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Some Difficult Intuitions for the Principle of Universality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2009
Abstract
The Principle of Universality asserts that a part retains its intrinsic value regardless of the whole in which it is a part or even whether it is part of a whole. The idea underlying this principle is that the intrinsic value of a thing supervenes on its intrinsic properties. Since the intrinsic properties remain unchanged so does the thing's intrinsic value. In this article, I argue that, properly understood, the Principle of Universality can handle seemingly troublesome intuitions about the relative intrinsic value of a vicious person having pain and his having pleasure. I specifically argue that the intuition that the former state is better is explained by the nature of the basic intrinsic-value states, which involve a person having a level of well-being and desert at a time. One implication of this is that given the nature of such basic intrinsic-value states, pleasure and pain are not value-bearing parts of virtuous and vicious attitudes.
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References
1 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), 27–30Google Scholar; Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford, 1930), pp. 136–8Google Scholar; Lemos, N., Intrinsic Value: Concept and Warrant (New York, 1994), pp. 40–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, B., ‘Is Intrinsic Value Conditional?’, Philosophical Studies 107 (2002), pp. 23–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 This taxonomy has recently come under fire from theorists who think that things that are valuable for their own sake can rest on extrinsic properties. See, e.g., Kagan, S., ‘Rethinking Intrinsic Value’, The Journal of Ethics 2 (1998), pp. 277–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rabinowicz, W. and Ronnow-Rasmussen, T., ‘A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and For Its Own Sake’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (1999), pp. 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Korsgaard, C., Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I find the examples used in support of this claim to be unconvincing and so will assume this criticism fails. In addition, the notion that the intrinsic value of a part supervenes on an extrinsic property fits best with the notion that the intrinsic value in question is prima facie good, where prima facie is given an epistemic interpretation. For the notion that it is a prima facie good and that prima facie goods are tendencies rather than an actual species of rightness or value, see Ross, The Right and the Good, pp. 28–9, 136–8.
3 Feldman, F., ‘Basic Intrinsic Value’, Philosophical Studies 99 (2000), pp. 319–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism (Oxford, 2004), pp. 172–82.
4 Hurka, T., ‘Two Kinds of Organic Unity’, The Journal of Ethics 2 (1998), pp. 299–320CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Virtue, Vice, and Value (New York, 2001), ch. 5.
5 These intuitions might break down where the pain doesn't exist. Intuitively, the positive value of compassion at the thought of someone's pain, where the pain doesn't exist, seems intrinsically good. I owe this point to Thad Metz.
6 Stephen Kershnar argues that Hurka's theory doesn't permit such a move (S. Kershnar, ‘Hurka's Theory of Virtue’, Philosophia, forthcoming). He argues that it breaks away from the recursive structure of Hurka's theory in that it thus allows virtue or vice to rest on objects that have no value. Since the recursive theory is what unifies his account of virtue and vice, Kershnar claims that this is a real problem for his theory. For the purposes of this article, I shall ignore this criticism.
7 Kershnar, ‘Hurka's Theory of Virtue’.
8 Hurka, ‘How Great a Good is Virtue?’, p. 190.
9 Contra Hurka, it is not clear that there are no cases when an attitude doesn't have a greater absolute intrinsic value than its object. One such case might occur when there is an incorrect attitude with great intensity that is directed toward an object of minor value.
10 Other plausible functions might involve averaging the values or treating them as contributing in a diminishing manner to the total value of the world. The former has a problem in explaining whether the averaging should take place over persons, times, or something else. For the different ways of averaging, see T. Hurka, ‘Average Utilitarianisms’, Analysis 42 (1982), pp. 65–119. For an example of the latter approach, see T. Hurka, ‘Value and Population Size’, Ethics 93 (1983), pp. 496–507. It is hard to see how the latter approach is plausible given that an earlier person makes the world a better place than a molecule-for-molecule identical person to whom the diminishing effect applies.
11 Feldman, F., ‘Adjusting Utility for Justice: A Consequentialist Reply to the Objection from Justice’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995), pp. 567–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurka, T., ‘The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert’, Ethics 112 (2001), pp. 6–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sher, G., Desert (Princeton, 1987), ch. 5Google Scholar; Nozick, R., Philosophical Investigations (Cambridge, Mass.: 1981), pp. 366–80Google Scholar; Feit, N. and Kershnar, S., ‘Explaining the Geometry of Desert’, Public Affairs Quarterly 18 (2004), pp. 286–8Google Scholar.
12 A thing has a derivative property only if it has it because of its relation to another thing (L. R. Baker, Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 2). The idea here is that a person's overall character is constituted by his mental states and the relations between them.
13 Hurka, T., ‘Virtuous Act, Virtuous Dispositions’, Analysis 66 (2006), pp. 69–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Here I assume that if attitudes have propositions as their objects, then propositions are a type of state of affairs.
15 The idea that one state of affairs can be part of another must be true if the Principle of Organic Unities (the intrinsic value of a whole is not necessarily equal to the sum of the intrinsic value of its parts) is true and if states of affairs are the bearers of value (N. Lemos,’Organic Unities’, The Journal of Ethics 2 (1998), pp. 321–37, at p. 322). The notion of inclusion can be found in the work of Alvin Plantinga (see Plantinga, A., The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974), pp. 44–5Google Scholar).
16 I mean to avoid the internalist/externalist debate over thought content and will assume that Smith knows that Jones and Johnson are different persons and correctly refers to them.
17 W. D. Ross adopted this view and Erik Carlson and Michael Zimmerman have mentioned it. (Ross, The Right and the Good, pp. 136–7; Carlson, E., ‘Organic Unities, Non-Trade-Off, and the Additivity of Intrinsic Value’, The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001), p. 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, M., ‘Virtual Intrinsic Value and the Principle of Organic Unities’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (1999), p. 662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Ross adopts it only if he is viewed as asserting that prima facie goods are a species of actual good. In the context of rightness, he is not willing to make this claim (Ross, The Right and the Good, ch. 2). It is not clear if Carlson or Zimmerman adopts it. Also, I am assuming here that desert is non-comparative. That is, desert depends on properties of individuals rather than relational properties between individuals.
18 Thomas Hurka also counts pleasure and knowledge as intrinsically good and pain and false belief as intrinsically bad and as independent of the value of the larger virtuous or vicious (and thus deserved and undeserved) facts about a person (‘Two Kinds of Organic Unity’, esp. pp. 317–20). Ben Bradley determines the intrinsic value of the world by adding up the basic intrinsic values of the states of affairs that are true there and counts aesthetic contemplation as a good independent of desert (Bradley, B., ‘Is Intrinsic Value Conditional?’, Philosophical Studies 107 (2002), pp. 23–44, at pp. 34–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Note that Bradley is doing this for illustration purposes and does not seem to commit to a particular view as to the nature of basic intrinsic-value states. Hurka, Noah Lemos, and Roderick Chisholm treat virtue and vice as having intrinsic value independent of the level of well-being of the virtuous or vicious person (Hurka, T., ‘How Great a Good is Virtue?’, The Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998), pp. 181–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurka, ‘Two Kinds of Organic Unity’, pp. 299–329; Hurka, Virtue, Value, and Vice, chs. 1–5; Lemos, Intrinsic Value, pp. 73–7; Chisholm, R., Brentano and Intrinsic Value (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 63–6Google Scholar).
19 Kagan, S., ‘Equality and Desert’, What Do We Deserve?, ed. Pojman, L. and McLeod, O. (New York, 1999), pp. 298–314Google Scholar; Hurka, T., ‘The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert’, Ethics 112 (2001), pp. 6–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note my assertion that Hurka treats desert-fit as an independent ground of value rests on the notion that Hurka's graph explicitly labels the Y-Axis as desert-value (Hurka, ‘The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert’. pp. 18–19). In Kagan's work, his graph contains a range of features (e.g. bell motion, curved desert, and desert curves with equal peaks) that make sense only if there is a separate category of desert-value. For an extended argument in support of this, see Feldman, ‘Return to Twin Peaks: On the Intrinsic Moral Significance of Equality’, Desert and Justice, ed. S. Olsaretti (Oxford, 2003), pp. 145–68, esp. 162–7.
20 Lemos, ‘Organic Unities’, pp. 333–5.
21 Hurka, ‘The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert’.
22 Feldman, ‘Adjusting Utility for Justice’; Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism (Oxford, 2004).
23 Ross, The Right and the Good, p. 138; Zimmerman, ‘Virtual Intrinsic Value and the Principe of Organic Unities’. Zimmerman's defense of virtual intrinsic goods is tied to an analysis of intrinsic value in terms of ethically required attitudes. I think this fails since I don't think the two co-vary. In particular, I don't think it wrong to take pleasure in the thought of Jones's suffering if doing so doesn't wrong anyone. Even if the two co-vary, the explanatory relation would go in the opposite direction.
24 I am grateful for the extremely helpful comments and criticisms of Neil Feit, Thad Metz, and George Schedler.