that her gaining of money from some behaviour φ could be sufficient to

justify her judgment that she would do better to φ, let us now underpin what seems

obvious with an explanation for why a friend necessarily could not find such a

justification sufficient.

Given what I have argued already, the explanation is easy to give. Let us follow Raz and

give one friend the name John and the other Judy. I have argued that if Judy is John’s

friend, then she must recognise herself as being required to justify to John, putatively if

not explicitly, her judgment that she would do better to φ than to refrain from φ-ing. But

if Judy is to take it that her gaining money from φ-ing would be sufficient to justify her

φ-ing, then it must be irrelevant for her whether she could justify her φ-ing to John. And

if it is irrelevant, then she is not John’s friend.

8.6 Comparing friendship with money

We can now see how a friend might compare the value of her friendship with the value

of money and yet remain a friend. For as I have said, to compare the value of a

friendship with the value of money will be to judge whether one would do better to φ,

where one’s φ-ing is a condition of one’s gaining money or avoiding its loss. And it is

open to Judy, while remaining a friend, to make this judgment about any act φ, and

therefore about any act that would be incompatible with her friendship with John. But if

she is John’s friend, she will see her judgment as justifiable only in so far as her φ-ing

or not φ-ing serves the ends the two share, which will be ends that both recognise to be

good. And if she judges that her refraining from φ-ing serves those ends better than her

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φ-ing, then she will judge that she would do better to refrain from φ-ing, even though in

so refraining she may forgo money that she could have gained for herself.

Obviously, Judy’s judgment that she would do better to refrain from φ-ing is a

comparative judgment. It is also a comparison of value: she is comparing the goodness,

or value, of her φ-ing with the goodness or value of her refraining from φ-ing, and

judging that the value of her refraining is greater. What distinguishes her from a non-

friend is not her resisting judging the comparison but her resisting presuming that the

judgment she reaches is justified just because she thinks it is. That is, if Judy is

somebody’s friend, then she will resist the inference from her judging that she would do

better to φ, to her φ-ing being better. This is not to say that she will resist the inference

from her good to the good: the inference from Judy’s φ-ing being better for Judy to it

being better that Judy φs. For that would return us to the puzzle about what is to count

as self-interest. What Judy will resist, if she is a friend, is the inference from what she

judges good to the good. That is, she will recognise that at least someone else’s

judgment is relevant for hers, if not necessarily paramount.

It is an implication of the above analysis that Judy might justify a comparative judgment

that she would do better to refrain from φ-ing no matter how much money that would

entail her forgoing. And if anybody is inclined to dismiss such an implication as

implausible, consider that some people, and perhaps many, would not see certain acts as

being justified merely by their gaining money as a result of performing them, no matter

how big the sum, and even if they could avoid criminal sanctions. The obvious

exemplar here is their killing of a friend. Remember, the requirement is that their

gaining money would be sufficient as the end justifying their action: they might share

with the friend other ends that would permit them to justify their killing the friend –

such as the end of the friend dying a good death. But there will also be acts short of

homicide that some people, at least, would resist staunchly if their only justification for

performing them would be their gaining of money, and that would be so, I suspect, even

if nobody but the object of such an act were likely ever to discover that it had been

performed. For myself, I suspect that I would be capable of resisting a very big financial

inducement offered on condition that I colluded in my teenage daughter being made the

sexual plaything, without her consent, of some wealthy stranger. But that would not be

because I thought the values of the inducement and my parental relationship were

incomparable. It would be because I judged it better to resist colluding, given that I

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could not justify my collusion to my daughter as better than my non-collusion, if my

only justification was that I would gain money.

Similarly and more prosaically, if my daughter happened to have won $1 million in a

lottery, and entrusted me with access to the bank account in which she kept it, I suspect

I would be capable of resisting the opportunity to transfer the money to my account

without her consent, if my only justification for transferring it would be that I gained the

money. Again, that would be because I recognised that my gaining the money would

not necessarily count as a justification for her. But I might make the transfer if I could

offer a justification I thought it likely she would accept. For example, if I discovered,

but could not tell her immediately, that the investment firm with which she was about to

place the money was under investigation for fraud, I might believe I could justify to her

my transferring the money to my account, and might therefore do so.

Further, it will be clear that if my only justification for my transferring my daughter’s

money to my account would be that I gained the money, no sum of money which she

might have in the account could be so great that my transferring it would be justified

necessarily as better than my refraining from transferring it. Which is also to say that,

no matter how much money my daughter had in her account, my transferring it to my

account would not necessarily be blameless.

8.7 Comparing justice with money

I said in introducing this chapter that I would offer a way in which we could understand

Judy’s resistance to treating her friend in a blameworthy manner (or more familiarly,

unjustly) in return for money, not as her valuing her blamelessness over money, but as

her judging justifiably that the blameworthy act serves her ends less effectively than its

blameless alternative, even where the blameworthy act would gain her a big sum of

money. I have argued that the behaviour that friends must resist, if they are to be

friends, is behaviour that is obviously subversive of the ends that each professes to share

with the other, which is behaviour that the actor recognises he cannot justify to the other

as serving or at least not disserving the pursuit of those ends.

It is behaviour of this kind from her friend that the other could show to be blameworthy

– or, returning to more familiar terminology, unjust. And while there will obviously be

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the potential for disagreement about whether any behaviour in particular is justified,

even given agreement on ends, it would be ridiculous to say that two people were

friends but could never agree that behaviour of some sort was unjust, because an

inability to agree at all about what behaviour would disserve a shared end must lead us

to look sceptically at the claim that they share the end. Two people cannot agree to

oppose a common enemy unless each has some confidence that the other would

describe as obviously abetting the enemy the same behaviour he would describe that

way, and can see in a rough and ready way what behaviour would be relevantly

similar.14

How, then, are we to understand somebody as comparing the value of doing what is

financially gainful and unjust with the value of doing what is financially gainless and

just? What we confront in these descriptions of the alternative acts is nothing but the

presupposed results of comparative judgments. For in describing the acts as,

respectively, unjust and just, we have presupposed the comparative practical judgment

the agent must reach, if his ends are indeed those disserved by the unjust act. There is,

therefore, no comparative judgment for him to make. If the act which gains him money

disserves his ends and the act which does not gain him money does not disserve those

ends, then necessarily his ends are served more effectively by the act which does not

gain him money, and the description of the alternative act as financially gainful is

wholly redundant.

When could the description of the act as financially gainful be relevant for somebody

facing such a comparison? Only prior to his judgment which act would more effectively

serve his ends. But that is the very judgment that accounts for the description of this act

as unjust. Hence, the financially gainful feature of the act will be relevant for the

comparison only in so far as we refrain from presupposing its being unjust. Our agent

then faces a comparison of the value of two acts, one financially gainful and one not,

where the justice of either act is in question. But the judgment which act is the more

valuable will be the judgment which act serves his ends more effectively. And that act

necessarily will be the just act, given that the ends he has professed to share are indeed

his ends.

14 The importance of seeing relevant similarities is compatible with Kovesi’s claim that moral reasoning is not deductive but analogical (Moral Notions p114).

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As I have said, nothing prevents the financially gainful act also being a blameless or just

act – except that in this case the descriptions of the acts that are supplied with the

example presuppose that it is not.

8.8 Why money can’t buy friendship

Why would it be, then, that money can’t buy friendship? Contra Raz, It is not, I have

argued, that a friend will resist comparing the value of their friendship with the value of

money. It is, rather, that a friend must share an end with at least somebody else, and

must recognise herself as required to justify her comparative practical judgments to that

other as not disserving that end. It is behaviour that she can justify to the other as not

disserving that end that will count as blameless for herself and her friend, and that

behaviour will also count for both as just or virtuous. A range of possible acts may here

count as equally good, and the friend may compare the values of these on some other

basis: perhaps simply choosing which she prefers. What she must resist, if she is a

friend, is the presupposition that her preferences will be sufficient for justifying her

comparative practical judgments.

What money can’t buy, then, is ultimately the shared end: I cannot pay somebody to

share any end I may have, for if the reason she promotes my end is that I pay her to do

so, then the end she serves is not my end but the end of her being paid. Conversely, if

she does share my end, then she will have good reason for resisting disserving it,

whether or not she is paid.

Further, even if somebody does profess to share an end with me, I may disagree with

her about what behaviour serves that end, and hence may judge to be blameworthy

behaviour she judges blameless. And as I have pointed out, an inability to agree with

somebody about what serves an end she professes to share with me must lead me to

look sceptically at the claim that she indeed shares that end. Thus ultimately also, I

cannot buy good judgment in another, for I will recognise her comparative practical

judgments to be good only in so far as I credit her with behaving a way that serves the

ends we profess to share with one another. If my own judgment is poor, then I will not

credit her with good judgment if she seems to me to be disserving our ends.

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It will be friends’ ability to justify their comparative practical judgments to one another

that will determine how intimate they can become. If I doubt another’s judgment, I do

not necessarily cease to be – or refrain from becoming – her friend in some sense. But I

will resist exposing myself to the consequences of what I take to be her poor judgment.

And if she cannot plausibly justify her judgments to me, as serving the ends she

professes to share with me, then I will doubt her sincerity, and will doubt also that she is

worthy of mine. This will limit the depth of our friendship.

Aristotle’s perfect friends will have a great deal of respect for one another’s

comparative practical judgments, and hence will see one another as virtuous, or just in

his complete sense. However, given that the members of any community will have ends

in common, whether or not all recognise this, and whether or not they judge well or

poorly about what will serve them, it is at least plausible that the capacity of perfect

friends to judge well what will serve the ends they profess to share with one another

will also be a capacity to judge well what will serve the less comprehensive ends they

profess to share with other community members, and to act on those judgments. Hence,

as Aristotle says, each will be good both for his friend and absolutely.15 Their

community might well pay such a person to exercise his judgment in the public interest.

But it will be a part of such person’s capacity to judge well that he will resist financial

incentives to do what he judges would disserve the ends he recognises himself to share

with his perfect friend(s) or the wider community.

15 “Also each party is good both absolutely and for his friend, since the good are both good absolutely and useful to each other.” Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, J.A.K. Thomson translation, 1156b2-23.

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9. Conclusion: The status of financial evaluation

The value which is expressed in any comparative judgment in which money features as

an item will share its description with the description we give of the reason why the

comparison has been conducted.

9.1 Overview

In the preceding chapters I have examined the standard arguments for the

incomparability of value and have found each to be wanting. Each is based on examples

that fail to give enough information about the comparison to permit a judgment to be

justified – or alternatively, from the scant information given, any judgment at all could

be justified. I have argued that what we need if we are to justify the judgment of a

comparison is an account of what Kovesi calls the formal element of the concept under

which the comparison is conducted, and that the formal element of that concept will be

the same as the reason why the comparison is being conducted. It is only from an

appreciation of the formal element of the comparative concept, I have said, that

whoever is to be the judge of a comparison can see what features of the items compared

would be relevant for a judgment, and hence can justify that judgment to himself or to

another person or group. But I have argued also that an account of the formal element of

the comparative concept will not be sufficient to allow us to see what would count as a

justified judgment, for we also need to know for whom the comparison is being

conducted, so that we may see who it is that the justification must satisfy.

Armed with an account of the formal element of the comparative concept and with a

specification of those to whom a comparative judgment must be justified, I have said,

we can see how arguments for the incomparability of value fail. But what is no less

significant for the aims of this thesis is that we can also see why the examples they rely

on appear plausible. They appear plausible because in one way or another, the

descriptions they give of the items compared presuppose something about the items’

value, and we are led from what is presupposed to impute to the comparison a reason –

and often conflicting reasons – for why it is being conducted in the case at hand.

To recapitulate this briefly: where the comparison is between the value of drinking a

cup of tea and the value of drinking a cup of coffee, we are led to think that what we

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must compare are the reasons why we value tea as tea and the reasons why we value

coffee as coffee. It is not obvious to us that we might really be wanting to compare each

as hot drinks, or something of the sort. Where the comparison is between the talents of

Mozart and Michelangelo, we are led to think that what we must compare are the

reasons why we judge Mozart to be a talented musician and the reasons why we judge

Michelangelo to be a talented painter; it is not obvious to us that we really want to

compare their talents as artists, or something of the sort. The careers of clarinettist and

lawyer suggests reasons for valuing either career rather than reasons for valuing a

career; the experiences of pain and death reasons for (dis)valuing pain and death rather

than reasons for valuing living, and so on. The more complex comparison between

money and friendship led us to assume conflicting conditions for justification, each

arising from our reasons for valuing each of those items. In other words, as I said in

Chapter 1, what we are led unwittingly to attend to here are the formal elements of the

descriptions of the items compared, rather than the formal element of the concept under

which the comparison is conducted. And in attending to the formal elements of the

descriptions of the items compared, we will inevitably be attending to the reasons why

we distinguish the items, rather than to reasons why we might treat them as similar.

This observation leads directly to the first conclusion that I want to draw in this thesis. It

is that for any comparative judgment about two items, the “value” that is expressed in

the judgment will not be the same as the value expressed in the description of either

item, unless the reason we are conducting the comparison is to judge whether the

description accorded one of the items is also applicable to the other item. So, for

example, if we want to compare the value of a financially profitable act with the value

of a fair act, the “value” that is expressed in the judgment will be neither the value of

financial profit nor the value of fairness, unless the reason why we are conducting the

comparison is to judge the financial profitability or the fairness of the two acts. And of

course, if we are conducting the comparison for that reason, it is not very helpful to

describe the compared items that way, for the description on one side presupposes the

judgment, and on the other side is irrelevant.

This conclusion is more powerful than may appear at first sight. In particular, it

provides the key to resolving a range of notoriously puzzling questions in ethical theory.

In Section 9.5, I shall illustrate the point by demonstrating its application to two

prominent examples of such questions.

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But first I need to return to the underlying theme of this thesis and confront a prior

puzzle. For I have suggested, even if I have not said so explicitly, that what counts as a

justification for a comparative judgment is whatever demonstration those to whom the

comparison is to be justified will accept. And that seems immediately to suggest that

somebody who needs to justify a comparative judgment only to himself could accept a

justification where the point of a comparison is specified only in a very general way,

and even where the degree of discrimination required was very fine. In other words, I

might judge this portion of ice-cream better than that very similar portion of ice-cream,

without making any attempt to give an account to myself of some more specific reason

for comparing them than that I wanted to know which was better, and I might accept

that my judgment was justified. And if it was nobody else’s business which portion I

thought was better, then given that I accepted my judgment as justified, surely it was

justified. And this could be so not only for me, but for me and my friend (we can agree

that we would do better to holiday in Mexico than in Cuba while not giving an account

of the formal element of doing better, and our judgment would be justified), and it could

even be so for all the owners of residential units in my block of flats (we can all agree

that we would do better to set our annual levy for maintenance at $1000 per unit rather

than at $999).

It seems, then, that where the people for whom a comparison is being conducted all

agree that a judgment is justified, it may be justified even where the concept under

which it is conducted is specified only in the most general way. Chang might not be

quite right, then, when she proposes that “A bald claim that philosophy is better than

pushpin … cannot be fully understood without reference to some respect in terms of

which the claim is made.” We must remember, however, her qualification shortly

afterwards that: “Although the respect in terms of which a comparison is made is not

always explicit, some value must always be implicit for there to be any comparison to

be understood.”1 In other words, an individual person or a group might understand

implicitly some more specific reason for judging which of two items is better, and might

therefore conclude that a judgment they reach is justified. The ice-cream judge, for

example, might recognise implicitly that by the better portion he means simply the

portion that he prefers.

1 Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, p6.

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From this perspective we can see that provided a person or group of people accept that a

comparative judgment is justified, there is no need to make explicit what is implicit by

giving a more detailed account of the reason why the comparison is being conducted.

And that is consistent with Kovesi’s argument about the role of the formal element of a

concept: it is from a tacit appreciation of the formal element that we can see what does

and does not count as an instance of the concept, but it would be helpful to give an

explicit account of the formal element of any concept only where there is some dispute

or puzzlement about what counts as an instance. Further, if the role of a detailed account

of the formal element of the concept under which a comparison is being conducted is to

settle disputes about whether a judgment is justified, then that role could be performed

in other ways: by an agreement that any judgment reached by an appointed judge is

justified, for example; or by agreement that the judgment is justified if a majority of

those to whom it is to be justified vote to accept it. In other words, by the institution of a

decision procedure. On reflection we will notice that this often occurs, and we need to

notice this if we are to unravel some of the notoriously puzzling questions I alluded to

above.

When I said, then, that we can justify a comparative judgment only by giving an

account of the reasons why the comparison has been conducted, I said something a little

too strong. We can settle disputed comparative judgments in other ways, and often do.

What I am pointing to is the way in which we can reason or argue to justifications for

comparative judgments. That, after all, is what underlies the debate about the

comparability of values: what is claimed about incomparable values is that reason

cannot or does not guide our choice between instances or bearers of them. What I am

seeking to show in this thesis is how reason can and usually does play a role in

resolving what are alleged to be puzzling cases.

What we cannot expect of reason, however, is that it can furnish us with deductive

proofs justifying comparative judgments. If Kovesi is right, then our comparative

judgments will always be justified inductively (by which I mean simply non-

deductively), rather than deductively;2 and hence their justification will always be a

matter of convincing and persuading rather than proving. Where the result of a

comparison appears deductively provable, that will be because the inevitably inductive

2 Because, as he says, there can be no relation of entailment between what we say a thing or act is and the material elements of that thing or act. (Moral Notions, p8.)

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aspect of the judgment has been presupposed in the way the example has been set up.

And it is through recognising that such presuppositions are commonly made that we can

assign an appropriate status to what is colloquially referred to as the value of money.

In this chapter I will elaborate on this proposal also, beginning with what is supposed to

be a puzzling distinction between comparative judgments that give rise to regret and

those that do not, with examples offered of the latter commonly comprising

comparisons of the values of sums of money.

9.2 Money and regret

In his essay “Incommensurability: What’s the Problem?”,3 James Griffin gives an

example adopted from Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge that is designed as a case

where a comparative judgment may be made between two items without the chooser

experiencing what Griffin describes as an irresolvable loss of value and what Nussbaum

describes as a wrenching or tragic dimension of the choice. Here is how Nussbaum

outlines the example:

For the agent for whom “nothing will ever come to the same thing as anything

else,” there are few easy trade-offs, and many choices will have a tragic dimension.

The choice between $50 and $200, when one cannot have both, is not terribly

wrenching: what one forgoes is simply a different quantity of what one also gets.

The choice between two qualitatively different actions or commitments, when on

account of circumstances one cannot pursue both, is or can be tragic – in part

because the item forgone is not the same as the item attained.4

Griffin says of this example that it offers a good point and a bad point. He says the bad

point would be that commensurability requires value monism. On this point, what I

have said about comparability (remembering that I do not think it useful to distinguish it

from commensurability) is that, in effect, any comparison requires local value monism,

in the sense that we can compare only under criteria that are applied in common to each

item compared. The good point, Griffin says, is “that values, being irreducibly plural,

can, and often do, exclude one another; life sometimes forces us to sacrifice one value

3 In Chang, R, ed., Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997; 35-51; p36. 4 Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990; p37.

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for another. But this is the incompatibility of values (they cannot both be realised

together), not their incomparability.”

I want to suggest that it is not, either, the plurality or incompatibility of values that

makes some sacrifices painful and others not. What we find painful about a painful

choice that requires a giving up, is that we are emotionally attached to whatever we give

up and we experience a powerful emotional reaction to our giving it up, a reaction that

we may well find painful. The reason why we tend to find plausible the suggestion that

giving up $50 is not terribly wrenching has nothing to do with our retaining $200 and

everything to do with the likelihood that for Nussbaum in the 1990s, as for very many

of those likely to be reading her, the loss of $50 is typically a trivial loss. And it would

be a trivial loss no matter what was the alternative to losing it.5

But there is more to be said about Nussbaum’s use of this example and Griffin’s

treatment of it. Griffin uses the example to illustrate the proposition that: “If all values

were reducible to a single substantive supervalue (take, for illustration, the rather crude

example of money, but it could be the most subtle intrinsic supervalue that monism

might come up with), then choice is eased.” It is immediately after this proposal that he

quotes Nussbaum’s example, commenting that what one forgoes is just the same as

what one acquires, only inferior to it. The point that both Griffin and Nussbaum are

angling for here, I suspect, is that not only is there nothing wrenching about the giving

up of $50, but also there is nothing wrenching about choosing which sum to give up.

That is, that the choice here is straightforward: given that one cannot have both, it is

easy to see what one must do in order to get on with life. One gives up the $50 and

retains the $200.

I want to illustrate with this example that what eases the choice here, while at the same

time allowing us to agree that any loss involved must be trivial, is a subtle slide from a

choice situation demanding a judgment that may be justified only inductively, and

therefore may be difficult to resolve conclusively, to a judgment that appears to be

justifiable deductively, and hence to the satisfaction of any rational person.

5 Consider the case of the person choosing between giving up $1 million and $1.2 million. Doubtless it would be comforting to recognise that one still had $1.2 million, but it is perfectly plausible that the loss of $1 million could somewhat wrenching for somebody who was barely a multi-millionaire. If it is less

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Like so many examples given in the comparability debate, this one fails to tell us much

about why we would be wanting to compare, in this case, the two sums of money. We

are therefore led to presuppose, because the items compared are described as being of

the same kind, that the comparative concept under which we are comparing them is a

concept of just that kind. That is, we are led to presuppose that the reason why we

would be comparing one sum of money with another sum of money is to find out which

would be the lesser sum of money. It is deductively provable that $50 is a lesser sum of

money than $200. And our presupposition distracts us from recognising that, given

Nussbaum’s context, we are supposed to be judging, not which is the lesser sum, but

whether we would do better to forgo $50 or $200. This is where the slide from

induction to deduction occurs: we implicitly identify our doing better with our choosing

to forgo the lesser sum. The comparative judgment we appear to be facing, then, is an

analytic judgment: in effect, we are asking ourselves whether, given that we would do

better to forgo the lesser sum, we would do better to forgo the $50 or the $200. It is easy

to see why our choice here is eased.

But there is nothing in the example that justifies our identifying doing better with

choosing to forgo the lesser sum, except the absence of cues that could tell us something

about our choice situation. If we imagine a situation at all, it will parallel our having

$250 fall out of our wallet on a breezy day, and our facing the mutually exclusive

options of picking up the two $100 notes that fell at our feet or snatching at the $50 note

that is being carried off by the breeze. But a choice whether to forgo $50 or $200, where

I cannot have both, could arise in innumerable other ways, in many of which it might

not be at all obvious which was the better choice. To offer one such example: I have

pledged $50 to a charity I think worthy, but as I go to write the cheque a week later it

occurs to me that I might do better to send $200 instead.

It is the slide from induction to deduction, then, that makes the choice between forgoing

$50 or $200 appear so straightforward, and the slide took place in the implicit but

unjustified (and unnoticed) identification of doing better with choosing the lesser loss of

money. It is through this identification that the inevitably inductive aspect of the

comparative judgment is presupposed in the way the example has been set up. The

inductive aspect in this case is the shift from conducting the comparison under the very

wrenching than would be the loss of one child for somebody who had five children, perhaps that is because most of us are more attached emotionally to our children than to our money.

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general concept of acting well, to conducting it under the more specific concept of

minimising financial loss – a shift that could be justified only inductively. What the

example presupposes is that justification.

I shall have more to say about this below. Now, let us look more closely at puzzles

involving conflicting values.

9.3 Where values conflict

9.3.1 The surgeons and the recluse

It is easy to generate even from the simple counterexample I offered above, a case

where values apparently conflict, so that we seem to be choosing between qualitatively

different options that can’t be resolved without a loss of value, a loss which (were the

loss involved not trivial) could seem wrenching. While I consider for what sum to write

the cheque to my favoured charity, it occurs to me that if I send $200 I may be unable to

cover a debt to my drug dealer if he arrives at my door before payday. Suddenly I seem

to be comparing the value of generosity with the value of prudence. If I send $50 I will

be ungenerous; if $200 imprudent. How do I compare the value of generosity with the

value of prudence? As artificial as this may sound, I suspect it is just what Nussbaum is

talking about when she observes that for the agent for whom “nothing will ever come to

the same thing as anything else,” there are few easy trade-offs, and many choices will

have a tragic dimension.

Let us then proceed to another example Griffin offers, a problem he describes as

notoriously difficult. I will begin by saying that I do not want to deny that reaching a

justified judgment in this case may be difficult; what I will argue is that the difficulty is

not where Griffin thinks it is.

Griffin presents the problem in the course of offering a contrast between what he calls

moral norms, each generated by our valuing life. On the one hand, he says, “We have

the moral norm, Do not deliberately kill the innocent, because we value life highly.” But

he points out that this term is too broad to cover all cases, offering as counterexamples

cases where someone must choose between an act which will result in the deaths of a

large number of innocent people and an act which will result in the deaths of a smaller

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number: a pilot may consider whether to direct his crippled plane away from crashing at

the centre of town where it would kill many people to the outskirts where it would kill

only a few; a parent may consider whether to smother a baby whose cries may give

away her family’s hiding place to the Gestapo (who presumably will kill them all); the

marooned survivors of a shipwreck may consider killing and eating the cabin boy so

that the rest may survive longer. “The value of life gives us a quite different norm for

those cases: Limit the damage,” Griffin says. He continues:

But then, as the notorious (and notoriously difficult) problem goes, should

surgeons limit the damage by killing one person on the sly – a recluse, say, who

will not be missed – to use the organs to save five? No, most of us would say; the

norm, Do not deliberately kill the innocent, does apply here. But what is the

difference? The answer, I think, rests largely on certain facts about agents.6

The facts Griffin then outlines concern the temporally extended and emotionally

attached nature of human well-being, the limited capacity of the human will and the

limitations upon what humans may know and predict reliably. A distinction between the

surgeon case and the crippled plane case is then brought out in terms of what sort of

policy is most appropriate for such agents to adopt in the different circumstances. The

pilot of the crippled plane is not assuming a god-like knowledge of consequences when

he chooses to limit the damage by directing his crippled plane towards the outskirts of

town; but if the surgeons choose to kill the recluse and distribute his organs, “They set

themselves up as omniscient dispensers of justice in a situation in which there is no

salient, obviously reasonable policy.” Griffin goes on to suggest that:

Ethics cannot do better for us in the transplant case than come up with norms for

agents like us in the world so far as we are able to know it. One such norm is, Do

not deliberately kill the innocent. And it takes some extreme case – some case, for

instance, that is simple enough for another moral policy to be salient (though not

error-proof) – for us to be justified in setting that norm aside. It would take, say, a

plane headed for a crash.7

Finally, in a long endnote to this discussion, Griffin answers an objection based on the

possibility that the surgeons know a great deal about the circumstances of the recluse,

6 Griffin, Op. cit., p41. 7 Op. cit., pp45-6.

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who might be already on their operating table for a high-risk operation, and also about

the circumstances of the putative recipients of his organs. Hence, possibly they could be

in a position to judge the likely outcome of their intervention as reliably as could the

pilot of the crippled plane. The surgeons might then justify their intervention on the

grounds that it would promote the most value, he says [my emphasis]. But, Griffin

argues, moral life is bound to be deeply conservative, because of the centrality of deep

feelings and attitudes and because of the limitations of human knowledge. “In fluke

circumstances in which we think we can determine the costs and benefits, we still only

think that we know them. We are held back by both deep feelings and deep scepticism.

We therefore demand that any exception to an important moral norm have an especially

clear justification.”8

What I want to point out first about this discussion is that Griffin’s analysis, given in

terms of which competing policy justifies the judgment reached in the case, appears to

be effective only because each alleged justification presupposes so much that

comparison is redundant.

Take first the crashing plane case. The pilot’s judgment that he would do better to direct

the plane to the outskirts of town appears obviously justified under the policy “limit the

damage” only if it is presupposed that what shall count as “damage” is only the death of

a person. Hence, by “limit the damage”, what is meant is “preserve the lives of the

greater number of people”. The comparison facing the pilot under this policy may then

be described as follows: Given that to do better is to preserve the lives of the greater

number of people, do I do better to crash the plane on the outskirts of town, which will

preserve the lives of the greater number of people, or to crash in the centre of town,

which will preserve the lives of the smaller number. It is deductively provable that to

preserve the lives of a greater number of people is to preserve the lives of a greater

number of people. Hence, the description of the comparison presupposes the

comparative judgment, and so the comparison is redundant.

How would this apply to the surgeons case? The surgeons’ judgment that they would do

better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs appears obviously justified under the

policy “limit the damage” only if it is presupposed that what shall count as “damage” is

only the death of a person. The comparison facing the surgeons under this policy is then

8 Op. cit., note 22. The emphasis on think is Grifffin’s.

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similar to the comparison that faced the pilot: Given that to do better is to preserve the

lives of the greater number of people, do we do better to kill the recluse and distribute

his organs, which will preserve the lives of the greater number of people, or to refrain

from doing so, which will preserve the lives of the smaller number. Again, the

description of the comparison presupposes the comparative judgment, and so the

comparison is redundant.

What of the policy “do not deliberately kill the innocent”? Under this policy, the

surgeons’ judgment that they would do better to refrain from killing the recluse and

distributing his organs seems obviously justified only if it is presupposed that what will

count as the deliberate killing of the innocent is present in the death of the recluse and

absent in the deaths of the potential organ recipients. Here, then, the comparison facing

the surgeons is: Given that to do better is to refrain from killing the innocent, do we do

better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs, which would be to kill the innocent,

or to refrain from doing so, which would be to refrain from killing the innocent. Again,

the description of the comparison presupposes the judgment, and comparison is

redundant.

To see just how much is presupposed in each of these justifications, we only have to

observe that under the concept of “damage” we could easily include only the deliberate

killing of innocent people. We could suppose, for example, that no surgeon does any

damage when he refrains from intervening in the imminent death of a terminally ill

person from natural causes. And if we did, and the recluse’s surgery, while risky, is

elective, then we can see that the policy “limit the damage” ceases to compete with the

policy “do not deliberately kill the innocent”, for the same judgment is justified under

each.

Once we have noticed that the two policies do not necessarily compete in the surgeons

case (and the same could easily be shown for the crashing plane case), we gain a fresh

perspective from which to examine the monist objection as Griffin represents it, which

was that the surgeons might know a great deal about their patients, and hence might

justify a decision to kill the recluse and distribute his organs on the grounds that their

doing so would promote the most value.

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The justifying policy here, we can reasonably suppose, would be “promote the most

value”. It should be plain that under this policy, the surgeons’ judgment that they would

do better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs seems obviously justified only if it

is presupposed that killing the recluse and distributing his organs promotes more value

than refraining from doing so. Here, then, the comparison facing the surgeons is: Given

that to do better is to promote the most value, do we do better to kill the recluse and

distribute his organs, which would promote more value, or to refrain from doing so,

which would promote less value. Once again, the description of the comparison

presupposes the comparative judgment, and comparison is redundant.

A reader who thinks something funny might be going on here could be drawn by the

apparent transparency of this last example to raise an objection. She may say that while

all sorts of things might be presupposed in our descriptions of items we are comparing

and even in our descriptions of policies, the surgeons have no need to presuppose

anything about the value of killing the recluse and distributing his organs, for they are in

a position to judge the value of doing so, and the value of not doing so, and saying

which is the greater. The objection is sustained: the surgeons are indeed in a position to

make a comparative judgment about the values of killing and not killing the recluse. But

I have not said any presupposition is required for them to make a judgment. A

presupposition is required only if their judgment is to seem obviously justified.

9.3.2 Judges and justification

There is no trickery here. My point is that even if it were accepted that to do better is to

promote the most value (a policy we might easily accept as universally appropriate

simply because the concept value is coextensive in its generality with the concept

goodness), it would not necessarily justify the surgeons’ judgment that they would do

better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs to say that they had made a judgment

that to do so would promote the most value. It might do if the surgeons were indeed

gods, or if one of them were God, but that it might has little to do with God’s

omniscience about future events – about what will happen under some description – and

everything to do with Christian and other religious traditions tending to make God the

final arbiter of goodness in human affairs, assigning Him the status, not only of

unmoved mover, but also of unjudged judger. In other words, when we talk about

surgeons playing God we tend to sidle past Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma with the

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assumption that either way, God can’t be wrong about what is good. And this should

give us a clue to why the surgeons cannot necessarily justify their judgment that it

would be better to kill the recluse simply by saying that this was the judgment they had

reached, and also a clue to when they could. They cannot justify their judgment in this

way unless those people to whom they must justify their judgment have agreed that

whatever judgment the surgeons reached in this case would be justified. But then, the

judgment would be justified on the dual basis that (a) the surgeons had made it and (b)

it had been agreed that no other justification was required in such cases.

It is a core conclusion of Moral Notions that our “moral reasoning is not deductive but

analogical”.9 We can see the force of that conclusion here. In order to see it, we need to

ask ourselves a question that the example as Griffin has outlined it does not answer: to

whom are the surgeons required to justify their comparative judgment whether they

would do better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs or to refrain from doing so.

If it is only to themselves, then their judgment is justified if they accept that it is

justified (perhaps on some implicit basis). If, however, it is to the members of the wider

community in which they live (who may include the reader of Griffin’s discussion), or

to some subset of them such as a jury appointed to decide whether their judgment was

justified, then they will have to reason or argue that it was justified. Obviously, one

defence available to them would be that this case was relevantly analogous to other

cases for which there had been prior agreement that whatever judgment the surgeons

reached would be a justified judgment just because they had reached it. (Another case to

which Griffin alludes in his footnote, that of an obstetrician killing an unborn child

where he judges that if he does not then the mother will die, comes to mind as a case for

which in many jurisdictions there is prior agreement that the surgeon’s judgment that he

would do better to kill the child shall count as a sufficient reason for his killing the

child.) Notice, however, that the question whether one case is relevantly similar to

another is a question that can be answered only inductively: it is not susceptible to a

deductive proof, and that is one reason why a jury representative of the wider

community and not an expert logician might be appointed to answer it.

In outlining the objection to which he replies here – the objection that the surgeons

might know enough about their six patients to be able to judge reliably that their killing

the recluse would promote the most value – Griffin offers the further detail that the

9 Moral Notions, p114.

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surgeons’ killing the recluse who is on their operating table for a risky operation might

not arouse the least suspicion. An unstated implication of this is that even if they were

formally required to justify their judgment to the members of a wider community, they

would never be called upon to do so. Hence it appears that, in practice, the judgment is a

judgment just for them. That still leaves open, however, the question that many might

want to see as the key moral question: how they are to justify to themselves their

judgment whether they would do better to kill the recluse and distribute his organs or to

refrain from doing so.

Once again, the surgeons might leave implicit any more specific account of what it

would be to do better and institute a decision procedure among themselves: they may

agree that a vote of some kind will carry the issue; or that what is better is whatever the

senior surgeon judges is better; or they may even flip a coin. But here is where some of

Griffin’s comments on the nature of human well-being come into play: if the surgeons

saw their choice as a trivial choice, they would not last long in the job.10 So it is likely

they will attempt to reason their way to a conclusion about what judgment would be

justified. However, if they are to attempt to reason their way to a conclusion, they may

do so, I have argued, only by attempting to give a more detailed account of what it is to

do better, and to justify their judgment by showing how it satisfies that account.

And here we come to the nub of the matter. For if they say that the point of the

comparison they face is to judge what it would be better to do, the surgeons have

described that point in a way that is sufficiently general to muster easy agreement

among themselves (or in the mind of each independently) that this is the point – indeed,

at this level of generality and given the context, nothing else could be the point;11 but

the very generality of the description makes it very difficult to justify a judgment that

one course of action satisfies the comparison’s point and the other does not. And it

cannot help them a great deal to redescribe the point as being to judge which course

would promote the most value, for unless by value they mean something more specific

than goodness, the level of generality here is the same.

10 Millgram’s discussion of the pitfalls lying in wait for anybody who resolves allegedly incommensurable choices on impulse helps show why they would not last long. Op. cit., p155ff. 11 For if there are only two alternatives, to judge which would be better is also to judge which would be worse and whether the two are equally good.

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However, if the point of the comparison is redescribed in much more specific terms –

say, for example, it is argued that to do better is to preserve the maximum possible

number of these six lives for the immediate future – then while it may be much easier

for the surgeons to agree about what judgment would be justified given the

redescription, what will be difficult to justify is the redescription itself: the claim that to

do better is simply to preserve the maximum number of these lives for this period.

Further, this will be the case even if we concentrate on the reasoning performed by an

individual surgeon, assuming he wants to show himself why his judgment is justified.

He can escape this conclusion only if he tells himself that he is justified in doing

whatever he likes, in which case his judgment is justified if it accords with his

preference ranking for the two options he is considering.

9.3.3 Justification and conflicting values

It may be clear at this point that we have completed a circle. For obviously, among the

ways in which the comparison facing the surgeons could be described more specifically

would be their arguing that for them to do better in this case would be to limit the

damage, or that to do better would be to refrain from deliberately killing the innocent.

However, while we remain at the most general level of description – the description in

terms of doing better or promoting value – induction enters the judgment only at one

point: the judgment which choice is better or has more value will inevitably be

inductive, and hence justifiable only through agreement or self-assertion. But if we

move to a more specific description, induction enters at two points: for it will be only

through an inductive argument that the redescription is justifiable if it is indeed more

specific; and the judgment what choice item satisfies the redescription must be justified

inductively also.

Can the redescription be made so specific that the judgment what choice item satisfies

the redescription becomes deductively justifiable, and hence induction enters only in

justifying the redescription itself? If Kovesi is right about how concepts shared in

language are formed, then the answer is No, unless the comparison is theoretical, rather

than practical. For even if we agree in some practical case that, for example, to do better

is to gather more acorns, it must remain an inductive matter what shall count as an

acorn. That this is likely so is brought out if we consider how a dispute could arise in an

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acorn-gathering contest (perhaps with a $1 million prize) over who has done better – a

contestant may argue that something his opponent has gathered, perhaps damaged or

mutated in some way, should not count as an acorn – and what resources we have

available to resolve it. Kovesi’s broad point here is that concepts shared in language are

one thing, the experiences which we jointly accept they describe quite another. It is only

in the hypothetical cases offered as examples in philosophical discussions that we find

deductive justifications of comparative judgments, and here, as I have said, comparison

is redundant.

However, we may redescribe the point of a comparison so that we bring out a

distinction between the items compared which seems much more significant than any

fuzziness in what does and what does not count as one of the items. And I suspect that is

how we ordinarily go about attempting to justify our comparative judgments about what

it would be better to do. When we redescribe the point of the comparison facing the

pilot of the crippled plane, from whether he would do better to crash in the centre of

town or on the outskirts to whether he would preserve the lives of more people if he

crashed in the centre of town or the outskirts, the putatively big distinction between the

number killed in each case seems to us so significant as to outweigh any quibbles we

might have about what counts as a person, or what counts as the preservation of a life.

But then, we are still faced with justifying the redescription. If we can accept that the

redescription is justified, and can accept also as justified the judgment made under the

redescription, then we accept the whole judgment about what he had better do as

justified, and hence accept that the pilot did better to crash on the outskirts. So we can

promote agreement about our practical judgments by justifying them in inductive steps,

each of which those to whom we seek to justify them can accept.

If we can see this, then we can get an inkling of what may be going on when we seem to

face a conflict of values. We are facing, I suspect, two redescriptions of the general

point of the comparative practical judgment that faces us, each inductively acceptable to

all or some of those to whom the judgment is to be justified, and each bringing out a

clear distinction between the choice items. But these clear distinctions seem obviously

to justify opposite choices.

Hence in the surgeons case we say that the comparative practical judgment the surgeons

face, whose general point is to judge which would be the better course, may have its

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point redescribed as which course would limit the damage, or alternatively as which

course would avoid the deliberate killing of an innocent person. And given certain

specifications for what will count as damage and what will count as deliberate killing

and innocence, the redescriptions appear obviously to justify conflicting judgments.

The move to a redescription in terms of promoting value appears to resolve the conflict,

but it does so only by, in effect, returning the surgeons to their starting point.

9.4 Resolving value conflicts

If that is all a redescription in terms of promoting value does, then why might it, and by

implication the entire Utilitarian project, seem like a good idea? Because, I suggest,

returning to the starting point can help promote agreement in many cases where people

have become committed to certain redescriptions of what it would be to do better. And

especially because those redescriptions, which become descriptions of the points of

comparative practical judgments, attribute justifiably to the compared items “values”

which then take on a life of their own. That is, they remain attributed to an item by

becoming part of its description. That tends to confuse us, because we fail to recognise

that any “value” that is presupposed in the description of an item in a comparison will

be irrelevant for the comparison (unless, as I said in introducing this chapter, it is a

comparison of a peculiar kind).

A good example of such an attributed value is the “innocence” that Griffin attributes to

the recluse in the surgeons case. While there are all sorts of things of which the recluse

may or may not be innocent – as R.E. Ewin has pointed out in a related context,12 he

may for example be guilty of a parking offence – the only relevant way in which he

might be innocent in this case is that he is innocent of any behaviour which would

justify his being deliberately killed in the circumstances facing the surgeons. Which is

to say that the recluse has not behaved in a way that would justify somebody’s judgment

that they would do better to kill the recluse deliberately than to refrain from doing so in

these circumstances. Even if this is so, its relevance for the comparative judgment

facing the surgeons could only be that his behaviour could not count as a premise in any

justification they might offer for their deliberately killing him. And again, this either

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presupposes what judgment the surgeons could justify, or it is irrelevant for what

judgment the surgeons could justify. It presupposes what judgment they could justify, in

so far as it rules out in advance any justification they might offer that alludes to the

recluse’s behaviour – for example, the justification that his having lived reclusively

justifies their killing him in order to save the other five patients, who have not. It will be

irrelevant for what judgment they could justify, in so far as it does not rule out any

justification they might offer that does not allude to the recluse’s behaviour – for

example, the justification that somebody’s not being missed (whatever is the reason

why) justifies their killing him in order to save the other five patients, who will be

missed.

It may help bring out the significance of what I have just argued if I put it in terms that

are at once less abstract and more familiar. What behaviour would justify the recluse’s

being deliberately killed in these circumstances? That will depend, as I have argued, on

to whom the justification is to be given, as will what is to count as deliberate killing.

But again we can speculate plausibly about what Griffin may have had in mind. It is

plausible he means that the recluse has not done anything that, under the law as it is

presently constituted for the community in which the recluse lives, would count as a

justification for anybody’s judgment that he would do better to deliberately kill the

recluse than to refrain from doing so, in the circumstances facing the surgeons. In other

words, he has not done anything that would offer the surgeons a successful defence in a

criminal court against a charge that their killing him amounted to murder. But on the

one hand, this presupposes their being unable to succeed with any defence that alludes

to the recluse’s behaviour, and hence presupposes what judgment a court would reach if

the surgeons offered such a defence. And on the other hand, it will be irrelevant not only

for any defence that does not allude to the recluse’s behaviour, but also for any

justification that is not offered as a defence under the existing law. For examples of the

latter, we might propose that since the surgeons’ killing the recluse will not arouse the

slightest suspicion, the surgeons are prepared to flout the law if they can justify to

themselves their doing so; 13 or that the case remains hypothetical, and the surgeons are

12 “If the person killed was not innocent but was quite clearly guilty of illegal parking, that simply would not count against a claim that he had been murdered; we need a formal element that allows us to argue out what sort of innocence is necessary.” Reasons and the Fear of Death, p34. The emphasis is Ewin’s. 13 Cf Kovesi’s discussion, described above in Chapter 1, of Philippe an official executioner who is also a member of the World War II French Resistance. Philippe is to preside over the death of a person who he alone knows has been wrongly convicted of a crime – and hence is relevantly innocent of any offence under the law as it is presently constituted – but who he also knows is a particularly effective Gestapo agent and close to identifying the leaders of the Resistance. Moral Notions, pp112-14.

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discussing it in order to see whether they might arrive at a convincing justification for a

judgment by members of their community generally that the community would do

better to change the law.

All apparent value conflicts are like this, I submit, where the allegedly conflicting values

are presupposed in the descriptions of the items which are to be compared. And all may

be resolved in the same way. Either we attend to what account of the point of the

comparison, and of those to whom a judgment must be justified, would justify the

attribution of the presupposed value, and justify our judgment under those conditions (in

which case the judgment is presupposed by the presupposed value, and any value

presupposed in the description of the other item, unless it is justified under the same

conditions, will be irrelevant for justifying a judgment). Or, we return to our most

general starting point, where the point of the comparison is to judge what it would be

better to do, and then redescribe more specifically the point of the comparison in a way

that finds acceptance among those to whom a judgment is to be justified, and make a

judgment that those people will accept satisfies that point – in which case any values

presupposed in the description of either item will be irrelevant (although they may

happen to be justified also under the new conditions). 14

9.5 Some general conclusions

9.5.1 Overview

I can now elaborate on the general conclusions I outlined in introducing this chapter,

before offering some more specific conclusions about money in particular. I said there

that for any comparative judgment about two items, the value that is expressed in the

judgment will not be the same as the value expressed in the description of either item,

unless the reason we are conducting the comparison is to judge whether the description

accorded one of the items is also applicable to the other item. One obvious corollary of

this conclusion is that any object, act or other item can instantiate, or bear, any number

of values simultaneously. For example, some particular act can be simultaneously

profitable, prudent, kind, just and wise. (Those who would object that to act kindly must

be to do more than justice requires might reflect that when I do more than justice

requires I do not act unjustly, and nor do I act neither justly nor unjustly.)

14 Or any other item, if more than two items are to be compared.

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I said the conclusion offered a key to the resolution of a range of puzzling questions in

ethical theory, and that I would give two examples. They will be the question whether it

would be better to act unjustly where to do so would produce more happiness for more

people, and the question whether it was always in one’s interest to act justly. I shall

begin with the first example, for it offers the more direct generalisation from the

discussion above.

9.5.2 Justice and happiness

Let us take any act φ whose performance is alleged to be (a) unjust and (b) productive

of more happiness for more people than its non-performance would be. What is the

comparison we face in which φ-ing appears as an item one might choose? In the most

general sense, it will be a comparison of our φ-ing with our refraining from φ-ing,

where the point is to judge which it would be better that we do. When would the

injustice that is presupposed in our description of φ-ing as unjust be relevant for that

comparison? It would be relevant only if the point of our comparison may be

redescribed as to judge which item would be just, where the redescription and the

judgment must be justified to the same person or group who would judge our φ-ing

unjust. But if this is the point, then our φ-ing obviously is unjust. The only judgment

that remains to be made is the judgment whether our refraining from φ-ing is also

unjust. The presupposition that our φ-ing would produce more happiness is not relevant.

(It is not relevant because is not specified that this judgment is accepted as justified by

the same person or group for whom the judgment of our φ-ing’s injustice is justified.

And it is not relevant because even if it were, it is not the point of the comparison to

make a judgment about happiness.)

When, then, would the happiness be relevant that is presupposed in our description of

our φ-ing as productive of more happiness than our refraining from φ-ing? It would be

relevant only if the point of our comparison may be redescribed as to judge which item

would be productive of more happiness, where the redescription and the judgment must

be justified to the same person or group who would judge our φ-ing to be productive of

more happiness. But if this is the point, then our φ-ing obviously would be productive of

more happiness. No judgment remains to be made. That our φ-ing would be

presupposedly unjust is not relevant.

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It might be objected that in proposing the resolution of such apparent conflicts of value

by attending to the points of the presupposed judgments, I have missed the point about

values conflicting. That point, it might be said, is that both justice and happiness are

relevant for our practical judgments. And so my proposal could be taken on directly, by

suggesting that both the injustice of φ-ing and its being productive of more happiness

are justified to the same person or group. That is, the group for whom the comparison

of φ-ing with refraining from φ-ing is being conducted accept as justified both the

judgment that φ-ing would be unjust and the judgment that φ-ing would produce more

happiness for more people.

The objection is refuted once it is remembered that the comparison we face is

describable in the most general sense as a comparison whether we do better to φ or to

refrain from φ-ing. And nothing compels us to judge that comparison by attempting to

compare a judgment about justice with a judgment about happiness, whether or not we

accept those judgments as justified. For we have available, for our judgment whether we

would do better to φ, all the empirical features of the act that were available for our

judging whether we would act justly if we were to φ or whether we would produce more

happiness if we were to φ. Further, we have available the same resources for justifying

our judgment whether we would do better to φ as we have for justifying our judgment

whether we would act justly in φ-ing or our judgment whether we would promote more

happiness in φ-ing. And indeed, among those resources is an attempt to justify a

redescription of the comparison whether we would do better to φ as a comparison

whether our φ-ing would be just or a comparison whether our φ-ing would promote

more happiness.

It may be worth my briefly alluding here to the argument originally offered by J.S. Mill

as a resolution for this sort of question, to show how what I have said differs from what

he said. Mill argued that justice had its roots in utility, and hence that anybody must be

mistaken who believed that any act could be both unjust and productive of more utility

than its just alternative, except in so far as the attribution of injustice alluded only to the

breaching of a widely accepted general principle of justice whose invocation was out of

place in some extraordinary case.15 It will be noted that this general line has echoes in

15 In Utilitarianism, Chapter V: On the Connexion Between Justice and Utility. Mill offers in the final paragraph his conclusion that “Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities which are

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Griffin’s suggestion that the best ethics can do is recommend norms which cover most

cases but must be thrust aside in peculiar circumstances. Mill offers, as an illustration

supportive of his conclusion, the observation:

Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by

force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the

only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice

which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other

moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other

principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language,

the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved

from the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.16

What I have said applies to Mill’s argument in this way: what he calls a moral principle

corresponds with what I call a redescription of the point of the general practical

comparative judgment that faces us in any particular case: to judge what it would be

better to do. I have argued that in any particular case, both the redescription and

whatever judgment is reached under the redescription are susceptible to justification. I

have also argued that the justification both of the redescription and of any judgment

reached under it will inevitably be an inductive justification, and hence ultimately a

matter for agreement among those to whom the justification is to be given. The benefit

available from a redescription is only that it can help promote agreement by inserting

steps into the inductive argument.

The relevance of Mill’s observation that we do not call anything justice which is not a

virtue, is that where it is obvious to almost anybody that one does better in some

particular circumstance to φ than to refrain from φ-ing, we will resist any attempt to

justify a redescription of what it is to do better in those circumstances in terms that

would justify the opposite judgment about the alternative acts – that is, the judgment

that one does better to refrain from φ-ing than to φ.

The relevance of Mill’s argument that justice has its roots in utility comes down to

much the same thing. For if the concept utility is, like value, coextensive in its

vastly more important, and therefore more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class (though not more so than others may be in particular cases)”. 16 Loc. cit., penultimate paragraph.

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generality with goodness, then to judge that one does better to φ is nothing but to judge

that one’s φ-ing would promote more utility; whereas if utility is not coextensive in its

generality with goodness, then necessarily it will not be the case that one always does

better to do what would promote more utility.

It may be observed that if utility is coextensive in its generality with value and

goodness, then what I said above about the promotion of value will be no less pertinent

for the promotion of utility: it does not get us very far to redescribe a comparison of the

goodness or value of alternative acts as a comparison of the utility promoted by

alternative acts. And this may be what lies behind an observation about utilitarianism

made by Bernard Williams. Williams, dealing for the sake of clarity with the classical

conception of the utilitarian aim as the promotion of happiness, said that:

we are going to be able to use the Greatest Happiness Principle as the common

measure of all and everybody’s claims, only if the “happiness” involved is in some

sense comparable and in some sense additive. Only if we can compare the

happiness involved for different people and over different outcomes, and also put

them together into some kind of General Happiness, can we make the thing work.17

Taking as his exemplar Bentham’s account of happiness as pleasure and the absence of

pain, Williams observed that the more an account of happiness made it look like

something that was calculable, comparable and additive, the less it looked like

something that any rational man must evidently be aiming at. And that on the other

hand, if the conception of happiness is made generous enough to include anything that

might reasonably be aimed at as a satisfying life or ingredient of a life, then it less and

less looks like something that could be calculable, comparable and additive.18 It is an

implication of my argument that Williams’ observation is accurate necessarily. For we

could rephrase his observation as the suggestion that the more general our conception of

utility, the less obviously justified will be any judgment that to φ will promote more

utility than to refrain from φ-ing; but on the other hand, the more specific our

conception of utility, the less obviously justified will be any claim that to do better is to

promote more utility.

17 Williams, op. cit., pp100-101. 18 Loc. cit.

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9.5.3 Justice and self-interest

Russell Hardin, giving a general account of rational choice theory, tells us:

Perhaps the central claim in Socrates’ political philosophy is that it is in an

individual’s interest to act justly, to be just. This claim contradicts appearances that

we, Glaucon in Plato’s Republic, and others cannot deny. Socrates denies that there

is a fallacy of composition in going from what is best for the individual to what is

best for the community. It takes a great deal of devious argument and an adoring

audience for him to seem convincing.19

Hardin then attributes to Thomas Hobbes and others the demolition of this fallacy of

composition, asserting that:

Eventually Hobbes and others demolished the fallacy of composition at the heart of

Socrates’ and Aristotle’s claims. In his allegory of the state of nature, Hobbes

explicitly supposed that individuals would follow their own interests and that the

result would be collective misery. This result gave licence to his invocation of an

all-powerful governor to bring harmony and wellbeing because it can generally be

in my interest to act well toward others only if there is a government prepared to

coerce both me and the others to behave well. In three short chapters (Leviathan,

chapters 13–15) Hobbes laid the foundations for rational choice theory and for

political philosophy thereafter.20

The emphasis in this second quote is mine, and what I have emphasised contains a

fallacy of the kind I have sought to bring out generally in this chapter and indeed in the

entire work. If Hobbes supposed that individuals would follow their own interests, then

he was attributing to individuals the god-like judgment that we sensibly resist

attributing to surgeons or anybody else. For to say that somebody follows their own

interest is to presuppose that he knows what it would be in his interest to do. And that

presupposition, no less than the claim Hardin attributes to Socrates, contradicts

appearances that we cannot deny, at least if it is held to apply to every individual, or

even to every adult individual. Indeed, the suggestion that if everybody followed their

own interests the result would be collective misery exhibits just the same fallacy of

19 “Rational choice theory: 1 Historical background” (1988). In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy; London, Routledge. Retrieved March 01, 2007, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/R023SECT1

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composition that Hardin attributes to Socrates, except that its implication is reversed.

That is, the implication this time is that everybody following their own interests will

lead to collective misery. But a denial that what is good for the group is necessarily

good for the individual does not entail an affirmation that what is good for the

individual is necessarily bad for the group. Indeed, if collective misery is not in each

person’s interest, then necessarily, each cannot be following his interest in producing it.

Ewin offers in Virtues and Rights an interpretation of Hobbes that avoids the fallacy I

am pointing to with respect to self-interest: Hobbes’s hypothesis was not a hypothesis

about the results of everybody following his own interest, but a hypothesis about the

result of everybody following what he judged privately would be in his own interest.21

No god-like judgment is presupposed. Nor does what someone judges privately to be in

his own interest necessarily exclude his taking it to be in his interest to promote what he

judges to be the interest of somebody else, or of everybody else. However, to promote

another’s interest is foolhardy where you have no good reason for believing that the

other has some respect for your interest, at least where that other has the capacity to do

you serious harm.22 And it is a key aspect of Hobbes’s political philosophy that healthy

adult humans share the capacity to do one another serious harm: it is this observation

that underpins his assertion of human equality, an assertion which drew from Ewin the

defence I alluded to in Chapter 6.23

In what is for the most part a remarkable book, Ewin argues that the individuals of

man’s natural condition about whom Hobbes hypothesised were, as Ewin describes

them, incomplete:24 they lacked social virtue, by which Ewin means that they lacked the

qualities of character that would be necessary even for their living peaceably together in

isolated family units. Ewin argues that this was no oversight on Hobbes’s part – that it

20 Ibid. 21 Boulder, Westview Press, 1991. 22 Hence, we do not, in general, promote the interests of those people with whom we are at war; and if each of us is at war with everybody, then only a fool promotes anybody else’s interests. Ewin underlines this point heavily in Chapters 4 and 5 of Virtues and Rights. We can also notice that human babies start out with no respect for their parents’ interests, for they do not understand what they are. But they also start out with little power to harm. Similarly, humans tend not to promote the interests of very dangerous animals except after they have been rendered relatively harmless, such as by taming or imprisonment. 23 However that defence was given in Liberty, Community and Justice, as I said then. 24 “In the Hobbesian natural condition, we have man the mere animal (or machine); life for him is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Such beings cannot simply be herded together to form a community. They must be combined in terms of certain principles – the laws of nature – which, as Hobbes points out, are qualities of character and are thus part of Hobbes’s full-blown account of human nature. Those who lack the laws of nature in any effective form therefore lack qualities that Hobbes

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was, rather, a big part of the point of Hobbes’s exposition to show that the fairly

widespread possession of social virtue was a precondition of community life25 – but that

Hobbes’s apodictic method interfered with his seeing its full significance.26 Hobbes, he

says, sought to show that where nobody submitted to any common authority, there was

no scope for social virtue: “It is not simply that justice does not pay in these

circumstances and that I should therefore not bother about being just; justice simply

does not require any particular behaviour of me.”27 But these circumstances Ewin

distinguishes as the radical form of the Hobbesian natural condition;28 Hobbes’s

description of it is a speculative device and to be contrasted with man’s actual

condition, where decision procedures within families and among small groups of

families will inevitably be established and (in general) followed even in the most

primitive circumstances – as they must be if the families are to thrive. As Ewin puts it:

“General possession of the virtues is necessary, Hobbes argued, if sovereignty is to be

possible, but general possession of the virtues also means that sovereignty is not

logically necessary and that private judgment can, without disaster, continue to play a

healthy part in our lives.”29 In other words, actual people often can rule themselves by

committee. Parliamentary democracy can be enduringly effective as a form of

government, given sufficiently favourable psychological conditions among the

governed, and favourable psychological conditions would be necessary for any form of

government.

However, Ewin runs into difficulty in his penultimate chapter, where he struggles to

give an account of how the possession of a virtue motivates a person to act virtuously.

The difficulty is perhaps most obvious where he offers a hypothetical example that is

regarded as essential to communal life. In an important sense, such ‘people’ are incomplete.” Virtues and Rights, p99. 25 “The ‘people’ with whom Hobbes populates the natural condition are in reality only aspects of people; they lack the qualities of character that are the laws of nature, and part of the point of the description of the radical form of our natural condition is to show the significance in social life of those qualities of character.” Virtues and Rights, pp104-05. 26 “What he [Hobbes] sought as a result of the scientific endeavour were apodictic or necessary statements – statements the falsity of which was inconceivable. He wanted logical truths.” Virtues and Rights, p9. Ewin devotes chapter 1 to giving an account of Hobbes’s method of argument. 27 Virtues and Rights, p127. The argument about the ineffectiveness of social virtue for those in the radical form of the natural condition is given at length in chapters 4 and 5. It is argued that in that condition, no one has a good reason for making a contract with anybody except fraudulently. If the contract on both sides were not fraudulent, then the contractors would have left their natural condition with respect to one another. 28 “Human life with no authority or conventional decision-procedures at all, even in the form of families or other small groups, is the radical form of the natural condition in which each person is in the natural condition with respect to each other person, and, as Hobbes made clear, that is not a possible continuing existence for humankind.” Virtues and Rights, p97. 29 Virtues and Rights, p166.

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premised on the possibility that a parent could instil in his son a disposition to be just

but without explaining to him how it could be in the son’s interest that he act justly.

Ewin takes it that “justice pays each of us by making life in community possible”,30 the

payoff being that life in a community is better for anybody than life as an isolated

individual. “That is why justice is a good thing, and it is, presumably, why we ought to

be just.”31 This may appear to be vulnerable to Hardin’s observation about the fallacy of

composition, but Ewin avoids the fallacy by arguing that a sense of justice is among the

aforementioned psychological conditions that must be present in a goodly number of

community members if community life is to be possible for anybody (these people can

then act together to coerce vicious free-riders).32 If nobody had a sense of justice then

there would be no community and nobody would survive more than a generation: that is

alleged to be part of what Hobbes sought to show. However, Ewin argues, “If one

thinks that the reasons why a particular quality of character is a good thing are the

reasons on which somebody is acting in exhibiting that quality of character, one will

misidentify the virtues.”33 Hence, what is good about people having a sense of justice is

that it pays them by making it possible for them to live in communities, but just people

act justly not because it pays each of them in every case but because to act justly in

general is to act in accord with their sense of justice. If we say that the reason why a just

person acts justly is because it pays him to do so, then we appear to be identifying his

doing what is just with his doing what pays him, “but doing something because it pays

is not really being just”.34 The point of the example Ewin offers is that the son brought

up to act justly without being given a full explanation for why it was good to act justly

would do what he saw to be just because it was just, and not because he saw how it

would serve his interests to do what was just. “It is a good thing that my son be just,”

Ewin elaborates, “but I cannot give him reasons for being just: Just is something that he

is, not something that he does. I can give him reasons for performing just actions; if he

30 Virtues and Rights, p178. 31 Loc. cit. 32 “If justice is a virtue, it is so because it facilitates social relations and pays off. In fact, it seems clear that a sense of justice is necessary for cooperation: One cannot cooperate with somebody who cannot be trusted at all, and one cannot trust somebody who keeps to his agreements only when they require that he do what it would have suited him to do anyway.” (Virtues and Rights, p177.) A more general but similar argument about why we count certain qualities of character as virtues is attributed to Hobbes. “In the radical natural condition, humankind could not last more than one generation, so it is a presupposition of continuing human life that these qualities of character are virtues. The argument is not a means-end argument. Hobbes is not arguing that continuing human life is a good thing, so what is necessary for human life to continue must be a good thing. He is arguing that it is a necessary truth in continuing human life that these qualities of character are virtues.” (Virtues and Rights, p168). 33 Virtues and Rights, p169. 34 Virtues and Rights, p178.

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is a just person, it will suffice that I give him those reasons that show the action to be

just.”35

The problem here is that Ewin seems to slip into the same fallacy I have accused Hardin

of: he neglects to distinguish a person’s doing what is just from his doing what he

judges to be just. What sort of reasons could show an action to be just? At best, I have

argued, they could be reasons given in justifying a judgment that an action was just.

What sort of reasons would they be? Well, they could be aimed at showing that the

judgment had been reached by a person in whom the authority to judge what was just

had been vested. How is the person’s having that authority to be justified? That is the

very question to which Ewin seeks to give a full and general answer in Virtues and

Rights. But Ewin could not give his son that full and general answer without giving

away the game. So he would be restricted to saying that what is just is whatever some

duly appointed official says is just. The inadequacy of such an answer as a reason for

accepting that person’s judgments as justified will be plain to many parents. It is

brought out when we recognise that for the son, in many cases the duly appointed

official will be none but his parent. “Because I said so” not only leaves unexplained the

source of the parent’s authority, but also leaves opaque any distinction the parent might

be making between what he judges is just and what he judges will pay him. What other

sorts of reasons could be given in justifying a judgment that an action was just? The

only other sort, I suspect, are the sorts of reasons that, as I argued in the previous

chapter, friends will give one another in justifying to one another their actions as

blameless. That is, reasons showing that the act does not disserve any end the friends

share. What counts as an adequate justification here? A justification that each friend

accepts.36 But then, that is to show that an act which two people accept to be just is any

act which they agree would not disserve their joint interests. So acting justly comes

down to acting self-interestedly after all. (Which, peculiarly enough, suggests Socrates

may have been right.)

The path through this apparent conundrum is to recognise that a judgment about what is

in one’s interest, like a judgment about what is just, is at bottom nothing more than

somebody’s judgment. The distinction between self-interest and justice does not lie in

35 Virtues and Rights, p180. 36 Remembering what I said in the previous chapter about such justifications where one of the parties is a child: here the acceptance of the child may be putative, but to say that one’s justification to the child may be putative is not to say that the parent is justified in doing whatever he likes.

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the just person’s having god-like knowledge of what is just, or even a human sense of

what is just, and the disposition to act on what is known or sensed. It lies in to whom the

judgment is to be justified in each case. The Hobbesian conception of self-interest

which Hardin invokes is not, as he suggests, a matter of somebody doing whatever is

(i.e. indisputably) in his interests, but a matter of his doing whatever he judges to be in

his interests, with the justification for that judgment to be given to nobody but himself.

This is what Hobbes argued, if universal, could lead only to misery. One way of seeing

how it would lead to misery is to see that, as I argued in the previous chapter, it would

preclude friendship even of the most minimal kind, in which two people ally to pursue

any joint interest. But what I hope we can now also see is that it would generate the

same misery, for precisely the same reason, if everybody did whatever he judged to be

just, with the justification for that judgment to be given to nobody but himself. Indeed,

this is an implication of Ewin’s analysis, but in seeking to explain how virtues motivate

he slides away from it.

What confuses us here? It is, once again, that we apply the description just or the

description self-interested to the act, while neglecting to notice that we accept different

conditions for the justification of these attributions of value. We identify acting in one’s

interest with justifying one’s practical judgments only to oneself, and acting justly with

justifying one’s practical judgments to at least somebody else, putatively if not

explicitly. We withhold the description just from the former act unless it coincides with

the latter. And we withhold the description just from a person unless she does what she

does because it is justifiable to (at least) another. However, and crucially, from her point

of view, the because here does not allude to a sufficient reason for her acting; rather, it

alludes to a necessary reason: the just person will refrain from doing what is not

justifiable to the other(s). Sometimes, and indeed very often, that will leave open a great

many things she might do which would be justifiable, and she may choose from among

these as she pleases, justifying her judgment which would be better only to herself,

while still being just, and acting justly. For as Hobbes himself observed, invoking

implicitly the law of excluded middle, “whatsoever is not unjust, is just”.37 That is, a

person’s refraining from acting unjustly is both necessary and sufficient for her acting

justly: every act she performs which is not unjust is a just act.

37 Leviathan, Chapter 15, paragraph 2.

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Will any of these acts be self-interested acts? It is plain that all will be, unjust and just

alike. For under this conception of self-interest, one acts in one’s interest when one does

what one judges to be in one’s interest, with the justification for that judgment to be

given only to oneself. Obviously the only here is a qualification of sufficiency: it is

sufficient for justifying my judgment that I accept the justification, and not necessary

that anybody else accepts it, but it is not necessary either that nobody else accepts it.

When I act self-interestedly, in this sense, whether anybody else thinks my judgments

about what it would be in my interest to do are justified is irrelevant to their being

justified. That is, my judgment is justified whether or not anybody else thinks it is; my

judgment is justified just in case I think it is.

A person, then, may act justly by doing only whatever (a) she judges to be in her interest

and (b) is just, provided that what she judges to be in her interest and what is just always

coincide. But further, nothing prevents her using the justice of an act – that is, its

performance being accepted as justified by at least someone else – as part of her

justification for her private judgment about what it would be in her interest to do. And

in so far as she does that, she will also be adjudged a just person. Indeed, when we look

at the reasons Socrates gives in the Crito for his submitting to his sentence of execution,

they are reasons of this kind. Socrates explains to Crito why he judges that he would not

do better to escape his sentence by fleeing Athens, even though it is possible that he do

so, and it is part of his explanation that his sentence is accepted as justified by the

citizens of Athens, in having been reached through the publicly accepted process of an

Athenian court. Obviously he disagrees with both the verdict and the sentence, having

argued against them at his trial, but he sees that his insisting on his private judgment

overriding the public judgment of Athens would have consequences for him, and he

tells Crito that he judges it better for him that he die than that he live with those

consequences. We do not infer, however, from Socrates’ arguing that it is in his interest

to submit to his sentence, that in submitting to his sentence he is motivated by self-

interest and therefore he is not really being just.

Nevertheless, if Socrates judges that his submitting to his sentence of execution serves

his interest better than his fleeing, and duly submits to the sentence in the calm way

outlined in the Phaedo, there is no contradictory appearance that Hardin or anybody else

can point to. If to serve one’s best interest is to do whatever one judges to be in one’s

best interest, where the justification for that judgment is to be given only to oneself,

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then Socrates is serving his best interest if and only if he judges that he is. We may

point out a discrepancy between what somebody says is in his best interest and what he

does, but in so far as his judgment appears to us, it is only in these ways that it appears.

Nor need we make any difficulty about explaining what motivates Socrates to submit to

his sentence: he is motivated, quite obviously, by self-interest. That anybody else judges

that Socrates’ submitting is not in his interest is irrelevant.

Hence, a claim by Socrates that it is always in an individual’s interest to act justly is not

refuted by the observation that some people do not always judge it to be in their interest

to act justly. Socrates’ response could be that the judgment of such people is poor.

Implicit in such a response is a distinction between a claim about what is in somebody’s

interest, and a claim about what somebody judges to be in his interest. We may account

for the distinction by attending to how we would distinguish a justified judgment from

an unjustified judgment in either case. We may also deny that there could be a

distinction, asserting, perhaps, that what is in an individual’s interest is whatever he

judges to be in his interest. But it is this claim, and not the claim Hardin attributes to

Socrates, that is most effectively demolished by Hobbes.

Why, then, might Hardin have thought it obvious that it was not in an individual’s

interest to act justly? Because, I suspect, we tend to describe just acts as just and forget

that they are also self-interested, and we tend to describe unjust acts as self-interested

and forget that they are also unjust. Hence, Hardin is observing that some self-interested

acts are unjust. He is right to do so, if by self-interested he means justified privately. But

if this is what he means by self-interested, then all just acts are self-interested. The

question then arising is whether an individual acts justly. Obviously, some do, even

where we take acting justly to be acting in accord with the law as it is officially

determined. Just as obviously, if what is in an individual’s interest is whatever he judges

to be in his interest, the question whether it is in a particular individual’s interest to do

what is legally just can be answered only by that individual. And the answer he gives,

unless somebody manages to do a better job than Hobbes of showing sovereignty to be

necessary, will be an answer that he can justify only inductively.

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9.5.4 The virtues and self-interest

Neera Kapur Badhwar has argued at some length for the conclusion that it may well be

in a person’s interest to be virtuous.38 Even if she were right, her being right would not

meet Ewin’s assertion that one will misidentify the virtues if one thinks that the reasons

why a particular quality of character is a good thing are the reasons upon which

somebody is acting in exhibiting that quality of character. Hence Ewin, we can imagine,

would argue that even if it is in somebody’s interest to be virtuous, when they act

virtuously they cannot be doing so just because they believe that to do so is in their

interest. But it should now be clear that we have again a failure to distinguish a person’s

doing what he judges would be in his interest from his doing what others would judge to

be virtuous. From the point of view of anybody else, there is nothing at all to complain

about if a person who is judged by others to act virtuously is doing what he believes is

in his best interest. Ewin might object that, as he says, “If self-interest is my only motive

for keeping the contract, then it will often lead me to break the contract,”39 – observing

that the point has often been made in terms of the Prisoners’ Dilemma. But self-interest

will motivate somebody to break a contract only if he judges it to be in his interest to

break the contract, and it is not necessary that a person will judge it to be in his interest

to break a contract, however fraudulent the other party to the contract might appear to

others.40 We might think that what such a person was doing was not in his best interest –

as I observed above, to promote another’s interest is considered foolhardy where you

have no good reason for believing that the other has some respect for your interest, at

least where that other has the capacity to do you serious harm. But that is entirely beside

the point, if the agent is to be his own judge of what is in his interest.41

This is brought out when we consider carefully how self-interest can feature as a

motive. Very clearly, in so far as it makes sense to describe a motive as “self-interest”,

it can motivate only behaviour that the agent judges to be in his interest. But of course,

this could be any behaviour. (It is pertinent to recognise that we sometimes apply the

38 “Self-interest and Virtue”, Social Philosophy and Policy 14(1) 1997; pp226-263, and “Altruism Versus Self-Interest: Sometimes a False Dichotomy”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 10(1), 1993; pp90-117. 39 Virtues and Rights, p178. 40 Our sympathy for people who lose money pursuing outrageously attractive investment opportunities offered them by strangers over the internet tends to be attenuated by the recognition that those who lost the money very likely were pursuing their own interest no less assiduously than those who defrauded them of it. 41 A point I made above might usefully be reiterated here: we can observe that the quote I attribute here to Ewin would be no less plausible if we replaced self-interest with justice, while leaving it up to me to judge what is just.

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description selfish to a person’s committing suicide, and it is not obvious that such an

application is never appropriate.) And we have again the presupposition of an inevitably

inductive aspect of a judgment: it is presupposed that certain acts either are or are not in

somebody’s interest in certain circumstances, where all anybody can do is make a

judgment about this.

The question which then arises is what would count as a justified judgment. And we can

observe that the other social virtues are like justice in this respect: that we withhold the

descriptions kind, generous, magnanimous, courageous, and more generally, virtuous

from an act or a person unless the description would be accepted as justified by at least

somebody other than that person; whereas we accept that an act may justifiably be

described as self-interested if the actor describes it that way.

Hence, just as a just person will judge it to be in his interest to do what (others agree) is

just, and partly because they agree it is just, so a kind or courageous person will judge it

to be in his interest to do what (others agree) is kind or courageous, and partly because

others would agree it was kind or courageous.

A virtuous person, in other words, will take it that it is in his interest to act virtuously.

But that does not answer Badhwar’s question, for she took herself to be examining

whether it is in a person’s interest to be virtuous: that is, in her summation, whether

“virtue not only makes us better, it also makes us better off”.42 Badhwar, then, might

usefully ask herself how she would justify a judgment whether the virtuous are better

off than the vicious, and to whom.

9.6 Conclusion: Value and money

The aim of this thesis was to illuminate any relation there might be between what is

referred to colloquially as the value of money and value as it is more widely understood.

Can we conclude anything from this extended discussion of comparability? The central

conclusion, I hope, should be plain. It is that money functions in any comparison just

like any other item functions in a comparison. The value which is expressed in any

comparative judgment in which money features as an item will share its description

with the description we give of the reason why the comparison has been conducted.

42 “Self-interest and Virtue”, pp227-8.

239

But what we mean colloquially when we talk of the value of money is the rate at which

it exchanges with that other item. Obviously, the value of money in this sense will

depend both on what is the point of the comparison and on who is to be the judge of it.

But can I now say anything general about what underlies the rate at which money

exchanges with other items in the circumstances which typically generate prices?

The general conclusion that the foregoing discussion points to is that what underlies

prices as they are typically generated is the justice of the acts that generate them. In

legally sanctioned transactions, the relevant justification for an act being just will be a

legal justification. A transaction is legally just if and only if it is not legally unjust, and

in what we call market economies, a great many transactions will not be legally unjust.

Money appears to make commensurable the values of a range of different kinds of

goods, simply because, given that the good is legally sanctioned as an object of trade,

the justice of the trade does not turn on what price the good is traded for, and hence a

trade in the good may be just at whatever price the good is traded for. The buyer and

seller of the good therefore are not legally required to justify to anybody but themselves

what price they reach, or whether they reach a price at all. Whether or not they transact,

and at whatever price they transact, they act justly under the law.

However, what is legally sanctioned as an object of trade is decided, in democracies or

constitutional monarchies, by agreement through democratic processes. It is because we

overlook the role of these processes in determining what is legally sanctioned as an

object of trade that we struggle to set a financial value on goods whose trading is not

legally sanctioned.

That is what somebody seeking to defend, to use another example offered by Williams,

the value of preserving an ancient part of a town, against the opportunity cost, expressed

financially, of preserving it, needs to remember if she is to avoid the apologetic

dilemma Williams outlines, of either saying that the value of its preservation cannot be

expressed financially or of attempting, through some unsatisfactory form of shadow

pricing, to set a financial sum on it.43 If such a person is not proposing to purchase the

43 “Again and again, defenders of such [non-quantifiable] values are faced with the dilemma, of either refusing to quantify the value in question, in which case it disappears from the sum altogether, or else of trying to attach some quantity to it, in which case they misrepresent what they are about and also usually lose the argument, since the quantified value is not enough to tip the scale.” Williams, op, cit., pp102-103.

240

ancient part of town herself and preserve it, then what presumably she must be arguing

is that it would be better if it were not a legally sanctioned object of trade, or that even if

its trading were to be legally sanctioned, it would be better if its destruction were not

legally sanctioned. It is open to her to attempt to justify such a judgment in a public

forum by pointing to the financial benefits (from tourism, for example) that might

accrue to the community if the part of town were preserved, and attempting to show that

these would be greater than the financial costs incurred in its preservation (from

compensating the private owners of that part of town for the community prohibiting its

destruction, for example). But she would also need to justify her redescription of what it

is to do better in this case as to do whatever will accrue the greater financial benefit to

the community, and this justification will inevitably be inductive: a matter for

agreement among whoever are the relevant public officials, rather than a matter

demonstrable via a deductively valid proof.

Very pertinently, however, if she cannot show that such financial benefits outweigh the

relevant costs, then it is also open to her to criticise in the same way anybody else’s

attempt to redescribe what it is to do better in the case, and the question whether her

criticism succeeds will again be a matter for agreement among whoever are the relevant

public officials.

Hence, apparent conflicts between compared items whose descriptions presuppose

attributions of financial value can all be resolved in the same way as such conflicts

where the value presupposed in the item’s description is not financial.

As I said above, we attend to what account of the point of the comparison, and of those

to whom a judgment must be justified, would justify the attribution of the presupposed

value, and justify our judgment under those conditions (in which case the judgment is

presupposed by the presupposed value, and any value presupposed in the description of

the other item, unless it is justified under the same conditions, will be irrelevant for

justifying a judgment). Or, we return to our most general starting point, where the point

of the comparison is to judge what it would be better to do, and then redescribe more

specifically the point of the comparison in a way that finds acceptance among those to

whom a judgment is to be justified, and make a judgment that those people will accept

satisfies that point.

241

In the latter case, any values presupposed in the description of either item will be

irrelevant (although they may happen to be justified also under the new conditions).

Hence, what justifies our accepting the recommendation of any cost-benefit analysis

that is conducted in financial terms is not only the deductive aspect of the analysis (and

any non-deductive inferences made in the course of producing it), but agreement that we

would do better to do whatever the cost-benefit analysis recommends.

It is here that we may resist the recommendations of any cost-benefit analysis – as we

commonly do. What I can now point out is that in doing so, we do only what a friend

must do in resisting an act that would gain her money but that she judges would

disserve a shared end, or even what a non-friend will do in resisting an act that would

gain him money but that he judges would disserve a more general end that he happens

to have. That is, we resist the redescription of doing better as doing what would be

financially the most gainful of the available options.

Of course, it may well be that in resisting this redescription we must attend to the public

procedure under which the redescription may have received a prior justification. That,

essentially, is the conclusion Ewin offers in Virtues and Rights. In other words,

somebody’s resisting the redescription does not necessarily justify his adopting any

redescription he pleases, and judging that given his redescription, he would do better to

break the law (for example) in resisting the act that the cost-benefit analysis concludes

is the better act.

But here is where D’Agostino’s suggestions about how a technology of

commensuration may contribute to domination come into play. For the apologetic

dilemma Williams attributed to the defender of non-financial values arises from the

likelihood in practice that, where a decision is to be made on the basis of a comparison

of value, values that are not presented as financial figures tend to, in his words,

disappear from the sum.44 And they disappear because they are held to be

incommensurable with financial values, and hence it is not clear how they could be

taken into account in a judgment that could be justified on the basis of a deductively

valid argument.

44 Ibid.

242

We are now in a position to see that the deductive validity of justifications for

comparisons of value always will rely on prior justification that has a non-deductive

basis, and that it is public agreement on this prior justification that constitutes the

technology of commensuration which renders the values commensurable publicly as

financial sums. If we recognise this, then we will be better placed to resist demands that

our comparative practical judgments be justified on the basis of deductively valid

arguments, and hence to resist domination by those who may have an interest in the

conclusions such arguments justify. That is, we will be better placed to resist the

demand that we identify value with financial quantities (just as, for example, we may

resist the demand that we identify somebody’s intelligence with his performance in

standard IQ tests).

The following suggestion might help stiffen our resolve: it is on just this resistance by a

decisively influential proportion of a community that the community’s use of money

depends. For if it were accepted that every community member was justified in doing

whatever he judged would be most financially gainful for him, then the prospect of his

gaining money from acting would justify any act he might perform. The absurdity of

such an acceptance needs no emphasis. But in resisting accepting this justification as

sufficient, we do not need to accept in its place the proposition that some values – the

value of acting justly for example – must for some people be incomparable with the

value of money. All we need to accept is that some people must recognise, implicitly if

not explicitly, that they share ends with others, and hence that their ends must be more

general than their gaining of money. Given that recognition, such people may justify

judging sometimes that they do better to resist opportunities to gain money: that the

option which is less gainful financially may be judged justifiably the more valuable

option. In so far as we wish to represent our practical judgments as justifiable on a

comparative basis, that recognition seems to underlie not only friendship but money

itself, and more generally, the prosperity of those who employ it.

243

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