Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances
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Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances1
The fitting attitude approach to value matches up values with attitudes in a
systematically pleasing way: for something to possess a certain value it is necessary
and sufficient that it be fitting (appropriate, or good, or obligatory, or something) to take
a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. This schema provides for a tight
conceptual connection between value and our responses to value bearers, while
preserving the necessary distance between values and possibly flawed actual
responses. The idea seems 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 and magnitudes—like goodness, betterness, and degrees of value—although
here the salient attitudes do not lie quite as close to the surface of the specification of
the associated value attributes. I will use favoring as a placeholder for that attitude, or
collection of attitudes, that are the fitting responses to the possession of these thin
evaluative attributes, relations and magnitudes. 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, and so on.
One important class of value bearers—perhaps the fundamental value bearers—
are abstract states. This paper is an extended argument for, and defense of, the thesis
that the fitting response to the thin evaluative attributes of these value bearers is desire,
broadly construed. The good is what it is fitting to desire, the bad what it is fitting to be
averse to, and the better what it is fitting to prefer.
I take the Fitting Atttitude (or FA) biconditional as the starting point of the
argument. There are two prominent challenges to the FA biconditional. The most widely
discussed is a challenge to the sufficiency of the fittingness of an attitude for possession
of the corresponding value. This is the so-called wrong kinds of reasons challenge (or
WKR for short). . In section 1 I sketch the WKR objection and what I argue is the
1
I would like to thank the following for making very helpful comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of
this paper: Krister Bykvist, Andrew Reisner, two anonymous referees of this volume, and several
participants of the 2014 Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop.
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correct response—namely, a representational account of fittingness.2 This involves
abandoning hope that the FA approach can supply a reduction of the axiological realm
to the non-axiological. One might well wonder what the point of the FA biconditional is if
it cannot effect such a reduction, but in fact not all FA theorists are intent on value
reduction. The FA schema is useful even if it does not yield a reduction, because it
elucidates necessary connections between values and attitudes. My particular interest
in the schema is that, if it can survive the challenges, it enables us to narrow down the
range of candidates for favoring. For example, if the correct response to the WKR
challenge is a representational account of fittingness, then favoring must be some
attitude that involves the representation of its object as good.
A much less discussed challenge to the FA account, one which challenges the
necessity of the fittingness of an attitude for possession of the corresponding value,
concerns the existence of solitary goods.3 The intention of this objection is to narrow
the range of candidates for favoring so drastically that nothing viable remains. In
particular, favoring can be neither a factive nor a credal attitude. I agree with the
conclusion, and I try to strengthen the objection by introducing the broader class of
finkish goods. Finkish goods are much more widespread than solitary goods, and no
value theorist can afford to treat them as marginal phenomena.
An alternative response to finkish goods might be to abandon abstract states as
the fundamental bearers of value and opt instead for concrete value bearers—either
concrete states or concrete particulars. In sections 4 and 5 I show this response fails.
The overall upshot of the two main challenges to the FA schema is that
favoring—the fitting response to good states—is a non-factive, non-doxastic
representation of a possible state as good. It is a non-doxastic value appearance. That
desires and preferences are value appearances is independently plausible. In section 6
argue conjecture that the simplest hypothesis left standing is that favoring is desiring.
In section I answer three important objections to the thesis that desire is the
fitting response to the goodness of states.
1
Fittingness and accurate representation
I have argued for this at greater length—see Oddie (2015)—following Tappolet’s lead in her
(2011). I give a summary in section 2.
3 Bykvist 2007.
2Elsewhere
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances
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Consider the value-attitude pair: being delightful and taking delight in. Suppose Ward,
who loathes the evils of American capitalism and colonialism, takes real delight in the
downing of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the horrible deaths of those who went to work
at the WTC that day. Ward’s delight is not appropriate because, whatever else it was,
the destruction of the Twin Towers and the suffering that it brought about wasn’t
delightful. If something isn’t delightful then it is unfitting to take delight in it. The FA
theorist adds to this modest observation the claim that if something is delightful then it is
fitting to delight in it. It follows that its being fitting to delight in something is both a
necessary and sufficient condition for the thing’s being delightful.4 The FA reduction of
the evaluative attribute of delightfulness adds to this seemingly innocuous biconditional
the claim that the right hand side (the fittingness of taking delight in) is fundamental, and
the left hand side (being delightful) is derivative. Things are delightful in virtue of the
fittingness of taking delight in them. If the biconditional fails then clearly the possibility
of reduction fails too. But the reduction may fail even while the biconditional holds
because the in-virtue-of claim fails.
It is hard to cavil with the FA biconditional in the absence of an account of
fittingness. Different notions of fittingness yield quite different accounts. There are,
broadly speaking, two different kinds of fittingness—normative and non-normative.5 I
take normative here to embrace both the deontic and the axiological domains. So a
normative notion of fittingness can be cashed out either deontically (one ought to take
the fitting attitude) or axiologically (it is good to take the fitting attitude).6 The alternative
to normative accounts of fittingness is a non-normative account, and the non-normative
account I will focus on here I will call representational.7 According to the
representational account, evaluative attitudes involve representations of objects as
having value attributes. Emotions, on the perceptual construal of them, are perhaps
the clearest examples of this. The object of delight presents itself to the one taking
delight in it as delightful. While this representation may serve as a reason for making
the associated judgment, or having the associated belief, it is not itself a judgment or a
4
Brentano 1889, Broad 1930, Ewing 1939, 1947 and 1959, Chisholm 1986, Lemos 1994, Mulligan 1998,
Scanlon 1998, Tappolet 2000, D’Arms and Jacobson 2000, Zimmerman 2001.
5 Tappolet 2011.
6 The axiological account cannot underwrite reduction of axiological attributes. The deontic account could
underwrite such a reduction to the deontic. See Ewing 1939, 14.
7 See Tappolet 2011. Tappolet calls this notion descriptive. I prefer representational.
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belief. An object of delight seems delightful in a non-doxastic sense of seeming, just as
a rose seems pink to one who has a certain visual experience of the rose, whether or
not she also believes or judges the rose to be pink.
In general, the FA account is committed to there being, for each value attribute V,
an associated attitude (or perhaps class or attitudes), F(V), which satisfies the following
biconditional schema:
X is V if and only it is representationally accurate for one to take attitude F(V) to
X.
For this schema to be on the cards the attitude F(V) must involve a representation of the
object X as V. F(V) is then a fitting response to X when and only when X really does
have value attribute V. The representational account clearly cannot underwrite a
reduction of value V, for the obvious reason that F(V) involves a representation of the
object as possessing the value V. But absent reduction the relationship might well hold
quite generally, provided that for each V there is a suitable correlated attitude F(V).
Of course the schema is trivially applicable, albeit uninteresting, if F(V) is the
judgment or belief that the object possesses V. (X has attribute V if and only if the
judgment that X is V accurately represents X.) For the schema to be interesting there
must be additional constraints placed on the fitting attitudes. It would be interesting if
attitudes were non-doxastic representations – or appearances – of value, as for
example the perceptual theory of emotions maintains. So from now on I will assume
that the FA account posits non-doxastic appearances of value attributes as the
candidate attitudes that satisfy the FA schema.
One virtue of going representational with fittingness is that it disposes neatly of
the well-known wrong kinds of reason problem. The powerful demon who demands to
be loved and worshipped on pain of her bringing about some terrible cataclysm (the
punishment of the whole world in a fiery hell, say) is neither lovable nor worshipworthy.8 In fact she is quite the opposite. All the same it seems you ought to love and
worship her—if you can manage it. To defuse the apparent counterexample to the FA
biconditional one could distinguish between two oughts—the moral ought and the ought
8
Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances
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of fittingness.9 Morally you ought to love and worship the demon (to avoid the
catastrophe), however fittingly you ought not to (she is neither lovable nor worshipworthy). This looks a bit ad hoc. The representational account more straightforwardly
yields the same result without proliferating normative notions. It may be morally
obligatory (or best) to love and worship the demon, but that does not make it fitting.
Since she is an odious being, it is erroneous to misrepresent her as lovable and
worship-worthy.10
While the representational attitudes that fit thick evaluative attributes are often
obvious, the fitting responses to the thin evaluative attributes are not. Nevertheless, the
representational account narrows the range down somewhat: they must be attitudes
that are representations of their objects as good, bad or neutral.
2
Unappreciated, solitary and finkish goods
Value idealism holds that the distribution of value depends entirely on the actual
responses of valuers. Roughly speaking, things are valuable just to the extent that they
are in fact valued. Value realism holds that the distribution of value is independent of
evaluative attitudes, perhaps radically so. The FA approach can be regarded as a way
to bridge the gap between these two extremes. It maintains an important connection
between the instantiation of value attributes and the responses of valuers (as idealists
urge), while holding the possession of values to be largely independent of actual
evaluative responses (as realists urge).
Call a value-bearing state unappreciated if it possesses some value but no one
responds fittingly to it. Whether or not a state is unappreciated is a contingent feature of
it. The FA account can obviously handle the fact that some states go unappreciated,
just as a response-dependent theory of color can handle the fact that some colored
objects go unsensed. Indeed that is one of the account’s chief advantages over value
idealism. The mere fact that something isn’t valued doesn’t entail that it is unfitting to
value it. Bykvist shows, however, that problems arise for the FA account that are
analogous to those that bedevil idealism. He argues that what he calls solitary goods
9
See Ewing 1947 and Olson 2009.
One might object that representational accuracy, like truth, is itself some kind of normative notion. Like
Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007) I reject this and for similar reasons.
10
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rule out large classes of attitudes as ineligible for the role of fitting response. A solitary
good is a good state of affairs that “entail(s) that there are no past, present or future
favorers of a certain kind”.11 A solitary good is thus a state of affairs which, if it obtains,
goes unappreciated.
In what follows I will assume that possible (or “abstract”) states are the bearers of
thin evaluative attributes.12 Since goodness comes in degrees, favoring must also come
in degrees if favoring attitudes are to properly discriminate among the full range of thin
values. We can thus think of both goodness and favoring as determinables that
embrace an ordered range of determinates. The greater the value (or disvalue) of a
state, the stronger the favoring (or disfavoring) response needs to be for it to be fitting.
Not only would it be unfitting to favor the holocaust, it would be unfitting to mildly
disfavor the holocaust or strongly disfavor an itchy thumb. So given degrees of
goodness and associated degrees of favoring, the FA theorist should endorse
something like this:
S is valuable/disvaluable to some particular degree Vd just in case it is fitting to
favor/disfavor S to the comparably appropriate degree, F(Vd).
Bykvist’s solitary goods argument makes two plausible assumptions. The first is
a possibility constraint: it must be possible to favor what’s good and to disfavor what’s
bad, to the appropriate degree. I will interpret this constraint weakly in order to give the
FA account the best chance of satisfying it. For any state S that bears value V, that S
has V must be logically compatible with some valuer’s taking attitude F(V) to S. That is,
S’s possessing a value cannot logically preclude the possibility of responding fittingly to
S. The second is a closely related coherence constraint: that S has V cannot preclude
the rational coherence of taking the associated fitting attitude F(V) to S. The obtaining of
S cannot ensure that favoring S fittingly involves the favorer in an incoherent
psychological state.
A state-directed attitude is state-entailing (or factive) if X cannot bear the attitude
to S without S’s obtaining. Knowing that S obtains is obviously factive, but so is taking
11
Bykvist 2009, 5.
Bykvist 2009, 3. Of course, this assumption may be suspect and one response to the solitary goods
argument is to reject it. I explore this possibility in sections 5 and 6.
12
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances
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pleasure in the fact that S obtains, and the latter is among the attitudes that are
entertained as fitting responses.13 Consider a good state E, that happy egrets exist,
and conjoin E with state F, that there are no past, present or future favorers. Bykvist
assumes that the conjunctive state E&F is also a good state. It follows that E&F is a
solitary good. If favoring is factive, then it is logically impossible for anyone to fittingly
favor E&F. (If someone fittingly favors E&F then F obtains, so no one favors anything,
so no one fittingly favors E&F. Contradiction.) Thus favoring cannot be factive on pain
of violating the possibility constraint.
Certain candidates for responses to both thick and thin values seem not to be
factive. Bykvist cites as an example the attitude of taking pleasure in something. Olivia
might take pleasure in the existence of happy egrets, even if unbeknownst to her there
are none. Once she learns of her factual mistake she cannot go on taking pleasure in
the existence of happy egrets on pain of a kind of rational incoherence. A state-directed
attitude is belief-entailing (or credal) if X’s taking the attitude to S entails that X believes
S obtains. For favoring to obey the coherence constraint, on the assumption that E&F
is good, favoring cannot be a credal attitude. For suppose favoring is credal. Then in
favoring E&F one believes that E&F obtains—but E&F is logically incompatible with
one’s favoring E&F. It is thus rationally incoherent for anyone to take any credal attitude
to E&F on pain of violating the coherence constraint.
Both of these arguments make the assumption that E&F is a good state, but that
clearly doesn’t follow from the assumption that E is good. The goodness of E&F
depends not only on the values of both E and F but on how the value of a conjunctive
state depends on the value of its conjuncts. Even if we assume additivity under
conjunction (which clearly fails in general), F itself doesn’t seem like a good state or
even a value neutral state. However, the basic insight of the solitary goods argument
can be more easily illustrated by broadening the basic notion. Consider, for example,
the following state:
U: No one is (currently) responding fittingly to any states.
13
See for example Zimmerman 2001.
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U is clearly possible. There can be periods when no one’s responses are fitting, either
because no one is responding at all, or because everyone who is responding is doing
so unfittingly. But U is not a solitary good in Bykvist’s sense—it isn’t a good state and it
does not entail the eternal non-existence of favorers. Rather, it is what we might call an
evaluatively finkish state: a value-bearing state which logically precludes anyone’s
responding fittingly to it. Finkish states are just those value-bearing states that violate
the possibility constraint. If U obtains then no one responds fittingly to any states, so
ipso facto no one responds fittingly to U itself. Solitary goods are finkish but not all
finkish states are solitary goods. If U has some value V or other, then according to the
FA account, there is a fitting response F(V) to U. But it follows from the FA biconditional
that if fitting responses are factive there can be no finkish states. All states that
preclude anyone’s responding fittingly to them fail to bear any value at all. Finkish
states would also violate the coherence constraint, since if F(V) is credal, anyone who
takes F(V) to U believes something (that U obtains) that is logically incompatible with his
taking F(V) to U.
Are there any finkish states? If there are then, given the logical and coherence
constraints, fitting attitudes can be neither factive nor credal. Note that we do not have
to show that there are any good finkish states. U isn’t a good state of affairs. It’s not
good that no one at all is responding fittingly to value bearers. But that does not render
U valueless. Suppose there is positive value in responding fittingly and negative value
in responding unfittingly (as, for example, Hurka 2001 has argued). Consider the state:
responding (either fittingly or unfittingly) to S. That X is not responding fittingly to S is
equivalent to the disjunction of a neutral state (not responding) and a bad state
(responding unfittingly). Suppose that the value of a disjunction of two incompatible
states is the (weighted) average value of its disjuncts. The value of the disjunction of
two incompatible states lies somewhere between the values of its disjuncts. So the
value of not responding fittingly lies between the value of responding unfittingly and that
of not responding. So not responding fittingly is somewhat bad. Since U is equivalent to
the (infinite) conjunction of all particular instances of not responding fittingly to some
state, if the conjunction of a bunch of bad states is itself bad then U is bad.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances
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One might, of course, eschew average (expected) value as a measure of the value
of a state, and hold instead some version of actualism: namely, that the value of the
disjunction of two incompatible states is the value of the disjunct that actually realizes
the disjunction (if there is one). So if X is not responding, X’s not responding fittingly
has the value of X’s not responding: it is value neutral. If X is responding unfittingly, X’s
not responding fittingly has the same value as X’s responding unfittingly: it is bad.
Suppose the conjunction of a collection of neutral states is value neutral, and the
conjunction of a mixture of neutral and bad states is somewhat bad. Then, whenever U
obtains, U is somewhat bad if at least one valuer is responding unfittingly to some state,
and it is neutral if no valuer is responding to any states. So if U obtains it is either
somewhat bad or it is value neutral. Either way, U lies somewhere below the good
region of the value scale. And that is all we need, because if U has some thin value or
other the fitting response to U must lie somewhere on the corresponding scale of
favoring/disfavoring. But if U obtains then no one responds fittingly to U. Ipso facto U is
finkish, and so no factive attitude can satisfy the possibility constraint and no credal
attitude can satisfy the coherence constraint.
U is admittedly a somewhat unusual state, and so one might wonder how
widespread the finkish states are. Consider a state S that has a thin value in world W,
and suppose that it is also appreciated (i.e. some valuer fittingly favors S in W).
Sometimes there will be other states that necessitate S that are also appreciated in W
but given that most valuers have limited appreciative resources and can only respond to
a limited set of value-bearing states at any one time this will by no means always be the
case. Let us call S an appreciation peak (or peak) if S obtains, is appreciated as such,
and there is no state distinct from S that has both these features.14 Peaks are states
that have value and are appreciated as such, but no distinct value-bearing states that
necessitate them are appreciated. Clearly a state can be a peak in one world but not in
another. Being a peak is a contingent feature. Except in a small number of rather
unusual worlds, there will be peaks and typically many of them. Peaks will very likely
vastly outstrip non-peaks. For example, if there are only a finite number of valuers,
each with finite cognitive resources, the number of peaks will be finite whereas the
14
S necessitates T just in case any world in which S obtains T obtains.
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number of non-peaks will be some order of infinity. Suppose that state G is a peak in W
and let Peak(S) be the state that consists in S’s being a peak. Then the following state
PG also obtains in W:
(PG)
G&Peak(G).
PG necessitates G and since G does not (in general) necessitate Peak(G), PG is (in
general) distinct from G. Since PG is distinct from and necessitates G, if PG obtains in W
the value of PG (if it has a value) must go unappreciated in W. So if PG has some value
it is a value-bearing state that must go unappreciated wherever it obtains. So PG is
finkish. Furthermore, every value bearing state that necessitates PG is finkish. Clearly
there will be a vast number of states that necessitate PG—including, of course, the
fusion or conjunction of all actual states (the actual world). So if a world W contains a
peak G, but is not itself a peak then world W has no value in W. To block the vast
proliferaton of finkish states, for any peak G, the state PG, along with those states that
necessitate PG (like the world itself) would have to be excluded from bearing value.
And that is quite a stretch. What reason would we have for accepting that claim apart
from the fact that it is a consequence of the theory?
3
Rejecting factive and credal responses as fitting
The simplest way for an FA theorist to block the finkish goods argument is to reject
factive and credal attitudes as candidates for fitting attitudes. But that might seem a tad
hasty since certain paradigmatic fitting attitudes are apparently credal. For example,
taking delight in is presumably the fitting response to the delightful (if any attitude at all
satisfies the FA biconditional for delightful surely delighting in does) and that attitude is
credal. One cannot (coherently) take delight in some state that one does not believe
obtains. Further, if delighting in is credal we can define a related factive attitude,
namely veridically delighting in: the attitude of taking delight in a delightful state that in
fact obtains. Veridical delight is a factive attitude, and, on the face of it, it is a fitting
response to those delightful states of affairs that actually obtain. If the finkish goods
argument proves that taking delight in cannot be the fitting response to what is delightful
then it proves too much.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 11
The FA theorist has to concede, I think, that the abundance of finkish goods
preclude both factive and credal attitudes for the thin values. But fortunately, both for
the FA theorist and for commonsense, the argument schema cannot be applied willynilly to just any value attributes. For example, to extend Bykvist’s solitary goods
argument to the attribute of being delightful we would have to specify a genuinely
delightful state that entails the non-existence of favorers. Suppose (with a view to
emulating Bykvist’s argument) we start with some undeniably delightful state D (a bunch
of delightfully blissful egrets, say). Now conjoin D with the state N which entails the
non-existence of any beings capable of taking delight in anything. If D&N were
delightful then we would have the desired state, one that is delightful, but in which, if it
obtains, no one can take delight. But fortunately there is nothing to guarantee that D&N
is delightful. Embedding a delightful state within some larger state clearly doesn’t make
the larger state is delightful. Further, that no one exists who is capable of taking delight
in anything that would otherwise be delightful doesn’t seem particularly delightful.
What enabled the finkish goods argument to go through (where the solitary
goods argument faltered) is the rather weak assumption that U has some thin value or
other. All we need is that U has some determinate or other of the thin determinable
attribute of goodness/badness. We don’t have to determine whether U is good, or
where it falls within the positive value range, or whether it falls in that range at all. Nor
do we have to stipulate what would constitute a fitting response to U. Provided U has
some thin determinate of value, the FA biconditional guarantees there is some
determinate of favoring/disfavoring/indifference that it is fitting to take to U. It is because
such states fall somewhere within the range of thin values, for each of which there is a
fitting response in the favoring/disfavoring range, that the argument succeeds. There is
no corresponding move with respect to D&N. While delightfulness clearly admits of
degrees, as does taking delight in, the delightful is not a determinable that embraces
both negative as well as a positive determinates. There is no single antonym for
delightful. There are of course various negative thick value attributes that rule out being
delightful (e.g. disgusting, disgraceful, horrible, terrible, nasty). So we cannot assume
that D&N (or U for that matter) have some degree of delightfulness or other to which
some (positive or negative) determinate of delighting in is the fitting response.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 12
This is enough to block a parallel argument for the conclusion that delight cannot
be the fitting response to the delightful, but two problems remain. First, must a world
which lacks valuers capable of responding with delight also lack delightful items?
Second, must a state that precludes anyone’s taking delight in it lack delightfulness?
These are two quite different questions. The answer to the first is no. The answer to
the second is yes, if delight is factive or credal.
Consider a delightful state of affairs D — a flock of happy egrets dealing forth
their being in a pristine wetland. D can be a part of worlds in which there are beings
who take delight in such things as well as a part of worlds in which there are no such
beings. In some of the former worlds we can suppose some beings do appropriately
take delight in D. So D doesn’t logically preclude anyone’s taking delight in it. So there
is no logical obstacle to it being fitting to take delight in D, regardless of whether or not
there are in fact any delight-takers around to do so, or the amount of delight or lack
thereof that D elicits in those who are around.
Now consider a state of affairs the obtaining of which does preclude anyone’s
taking delight in it (e.g. a flock of happy egrets in a pristine wetland that no one delights
in). If taking delight were factive, it is logically impossible for anyone to delight in such a
state. And if taking delight in is credal it is rationally incoherent for anyone to delight in
such a state. Either way, if delight is the fitting response to the delightful, such states
cannot be delightful even if they contain or necessitate states that are delightful. But
since such states are not clearly delightful they don’t constitute a clear counterexample
to the FA biconditional for delightfulness.
If this defense can be generalized to other thick attributes, there is nothing in the
finkish goods argument to rule out the fitting response to the thick attributes being
factive or credal.
The finkish goods argument shows that fitting responses to thin values can be
neither factive nor credal, on pain of denying value to an inordinate number of states,
including most worlds. Desire and preference clearly satisfy the stricture—one can
desire a state without that state’s obtaining and without one’s believing that it obtains,
and the same goes for preferences among possible states.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 13
There will, of course, be attitudes other than desire and preference that satisfy
the stricture but desire and preference are independently attractive candidates for the
fitting responses to the desirable and the preferable. Before we develop this further it is
worth considering other possible FA responses to finkish goods.
4
The bearers of value and value actualism
For the purposes of the finkish goods argument I have been assuming that abstract
states are value bearers. Instead of taking the argument to disqualify factive and credal
attitudes as fitting responses, an FA enthusiast might instead take it to be an argument
against abstract entities as value-bearers. Perhaps only concrete entities—actual
states and/or concrete particulars—are value bearers.
A comprehensive value theory should address the question of what types of
entity are value bearers, as well as what types of entity are the fundamental value
bearers and what types of entity bear value derivatively. There are a range of
candidates for both the fundamental value bearers and value bearers in general. It is
typical to grant just one kind of fundamental value bearer. Any other entities that bear
value attributes do so derivatively, in virtue of the relations they bear to the fundamental
value bearers. One might grant that a wide range derivative value bearers (call this
liberalism), or could restrict value bearing to the fundamental bearers (call this
fundamentalism). My focus here is concrete fundamentalism: both concrete state
fundamentalism and concrete particular fundamentalism.
According to the concrete state fundamentalist, the only bearers of value are
concrete (usually taken to mean actual) states of affairs. For example, suppose that in
fact Mary is happy.15 Then Mary’s being happy is an actual or “concrete” state of
affairs, at least while she is happy, and so, according to the concrete-state theorists,
Mary’s being happy is a candidate for being good to some degree, as well as for
bearing more determinate, thicker value attributes. On the concrete state view, a nonobtaining state like Mary’s being unhappy has no value attributes at all. If only actual
states are bearers of value attributes, then consistency demands that the relata of a
genuine value relation (like betterness) must also be actual states. So two incompatible
15
Perhaps we should add with her lot, during some particular interval of time I. But for simplicity I will
ignore these qualifications.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 14
states cannot stand in value relations (like betterness) because at least one of them will
not be a concrete item. For example, Mary’s being happy isn’t better than Mary’s being
unhappy. The concrete state view is thus committed to what I will call value actualism:
that if a state of affairs S has a value attribute then S is actual. A corollary of the
concrete state view is that if a state S bears a value relation to state S* (like the better
than relation) then both S and S* are actual.
The concrete state fundamentalist cannot easily accommodate value relations
between incompatible states. The rival abstract-state view, with which we have been
tacitly operating, has a much easier time doing so. There existing happy egrets,
Christine’s frying pan’s being gorgeous, Diana’s wedding dress being precious are all
possible states, as are the following: there existing no happy egrets, Christine’s frying
pan’s being garish, and Diana’s wedding dress being common. The former are
reasonable candidates for being good, while the latter are candidates for being bad.
The abstract-state view can accommodate these judgements. This is an obvious
advantage of the abstract-state view.
Many philosophers, especially those inclined to nominalism, are not happy
countenancing either propositions or states of affairs (whether concrete or abstract)—let
alone promoting them as value bearers. According to concrete particularists it is not
states (concrete or abstract) but concrete particulars—like Mary, egrets, frying pans,
and dresses —that are genuine bearers of value.
I favor a version of liberalism: that the fundamental bearers are all of one kind—
they are all abstract states—but that a wide range of kinds of entity can bear values
derivatively, by virtue of their relations to the fundamental value bearers. Suppose
however that concrete state fundamentalism is true. To prevent goodness from
leaching out of the actual realm into the merely possible, only states that are actual can
bear the thin evaluative attributes.16 This has struck many as independently plausible,
but here is an argument for it.17 One cannot sensibly say: “It is good that Henry is
happy, but of course he is in fact totally miserable.” The simplest explanation for this is
that it is good that S entails S. If this is right then we can make a parallel argument that
16
17
See for example Lemos (2005).
I owe this argument to Kevin Mulligan (personal correspondence).
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 15
S is bad and S is neutral also entail S. So if Henry’s being happy is not actual it
possesses no determinate of thin value. The actualist concludes that the only states
that bear goodness and badness (whether fundamentally or derivatively) are actual
states. And if that is right then the fitting response to a good (bad or neutral) state must
be a factive attitude. Call this combination of the FA schema and value actualism: FAactualism.
What about the thick values? Delight is not a factive attitude but it is, apparently,
a fitting response to what’s delightful. How can the FA-actualist accommodate this?
Something is awry if Oliver delights in winning the lottery when he mistakenly believes
himself to have won it, and the FA-actualist does have a tidy explanation for this. By the
FA schema, if one fittingly delights in S then S is delightful. By value actualism, if S is
delightful then S obtains. So if Oliver didn’t in fact win the lottery, FA-actualism entails
that Oliver cannot fittingly delight in winning the lottery. The same argument goes for
any candidate for fitting response to the thin values. Suppose favoring to degree d is the
fitting response to S if S possesses thin value to degree d. Then according to FAactualism, fittingly favoring S must be factive even if the core attitude of favoring S is
not.
Provided value idealism is false, some states that possess a value go unnoticed,
or if noticed, elicit unfitting responses. If U obtains then no one responds fittingly to it. If
U does not obtain then by FA-factualism it possesses no value. So given the possibility
constraint and FA-actualism, U is necessarily valueless.18 Quite generally, FA-actualism
and the possibility constraint entail that no state that precludes anyone responding
fittingly to it to can bear any value attribute in any possible world in which it obtains. And
since, according to value actualism, it bears no value in any world in which it does not
obtain, it is impossible for such a state to bear any value at all.
FA-actualism spreads absence of value over a wide swathe of states. For
example, consider any maximal state W. According to actualism W does not have any
value if W is not actual, so the only circumstance in which W can bear any value is if W
itself is actual. What further conditions must W satisfy for it to have some value given
18
Being valueless is distinct from being value-neutral—which is possessing that degree of thin value
which is below the positive range and above the negative range. The fitting response to the value-neutral
is indifference, whereas there is no fitting response to the valueless at all.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 16
FA-actualism? Either someone in W fittingly favors W or no one in W does. If no one in
W fittingly favors W then the obtaining of W logically precludes anyone fittingly favoring
W. For the only world in which W can be the object of fitting favoring is W itself — since
W is the only world in which W bears any kind of value — but if W obtains no one favors
W fittingly. Suppose that in W some valuer does fittingly favor W. To do so the valuer
in question would, in contemplating W in all its complexity, favor W to the fitting
degree.19 Given FA-actualism, in so doing the valuer would also have to take W to be
the actual world—for if W were not actual then it would have no value at all. But to be
aware of some world W that W is the actual world is to possess omniscience (or at least
omnicredence20). And to respond fittingly to the value of the actual world one would
have to be perfectly sensitive to the actual value of that world. So for W to bear any
value there would have to be a valuer in W who is both aware, in W, that W is actual,
and who perfectly appreciates the value of W. Such a valuer, if not God herself, would
have to be very close to God. So the only worlds that can have any value attributes at
all are worlds in which God (or something very God-like) exists and fittingly responds to
the value of that world.
Given FA-actualism, if in world W there is no one who believes both that W itself
is actual and knows what W’s value is, then W has no value in W. So for W to have
value in W itself there a God-like being must exist in W. But given value actualism, the
only world in which W could have any value is W itself. It follows that any world that
lacks a God-like being is of necessity valueless. All such God-less worlds are, of
necessity, neither good, nor bad nor value neutral. That the world would be valueless
unless a God-like being exists might be a welcome conclusion for theists, but for value
realists generally it will be a bit of a stretch. And even theists might balk at the idea that
God’s non-existence could not make things worse.
5
Concrete particular fundamentalism
At this juncture, those who combine the FA account with a robust prejudice in favor of
the actual might be inclined to place the blame for finkish phenomena not on the
19
I take worlds here to be states, and the actual world to be the fusion of all actual states.
That is, believing all and only truths. I rely here on the thesis that the world is the collection of facts or
states, not a collection or fusion of particulars.
20
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 17
concreteness of the value bearers, but rather on taking states to be the value bearers at
all. Perhaps states are not the right kind of thing to be bearers of value. Perhaps
finkishness argues for giving concrete particularism an airing. Suppose that only
concrete particulars, like Mary, the ceramic frying pan, and Diana’s wedding dress, are
fundamental value bearers. This might solve the problems of finkishness by removing
value bearers from the realm of objects to which factive or credal responses are
categorially appropriate.
Here is an argument against taking concrete particulars to be the only or even
the value bearers. Christine’s frying pan is gorgeous; being gorgeous is a determinate
of beauty; and beauty is valuable. Everyone who is not a value nihilist will grant that.
But what makes Christine’s frying pan gorgeous is surely the particular configuration of
shape, color, material properties and so on that the pan exhibits. If Christine’s pan is
gorgeous then any duplicate of her pan in just those respects (make it a molecule-formolecule duplicate if you like) would be equally gorgeous. This rather obvious fact
suggests that the value attribute at issue here, namely gorgeousness, is born by a
certain combination of first-order properties. It is this gorgeous combination of
properties that makes the particular that has that combination a gorgeous particular. If
this is right, particulars inherit their value attributes from the value attributes of the
properties they have.21
This duplicability objection is worth further development, but let’s put it aside and
consider a value property which seems not to be subject to this duplicability argument –
being precious. What makes a particular precious may not be duplicable. Take Diana’s
royal wedding dress. This is precious not because it is duplicable, but in part because it
cannot. If someone makes a bunch of replicas of that dress — even if they cannot be
told apart from the original — they won’t be precious. It is in part the non-duplicable
historical features of Diana’s wedding dress that make it precious.
If one tries to construct a solitary or finkish goods argument for precious
particulars one is 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
21
See Forrest, Butchvarov and Oddie forthcoming 2016b for developments of this account.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 18
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. Let’s assume the fitting response to what’s precious is to cherish it. A
value correlate of an existent particular that goes unconceived is a precious particular
that goes uncherished.
Suppose that Diana’s précis wedding dress lies crumpled up inside a box of old
dressing-up clothes at the back of a wardrobe in one of Her Majesty’s rarely frequented
castles in some damp corner of Wales. Sadly, no one cherishes it. So Diana’s wedding
dress is, apparently, an uncherished precious particular. The fitting response to such a
particular is to cherish it of course, but, following Berkeley, it is impossible to cherish an
uncherished particular. So Diana’s wedding dress cannot be precious after all. It seems
that all precious particulars are cherished by someone, just as all existent particulars
are conceived of by someone.
Both arguments are flawed. It is possible to cherish a particular that is in fact
languishing uncherished. It is not essential to any particular that that particular not be
uncherished. There is nothing that renders it impossible for someone, Harry say, to
fossick about, find the particular that is Diana’s wedding dress (call it D), remove D from
its ignominious uncherished state in the box, and begin fiercely cherishing it. If Harry
were to do that then D itself, that very particular, would be cherished. D’s being currently
uncherished is no part of what makes D that particular, and it is certainly no part of what
makes it precious, and so Harry’s coming to cherish it would destroy neither its identity
nor its preciousness. There is clearly a modal error in this Berkeleyan version of the SG
argument, one which also infects the Berkeleyan argument itself. However, note that an
analogous defect does not hobble the finkish goods argument. This is because it is an
essential feature of states like U that they go unappreciated whenever they obtain. It is
not impossible to cherish a particular that happens to be going uncherished. But if
favoring is factive it is impossible to fittingly favor a finkish state like U.
It may not be entirely clear what essential properties D has, but being precious is
clearly not one of them. This is because whatever D’s essential properties are being
Diana’s royal wedding dress is not among them, and the preciousness of D depends on
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 19
its being Diana’s wedding dress. That D is Diana’s wedding dress is a matter of D’s
bearing certain contingent relational properties to other particulars. Suppose that,
unbeknownst to Diana, the Emanuels (who designed her dress) had two realizations of
their design made up (D along with a distinct particular C). They handed D over to the
royals, and kept C for themselves, perhaps as a back-up, or perhaps with a view to
cashing in on it at some later stage. They could easily have sent C to the palace
instead. In that case the particular C, not D, would have been Diana’s wedding dress.
But C would not, of course, have been the particular D. No particular can be or become
another distinct particular. To understand how C might have been Diana’s wedding
dress but might not have been D we must distinguish between concrete particulars and
the various roles that concrete particulars play. Diana’s 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 (to be Diana’s wedding dress in the sense of role
occupancy) is determined by a particular’s position in a certain network of properties
and relations to other particulars. If C had occupied D’s position in that cluster of
properties and relations, then C would have been (the occupant of the role of) Diana’s
wedding dress, and C rather than D would have been the more precious of the two, and
D would have been considerably less precious than it is in fact.
Whether a thing is fittingly responded to or not is also a relational, rather than an
essential, property of it.22 And, as we have seen, relational properties can contribute to
certain evaluative attributes of a particular (like degree of preciousness). The relations
that D contingently bears to Diana and 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 may also be possible for a particular’s contingent
relations to the responses of valuers (whether those responses are fitting, unfitting or
non-existent) to also contribute to its value profile. (Response-dependent theories of
value claim that all the value attributes of an entity depend on relations to value
responders, but that is clearly going overboard.) A precious particular (like Diana’s
dress, scrunched up in that box) may go tragically unappreciated. This seems like a
candidate for a thick value attribute. Let that attribute be Tragic, and let F(Tragic) be
22
For states like U, however, seems to be both an essential feature as well as a relational feature.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 20
the fitting response, whatever that might be, to precious particulars that go tragically
unappreciated. If it is fitting to take F(Tragic) to D then D must have the attribute
Tragic. But could someone take F(Tragic) to a particular that in fact bears the attribute
Tragic? Suppose Harry were to find D in the closet and take attitude F(Tragic) to D.
Then (on the representational account of fittingness) D would have to strike Harry (in
the appropriate way) as a precious particular that is going tragically unappreciated as
such. But for that D would have to strike Harry (in the appropriate way) as precious. In
that case, D’s preciousness would not be going unappreciated after all, and so would
not be going tragically unappreciated. So if concrete particularism is true there appear
to be some value attributes (like Tragic) the possession of which precludes anyone’s
taking the fitting attitude to them. So Tragic is not a value that a concrete particular can
bear. Diana’s dress cannot go tragically unappreciated. But that’s absurd.
Concrete particular fundamentalism can no more avoid finkishness than can
concrete state fundamentalism.
6
Identifying the fitting responses to thin values
The WKR challenge can be met by embracing the representational account of
fittingness. The finkish goods challenge can be met by embracing abstract states as
value bearers, and excluding both factive and credal attitudes from the pool of fitting
responses to goodness. Putting these constraints together it follows that the fitting
response to the goodness of a state must be a non-factive, non-credal representation of
the state as good. It must be some kind of non-doxastic appearance of value.
While a ban on factive and credal attitudes rules out many candidates for
favoring, it leaves desires and preferences in the pool. Desire is clearly not factive.
One can desire the existence of happy egrets without it being the case that there are
happy egrets. Desiring is also not credal. One can desire the existence of happy
egrets without believing that there are happy egrets.
It is also plausible that desires are value appearances or value seemings. When
I desire something (that there be happy egrets, to hear a performance of the Goldberg
Variations, or eat a hokey-pokey ice-cream) these things strike me as good. When I
have an aversion to something (the unnecessary suffering of the innocent, listening to
Justin Bieber’s Baby, or eating the raw flesh of sentient creatures) these strike me as
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 21
bad. When I am completely indifferent between two possibilities (going swimming or
going skiing, say) then these strike me as being equally valuable. This basic idea has a
long history. It can be traced back at least to Augustine:
...(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.23
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. … To desire
something is to be in a kind of perceptual state, in which that thing seems
good...24
This value appearance thesis has a number of components. First, there are
value seemings and these are perception-like rather than belief-like. (Something can
seem a certain way without one’s believing it to be that way.) Second, a desire for S is,
or involves, an appearance of the goodness of S. Third, an appearance of value is
fitting or appropriate just in case it is an accurate perceptual representation of its object.
There might well be mental states other than desire that satisfy the constraints,
and nothing I have said here so far rules this out. What I am arguing for is simply that
desires are value appearances, not that all appearances of value are desires. In fact
the latter thesis seems rather implausible. For a start, desires take a particular kind of
object (states, whether these be states of affairs or states of being). But entities other
than states can bear value attributes (at least derivatively, even if not fundamentally)
and these entities can certainly appear valuable without being desired. It sounds odd to
say that the fitting response to a concrete particular that happens to bear some positive
value (like Diana’s wedding dress) is to desire that particular. Diana’s wedding dress
might well appear valuable to me without my desiring it. It is possible (though not
necessary) that because it seems valuable I desire to own Diana’s wedding dress, or
23
24
Augustine 1982, 109.
Stampe 1987, 381, Oddie 2005 and Tenenbaum 2007.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 22
wear Diana’s wedding dress to the prom, but if I do so it is these states (owning Diana’s
dress, wearing Diana’s dress to the prom) that present themselves to me as good.
It is worth spelling out why finkish states present no problem for the thesis that
desires are the fitting response to the good. Consider again that state that has been
giving the FA enthusiast trouble: U. U is problematic because its obtaining logically
precludes anyone at all fittingly favoring it. If favoring is factive or credal then of course
favoring would violate the logical or coherence constraints. But desire is neither, and so
it is entirely possible that someone desire U exactly to the degree that is fitting. Suppose
that U is somewhat bad and that the fitting response to a bad state of affairs is to be
somewhat averse to it. Being somewhat averse to U’s obtaining (i.e, desiring somewhat
that U not obtain) does not entail that U obtains and it does not entail that one believes
that U obtains. If anyone at all is appropriately averse to U then at least one response of
one person is fitting, and that entails that U itself does not obtain. But this is just the
converse of the definition of the property of finkishness – to respond fittingly to a finkish
value bearing state guarantees that that state doesn’t obtain. The difference here is
that since desiring isn’t factive, desiring a finkish state to the fitting degree does not rule
out the state having the associated value (even if it rules out the state’s obtaining).
Perhaps this might sound odd at first. Suppose I contemplate the possibility of
U’s obtaining, and respond appropriately (I am fittingly averse to U). Then simply by
taking the fitting 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 that bad state of
affairs, I ensure that a bad state of affairs (the very one I am averse to obtaining) fails to
obtain.
While this is certainly an interesting feature of states like U and the attitudes that
fit them, it is not a problematic feature. It is analogous to similar phenomena outside the
value realm. One can guarantee that certain states obtain simply by desiring that they
obtain: for example, I can make the state that consists in my desiring something or other
obtain simply by desiring that that very state obtain. And one can preclude certain
states from obtaining by being averse to them: for example, I can preclude my being
averse to nothing by being averse to that state. Furthermore, if it is valuable to take the
fitting attitude to a good state, then I can bring about a good state simply by desiring
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 23
that very state to the fitting degree — the state that consists in my desiring something
fittingly. Once we admit states of affairs that involve fitting attitudes, finkish valuebearing states are not only rather ubiquitous, but carry in their wake some rather
interesting value phenomena.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 24
7
Objections to the value appearance thesis
The FA biconditional schema can survive the most pressing challenges provided value
bearers are abstract states, fittingness is representational accuracy, and favoring is
non-doxastic and non-factive. And given the value appearance thesis, desires and
preferences are the simplest remaining candidates to fill the role of fitting responses to
the thin evaluative attributes. However, the value appearance thesis has attracted a
number of powerful objections. To conclude, I briefly sketch three of the more pressing
objections and sketch some possible solutions to be further developed.
8.1
The incompatibility of desire with full belief
The finkish goods argument mandates that favoring be neither factive nor credal, and
desire satisfies this. However, an ancient tradition holds that desire is either anti-factive
(state-precluding) or anti-credal (belief-precluding). And if this is right it presents a quite
different problem for the value appearance thesis.
Socrates in the Symposium claims that desires are state-precluding—what one
desires cannot be the case:
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.25
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.26
This thesis is explicitly modelled in the formalism of evidential decision theory.
The same idea drops out of the dispositional-motivational theory of desire.
Stalnaker writes:
25
26
Plato Symposium, in Reeve 2012, 184
Jeffrey 1983, 62-3.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 25
To desire that P is to be disposed to act in ways that would tend to bring it about
that P in a world in which one’s beliefs, whatever they are, were true. 27
If one already believes that S obtains then, at least if one is rational, one will not have a
disposition to act in ways that would tend to bring about S in worlds in which S obtains.
So one cannot (rationally) desire S if one believes S to be the case already. A desire
for S must dissolve as the subject comes to believe that S obtains. Lauria calls this the
death of desire and makes it a fundamental desideratum on any account of desire.28
Suppose I want a bottle of Burgundy to accompany my dinner. On the value
appearance thesis having a bottle of Burgundy to accompany my dinner seems good to
me, in the specific non-doxastic way of seeming that constitutes desire. So I search the
wine cellar and, lo and behold, I am in luck! There is one left, and a good one at that.
Once I am convinced that I have a bottle of Burgundy to accompany my dinner, that fact
can still seem good to me. But can I still desire or want to have a bottle of Burgundy to
accompany my dinner once I am convinced that I already have one? Would it be odd
for me to shout, as I clamber happily up the stairs from the cellar with bottle firmly in
hand, “I still want a bottle of Burgundy with my dinner”? I myself don’t think that that
sounds odd. I now have what I want, and I know that I have what I want, but that
doesn’t make it the case that I no longer want that very thing. However, some
philosophers do clearly find it jarring to say that one desires what one has or thinks one
has. How can one explain this discrepancy?
We can distinguish between a thin notion of desire, a determinable, and various
thick determinates of that thin notion. Each of the thick notions involves, in addition to
thin desire, a certain credal state with respect to the object of that thin desire. The thin
notion can be explicated using preference. I desire S provided I would prefer the
obtaining of S to its not obtaining. (On the value appearance thesis this preference
involves S seeming better than not-S.) One can clearly combine a preference for S
over not-S with various states of belief about the obtaining of S. There are three broad
cases:
27
28
Stalnaker 1984, 15.
See Lauria 2014.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 26
1
Desire S (prefer S to not-S) while uncertain whether S or not-S obtains;
2
Desire S (prefer S to not-S) S while certain that S obtains;
3
Desire S (prefer S to not-S) while certain that S doesn’t obtain.
The first thick desire state — in which one is uncertain about whether or not the world
satisfies one’s preference for S over not-S — we could call prospective desire. The
second — where one is certain that one’s preference is fulfilled — we could call
satisfied desire. The third — where one is certain that one’s preference is not fulfilled —
we could call frustrated desire. What starts out as a prospective desire can, with
different changes in one’s beliefs, become either a satisfied or a frustrated desire. But
the underlying thin desire state — the preference for S over not-S — can remain stable
throughout that process. A satisfied or frustrated preference is still a preference. We
have different locutions for signaling these different thick desire states. So, for example,
we typically say in case 2 that one is glad that S, or pleased or satisfied that S, rather
than that one desires S and believes that S obtains. And in case 3 we say that one is
disappointed that S, or displeased that S or frustrated that S rather than that one
desires S and believes that S doesn’t obtain.
Thick prospective desires are those desires that can dispose one to action. But
extra conditions are necessary for a prospective desire to underwrite such a disposition.
For a start, there may be nothing at all that one can do to bring about the fulfillment of
one’s preferences. A person may be unsure whether God exists, for example, but still
have a strong preference for God’s existence over God’s non-existence. If she is
rational that preference will not dispose her to do anything at all about God’s existence,
since there is simply nothing that can be done about it.
What evidential decision theory calls desires are just prospective desires, and it
is true that, at least in rational beings, a prospective desire for S dies when uncertainty
about S gives way to conviction. That falls straight out of the definition. But the
preference for S over not-S need not die with the prospective desire. An agnostic who
hopes that God exists, may retain that preference and become either a firm believer
who is glad that God exists, or a committed atheist who is disappointed in the universe.
8.2
The desires of babes and brutes
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 27
A second major objection to the value appearance thesis concerns the desires of
cognitively less sophisticated beings — like human neonates and non-human animals.
As every parent or pet-owner knows, they have desires, sometimes quite strong
desires. But do things appear good to them? For things to appear good to them they
would have to grasp the concept of goodness. But it is absurd to attribute to them
possession of the concept of goodness.
This objection deserves careful consideration. There are four possible
responses.
The first is to reject the premise that babes and brutes have desires at all. That strikes
me as deeply implausible (I am both a parent and a pet owner) and not worth further
consideration.
The second is to attribute to babes and brutes possession of the concept of
goodness. This strikes me as rather implausible. However, since it is not immediately
obvious what it takes to possess a concept, there may be ways of explicating the notion
that make attribution of concept possession to cognitively unsophisticated beings such
as these quite palatable. For example, if possessing a concept of F-ness is simply a
matter of being able to discriminate between things that have F and things that don’t
with some degree of reliability then babes and brutes may, at least partially, possess
various concepts.
The third and fourth responses, which are the most promising, deny that to
experience something as F requires possession of the concept of F-ness. There are two
variants of this. The first embraces the non-conceptual content of experience. It is
possible for one to have visual or auditory experiences with complex contents that
vastly outstrip the conceptual tools one has for categorizing and cognizing those
contents. I myself do not wield definite concepts for the myriad colors that I am capable
of experiencing. One’s palate of color concepts seems to be developed and refined
through the perceptual experience of colors, color differences and color similarities.
While it is true that one’s experiences of colors can be changed and heightened through
the acquisition and refinement of ever more sophisticated and fine-grained color
concepts, the acquisition of color concepts is surely rooted in prior non-conceptual color
experiences. Just as beings who do not wield the concept of brightness or redness can
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 28
have experiences part of the content of which is a representation of bright red objects,
so beings who do not wield the concept of goodness might have experiences the
content of which includes a representation of something as good.
The fourth response locates the apprehension of goodness not in the content of
a value experience but rather in the mode of that experience. (This idea can be traced
back to Brentano’s work and has recently been developed by Friedrich (2006) and
Lauria (2014).) On the modal view, to experience the existence of happy egrets as
good is not to have an experience the content of which is: the existence of happy egrets
is good. Rather it is for the existence of happy egrets to be experienced in a particular
way. Suppose I have a perceptual experience of egrets happily going about their
business in a pristine wetland. The existence of happy egrets is presented to me, in
perceptual experience, as obtaining. Now suppose I desire the existence of happy
egrets. In desiring the existence of happy egrets the same content is presented as in
the perceptual experience, but this content is now presented not as obtaining but rather
as bein good. A state’s being presented as obtaining is one mode or presentation,
while its being presented as being good is another. For a state to be desired just is for it
to be presented in a particular way — its seeming-good. For one to be the subject of a
presentation in that mode one need not possess the concept of goodness, just as to be
subject of a perceptual presentation one need not possess the concept of obtaining.
8.3
Isomorphic preferences
The third major objection to the value appearance thesis is the problem of isomorphic
preferences. In the simple FA schema there seems no room for the fittingness of
preferences to vary from one valuer to another. The preferences of any two valuers
who are responding fittingly (“fitting responders” for short) to facts about betterness
have to be isomorphic with the facts about betterness, and hence isomorphic with each
other. If preference is the fitting response to betterness, then if the preferences of two
valuers diverge at least one of them must be responding unfittingly. But that’s
counterintuitive. Surely there are occasions on which there are a range of different
legitimate preferences, all of which are equally fitting responses to value. Different
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 29
valuers can, legitimately, respond in different ways to things which possess their value
in a valuer-independent way.
There are four responses to this worth exploring: agent-relative value,
permissible preference orderings, perspectivalism, and properties as value bearers.
Agent-relative values: If there is no such thing as good simpliciter, if all goods
are goods for some valuer, then while it is fitting for X to favor what is good for X, what
is good for Y places no demands on X. John’s happiness is good for John and so it is
fitting for John to desire John’s happiness, but Jane’s happiness is not good for John
(except perhaps instrumentally) and so it isn’t fitting for him to desire that. I think this
fails as a general solution because some states do just seem better than others,
simpliciter. John’s being happy and Jane’s being happy is just better than John’s being
happy and Jane’s being miserable. But if states have any agent neutral values the
problem of isomorphic response will arise.
Permissible preference orderings: It is a common assumption in value theory
that both rational preferences and betterness induce complete orderings of their
domains. This is a very strong assumption. It would be more reasonable to
countenance some gaps in the orderings—that is, to countenance the possibility of
partial orderings of the elements in the domain. Even so, if there is only one
permissible preference ordering (even it is a partial ordering) then, together with the FA
schema, this would entail that one and only one preference structure is permissible—
that which is isomorphic to the one betterness relation—and so we would still have the
problem of isomorphic response. In order to avoid this, the FA-theorist must
countenance a range of permissible value ordering (with or without value gaps in them).
If one allows for more than one permissible preference ordering this provides a certain
latitude in the range of permissible preferences—the more latitude the larger the class.
This model has been extensively explored by Rabinowicz and shows considerable
explanatory power.29
Perspectivalism: Fitting responses are, on the representational view, accurate
appearances of value. The analogue of the isomorphic response problem for regular
perception would be absurd. It is not a requirement of accurate perception in general
29
Rabinowicz 2008.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics 30
that for any two observers the appearances should be isomorphic to reality and hence
isomorphic to each other. Perceptual representations are representations from a
certain point of view within a space, and as such they legitimately incorporate
perspectival effects. 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 may also be value analogues of
distance and perspective. If desires and preferences are value appearances then the
shape and configuration of those appearances should depend not just on the values of
the objects of those appearances but also on how one stands in relation to those
objects. So there may be a perspectival element to desire just as there is a perspectival
element to, say, visual perception. Just as it is 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. (See
Oddie (2005) for a development of this view.)
Properties as value bearers: Finally, we eschewed both concrete states and
concrete particulars as the fundamental value bearers, in favor of abstract states of
affairs. There is, however, a somewhat neglected fourth alternative here. According to
the property view, the fundamental value bearers are properties—like being happy,
winning the gold, and being gorgeous. On this view, particulars and states of affairs
have value derivatively, by partaking in, or being realizations of, the fundamental valuebearing properties. The possible state view is a limiting case of the property view, a first
approximation to it, and the arguments for the possible state view presented here can
be carried over to the property view. What makes the property view promising as far as
the isomorphic preference problem goes is this: properties (unlike propositions or states
of affairs) have a built-in perspective or point of view. A property does not characterize
a state of the world. Rather, it characterizes a state of being in the world. Many
apparently conflicting preferences over (subject-neutral) states of affairs may instead
turn out to be convergent preferences over (subject-relative) states of being.
Graham Oddie: Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances 31
These four responses are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The value
appearance thesis may be able to combine some or all of them in a response to the
problem of isomorphic preferences.30
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