Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 1
Graham Oddie
Fitting attitudes, value bearers, and solitary goods
The fitting attitude approach to value embraces a schema for matching up values with
attitudes in a systematically pleasing way. For something to have a certain value it is
necessary and sufficient that it be fitting, or appropriate, or good, or obligatory (or
something) to take a certain attitude to bearers of that value. The schema provides for
a tight conceptual connection between value and responses to value, while preserving
the necessary distance between values and flawed actual responses to their
manifestations. The idea seems just obvious for certain thick evaluative attributes-the
delightful is whatever it is fitting to take delight in; the shameful whatever it is fitting to be
ashamed of, and so on. But it also seems rather plausible for the thin evaluative
attributes—goodness and badness and betterness—although here the appropriate
attitudes do not lie as close to the surface of the specification of the values. I will follow
custom and use the now customary terminology of favoring as a convenient placeholder
for the fitting attitude, whatever it is. So the good is what it is fitting to favor, the bad
what it is fitting to disfavor, the better what it is fitting to favor more.
There are three main challenges to the fitting attitudes account. The first and
most widely discussed challenge concerns the wrong kinds of reasons (WKR for short).
The WKR challenge can, I think, be met, although only by jettisoning the hope that the
fitting attitude approach can supply a reduction of the axiological realm to the nonaxiological. You might well wonder what the point of the FA approach is if not
reducibility, but in fact not all FA-theorists are intent on reduction. For some at least, the
aim is to elucidate connections between values and attitudes, rather than reduce values
to attitudes and fittingness. And in any case, this is my aim.
In this paper I focus on two much less discussed challenges: the solitary goods
objection (SG for short) and the isomorphic response objection (or IR for short). In the
course of doing so I offer a conjecture about the favoring relation in the case of the thin
evaluative concepts and the nature of the fundamental bearers of value.
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Value bearers
A theory of value should address the question of what types of entity are potential value
bearers, and further, what types of entity are the primary or fundamental value bearers.
Generous views allow a wide range of different kinds of fundamental value bearers, and
ipso facto of value bearers in general. (The most generous holds that any entity
whatsoever may be a fundamental value bearer.) Restrictive views allow a small
number of kinds of fundamental value bearers, perhaps limited to just one kind of entity.
Any entities outside the narrow base that bear value attributes will do so derivatively.
Restrictivists divide into those who allow a wide range of entities to bear value, albeit
derivatively (call these liberals), and those who restrict value bearers to the fundamental
value bearers (fundamentalists).
We can distinguish three prominent candidates for fundamental value bearers.
According to the concrete state view, the only fundamental bearers of value are
concrete (that is, actual) states of affairs. Suppose that in fact Mary is happy (at some
particular time, though I will suppress the temporal element in general). Then Mary’s
being happy is an actual or “concrete” state of affairs, and hence a candidate for being
good to some degree, or for bearing some more determinate, thicker value attribute. On
the other hand Mary’s being unhappy, not being actual, has no value properties at all.
Just as the bearer of a genuine value attribute must be an actual state, so the relata of a
genuine value relation must also be actual states. So two states of affairs that are
incompatible could not stand in fundamental value relations (like the better than relation)
because at least one of them will not be actual. In particular, Mary’s being happy doesn’t
bear the value relation of being better to Mary’s being unhappy. The concrete state
view is thus committed to what I will call actualism—that if a state of affairs S has any
kind of value attribute at all then S is actual; and further, if state S bears a fundamental
value relation (like better than) to state S* then both S and S* are actual.
According to the abstract state view, the primary value bearers are possible
states of affairs, or closely related entities like propositions, or entities that can be
plausibly identified with propositions and possible states of affairs, like classes of worldtimes. Martha’s being virtuous, there existing a happy egret, Christine’s ceramic frying
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 3
Graham Oddie
pan’s being gorgeous, Diana’s wedding dress being precious are possible states, as are
Martha’s being vicious, there existing no happy egrets and Diana’s wedding dress being
common. The former are reasonable candidates for being good states, while the latter
would presumably be reasonable candidates for being bad or neutral states. And the
former could bear the better-than relation to their counterparts among the latter.
According to the concrete particular view it is particulars like Mary, egrets, frying
pans, and dresses that are the fundamental bearers of value. If states possess value
they do so derivatively, inheriting value attributes from the particulars which star in them.
One could take a generous view, and deem both the particular that is the frying
pan as well as possible states of affairs in which it stars, like the frying pan’s being
gorgeous to be fundamental bearers of value. Perhaps being gorgeous is a thick value
attribute that the particular frying pan bears; while being good is a thin value that the
concrete state, the frying pan’s being gorgeous, has non-derivatively; and being bad is a
thin value that the non-actual possible state, the frying pan’s being ugly, bears. On this
view, both particulars and states can be fundamental bearers of value. While some
think both states and particulars can be value bearers, I don’t know of anyone who
explicitly holds the view that both are bearers of fundamental value attributes. Typically,
one type of entity is deemed to inherit its value attributes from the other.
As we will see, the SG challenge makes it problematic to combine the FA
approach with concrete value bearers. This suggests that an FA theorist should
embrace the possible state view. However, there is a somewhat neglected fourth
alternative—the property view. According to the property view, the fundamental value
bearers are properties—like being happy, being virtuous, and being gorgeous.
Individuals and states have value derivatively, by partaking in, or being the realizations
of, value-bearing properties.
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Fittingness
There is evidently a close conceptual connection between some thick evaluative
attributes and certain related attitudes. Consider the pairs: being delightful and taking
delight in; being admirable and admiring. Although someone can delight in what isn’t
really delightful, or admire someone who is not at all admirable, that would involve some
sort of mistake. It would be unfitting. If something isn’t delightful it’s not fitting (in this
sense) to delight in it. The FA theorist adds to this very modest observation that if
something is delightful then it is fitting (in the sense at issue) to delight in it. It follows
that its being fitting to delight in something is both a necessary and sufficient condition
for the thing to be delightful.1
The thin evaluative attributes are limiting cases of the thick attributes. So it would
be a somewhat anomalous discontinuity if this relationship between value attributes and
evaluative attitudes ran through all the thick attributes but petered out when it came to
the thin. And, on the face of it, there are attitudes that do bear the relation of fit to
goodness and betterness. First, following the pattern with the admirable and the
delightful, the fitting response to what’s desirable is to desire it, and the fitting response
to what’s preferable is to prefer it. Second, it is at least plausible that the good is what’s
desirable, and the better is what’s preferable. If this is right then the fitting response to
what is good is desire, and the fitting response to what is better is preference.
Quite generally the fitting attitude account of value posits the following
biconditional schema for the connection between value V and fitting attitude F(V):
FA schema
X has value property V if and only if it is fitting to take F(V) to X.
This is probably not the best or final formulation. It needs refining, but refinements often
come with diminishing marginal returns, so I will take it as is. The fitting attitude
reduction of value consists of an endorsement of the existence of a fitting attitude F(V)
for each value V, together with the claim that the right hand side is fundamental, the left
hand side derivative. If the schema fails then the reduction fails too. But even if the
1
The idea can be traced back at least to Brentano 1889, but has resurfaced often. See ,for example,
Broad 1930, Ewing 1939, 1947 and 1959, Chisholm 1986, Lemos 1994, Mulligan 1998, Scanlon 1998,
Tappolet 2000, D’Arms and Jacobson 2000, Zimmerman 2001.
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reduction fails the schema may hold, and yield illuminating connections between values
and attitudes.
In a recent survey of neo-sentimentalist theories of value, Christine Tappolet
distinguishes between two different accounts of fittingness (or “appropriateness”).
There are two main ways to understand the concept of appropriateness at stake.
The first, which is now standard, is to take this concept to be normative. An
appropriate emotion is one that satisfies a normative requirement; the emotion
ought to be felt, in some sense of ought.2
We can distinguish two different normative conceptions of fittingness.
Normative is used in its narrow sense, which is equivalent to “deontic” and
excludes the evaluative. If one takes the normative to encompass both the
deontic and the evaluative, this would make for two sub-possibilities one of which
being that appropriate is evaluative.3
So we have two versions of Normative FA:
Deontic FA
X is V if and only if one ought to take attitude F(V) to X.
Axiological FA
X is V if and only if it is good to take attitude F(V) to X.
As Tappolet notes, the Axiological schema, even if it holds, cannot be used to
underwrite a general reduction of axiological attributes since it employs goodness on the
right hand side.4 The Deontic schema, on the other hand does not involve any such
circularity and so could underwrite a reduction of the axiological to the deontic.5 The
alternative to these normative readings of fittingness Tappolet calls the descriptive
reading and I will call representational. Tappolet motivates it by appealing to a
perceptual theory of emotions—that emotions are a kind of value perception.
2
Tappolet 201, 119.
Ibid.
4
It might however facilitate a reduction of the thick evaluative attributes to the thin together with some
attitudes.
5
This was precisely why Ewing endorsed it. See Ewing 1939, 14.
3
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An alternative conception... is that the appropriateness of emotions is a matter of
representing things as they are. In the relevant sense, appropriate emotions are
emotions that are correct from an epistemic point of view.
Call this the Representational notion of fittingness:
Representational FA X isV if and only it is representationally correct for one to
take attitude F(V) to X.
For this to be an option the attitude F(V) must involve a representation of the object X as
having the associated value attribute V. F(V) is a representationally fitting response to
X just in case X has V. As with Axiological FA, Representational FA will not underwrite
a reduction of value for the obvious reason that F(V) involves a representation of its
object as having value V. But the relationship may still hold quite generally, given a
range of appropriate attitudes. It would be both trivially applicable, but totally
uninteresting, if the attitude F(V) were just the judgment or belief that the object
possesses V. However, it could also turn out to be non-trivial and interesting if fitting
attitudes are non-doxastic representations–or appearances–of value.
3
The WKR objection and the Representational escape
If an evil demon threatens the world with some terrible outcome unless you admire him,
then you ought to admire him. But he isn’t admirable. Such examples show that the
right hand side of Deontic FA can hold while the left hand side fails. They can also be
tweaked against Axiological FA. Suppose the demon threatens to bring about the very
worst outcome unless you desire that. Then, provided the threat is real and credible,
desiring the worst outcome is the best option available to you. But that does not make
the worst outcome desirable or good.6
In response to WKR cases Jonas Olson (following A.C. Ewing) suggests that the
FA theorist distinguish between the moral ought and the ought of fittingness. Morally
you ought to admire the demon—because otherwise disastrous consequences would
ensure. However the ought of fittingness doesn’t apply, since the demon is
contemptible. The distinction may sound a little ad hoc. However, on a
Representational account we can motivate it without discomfort. It wouldn’t be fitting for
6
Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004.
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Graham Oddie
you to admire the demon, because that would be to represent the demon as admirable,
when in fact he’s despicable. But the morally right, or the best, thing for you to do is to
avert disaster by taking precisely that unfitting attitude towards the demon (if you can
pull it off). The representational account allows that an unfitting attitude might be the
best, or morally right attitude to adopt all things considered. Fitting attitudes may be of
value, but they are not the only thing of value at issue here. Sometimes it will be allthings-considered best (or morally obligatory) to adopt an unfitting attitude.
We can thus save the FA schema from WKR counterexamples provided we go
representational with the notion of fittingness and embrace evaluative content in the
fitting attitudes themselves. Embracing representational FA does indeed remove the
possibility of reducing value attributes to the non-evaluative. But it does not annihilate
an illuminating connection between value attributes and various evaluative attitudes.
4
Solitary and unappreciated goods
Value idealism holds that the distribution of values depends entirely on the actual
distribution of evaluative attitudes. Roughly speaking, things are valuable just to the
extent that they are valued. Value realists, on the other hand, hold that the distribution
of values is independent, perhaps radically so, of evaluative attitudes and responses.
The FA approach is an attempt to bridge the gap between these two extreme views. It
maintains a connection between the instantiation of value attributes and the attitudes of
valuers (as idealists urge), while holding the possession of values to be largely
independent of actual evaluative responses (as realists urge).
The FA theorist can easily accommodate the fact that our evaluative responses
are often flawed in various ways. It is possible for the possession of a value attribute to
go totally unappreciated, or worse. According to Bykvist, solitary goods are “good states
of affairs that entail that there are no past, present or future favourers of a certain kind”.7
Let’s call a good unappreciated if it exists without anyone’s responding fittingly to it.
Clearly solitary goods are unappreciated, but the latter category is much wider. If
unappreciated goods turned out to be problematic for the FA theorist then that would be
7
Bykvist 2009, 5.
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a huge blow to the program, for it would knock out perhaps its single biggest advantage
over idealism.
Let’s assume for the sake of this exposition that possible states have thin
evaluative attributes.8 Further, call the fitting attitude for the goodness of states simply
favoring—the attitude, if there is one, that underwrites the FA biconditional schema for
the thin evaluative property of goodness of states of affairs. So, at a first pass, S is a
good state if and only if it is fitting to favor S.
This is rough because both thin value and favoring come in degrees. We can
think of both as determinables that embrace an ordered range of determinates.
Presumably the greater the value (or disvalue) of a state, the stronger favoring (or
disfavoring) response needs to be for it to be fitting. It would be unfitting to mildly
disfavor the holocaust, for example, while strongly disfavoring your child’s suffering a
minor injury. So, more generally and accurately, the FA theorist will want to endorse
something like this: S is valuable/disvaluable to some particular degree just in case it is
fitting to favor/disfavor S to some comparably appropriate degree. Further, an FAtheorist would presumably want to be able to accommodate degrees of fittingness. The
closer one’s response is to the fitting response, the more fitting the response.
Bykvist’s argument (of which the following is a reconstruction) depends on two
assumptions which are, in my view, independently plausible. The first is a possibility
constraint: it must be logically possible to favor the good and to disfavor the bad. For
any state that has a value V, that S has value V must be logically compatible with some
valuer’s taking F(V) to S. The goodness of S cannot preclude the possibility of
responding fittingly to S. The second is a coherence constraint: for a response to be
fitting it must be rationally coherent for a valuer to favor the good and disfavor the bad.
The goodness of S cannot preclude the possibility of fittingly favoring S without falling
into an irrational or an incoherent psychological state.
8
Bykvist writes (2009, 3): “The proponents of the FA-analysis often point out that a great advantage of
their theory is that they can provide a recipe for analysing different value concepts that apply to different
ontological categories. In this paper, however, I am going to focus exclusively on states of affairs. This
does not mean that I deny that intrinsic value can be assigned to other entities. I am only assuming that
intrinsic value can be assigned to at least states of affairs.”
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Graham Oddie
A relation between an individual and a state is state-entailing if X cannot bear the
relation to S without S’s obtaining. So bringing it about that S, knowing that S obtains,
taking pleasure in the fact that S obtains are all state-entailing relations. Consider
something we might all agree is a good state–that happy egrets exist (E). Now combine
E with another state F, the state consisting in the fact that there are no past, present or
future favorers. Suppose, as Bykvist does, that the conjunctive state E&F is also good.
Then it follows that it is a solitary good. We can show that if the FA schema obeys the
possibility constraint, favoring cannot be a state-entailing relation.
Proof: Suppose favoring is state entailing. Suppose, for the sake of a reductio,
that someone X favors E&F. Then (since favoring is state entailing) E&F obtains.
Hence there are no past, present or future favorers. This contradicts the
assumption that X favors E&F. So (given the possibility constraint) favoring
cannot be state-entailing.
Being state-entailing is a rather stringent requirement on an attitude. Certain
candidates for fitting responses are clearly not state-entailing. Bykvist cites as an
example the attitude of being pleased that S. Oliver might be pleased that he has won
the lottery even though he is mistaken about winning (he misread one of the digits).
However, if he is pleased that he won the lottery then he must believe he has won it.
Once he learns of his mistake he cannot go on being pleased that he won. Call a
relation between an individual X and a state S belief-entailing if X’s bearing the relation
to S entails that X believes S obtains. We can show that if the FA schema obeys the
coherence constraint, favoring cannot be a belief-entailing relation.
Proof: Suppose that favoring is belief-entailing and that E&F is good. Assume X
favors E&F. Then X believes E&F obtains. E&F entails that X doesn’t favor
anything. In favoring E&F, X believes something that is logically incompatible
with her favoring E&F. It is thus incoherent for X to favor E&F. So (given the
coherence constraint) favoring cannot be belief-entailing.
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One problematic feature of both solitary goods arguments is the assumption that E&F is
good. That by no means follows from the assumption that E is good. Whether E&F is
good depends not only on the degree of goodness of E and of F, but on the how the
value of a conjunctive state depends on the value of its conjuncts.9 Assume, for
simplicity, some kind of additivity of value here. Then whether E&F is good depends on
the value of F. For E&F to be good, F would presumably have to be either a good state,
or a neutral state (neither positively good nor positively bad), or, if bad, then not so bad
that its disvalue swamps the value of E. F doesn’t seem like a good state. One might
hold that the non-existence of fitting responders to value would be a defect of the world,
and that the cumulative disvalue of the eternal non-existence of fitting responders would
swamp the rather small positive value of the existence of a happy egret. At best it
seems like a neutral state of affairs, and that’s the value status Bykvist accords it. But
even if this is right, value may not be additive, in which case all bets on the goodness of
E&F are off. So whether value is additive or not, the goodness of E doesn’t guarantee
the goodness of E&F. One could delve into theories of how the value of whole states
depends on the value of their parts, but it is not necessary to do so. We don’t have to
incorporate the eternal non-existence of favorers and we don’t have to make any
assumptions at all about how the value of wholes depend on the value of parts. We can
instead construct unappreciated goods that play the role of E&F in Bykvist’s reductio
without having to settle any controversial issues in value theory.
There can be periods during which I am not responding fittingly to any states.
Indeed there can be periods when no one at all is responding fittingly, when no-one’s
attitudes fit the objects of those attitudes, either because no one is responding at all, or
because everyone who is responding is doing so unfittingly. Consider this state:
U: Everyone’s (current, actual) attitudes to states are unfitting.
Call this state U, and assume that U has some amount of value or other (it falls
somewhere on the scale of good, neutral and bad). From now on let favoring be a
9
Talk of “conjunctive” states as well as “disjunctive” and “negative” states can be extremely misleading.
However there are good ways of making sense of the discourse without succumbing to tempting fallacies
that bedevil the literature on states of affairs. I will ignore these problems here.
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determinable embracing a range of more determinate relations–the degree of favoring
that fits value V. Thus indifference and disfavoring can also be regarded as
determinates of favoring. If S has some degree of value V, then X favors S fittingly just
in case X takes that determinate of favoring to S that fits value V. Favoring is stateentailing just in case the determinate realizations of favoring are state-entailing. We
can show that provided the FA schema obeys the possibility constraint, favoring cannot
be state-entailing.
Proof: Suppose that favoring is state-entailing. Suppose U has value V (U is
either good to some degree, or neutral, or bad to some degree). Assume X
fittingly favors U. Since favoring is state-entailing, U obtains. So everyone’s
responses are unfitting, including X’s response to U. Contradiction.
U has what we might call fit-finkishness–its obtaining necessitates that it goes
unappreciated. If we add the possibility constraint, favoring cannot be state-entailing.
We can also show that with coherence constraint, favoring cannot be belief-entailing.
Proof: Suppose favoring is belief-entailing. Suppose that X fittingly favors U.
Since favoring is belief-entailing, X’s fittingly favoring U entails that X believes a
proposition logically incompatible with X’s favoring U. Favoring U would thus be
a rationally incoherent attitude. Contradiction.
Call these Unappreciated Goods arguments (UG). The simplest, most obvious
way for a defender of the FA biconditional to block both SG and the more
comprehensive UG arguments is to simply give up on the idea that any fitting attitudes
could be state-entailing or belief-entailing and search for fitting responses outside these
classes. (Note that Bykvist’s strategy is to narrow down the range of admissible fitting
attitudes until there are no good candidates left.) But this response to the argument is
too hasty. Surely, one might say, if anything at all is a fitting response, taking delight is
the fitting response to the delightful. But taking delight is plausibly belief-entailing. So if
there are any fitting attitudes at all, some of them at least must be belief-entailing. If the
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unappreciated goods argument shows that taking delight cannot be the fitting response
to the delightful it shows too much.
In fact this style of argument cannot be applied willy-nilly to just any value
attributes. For example, to extend Bykvist’s SG argument to the attribute of being
delightful we would have to specify a delightful state that entails the non-existence of
favorers. Suppose (with a view to emulating Bykvist’s original argument) we start with
some undeniably delightful state D (a bunch of delightfully blissful egrets, say). Now
conjoin D with the state F which entails the eternal non-existence of favorers. If D&F
were delightful then we would have the desired state, one that is delightful but in which
no-one could take delight. But there is nothing to guarantee that D&F is delightful.
Embedding a delightful state within a larger state clearly doesn’t guarantee that the
larger state is delightful.10
What we assumed for the original UG argument to go through is only that the
state U has some value or other. And all we need for that is that U has some
determinate or other of the thin determinable attribute of goodness/badness. That is to
say, all we have to assume that U can be placed somewhere on the scale of thin value.
We don’t have to determine where it falls. Nor do we have to stipulate what would
constitute a fitting response to U. Since U has some thin determinate of goodness or
other the FA biconditional assures us there is some determinate of favoring that it is
fitting to take to U. That is all we need. But then it also follows that the negative upshot
of the two reductios apply directly only to the thin determinable, goodness, and the thin
determinates of that determinable, not to the thick value attributes more generally. A
certain thick evaluative trait could well depend on the existence and responses of value
responders and if it does then there might be nothing untoward about such goods failing
to be instantiated when there happens to be no-one around responding fittingly to value.
10
A particular performance by a string quartet of a Mozart Divertimento may be delightful. Now place that
performance outside the gas chambers of a concentration camp as the victims are lining up to be gassed.
To say that the whole isn’t delightful is something of an understatement. See A Teacher’s Guide to the
Holocaust (http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/MUSVICTI.htm). “Fania Fenelon, describes her experience
as a member of a women's orchestra in Auschwitz from January 1944 to liberation in her book Playing for
Time. Fenelon states that even though she had clean clothes and daily showers, she had to play "gay,
light music and marching music for hours on end while our eyes witnessed the marching of thousands of
people to the gas chambers and ovens."”
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So if this version of the UG argument is sound, it only works to show that for the
thin determinable property of goodness (and its thin determinates) fitting attitudes can
be neither state-entailing nor belief-entailing. But many who find the fitting attitude
approach attractive might have been well disposed toward this view in any case. For
desire and preference clearly satisfy this stricture—one can clearly desire a possible
state without that state’s obtaining and without one’s believing that it obtains, and the
same goes for preferences among possible states. One might prefer it that God exist
than not exist, but at most one of those can obtain, and as it happens one might believe
neither one nor the other. There will, of course be other attitudes that satisfy the
stricture, but as already noted, desire and preference are independently attractive
candidates for the fitting response to the desirable and the preferable. They conform to
the standard pattern, and, as I have argued elsewhere, it is not implausible to think of
desire and preference as non-doxastic representations of goodness and betterness. So
these two attitudes seem to be independently attractive candidates for fitting attitudes
that survive the UG arguments. But before we explore this further let’s consider another
possible response to the argument.
5
FA-actualism and concrete state fundamentalism
Both the SG and the UG argument traffic in abstract—possible but non-actual—states
as value bearers. One might plausibly take SG not to hobble state-entailing and beliefentailing attitudes as candidates for favoring, but rather to rule out abstract entities as
either the fundamental or derivative bearers of value. If this is right, then presumably a
FA theorist could instead restrict the thin value attributes to concrete entities—either to
concrete states or to concrete particulars, or both.
Start with concrete states as fundamental value bearers. To prevent goodness
from leaching out of the actual realm into the merely possible, one would have to
embrace concrete state fundamentalism. This view has struck many as independently
plausible, and here’s an argument for it.11 It is good that S is equivalent to that S is
good, which sounds pretty close to S is good—at least when we use variables ranging
11
I owed this argument to Kevin Mulligan when I gave an early version of this paper in Geneva.
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over states. Now, one cannot sensibly say: “It is good that Jane is happy, but of course
she is in fact totally miserable.” And this is so because, quite generally, it is good that S
entails S is actual. If it is good that S is equivalent to S is good then the possible but
non-actual state of affairs consisting in Jane’s being happy is not good. It is not
plausible to say it is bad or that it is value-neutral either. So Jane’s being happy
possesses no determinate of thin value. (Perhaps Jane’s being happy would be good if
it were to become concrete. However, this would depend on the truth-conditions of
counterfactuals.) In any case, the actualist concludes that the only states that can bear
goodness and badness are actual states.
There are attitudes that fit thick values which aren’t state-entailing. Taking
delight in is, as we have seen, a non-state entailing fitting response to the delightful.
Still, there seems to be something defective with being delighted about winning the
lottery when you haven’t actually won it. FA-actualism can help explain this. By the FA
schema, if anyone fittingly takes delight in S then S is delightful. By actualism, if S is
delightful then S obtains. Since Oliver didn’t win the lottery, actualism yields that Oliver
does not fittingly delight in winning the lottery. The same argument goes for any fitting
attitude: according to FA-actualism, fittingly favoring S is state-entailing even if the
attitude of favoring S is not.
Now provided value idealism is false, an actual state of affairs may go
unappreciated. Some states possess a value but go unnoticed, or when noticed, elicit
unfitting responses. If U has a certain value, then it is an example of such a state, albeit
an extreme example, because U is fit-finkish. Its obtaining necessitates that all states go
unappreciated, and hence that it itself goes uanppreciated. It is logically impossible for
U to obtain and be fittingly favored, and so (by FA-actualism) U necessitates that it itself
lacks any fundamental value attributes. Quite generally any state S that necessitates
that S is not fittingly favored cannot bear any value attribute in any possible world in
which it is realized. For suppose S has value V. Then by FA, it is fitting to favor S. But
S entails (by FA-actualism) that it is logically impossible to fittingly favor S.
FA-actualism spreads absence of value over more states than an FA theorist
would, I think, like. For example, suppose that w is the actual world, the fusion of all
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actual states. Does anyone fittingly favor w in in w? To do so she would have to be
capable of contemplating w, arrive at a correct determination of w’s value and respond
fittingly.12 In so doing she would also have to be aware that w is the actual world, for
otherwise w has no value. She would have to be ominiscient and favor all goods
fittingly. Such a being would clearly have to be God-like. So the only worlds that have
value attributes are worlds in which God (or something very like God) exists and fittingly
responds to the value of that world. If in w no one fittingly favors w then w’s obtaining
entails that w itself is not fittingly favored by anyone. So if the actual world is one in
which there is no one who fittingly favors it, then the actual world has no value, and so it
lacks value of necessity. The actual world wouldn’t be bad in this case. The question of
the value of the actual world simply wouldn’t arise. That the actual world is value-less if
a God-like being doesn’t exist would seem to be a strange and unwelcome
consequence of FA-actualism.
6
FA-actualism and concrete particular fundamentalism
Perhaps FA-enthusiasts with a robust prejudice in favor of the actual might be inclined
to switch to concrete particularism at this stage. Suppose that only concrete particulars,
like Mary, the ceramic frying pan, and Diana’s wedding dress, are value bearers.
There are well known problems taking particulars to be the fundamental value
bearers. Particulars may well have value attributes–some particulars are gorgeous,
being gorgeous is one way of being beautiful, and beauty is valuable–but what makes
the frying pan gorgeous is some configuration of shape, color and material properties. If
the pan is gorgeous then any duplicate of that pan, in just these respects, would also be
gorgeous. And that suggests that the fundamental value attribute is born by some
configuration of first-order properties and particulars which have that configuration
inherit the value of that configuration. Let’s bracket this objection for a while and
consider a different value property–being precious. Being precious is different from
being gorgeous, in that a particular may be precious not in virtue of various intrinsic and
12
I am taking worlds here to be states, and the actual world to be the fusion of all actual states. (See
footnote 7.) Remember, a world is a fusion of compatible states, not a fusion of particulars. That is one
thing Wittgenstein got right. Tractatus 1.2 “The world is the totality of facts, not things.”
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duplicable properties. Take Diana’s royal wedding dress–this is precious not because
of any duplicable properties but simply because it is, necessarily, one of a kind, and an
interesting kind at that. (Had Diana married a second royal, say a Saudi Arabian prince,
or a dozen or so royals in quick succession, then there would be no such particular as
Diana’s royal wedding dress.) It is in part the very non-duplicability of Diana’s wedding
dress that it makes it precious. Assume it is fitting to cherish what’s precious.
Interestingly if we try to construct an SG argument for concrete particulars we are
led back to the mother of all such arguments–Berkeley’s master argument for idealism.
Recall that Berkeley identifies realism with the view that some particulars could exist
unconceived by anyone. He then argues that such things are not possible. For if such
were possible (assuming possibility implies conceivability) it would also be possible to
conceive them. But then it would have to be possible to conceive of something that is
unconceived by anyone, and that, Berkeley maintains, involves a contradiction. The
value correlate of the possibility of an existent particular that goes unconceived is a
valuable particular that goes unappreciated.
Suppose that Diana’s dress, D, is precious, but that no-one cherishes it. It lies
discarded and woefully unappreciated, in a box of Diana’s old junk in a back wardrobe
of one of Elizabeth’s rarely frequented abodes. So D is an uncherished precious
particular. The fitting response to D is to cherish it of course, but, mimicking Berkeley, it
is clearly impossible to cherish an uncherished particular.
Doubtless both arguments are flawed. It is possible to cherish a dress D that is
in fact going uncherished. It is not essential to any particular that it not be cherished.
There is nothing that rendered it impossible for someone, Harry say, to hunt down D,
remove it from its ignominious unappreciated state in the box, and start cherishing it. If
Harry had done that then D itself, that very particular, which is currently an uncherished
particular would have been a cherished particular. D’s being currently uncherished is no
part of what contributes to D’s preciousness, and Harry’s cherishing it would not destroy
its value. So there seems to be an error involving modal scope involved in these
Bekeleyan versions of the SG argument. Note that this feature is not shared with the UG
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argument. It is an essential feature of the possible state U that it goes unappreciated
whenever it obtains.
It is controversial what being an intrinsic property consists in, but being precious
is clearly not an intrinsic property of the particular D since being Diana’s royal wedding
dress is not an intrinsic property of D. Perhaps D’s shape, color and material
constitution are all intrinsic properties of D, but D’s being Diana’s royal wedding dress is
not. That is a matter of D’s bearing certain contingent relational properties to other
particulars. Suppose that unbeknownst to Diana the dress designer she contracted
made two identical dresses to Diana’s specifications, D and C, and he gave Diana D
keeping the duplicate C for himself, perhaps as a back up but perhaps with a view to
cashing in on it at some later stage. He could easily have sent C to the palace instead
of course. In that case the particular C, not D, would have been Diana’s royal wedding
dress. But C would not, of course, thereby have been the particular D. No particular can
be another distinct particular. This sounds paradoxical but it isn’t. Diana’s royal
wedding dress is a role for a particular to play, a role that could have been played by C
but was in fact played by D. What it takes to occupy that role is determined by a
particular’s position in a certain cluster of relational properties. If C had acquired D’s
position in that cluster of properties, then C would have been precious and D would
have been comparatively valueless.
Whether a thing is fittingly responded to or not is also typically a relational, rather
than an intrinsic, property of it.13 Still, as we have seen relational properties can
contribute to the value a particular. The relations that D contingently bears to Diana and
her wedding to the long suffering heir to the crown of England are a case in point. If
those relational properties can contribute to a concrete particular’s value profile, then it
should also be possible for a particular’s contingent relations to the responses of valuers
(whether those responses are fitting, unfitting or non-existent) to contribute to its value
profile. For example, some precious particular (like Diana’s dress) may go tragically
unappreciated as such. Let this value attribute be T, and let F(T) be the fitting response
13
For states like U, however, seems to be both an intrinsic feature as well as a relational feature.
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to particulars that possess T. So fittingly taking F(T) to X entails that X has T.14 But if
anyone were to take the attitude F(T) to X then X’s preciousness would not be going
tragically unappreciated after all. It is not being tragically ignored but appreciated for the
precious item it is. So if concrete particularism is true there are value attributes that
preclude anyone’s taking the fitting attitude to particulars with that value attribute.
If fitting or unfitting responses to the values of concrete particulars can
themselves contribute to the value attributes of those particulars then the UG argument
applies as much to concrete particular fundamentalism as to concrete state
fundamentalism.
7
Fit-finkishness
Our excursion into actualism has revealed something interesting. To avoid the UG
argument it is not enough to simply abandon all state-entailing and belief-entailing
attitudes as fitting responses to value. One must abandon any favoring attitude such
that fittingly favoring is state-entailing or belief-entailing.
Desire and preference are, however, still in the running. One can fittingly desire
something (happiness for all who deserve it, say) without it being the case that all who
deserve happiness are happy, and without one believing that all who deserve happiness
are happy.
Consider the state that has been giving the FA enthusiast so much trouble: U. U
is fit-finkish–its obtaining logically precludes anyone at all fittingly favoring it. But that
does not mean it violates the possibility or coherence contraints, provided fittingly
favoring is neither state-entailing nor belief-entailing.
Suppose that U is somewhat bad and that the fitting response to a bad state of
affairs is aversion. Being averse to U’s obtaining (i.e, desiring that U not obtain) does
not entail that U obtains and it does not entail that one believes that U obtains. Rather, if
someone responds fittingly to U then at least one of her responses is fitting, and so U
itself does not obtain. This is just another way of spelling out fit-finkishness–fittingly
responding to S entails that S doesn’t obtain.
14
If F(V) is the fitting response to a concrete particular then of course that concrete particular has to have
the value property V.
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This might sound a bit odd. By simply having the right attitude to U I ensure that
that very state of affairs–U itself–fails to obtain. And since U is a bad state of affairs, by
simply being averse to a bad state of affairs, I ensure that a bad state of affairs (the one
I am averse to) does not obtain.
While this is interesting it is not at all problematic. One can make certain
propositions true simply by desiring that they be true: for example, that I desire
something or other. And one can make some propositions false by being averse to
them: for example, that I am averse to nothing. Furthermore, if it is valuable to have
fitting attitudes, then one can bring about a good state simply by desiring it: for example,
that I desire fittingly. Once we admit states of affairs that involve fitting attitudes, the
existence of fit-finkishness and related phenomena becomes not only possible but
rather ubiquitous.
8
The apparent incompatibility of desire with belief and disbelief
While desire is neither state-entailing nor belief-entailing an ancient tradition holds
practically the opposite view–that desire is state-precluding.
For example, Plato:
Anyone … who has a desire desires what is not at hand and not present, what he
does not have, and what he is not, and that of which he is in need; for such are
the objects of desire and love.15
Jeffrey substitutes belief-precluding for state-precluding in his version of evidential
decision theory.
Socrates argues that …to desire something is to be in want of it: you cannot
desire what you already have. ... better to say that you cannot desire what you
already think you have: one who believes that a proposition is true cannot desire
that it be.16
15
16
Plato Symposium, in Reeve 2012, 184
Jeffrey 1983, 62-3.
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This thesis is explicitly modelled in the formalism of evidential decision theory (EDT).
Note that Jeffery is simultaneous modeling desire and partial belief, or credence.
Credence comes in degrees that obey the probability calculus. To believe (or fully
believe) S is to invest maximal credence (one) in S. To disbelieve (or fully disbelieve) is
to invest minimal credence (zero). Now, if one fully believes S (i.e. invests maximal
credence in S) then one’s degree of desire for S is identical to one’s degree of desire for
any completely tautologous proposition. But the truth of the tautology is presumably
something one neither desires nor is averse to.
The same idea is built into the dispositional-motivational theory of desire — that a
desire is a state that meshes with one’s beliefs to cause actions. According to the
dispositional theory, my desire for S is that mental state which, in conjunction with the
belief that doing some action A will bring about S, causes me to do A. If I already
believe S obtains then there will be no state that causes me to act to bring about S (at
least if I am rational). The basic idea here is the same: I cannot desire S if I believe S
to be the case already. So a desire for S must wither and die as soon as the subject
comes to fully believe that the desire is satisfied. Belief is the thief of desire.
For the actualist, one can fittingly favor S only if S is actual. If S fails to obtain, it
has no value, and so it cannot be fittingly favored. We now have a dual problem:
according to the view that belief is the thief of desire, only non-obtaining states can be
fittingly favored. If favoring is desiring, and one endorses the thief of desire principle,
then one can favor only those states that one does not believe obtain. As soon as one
believed that S obtains S could not be fittingly favored. So one can only fittingly favor
states that do not obtain in fact. Whereas actualism entails that no non-actual states
are good, it follows from the thief of desire principle that no actual states are good. One
can of course be averse to a state that obtains so one could fittingly disfavor an
obtaining state. But from this it follows that any obtaining state to which one bears a
fitting response must be a bad state of affairs.
But it gets worse. According to standard evidential decision one has no desire
for any state that one fully believes does not obtain. Here the impossibility is, in a
sense, even stronger. Proposition that are fully believed all get assigned a certain
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degree of desire, albeit the same degree, all equal to one’s desire for the necessary
proposition to obtain. However, those propositions that one fully believes to be false are
assigned no degree of desire at all. The question of how much one desires what one
fully believes not to be the case simply doesn’t even arise.
Let {Q1, Q2, .., Qn} be some partition of the set of possibilities where credence in
each Qi is non-zero, where credence in their disjunction is one, and where D(Qi) is a
measure of your desire for the ith cell. Then desire for proposition P is given by the
formula:
∑ Desire(Q ) × Cr (Q
i
i
| S) .
i
That is to say, it is the credence-weighted average of your desire for each cell Qi of the
partition, given the condition that S is realized–that is, Cr(Qi |S). But now suppose that S
is something you are totally convinced does not obtain–that is Cr(S)=0. Conditional
probability is typically defined as the following ratio of unconditional credences:
Cr (Qi | S) = Cr (Qi & S) / Cr (S) .
But since the denominator of this is 0, the ratio is undefined. And hence so is the sum.
These two doctrines (the Platonic doctrine and the thief of desire principle) would
be disastrous for the FA-enthusiast who embraces desire as the fitting response to
goodness. But they are also counterintuitive. This is just obvious for the Platonic
doctrine but it is easy to show for the thief of belief principle too. Suppose I am doing
philosophy right now, I know this, and it is also something I very much want to be doing
right now. There are of course numerous bloody and destructive wars raging around
the world, I know that too, and that is something I strongly desire not to be going on right
now. So I have a strong desire for something I know to be the case (doing philosophy
right now) and a strong aversion to something I also know to be the case (those wars
raging). My desire for these two states is by no means equivalent to my desire for some
value neutral state like the proposition that it is either raining or not raining now.
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Further, suppose we embrace the value appearance thesis, that desires are
appearances (or non-doxastic representations) of goodness. It appears to me good that
I am doing philosophy now. It appears to me bad that there are sundry wars raging. In
this case our intuitions about desires line up with our intuitions about appearances of the
good and both are strongly out of kilter with the account of desire given in EDT.
Jeffrey argues that the objection is mistaken, maintaining that desiredness of a
state should be identified with auspiciousness, of whether or not it would be good news
to learn that the state obtains. So, a state is desired if learning of it would be good
news. But something one knows already has no news value. Old news is no news at
all, so it cannot be good news.
Consider a convinced theist, one who invests credence one in the proposition
that God exists and, being deeply pious, rejoices in God’s existence during his every
waking moment. He not only judges God’s existence to be a very good thing but also
appears to him to be a very good thing. Since he strongly prefers God’s existence to
God’s non-existence, he wants the universe to be exactly the way it is in this respect.
Now consider an equally convinced atheist, but one who shares our theist’s
views about the goodness of the existence of God. She invests credence zero in the
proposition that God exists, but would much prefer that it be true. Things would be
much better, she thinks, if God existed, but regrettably she knows that the world is not
that way. Our atheist shares with our theist a strong desire for the world to contain an
existent God. But they have diametrically opposed beliefs. What seems good to both
our theist and our atheist is the existence of God, what seems bad is the non-existence
of God. And these value seemings align with the way they want the universe to be. But
all this would be nonsense on EDT’s account of desire.
The FA-theorist who holds preference and desire to be the fitting response to
goodness and betterness has to bite the bullet here and reject some aspect of EDT.
There are a number of possible ways to go here. One way of avoiding both objections
would be to require that credences be regular, that no non-trivial proposition receives
extreme credences (zero or one). For any contingent proposition at all you must hold
back some small degree of belief. A way of avoiding at least the second problem would
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be to abandon the traditional definition of conditional probability as a ratio of
unconditional probabilities. There are good independent arguments for both these
positions. Finally one might distinguish between intrinsic desires (which are completely
unaffected by what one believes about the actual state of the world) and extrinsic
desires. Intrinsic desiredness of a state is determined not by a credence function that
has been updated to reflect one’s beliefs about contingent states of affairs, but rather by
a credence function that corresponds to something like complete ignorance of the state
of the world. If our theist and atheist could wind back their credences to a common
state of ignorance, while maintaining their intrinsic desires for each possible world, then
they would have well defined desires for the existence of God and the non-existence of
God, they would share these desires, and the existence of God would be far more
desired by both than the non-existence of God.
So it may be possible to tweak or modify or reinterpret EDT’s account of desire in
such a way that it does not entail the incompatibility of desire and extreme credences.
Short of that, the FA-desire theorist will have to eschew EDT and formulate a new
theory of desire that accords both with widespread intuitions about desire and with a
plausible account of desires as value appearances.
8
The Isormorphic Response objection
In the simple schema there is no room for the fittingness of a response to be a valuerrelative matter. The responses of any two valuers who are responding fittingly (“fitting
responders” for short) have to be isomorphic with the value facts, and hence isomorphic
with each other. If preference is the fitting response to betterness, then if one valuer
prefers X to Y and another prefers Y to X then one or the other (or possibly both) must
be responding unfittingly. But that seems a tad counterintuitive. Surely there are
occasions on which there are a range of different preferences, all of which are equally
fitting responses to value. Different valuers can, legitimately, respond in different ways
to things which possess their values independently of those valuers’ responses. This is,
of course, the problem of partiality.
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Combine desire and preference as fitting responses to value with the
representational notion of fittingness. Then we get the value appearance thesis: that
desires and preferences are appearances of value.
This idea has an ancient pedigree. Augustine articulated an early version of it:
...(In) the [pull] of the will and of love, appears the worth of everything to be
sought or to be avoided, to be esteemed of greater or lesser value.17
And here is a very clear contemporary statement of the thesis (by Denis Stampe):
The view I shall take is this: Desire is a kind of perception. One who wants it to
be the case that P perceives something that makes it seem to that person as if it
would be good were it to be the case that P, and seem so in a way that is
characteristic of perception. To desire something is to be in a kind of perceptual
state, in which that thing seems good...18
The value appearance thesis has a number of components. First, there are
appearances of value and these are perception-like rather than belief-like. (Something
can appear a certain way without one’s believing it to be that way.) Second, a desire for
X is, or involves, an appearance of the goodness of X. (And a preference for X over Y
is or involves an appearance of X’s possessing more value than Y.) Third, an
appearance of value is fitting just in case it is an accurate representation of its object.
The isomorphic response objection now takes the following form:
X is better than Y iff it is fitting for X to appear better thanY. Hence the value
appearances of any two fitting responders are isomorphic.
The analogue of this for regular perception would be absurd. It is not a
requirement of accurate perception in general that for any two observers the
appearances should be isomorphic to reality and hence isomorphic to each other. This
is because perceptual representations are representations from a certain point of view,
17
18
Augustine 1982, 109.
Stampe 1987, 381. See also Oddie 2005 and Tenenbaum 2007.
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and as such they legitimately incorporate perspectival effects. Suppose two objects X
and Y are exactly the same size. Dom is closer to X than to Y while Eric is closer to Y
than to X. Then to Dom, X will appear larger than Y, while to Eric, Y will appear larger
than X. But neither response is an unfitting or inaccurate perceptual representation of
the objects. Rather it is totally fitting for the objects to appear differently to the two
perceivers, given the different relations they bear to the perceiver. Perception is always
perception of objects as they stand in relation to the perceiver. From the earth the
setting moon should appear larger than the rising sun, even though it is in fact much
smaller. As such, the appearances for two differently situated perceivers should not in
general be isomorphic to reality or to each other.
If there are genuine appearances of value, then there should also be value
analogues of distance and perspective. If desires and preferences are value
appearances then they should depend not just on the evaluative properties of the
objects of those appearances but also on how one stands in relation to those objects.
There should be a perspectival element to desire just as there is a perspectival element
to, say, visual perception. Just as it is entirely fitting for distant objects to appear small
by comparison with nearby objects, states that are far from you in value space should
not loom as large in your desires and preferences as states that are close to you.
Suppose we can make sense of this notion of the value distance of responders
from various possible states. Then the weals and woes of those with whom one is
closely connected, those for whom you care deeply, are closer to you in value space
than the weals and woes of distant strangers. Suppose that pain is bad, and that
qualitatively identical pains have the same disvalue whoever is the subject of that pain.
Suppose that your daughter and some stranger are experiencing extreme and
qualitatively identical pains. You are far more averse to your daughter’s being in
extreme pain than to the stranger’s being in pain. Of course you are also averse to the
stranger’s predicament (you are a decent sort) but if there is only one dose of morphine
at hand then you do not find yourself indifferent between the stranger getting that dose
and your daughter getting it. On a deontic notion of fittingness you ought to be
indifferent as to whether the last does of morphine goes to your daughter or to the
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stranger. But that seems odd. It seems completely appropriate for you to care more
about the pain of people you love, and with whom you have deep connections, than
about the pain of people with whom you have no connections at all. Which is not to say
that it would be fitting to not care at all about the stranger’s pain. Nor is it to say that you
should believe or judge that your daughter’s pain is worse. If it just to say that it is
appropriate for you to prefer that your daughter be the recipient of the last dose of
morphine than that she continue to suffer extreme pain while the stranger’s pain is
alleviated. If desires and preferences are non-doxastic appearances of value then this
falls out rather naturally.19
The problem with this is that the notions of distance in value space, and of
perspective are somewhat metaphorical. Is there any way of reducing the metaphorical
content, and of cashing out the notion of perspective?
9
Properties as the objects of desire
For desire and preference to be value appearances, the objects of desire and of
preference have to be bearers of value. The possible-state account of value bearers
thus sits happily with the traditional view of desire as a propositional attitude. But the
propositional/state view, although it is widely held, sits somewhat unhappily with the
surface grammar of many typical desire claims. For example: Harry wants a hokeypokey ice-cream; Graham has a hankering for the Goldberg Variations; Oliver and
Orlando both want to win the gold; Mary wants to be happy.
Now, a hokey-pokey ice-cream, the Goldberg Variations, winning the gold, and
happiness all appear to function here as objects of desire, and while they are related to
various propositions and states of affairs they are not themselves propositions or states
of affairs. So if the propositional view is correct, the surface grammar of desire claims
runs against the metaphysical grain.
We can of course recast these claims into something logically equivalent, with
propositions or states as object. Whenever a desire seems to be for some non-state,
like a hokey-pokey ice-cream or the Goldberg Variations then it is reasonable to
19
This combination of value distance and perspective was laid out and argued for in Oddie 2005.
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paraphrase by saying that what one really wants is a certain interaction with the entity at
issue: to lick or eat the hokey-pokey ice cream, to hear a performance of the Goldberg
Variations. Further, on the propositional view, Harry’s wanting to lick an ice-cream will
have to be further parsed as Harry’s wanting it to be the case that Harry licks an icecream; what Oliver really wants is that Oliver wins the gold; what Mary desires is the
state of affairs consisting in Mary’s being happy.
There is, however, a rather natural rival to the propositional view. Suppose
Orlando and Oliver are in a competition. Oliver says I really want to win the gold and
Orlando chips in So do I! The common object of their two desires is to win the gold.
On the propositional view, they can only want the same thing if they want the very same
state of affairs to obtain: but there is no state of affairs that is their common desire. But
there is a single way of being rather than state of affairs that both want. They both want
to have a certain property, the property of winning the gold. And more generally what
one desires is typically to possess or to have some property, what one prefers is the
having of some property to the having some other property.20 The property view can
make literal sense of the claim that Oliver and Orlando want the very same thing (to
have the property of winning the gold). If Orlando’s desire is satisfied then Oliver’s is
frustrated, and vice versa.
In addition to her own happiness Mary wants the war to be over. Indeed the
satisfaction of her first desire for happiness turns on the satisfaction of her desire for the
war to be over. But the war’s being over seems to be a state of the world, not a
property of Mary. So, at the very least, the property view has to be able to capture that
class of desires that have as their apparent objects certain states of the world. Happily,
there are quite natural property-surrogates for states of the world that can serve as the
objects of these state-directed desires.
20
Lewis 1979. Note that one does not have to buy into the baroque aspects of Lewisian metaphysics to
find the property view of desire plausible. Indeed, the view is probably more plausible if worlds are
abstract ways that things can be, rather than large, Lewisian, causally isolated, hunks of junk. Nor does
one have to buy into his companion thesis that the objects of belief are also properties though that view
sits happily enough with what I am endorsing here.
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For each state of the world S there is exactly one state-property, 𝜑S,
characterized as follows: X has property 𝜑S if and only if S obtains. 𝜑S is the property
of being such that S obtains.21 Since X doesn’t occur on the right hand side of the
definition, 𝜑S is global in the sense that it is had by some individual if and only if it is had
by all. (And a property is local just in case it is not global.) Either every individual has it
or none have it. The circumstances in which it is had by an individual are just those in
which S obtains. So wanting to have the global property 𝜑S is tantamount to wanting S
itself to obtain. We can retrieve the class of propositional desires, or state desires (viz.
that X desires that S obtain) from desires the objects of which are these global
properties (viz. X desires to have 𝜑S). When Mary and Martha both have the
apparently state-directed desire that the war be over (O) the common object of their
desires is to possess the property 𝜑O.
What does desire fulfillment consist in on this view? On the state or propositional
view the desire that P is fulfilled if and only if the object of the desire, the proposition P,
is true. But properties do not bear truth values. Further, on the property view, Orlando
and Oliver can share the very same desire, to win the gold. But how can they be the
same desire if the fulfillment of Oliver’s desire will constitute the frustration of Orlando’s?
That’s a violation of Leibniz’s principle. This puzzle is easily dissolved. Desire suffers
the usual state/object ambiguity. Oliver’s desire can pick out Oliver’s mental state of
desiring or the object of that mental state. Fulfillment is not solely a feature of the object
of desire. For Oliver’s desire to be fulfilled Oliver (rather than Orlando) has to acquire
the property of winning the gold.
10
Properties as the fundamental bearers of value
Winning the election, eating a hokey pokey ice-cream, hearing the Goldberg Variations
performed, being happy, and the war’s coming to an end, are not just objects of
desire—they are also apt subjects of value attributions. Plausibly, these properties are
all good. So on the property view it is plausible that the objects of desire are also
bearers of value.
21
This is not how Lewis 1979 characterizes the property view but his characterization is dependent on his
own idiosyncratic view of individuals and worlds—in particular the global denial of any trans-world identity.
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 29
Graham Oddie
Even if properties are value bearers, it would be absurd to claim that only
properties are value bearers. We attribute value to many entities that seem to be
neither properties nor states of affairs (ice-creams, keepsakes, frying pans, dresses,
cities, paintings, works of music, landscapes, ecosystems). But even if many different
kinds of things are value bearers, it might be that the fundamental value bearers are
properties, and that everything else has value only in virtue of the value possessed by
the fundamental value-bearing properties.
Mary’s being happy, Martha’s being happy, and Marley’s being happy are all
good states. But are these distinct fundamental value facts? If states of affairs are the
fundamental value bearers then that has to be the upshot. But it seems odd that we
should have to countenance, for each and every particular X, a distinct fundamental
value fact: X’s being happy is good. But now suppose that happiness, the property of
being happy itself, is a good property. Then its being a good property can make Mary’s
being happy, Martha’s being happy, and Marley’s being happy good states of affairs.
But now we have just one fundamental value fact–that happiness is good–and this
explains a vast multitude of derivative value facts, all these states of affairs that consist
in some one particular having the property of happiness. All these distinct states are
valuable because they all involve the instantiation of a single valuable property. I think it
is far more natural to think that the value of these different states of affairs is rooted in a
single fundamental value fact–the goodness of happiness–than that there are
innumerable distinct fundamental value facts that undergird and explain one derivative
value fact, that happiness is good.
Recently Panayot Butchvarov and Peter Forrest have also argued that properties
are value bearers. Butchvarov writes:
Let us say that facts of the form expressed by “x is happy” have in common the
property of involving happiness in a cetain specific way. Surely they are good
only because they have that property. And why then would we want to deny that
that property itself is good? … It would be …. mysterious that being a happy life
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, solitary goods
30
should entail being at least partially a good life if happiness were not itself
good.22
This passage is compatible with the modest thesis that properties are value bearers.
But in the following passage he hints at the stronger thesis, that properties are the
fundamental value bearers and states of affairs bear value derivatively.
I suggest that a person’s life can be said to be good on the grounds that it is
happy only happiness itself can be said to be good, and in general a concrete
entity can be said to be good only on the grounds that it has some …. property or
properties that themselves have the property of being good.23
Here he makes it explicit that Goodness is a higher-order property that properties have
or lack, and that states of affairs and individuals have a related value property of
goodness that derives from the Goodness of the properties they instantiate. 24
It is really quite extraordinary how even good value theorists simply glide over the
property view without even noticing it is there. Take Chisholm for example:
The terms we use in making up lists [of intrinsically good and bad things] are
abstract–“pleasure”, “displeasure”, ‘love”, “hate” …. And so on. What these
terms refer to are not individual or concrete things or substances. They are
rather propositional entities, or states of affairs: … there being individuals
experiencing pleasure, or there being individuals experiencing displeasure.25
Or again:
In saying, for example that knowledge is intrinsically good we mean, more
exactly, that that state of affairs which is someone knowing something is
intrinsically good.26
22
Butchvarov 1989, 14-15.
Butchvarov 198914.
24
See Forrest 1988, Oddie 1991and Forrest 1992.
25
Chisholm 1968, 22.
26
Chisholm 1968, 22.
23
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 31
Graham Oddie
Of course “pleasure” and “knowledge” patently do not refer to state of affairs, and
because of this immediately Chisholm has to go off in search of surrogate states to be
value bearers. But the value of pleasure or knowledge does not attach to some
particular privileged state of affairs involving knowledge or pleasure. It is much more
natural to hold that (the property of) experiencing pleasure, or (the property of)
possessing knowledge is fundamentally good, and that it is the value of experiencing
pleasure and possessing knowledge as such that makes individual instances of these
good.
11
The Isormorphic Response objection revisited
The shift from states to properties as the fundamental bearers of value might be a
promising step in solving the IR objection, but in a way which dovetails with and
explains the the perspectival response. Local properties (unlike states and/or global
properties) have their own built-in perspective or point of view. A local property of
individuals does not characterize a state of the world. Rather, it characterizes a way of
being in the world. Two states of the world might involve isomorphic distributions of
properties over individuals, and hence be equally valuable states. But the value of the
properties that Oliver has in one such state might be quite different from the value of the
properties that Oliver has in the other.
Consider the property of winning the gold, and assume, for the moment, that only
one person can win the gold. Oliver and Orlando both want to win the gold. Both prefer
winning the gold (Win) to not winning (~Win or Lose). That’s how the relative values of
these properties appear to both of them: Win >P Lose. And, let’s suppose, that is how
these properties stand with respect to value: Win >V Lose. Now consider the following
states of affairs.
S1
Win (Oliver)& Lose (Orlando)
S2
Lose (Oliver)& Win (Orlando)
S3
Lose (Orlando)& Lose (Oliver)
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, solitary goods
32
Since Oliver prefers winning over to losing, he will likely prefer S1 (in which he wins) to
both S2 and S3 (in which he loses). Similarly, Orlando will prefer S2 (in which he wins)
to both S1 and S3 (in which he loses). Oliver may well be indifferent between both S2
and S3 or may prefer one to the other. If Orlando is his hated rival then he might prefer
losing to some stranger than to losing to Orland. If Orlando is his friend and teammate
then he might prefer to lose to Orlando than to lose some stranger. But if we want to
incorporate those relations we need to build them into the states. Let R(X,Y) be the
relation that consists in X and Y being each other’s hated rivals. We can consider the
following properties, where Win1 and Win2 are determinates of Win, while Lose1 and
Lose2 are determinates of Lose:
W1
Win(X) & (∃Y)(Lose(Y)& Rival(X,Y))
wins by beating his hated rival
W2
Win(X) & (∃Y)( Lose(Y)&~ Rival(X,Y)) wins by beating a non-rival
L1
Lose(X) & (∃Y)(Win(Y)&~Rival(X,Y))
loses to a non-rival
L2
Lose(X) & (∃Y)(Win(Y)&Rival(X,Y))
loses to his hated rival
Suppose both Orland and Oliver have the following eminently reasonable preferences:
Win1 >P Win2 >P Lose1 >P Losee.
Each property is a way of being in the world, a specification both of one’s own
properties and one’s relations to others. The preference ordering that both Oliver and
Orlando share also seems like the objective value ranking on these properties–or so we
can assume.
Now consider the following possible states of affairs:
S1
Win(Orlando) & Lose(Oliver) & Rival(Oliver, Orlando)
S2
Win(Orlando) & Lose(Oliver) & ~Rival(Oliver, Orlando)
S3
Lose(Orlando) & Win(Oliver) & ~Rival(Oliver, Orlando)
S4
Lose(Orlando) & Win(Oliver) & Rival(Oliver, Orlando)
S1 and S4 are isomorphic, as are S2 and S3, and so–granting a plausible principle of
value–they should be value equivalent. Let’s suppose that, other things being equal, a
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 33
Graham Oddie
close win involving rivals is better than a close win without rivals, so that S1 is better
than S2 and S4 is better than S3. So we have the following value ranking on these
states:
S1 =V S4 >V S2 =V S2.
Note that this is the value ranking we would get by comparing global properties that
specify the distribution of properties without specifying which individuals have which
properties. That is, consider the following global properties:
G1
(∃X)(Win(X)&(∃Y)(Lose(Y)& Rival(X,Y)))
Someone wins by beating a hated rival
G2
(∃X)(Win(X) & (∃Y)( Lose(Y)&~ Rival(X,Y))
Someone wins by beating a non-rival
G3
(∃X)(Lose(X) & (∃Y)(Win(Y)&~Rival(X,Y))
Someone loses by being beaten by a non-rival
G4
(∃X)(Lose(X) & (∃Y)(Win(Y)&Rival(X,Y))
Someone loses by being beaten by his hated rival.
Since Lose is equivalent to ~Win, it’s obvious that G1 is equivalent to G4 and G2 is
equivalent to G3. So the pairs of global properties are not just value equivalent, they are
equivalent simpliciter.
But this value ranking on states will not match Oliver’s and Orlando’s preference
rankings at all. This is not how the values of the states will appear to Oliver and
Orlando (though they might well appear that way to some third party who has no dog in
the fight). If Oliver is consistent he is going to prefer states in a way that exactly
matches the value ranking of the properties he has in those states, and the same goes
for Orlando. That is to say, they are going to project the values of the properties down
onto the states, ranking states according to the properties that they each have in those
states. So they are going to have desires for states that are isomorphic to their desires
for the properties, and those desires in turn are isomorphic to the values of those
properties.
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, solitary goods
34
Their preferences over states are thus going to be diametrically opposed but, since they
occupy entirely different niches in the states, this is entirely fitting.
State
S1
Property
Orlando’s
Oliver’s
Betterness
distribution
preferences
preferences
relation
Win1(Orlando)
1
4
1=
2
3
2=
3
2
2=
4
1
1=
Lose2(Oliver)
S2
Win2(Orlando)
Lose2(Oliver)
S3
Lose1(Orlando)
Win3(Oliver)
S4
Lose2(Orlando)
Win1(Oliver)
The view that properties are the fundamental bearers of value may not, by itself, be able
render intelligible all aspects of legitimate partiality within an objectivist value framework,
but it goes a long way in that direction.
Conclusion
Suppose we start with the presumption that there is an important insight about the
relation between values and attitudes lurking in the Fitting Attitude approach. Then in
rising to the challenges presented by the three main objections to the approach–namely,
Wrong Kinds of Reasons, Unappreciated Goods, and Isomophic Response–we are led
to embrace a collection of theses which fit together rather nicely. Namely:
(1) Fitting attitudes are value appearances, or non-doxastic representations, of value;
(2) The fundamental bearers of value are properties rather than states or particulars;
(3) Apparent conflicts in preferences over states of affairs can be explained by
legitimate and fitting preferences over local properties.
Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop: Fitting attitudes, value bearers, unappreciated goods 35
Graham Oddie
References
Augustine, (1982), ‘The Literal Meaning of Genesis’, in J. Quasten, W.J. Burghardt and
T.C. Lawler (ed. and trans.) Ancient Christian Writers: Vol. 1 Book 4 (Paulist
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& Humblot).
Broad, C.D. (1930), Five Types of Ethical Theory. (Harcourt Brace).
Butchvarov, Panayot, (1989) Skepticism in Ethics, Indiana University Pres.
Bykvist, K. (2007), ‘No Good Fit: Why the Fitting Attitude Analysis of Value Fails,’ in
Mind, 118, 1-30.
Chisholm, Roderick M., (1968-9), “Objectives and Intrifdnsic Value”, in Proceedings and
Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 42, 21-38.
Chisholm, Roderick M. (1972), “The Defeat of Good and Evil”, in Jenseits vom Sein un
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