No one thinks value is a substance. Value talk is just a way of talking about what makes things good. It doesn't commit you to commensurability among and additivity of quantities of value, although you don't necessarily want to beg the question against consequentialist theories (of the sort thar Like accepts and I reject) by ruling these out definitionall. Moreover there are more kinds of value than moral values. Allan Gibbard has been developing a very attractive general theory of value that he supposes applies to not only moral but other kinds. Don't be surprised that I say this, Luke, I have long told Allan that his theory is not really noncognitivist, and now, in his APA Presidential address, he admits it. Mike, check his Wise Choicesm APt Feelings, the most beautifully written book of metaethics ever written.
> Special new improved altruism! Now with 35% more value! It's one way of reducing ethical discourse to stark terms of "good" and "bad", leaving out the question "what kind of good?" or "what kind of bad?"
Again, consequentialism may be many things, but it isn't silly, whatever it is. It's not obvious that it makes no sense to say that in principle one couldn't assign numbers of value decisions. That is what rational choice theory in fact offers to do.
>We might do well to heed Elizabeth Anscombe's suggestion that we abandon
>this "specifically moral ought" in favor of more specific terms appropriate
>the situation in which agents act: courageous or cowardly, just or unjust,
>kind or malicious, etc.
Although I agree that many value terms are incommensurable, leaving things at this stage is totally unsatisfactory, Imagine the following dialog.
German General: It would be dishonorable of me to break my oth to the Fuhrer.
von Stauffenberg: Honor, schmonor, it's cruel and wicked to participate in this evil war. Join me in the plot.
How to resolve this standoff between honor anbd cruelty on Anscombe's terms?
> So, for example, we can argue about whether or not something contributes
to human welfare (one of those questions that crosses the
empirical/normative boundary without being clearly resolvable into either),
without getting caught up in the endless quest for a determinate response to
the question "but why should I value human welfare?"
>
>
Ah, well, if someone doesn't see why he should value human welfare, it's not obvious what one can say to him. I don't know why it should bother us or weaken our commitnment to human welfare if we can't think of something. As Mill says, on those whom conscious has no hold, there is is only the pressure of external sanctions. I don't think this is a problem any more than I am bothered by my inability to refute the demon skeptic on his own terms.
jks
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