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Consequentialism, Goodness, and States of Affairs

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Notes

  1. See eg. Amartya Sen, ‘Rights and Agency’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 11 No. 1, (1982); T.M. Scanlon, ‘Rights, Goals and Fairness’, Erkentniss, Vol. 11 No. 1, (1977).

  2. See Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘Goodness and Utilitariaxnism’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 67 No. 2, (1993); ‘The Right and the Good’, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 94 No. 6, (1997); ‘The Legacy of Principia’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 41 No. 1, (2003a); ‘Reply to Sinnott-Armstrong’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 41 No. 1, (2003b); Normativity (Chicago: Open Court, 2008); ‘Normativity’, Analysis, Vol. 70 No. 4, (2010a); ‘Reply to Critics’, Analysis, Vol. 70 No. 4, (2010b).

  3. This talk of different usages is helpful for understanding the challenge Thomson poses consequentialists, and the options they have for responding, but I should note that Thomson is very clear that the word ‘good’ (though it ascribes different properties) has only one overarching meaning, not multiple meanings with ambiguous differentiation.

  4. Thomson (2008), op. cit., p. 26.

  5. Some authors use ‘attributive’ to refer only to good-of-a-kind properties, and treat the ‘good for/at/with’ properties differently. I will use it, as this sentence suggests, to cover both.

  6. See Peter Geach, ‘Good and Evil’, Analysis, Vol. 17 No. 2, (1956).

  7. Nicholas Sturgeon, ‘Normativity’, Analysis, Vol. 70 No. 4, (2010); Charles Pigden, ‘Geach on “good”’, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 40 No. 159, (1990).

  8. See Thomson (2003b), op. cit.

  9. Thomson’s claim really is the analytic/semantic one that seemingly-predicative uses of ‘good’ always have some sort of attributive goodness as their meaning. (With the exception of those in philosophical texts, which she thinks are meaningless, and the handful for which she gives the expressivist analysis described in the next paragraph.) If—as seems pretty plausible, though not totally undeniable—“punishing criminals is good, but is it good for society?” is an open question, that would itself tell against Thomson’s strategy. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

  10. See Thomson (2010b), op. cit.

  11. The three answers I consider next were suggested by an anonymous reviewer.

  12. See eg. Michael J. Zimmerman, ‘In Defense of the Concept of Intrinsic Value’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 29 No. 3, (1999), p. 404. Roger Crisp also expressed doubts to me when I raised this suggestion.

  13. Cf. Sturgeon, op. cit.

  14. See R.M. Hare, ‘Geach: Good and Evil’, Analysis, Vol. 17 No. 5, (1957).

  15. Francesco Orsi, Value Theory, (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). The relevant section is §3.6, pp. 58–61.

  16. Zimmerman (1999), op. cit. This article was republished as Chapter 2 in Zimmerman, The Nature of Intrinsic Value, (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

  17. Cf. Christine Korsgaard, ‘Two distinctions in goodness’, Philosophical Review, Vol. 92 No. 2, (1983), pp. 169–195. What Zimmerman calls ‘intrinsic goodness’ is now more often called ‘final value’, to avoid this confusion.

  18. Zimmerman (1999), op. cit., p. 405.

  19. I think it’s relatively clear that Zimmerman doesn’t mean the ‘moral requirement to favour’ comment as an analysis of ethical goodness. But it’s worth noting that the interpretation of both Orsi (2015, op. cit.) and Thomson (2003a, op. cit.) is that he is offering an analysis. They thus both criticise him for not offering an independent or informative account of intrinsic goodness, but instead simply reducing the evaluative to the deontic. That sort of reduction is also what would render the consequentialist principle vacuous, so these criticisms go together. (At least for those who don’t want to make consequentialism vacuous.)

  20. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 388–389.

  21. That value (at least for consequentialists) is ultimately borne by states of affairs, and that talk of things being good is short for talk about states of affairs in which they occur being good, has also been argued by Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 30–2, and T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 80.

  22. Richard Kraut, Against Absolute Goodness, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 42.

  23. Kraut, op. cit., p. 27.

  24. Kraut, op. cit., pp. 101–7.

  25. See Richard Kraut, ‘Replies to Stroud, Thomson, and Crisp’, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Vol. 87 No. 2, (2013), p. 493.

  26. Ibid, p. 485. Emphasis mine.

  27. Kraut (2011), op. cit., p. 106. Emphasis mine.

  28. Ibid, pp. 62–3.

  29. Ibid, pp. 79–97.

  30. That the real problem is with inattention to benefit and harm rather than attention to absolute goodness is pointed out by Orsi, though he only hints at the implication that the Ethical Objection has no force independent of the Double Value Problem. See Francesco Orsi, ‘How to Be a Friend of Absolute Goodness’, Philosophia, Vol. 41 No. 4, (2013), pp. 1237–1251.

  31. Kraut (2011), op. cit., pp. 42–53.

  32. Cf. Roger Crisp, ‘In Defence of Absolute Goodness’, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Vol. 87 No. 2, (2013), p. 480.

  33. Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘Goodness’, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Vol. 87 No. 2, (2013), p. 469.

  34. See Roger Crisp, ‘Value, reasons and the structure of justification: how to avoid passing the buck’, Analysis, Vol. 65 No. 1, (2005), pp. 84–5.

  35. Kraut (2011), op. cit., p. 59.

  36. See Orsi (2013), op. cit., for a thorough consideration of the various responses just canvassed and demonstration that the redundancy arguments against goodness-for and absolute goodness are very tightly analogous. See also Thomson (2013), op. cit., p. 469; Crisp (2013), op. cit., p. 479.

  37. Kraut (2011), op. cit., p. 60.

  38. Kraut (2013), op. cit., p. 491.

  39. That he would want to say this is suggested by Kraut, (2011), op. cit, pp. 67–8.

  40. The clarity of the argument that follows was greatly improved by the comments of an anonymous reviewer.

  41. Connie S. Rosati, ‘Objectivism and Relational Good’, Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 25, (2008), p. 318.

  42. I base this presumption on Kraut (2011), op. cit., p. 68; (2013), op. cit., p. 491.

  43. Donald Regan, ‘Why Am I My Brother’s Keeper?’, in Reason and Value: Themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz, R. Jay Wallace (ed.), (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), p. 211.

  44. Kraut (2011), op. cit., p. 56.

  45. I owe great thanks to Roger Crisp for extensive discussion and comments on early drafts of this material.

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    Fergus Peace

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Peace, F. Consequentialism, Goodness, and States of Affairs. J Value Inquiry 51, 51–68 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9553-x

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