>
>(1) I was probably misshapen at an early age by hearing U of C econ grad
>students run around the quads talking about "utiles" pretty much as if they
>were tiles in a mah jongg game. Of course, you might convince me that
>those cretins aren't really people, so "no one" believes that value is a
>substance.
Well, economists aren't people, and U of C economists are even less so. I talking about Marxists. If someone can provide quotations and citations to a Marxist economist who has believed that value in Marx (embodied labor) is a substance, I'll eat my hat. Of course there may be such an idiot. But NCEs talking rot about utiles is not a countereaxmple.
(Although my warning was really against slipping into a way of talking "as
if" value were a substance, not the literal belief that value is a
substance). But I'll take your suggestion and add Gibbard to my list of
things to read.
>
>(2) As to the last half of your response, I'm confused. We agree that
>there is no special need to justify concern for human welfare as "good" to
>an absolute skeptic. But what about the person who places some other value
>before welfare, while not denying that welfare is a good thing, all other
>things being equal?
Like me, for example. Or Rawls. We think that freedom and equality of opportunity and fairness is basic dsitribution are more important--Rawls, in that order.
>Isn't that what the debate between von Stauffenberg and the German general comes down to: honor vs. welfare? So, eschewing any attempt to justify welfare as "Good", what do you say to the general?
No, not necessarily. von S refers (in my story) to cruelry and evil, neoither od which fit nicely into welfarist classifications.
>
>So, you see, I'm not entirely convinced that Anscombe's position is
>"entirely unsatisfactory." Why can't one argue for a relative priority of
>goods?
Who said you can't? But it's not easy. Rawls' version of the argument doesn't work, or so I argue in my Rights of Inequality, Legal Theory 2001.
>Why can't one argue, in this case, that an honorable oath to Hitler is a
>contradiction in terms?
I surely hope you could, but that avoids the problem of incommensurability.
>Or that clinging to honor while perpetuating cruelty is a particularly
>odious form of moral self-indulgence? Or that "honor" is a patriarchal
>concept that really has no place in ethics at all?
Could argue all of those things. I am not sure I agree that honor has noplace in ethics.
>
>(3) Actually, I think it can be shown that the way rational choice theory
>tries to finesse commensurability doesn't work - at least the way von
>Neumann-Morgenstern tried to do it. They propose a lottery in which you
>first identify your least- and most-preferred alternatives, and then rank
>all othe alternatives as equivalent to a lottery ticket with specific
>probabilities of those polar alternatives. This confuses enforced (and
>probably meaningless) choice with commensurability. Reason doesn't require
>a complete ranking of preferences, nor is an induced ranking necessarily
>meaningful.
>
>MM
Yes.
jks
>
> >>> jkschw at hotmail.com 05/12/02 13:50 PM >>>
> >
> >It's probably a good idea not to fetishize "value" as if it were some
> >substance that ethical action intends to maximize.
>
>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 unjst,
> >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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