Abstract
This paper critically examines Richard Kraut’s attack on the notion of absolute value, and lays out some of the conceptual work required to defend such a notion. The view under attack claims that absolute goodness is a property that provides a reason to value what has it. Kraut’s overall challenge is that absolute goodness cannot play this role. Kraut’s own view is that goodness-for, instead, plays the reason-providing role. My targets are Kraut’s double-counting objection, and his ethical objection against absolute value. After explaining the double-counting objection, and discussing the idea of non-additive reasons, I examine and reject Kraut’s reasons for holding that nonadditivity can rescue relative value but not absolute value. I proceed then to explore a different reply to the double-counting objection by introducing a distinction between normative reasons for action and reasons that explain why a certain consideration is a reason for action. Such a distinction (hinted at by Kraut) would either help both Kraut and the friend of absolute value, or neither of them. I defend the distinction from the objection that it would make absolute value just a ‘shadow’. Finally, I reply to Kraut’s ethical objection that being motivated by absolute value is depersonalizing, on two grounds: 1) if thinking in terms of absolute value depersonalizes relationships, then we have absolute-value-given reasons not to think in those terms; 2) the distinction between normative and explanatory reasons explains why even a motivation centred on absolute value need not be depersonalizing.
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Notes
All further references are to Kraut 2011.
He does have a different sort of worry about a buck-passing or fitting attitude analysis: truths about what there is reason to value are not self-justifying (see his Appendix D).
E.g. the ethical objection against absolute goodness (on which, see below) could also be turned against attributive goodness. Changing one of Kraut’s examples slightly, if one cared about teaching one’s son to understand and admire Macbeth only because of the value it has as a play, this would not be any less depersonalizing and thus objectionable (as Kraut sees it) (see also p. 196: “That something is a good member of some kind or other does not yet speak in favor of valuing it”).
As one reviewer noted, given certain views of what is a normative reason, goodness or goodness-for might still be said to provide reasons, even if they are analyzable in the buck-passing way as higher-order properties such as the property of having other properties that provide reasons (see Rønnow-Rasmussen 2011: 43–5). As far as I can see, from Kraut’s perspective the sort of reasons that absolute goodness would thus provide would still involve double-counting and depersonalization. On the other hand, it is not clear that x’s goodness-for-A, conceived as a higher-order property (e.g. x’s property of having other properties that provide reasons to desire x for A’s sake), even if reason-providing, would provide the right sort of reason in opposition to absolute goodness (i.e. a non-dispensable, and appropriately personal reason). So, even if possibly consistent with Kraut’s view, a buck-passing account of good-for might still be resisted.
One might say that it is no coincidence that Kraut appeals to non-additivity in the case of attributive goodness: after all, he denies that attributive goodness ultimately provides reasons (see footnote 3 above). So if non-additivity makes an evaluative property dispensable, this is fine as long as attributive goodness goes. But Kraut’s appeal to non-additivity occurs in the context of defending both attributive goodness and goodness-for-somebody from a buck-passing challenge. That the particular example involves goodness as a play rather than goodness for a person is incidental.
Remember that Kraut, unlike other critics, does not question the conceptual rights of absolute goodness.
From ‘p should never be considered as reason-giving’ it may not follow that ‘p is never a reason to act’, and so that ‘p can never outweigh other reasons’. But I leave this complication aside.
Friends of absolute goodness need not hold, like G. E. Moore seemed to, that absolute goodness is the only normative reason there is for doing anything at all. Not everything that is good-for-somebody need be absolutely good. In these cases, goodness-for is a sufficiently good reason for action—provided, perhaps, that it is not merely conceived as a higher-order, buck-passing property (see fn. 4). Thus goodness-for can be an evaluative sui generis reason-providing property also for at least some friends of absolute goodness (thanks to a reviewer for pointing this out). The disagreement with Kraut turns on whether he has given us good reasons to dispense with absolute goodness as an additional such property.
One possible answer has to do with agent-neutral reasons, or reasons for anyone. When x’s goodness-for-someone gives rise to x’s absolute goodness, then in turn there will be reasons for anyone to favour x. Such reasons might not be granted simply in virtue of x being good for someone (i.e. for this particular individual). So not all the normative work can be done by goodness-for. The relation of relative goodness to agent-neutral reasons is somewhat underexplored in Kraut’s book. Another possible answer has to do with the implications of the notorious non-identity problem. It might be better if a woman waits a few months or years to conceive a child, but this would not be better for the child she would not conceive, nor for the child she would conceive, although the latter would (by hypothesis) enjoy a higher level of well-being than the former. Arguably, facts about goodness-for are necessary but not sufficient to explain why she has a reason to prefer waiting a few months. (Unless we can make sense of the claim that such a choice is better for her children, whoever they turn out to be.)
References
Kraut, R. (2011). Against absolute goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rønnow-Rasmussen, T. (2011). Personal value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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This paper was written while holding Mobilitas Grant MJD111.
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Orsi, F. How to Be a Friend of Absolute Goodness. Philosophia 41, 1237–1251 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9454-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9454-1