Christopher Tollefsen: Sanctity of Life and Future of Value Arguments

Tollefsen: Sanctity of Life and Future of Value Arguments

45 comments:

Stephen K, August 7, 2024 at 3:12 PM

COMMENSURABILITY AND MEAN-SPIRITED ARCHANGELS

Chris Tollefsen argues that goods are incommensurate (incomparable). I disagree. Here are five cases of commensurate goods, or reasoning that supports commensurability.

Case #1: Equal Goods
Two doppelgangers – with an identical past, present, and future – have identical intrinsic value-makers (for example, five units of pleasure or five units of deserved pleasure). These goods are equally valuable.

Case #2: Pareto Superior Good
A conjunction of intrinsic value-makers (A + B) includes one intrinsic value-maker (A). Hence, the former is better than the latter.

Case #3: Reductio
An archangel makes a subordinate angel choose between allowing A to pinch B or allowing C to torture, mutilate, and then kill D. Intuitively, the subordinate angel need not flip a coin.

Case #4: More is Better
If, by itself, something is intrinsically good, then more of that thing is intrinsically good. Consider +1 unit of pleasure (roughly, measured via intensity and duration) and +1 billion units of pleasure in the same person.

Case #5: Reasons
Reasons sometimes require us to prefer one good over the other, even when we are not more closely related to either good. Goodness-commensurability alone justifies the reason. Consider, again, the subordinate angel’s choice.

David H August 12, 2024 at 5:05 PM

Steve
Interesting challenges. Perhaps in regards to #1and #4, Chris T will allow commensurability within a good but not between different goods. So five units of pleasure are equally good to five other units of pleasure. What isn't allowed is commensurating different goods. say pleasure and knowledge

Chris T may also say that pleasure is not a good, though you could easily change your example to another good that seems to allow internal comparisons of more and less

Does the conjunction argument begs the question? Chris T says the goods are commensurable. You assume commnesurability and respond that adding two goods is better than just one good.

I take it you are assuming that adding good B doesn't mean less of the good A. Although it probably assumes more commensurability than Chris T would allow, consider the following example, more play (good B) could come at the expense of more knowledge (good A). So adding B doesn't make one better off than just having more of A.

I wonder if adding intrinsic goods always makes one better off. imagine becoming smarter and smarter. Perhaps this comes a that expense of friendship or family as they can't relate to you and you find talking to them dull

I think your Chris might say about your angel case what Melissa Moschella said about pain or harm - avoiding harm and pain, or possessing their opposite, are not basic goods good.

Chris T might allow there to be reason to prefer one good over another without that violating commensurability. I recall him claiming in another paper, or maybe Melissa M just referring to his vocational principle. So Michael Jordan has reasons to practice basketball rather than throw himself into gold or baseball or poetry. It better fits the vocation and narrative of his life. So there are reasons to prefer A over B that don't track A being of a greater good than B. Do you think this is cheating, sneaking commensurability in the back door without announcing it

Stephen K., August 13, 2024 at 11:19 AM

OBJECTION #1: PLEASURE IS NOT INTRINSICALLY GOOD

David, excellent points as always.

“Chris T may also say that pleasure is not a good, though you could easily change your example to another good that seems to allow internal comparisons of more and less. … I think your Chris might say about your angel case what Melissa Moschella said about pain or harm - avoiding harm and pain, or possessing their opposite, are not basic goods good.”

You anticipated my response. If pleasure is neither an intrinsic good nor an intrinsic prudential good, then substitute what is a basic good. John Finnis lists knowledge, sociability, and practical reasonableness. Two of the arguments apply verbatim.
(1) Doppelganger argument (Case #1)
(2) Pareto Superiority argument (Case #2)

So, on this account, a brief 30-second social interaction at a coffee house is not better – intrinsically or prudentially-intrinsically – than a lifetime marriage or friendship.

A parallel case is true if one wants to focus on the capacity for social interaction (sociality-capacity) and one person has the most minimal capacity and the a Russian Jewish mother embedded in a large and close-knit family.

Here’s what the New Natural Law Theorist should say of the following.

“Kershnar and Hershenov are correct. The good is commensurable. But it is so hard to make these judgments that the epistemic difficulty puts us in the same situation had there been no metaphysical incommensurability.”

Stephen K,  August 13, 2024 at 11:20 AM

OBJECTION #2: COMMENSURABLE REASONS, BUT INCOMMENSURATE GOOD

You make another great suggestion for the incommensurability theorist.

“Chris T might allow there to be reason to prefer one good over another without that violating commensurability. I recall him claiming in another paper, or maybe Melissa M just referring to his vocational principle. So Michael Jordan has reasons to practice basketball rather than throw himself into gold or baseball or poetry. It better fits the vocation and narrative of his life. So there are reasons to prefer A over B that don't track A being of a greater good than B. Do you think this is cheating, sneaking commensurability in the back door without announcing it [?]”

First, there is an issue of whether the reason-based theory tells us what is morally permissible – a species of the right – rather than what is better – a species of the good.

(1) Option #1: The Right. If it is the former, this is mere non-consequentialism and so the good-incommensurability is irrelevant to it.

(2) Option #2: The Good. If what justifies this reason is that one result is better than another for someone – or perhaps better simpliciter – then the incommensurability theory has contradicted himself.

(3) Option #3: Neither the Right Nor the Good. I do not see what the third option is. If the NLT theorist says that he is only talking about decisions – perhaps involving practical reasoning – we still need to know what justifies this reason. With a reference to the right, the good, or a third value (for example, virtue), there is no answer.

Stephen K August 13, 2024 at 11:20 AM

OBJECTION #3: TRADEOFF-MAXIMUM

David:

Great point. You say the following.

“I wonder if adding intrinsic goods always makes one better off. imagine becoming smarter and smarter. Perhaps this comes a that expense of friendship or family as they can't relate to you and you find talking to them dull.”

This tells us that some goods have marginal utility (via well-being or the good) that eventually becomes negative. For example, Sally’s White Clam pizza is – as far as I know – the best pizza in the US. Still, it is no longer enjoyable on the second extra large pizza even for a despicable overeater, e.g., me.

This will not save the incommensurability theorist. He needs a claim about intrinsic goods or intrinsic prudential goods. The negative rate of return on an extrinsic good does not support his claim.

Jim D,  August 21, 2024 at 9:36 AM

I don’t have a lot to add directly to the above exchange between David and Steve on incommensurability. I’m definitely sympathetic to this aspect of natural law, mainly because it’s so intuitively plausible. We of course think we have reasons to pursue some instances of goods over others, but it does not seem true to experience that these instances can be reduced to some uniform unit of well-being. Rather it seems that the good one does not choose has a unique value in its own right, one that is not captured by the good one in fact chooses.

I’ve talked informally with ChrisT about the following, but was hoping he might comment. David mentions the idea of narrative structure/a plan of life as a basis for prioritizing certain goods over others (Jordan practicing shooting rather than taking up tennis) while preserving the overall incommensurability of the goods. This seems right to me, but raises some related questions:

1. Apart from the context of a particular life plan, do you think that some instances of goods are for lack of a better term, “all other things being equal,” superior to others? For example, the instance of knowing a trivial fact versus knowing/understanding a complex mathematical proof? And not just because the latter might be instrumentally more valuable in terms of a means to further goods? Finnis suggests something like this. He says except for some exceptional set of circumstances, it’s better to know/understand the content of his book than to know how many words are in it. Similarly, George talks about “fuller vs. more meager” realizations of goods. I’m wondering if ChrisT is sympathetic to this? And if so, would this “all other things being equal” superiority hold between instances of different goods? For example, a knowledge of a trivial fact versus meaningful time spent with a close friend?

2. If goods can be prioritized this way, how does NNLT maintain the normative principle against intentional destruction? Is it because even an all other things being equal “lower good” has a unique value that cannot be simply outweighed by a higher one?

David H August 21, 2024 at 11:02 AM

Jim
Interesting puzzle. It certainly seems one must allow internal intrapersonal comparisons of a good. It would seem irrational to prefer less knowledge to more - that is why I read this blog rather than another blog :). It would also be irrational to prefer trivial knowledge to substantial knowledge as Finnis's example of knowing his book over the number of words - a literary version of the blade of grass counter. One would think one should be able to cash this out in flourishing. But if one flourishes more with more knowledge or more significant knowledge (say knowledge of how to get on well with one's family rather than how many blades of grass exist in a stranger's yard), doesn't one flourish more with significant knowledge than trivial play?

Or are comparisons of flourishing allowed but they don't supervene on commensurable goods? Is Mr. X's flourishing incommensurable with Mrs Y's? Maybe. Perhaps there are only intrapersonal comparisons of same goods and flourishing. We can say a person will flourish more with more of one good, but can't say they will flourish more if they possessed even more of a different good.

Or we can say they are flourishing more because of the vocational principle. So flourishing is more than good possession, and differences in flourishing don't crudely aggregate with increases in variety and amounts of goods possession. Flourishing depends upon vocation and narrative structure and the like, which involve the basic goods. The narrative or vocational reasons allows us to make rough interpersonal comparisons of flourishing without ranking goods. We can another is not flourishing because the goods she possesses don't fit well in her life. For example, a woman spent her kids' birthdays, weddings, and graduations learning about Taylor Swift when she had a relationship with her kids, that culminate in such events, or made promises to them etc. This need not be a better life than being a chidless Swifty with encyclopediac knowledge of her music and life. It is just a more flourishing life for the Mom with kids to celebrate their milestones than to read up on Kelce and Swift.

So I hope flourishing can be compared via Chris's other considerations in a way that doesn't require ranking of goods. I have a sneaky feeling that this can't be done. Perhaps Steve will articulate that suspicion.

Stephen K  August 7, 2024 at 3:16 PM

HUMAN LIFE IS NOT SACRED

Chris Tollefsen’s claim that human life and health are intrinsically valuable is implausible.

If human life is an intrinsic value-maker, then – in some cases – a person whose life has net negative well-being and net negative desert makes the world intrinsically better. But it is false that such a person’s life makes the world intrinsically better.

We cannot imagine that God saying, “This person suffers and deserves to suffer (he’s a terrible person), but because he’s healthy, he makes the world intrinsically better. In fact, it is intrinsically better that he exists in this state for 35 billion years than that he ceases to exist.”

For a similar reason, human health is not an intrinsically good-maker.

Contra Tollefsen, then, human life and health are not intrinsically good.

David H August 12, 2024 at 5:12 PM

Is this post about health a shot at me? I don't think you are going to claim it was a foreseeable but unintended attack :)

Health is sometimes constitutive of good. Imagine a healthy mind capable of reasoning, emphathizing, loving. That sort of mental health seems to be an intrinsic good. Or would you say it is just constitutive of a good

the medievals (and Oderberg) thought the good is doing what something ought to do. So if one is healthy, then one's body is doing what it ought to do. How could something doing what it ought to do not be good?

Other aspects of health may be instrumental. your heart pumping allows you to participate in certain good activities

Health may be sometimes bad for you, perhaps overall bad for you if you are suffering great torments or indignities or loss of freedoms. You may be better off being unhealthy and dying than being tortured, imprisoned, degraded etc." Pneumonia can be the aged's friend" Sir William Osler

Stephen K August 13, 2024 at 11:22 AM

OBJECTION: HEALTH IS CONSTITUTIVE OF THE GOOD

David:

Great point. The post was definitely not a shot at you. It was neither intended nor a foreseeable attack on health. Here is a shot at you, “David is Jewish and a Giants fan. Neither explains why he was a bully in the paint.”

Consider this claim.

(1) Health is constitutive of the good.

Here “constitutive” is unclear. Here are two interpretations of it. I’ll assume we are talking about intrinsic good rather than intrinsic prudential good, although nothing rests on this.

(2) Health is intrinsically good.

(3) Health is an essential part – or feature – of intrinsic goodness.

Neither is plausible. If (2) is true, then healthy phytoplankton is intrinsically good. This is implausible. In fact, given additivity, enough healthy phytoplankton generates enough good to outweigh the Holocaust (Let’s label this the Phytoplankton over Holocaust Objection). Again, implausible.

Proposition (3) is true because health has a contingent connection to well-being. Consider, for example, a case when health has no effect on the most plausible well-being makers: pleasure, desire-fulfillment, and objective-list goods.

Consider this claim.

(4) Goodness is doing what one ought to do.

Assume that a person ought to do something if and only if he has a duty to do it. Rightness, and only rightness, focuses on what one has a duty to do. Now consider this claim.

(5) [Roughly], rightness is doing what one ought to do.

(6) Hence, goodness is rightness. [(4), (5)]

David H August 15, 2024 at 11:29 AM

You don't believe what you are saying about health. If health of plankton can outweigh the badness of the holocaust, so can countless other things - the pleasure of rodents. So why is this my problem? Why isn't it your problem as well? I can only assume you don't believe what you say :)

Perhaps the lesson is that one can't compare the goods of health and plankton and holocaust victimes. Point, game and match to Chris T thus wins.

Or McMahan thought some creatures were below an additive point threshold.

Anyway, should I care about adding up goods? I don't think one can treat persons as means to increasing overall happiness or good etc.

Is this just a problem for God deciding which world to make, assuming (falsely) he must make the better world?

Stephen K  August 19, 2024 at 2:03 PM

AGGREGATION IS BOTH TRUE AND SEXY

David:

Great points.

David Hershenov  Objection: Rodent-Pleasure
On a welfarist theory, the aggregate pleasure of rodents outweighs the badness of the Holocaust. Because this is absurd, there is a problem with (a) the pleasure of rodents having intrinsic value or (b) aggregation of intrinsically valuable goods involving such a pleasure.

Kershnar Response: Aggregation All Night Long

Accept (a). If rodent pleasure is not intrinsically good, then rodent pain is not intrinsically bad. If the consequent were true, then there would be nothing wrong if an evildoer were to torture a rodent (at least no rodent-based wrong-maker). This is implausible. In fact, the badness of the pain (for the rodent and simpliciter) explains why the evildoer should not torture a rodent.

Accept (b). If we do not aggregate the goodness of rodent pleasure, then this is because (i) we are averagists, (ii) the good has diminishing marginal value, or (iii) there are lexically ordered higher-order goods. None are plausible.

(i) Reject Averagism. Averagism is implausible because it is strongly counter-intuitive that the addition of very happy individuals, happy life-years, or happy space-time regions does not make the world better so long as it lowers the average. It also denies strongly intuitive claims: for example, pleasure is good, knowledge is good, etc.

(ii) Reject Diminishing Marginal Value. The notion that the good has diminishing marginal value has technical problems. For example, it entails that a population with a higher total and average well-being (and that is more equal) can be worse than a population that falls short on all three dimensions. It is also bizarre that intrinsically equal individuals’ lives have different values (this depends on the ordering).

(iii) Reject Lexical Ordering. The notion that there are lexically ordered goods is quite counterintuitive. For example, does anyone really think that one momentary vicious thought in a dimwitted politician is worse than the disvalue of billions of mammals being burnt alive?

Game, set, and match to the aggregator.

We should pay attention to this way of calculating the good. God should do so as well.

In fact, I suspect that late at night, when the blinds are closed and no one can read your thoughts, you are a closet aggregator.

Best.

David H August 19, 2024 at 2:40 PM

Why are you objecting to my health-based claim of mindless welfare if you believe that enough rodents pain makes that world worse than one with the holocaust?

I take it that you are an advocate of the Old Natural Law. Is it because the beatific vision trumps all else?

Or do you prefer the old natural law because you believe that one can entail an ought from and is?

I suspected that Oderberg convinced you during his Hourani talk that there can be good triangles and good mountains

David H September 4, 2024 at 1:30 PM

Steve
why not distinguish prudential value from moral value? Perhaps aggregation has to do with the latter. Perhaps viruses have a prudential good as do disease causing bacteria. But prudential good plays no role in the relevant aggregation of which future to bring about. It a different type of good, that of which a healthy human mind (one capable of reasoning, loving, laughing, socializing, caring, empathizing etc.) realizes that has the value relevant. And there are deontological reasons (or Tollefsen-like reasons for protecting and pursuing basic goods) which provide reasons why the aggregate good of bacteria and rodents doesn't allow us to do certain things to persons

Stephen K  August 7, 2024 at 3:23 PM

INTRINSIC VALUE AND THE JUSTIFIER PRINCIPLE

The Justifier Principle explains why intrinsic value is commensurate.

Justifier Principle
If one thing has a stronger moral-property justifier than a second thing, then the first has more of that moral property than the second.

Here are instances of commensurability in the main areas of morality. They cohere nicely with the Justifier Principle.

Example #1: The Good.

Example #1a: Welfarist Goodness
Consider pleasure, desire-fulfillment, and objective-list goods (for example, knowledge, love, and virtue).

Example #2: Non-Welfarist Goods
Consider well-being-dependent goods (for example, desert-adjusted well-being) and well-being-independent goods (for example, beauty).

Example #2: The Right. Consider how the amount of wrongfulness is affected by (a) the importance of the right-infringed and (b) the extent to which the wrongdoer infringes the right. Consider mutilators vs. mere touchers. Consider, also, right-independent rightness-makers such as equality, fairness, and justice.

Example #3: Other Areas of Morality
Consider responsibility, virtue, and meaningful life.

A wise man once said, "Soylent Green is people." He should have added, "Morality is commensurability."

Stephen K  August 7, 2024 at 3:28 PM

DIGNITY - PHILOSOPHY OR POETRY?

In saying that a person has dignity because he does not have a price, Chris Tollefsen is – I think – relying on value-incommensurability. We considered this notion above.

In addition, the beyond-price claim contradicts how we do – and should – think about tradeoffs. Consider these cases.

Case #1: Intrapersonal Tradeoff
A deep sea commercial fisherman must decide what salary premium to demand in order to fish in the dangerous North Atlantic. He can do so only if he does a cost-benefit analysis regarding the disvalue of the risk. He can correctly do so only if he can correctly value his health and life.

Case #2: Interpersonal Tradeoff #1
Congressional do-gooders require that Montana have a specific daytime speed limit. Montana legislators do so by using a cost-benefit analysis. They can do a correct cost-benefit analysis only if they can correctly value health and life.

Case #3: Interpersonal Tradeoff #2
A man with a life-saving pill can use the pill to save twenty people – each of whom needs 5% of the pill – or one person – who needs the whole pill. If life is beyond price, the man cannot weigh these alternatives.

Here I use ‘value’ and ‘price’ interchangeably. On an alternative usage, price measures value.

A beyond-price theorist cannot allow for such tradeoffs.

In addition, such a proponent cannot rely on reasons instead of value in discovering the optimal tradeoff if the relevant reasons depend – at least in part – on commensurate value. Deep in your heart, you know they do.

David H August 12, 2024 at 5:17 PM

Steve
Perhaps Chris T will allow that someone can rank their preferences for risk etc. He might just challenge that tracks commensurable goods. Likewise for politicians doing interpersonal comparisons.

Stephen K  August 13, 2024 at 11:26 AM

OBJECTION: RISK-BASED RANK

David, excellent suggestion.

Still, I don't see what would justify ranking risks or attaching weight to a preference for risks without a justifier that tells us that one risk is better than a second.

Here the risk is the product of the magnitude of harm, probability of harm, and - perhaps - a morality factor (for example, desert).

David H August 19, 2024 at 10:20 AM

Steve
I think Chris will allow that one can do a preference ranking based on what one takes one’s harms and risks to be. So more towns folk will want a playground than a library. They may think it is better for them. They will be happier and the risks are better that it will be built. But Chris T’s point may be that those who prefer a library are not wrong, i.e. preferring something of less good than the playground. Two basic human goods are involved - play and knowledge, and neither trumps the other. So preferences, happiness, and risk are not going to make one better than the other or mean there is more flourishing than the other - if flourishing can't be compared as it consists of good possession

Stephen K  August 19, 2024 at 2:20 PM

ONLY NERDS USE LIBRARIES

David:

Let’s consider two options.

(1) Regarding the playground, hundreds of children will have a great time playing there for thousands of hours. Their parents will enjoy watching them play.

[On an irrelevant note, they feel very good about their having forced elderly and fixed-income taxpayers to pay for their children’s entertainment. They point out that when it comes to cost of child-raising, socialism is no vice.]

(2) Regarding the library, only one person will take out one book from the library and he will only read the first page in it.

One defender says, “Two basic human goods are involved - play and knowledge, and neither trumps the other. So, I can’t think of any reason to prefer one option over the other.

A second defender says, “Two basic human goods are involved - play and knowledge, and neither trumps the other. However, there is a good reason – completely unconnected to the good – to favor the former. The good reason is in fact a comparative stringency reason, and it floats free of the good.”

Is this plausible?

Best,
Steve K

David H August 19, 2024 at 2:37 PM

Yes, it is plausible. And you really don't believe the alternative because late at night, with the blinds closed, and no one is around, you are reading that one library book and not ashamed because you believe it is good and there would be something intrinsically good lost if the library was a soccer field with hundreds of kids kicking each other in the shins playing soccer.

Alas, your friend Neil Feit, who won a council seat in Fredonia after retiring from The SUNY Day Care after Day Care, and cast the deciding vote in favor of the library, will not win reelection due to the ire of hundreds of soccer moms.

David H Sept. 18, 3:45

Chris T appeal to a vocational principle that gives say Michael Jordan (mid career) more reason to practice basketball than study physics. It is compatible with the incommensurability of  basic goods like play and knowledge. Perhaps cultures or societies could also have a vocational principle -  they are a type of society that has pursued one good far more often and deeply than another, so it makes more sense to continue to do so.  Thus, it is better for some societies to build libraries, better for other societies to build playing fields – neither is a greater good

David H August 12, 2024 at 4:43 PM

Incommensurability:

I am assuming that we can say that someone is flourishing more than another. A’s life is going quite well (thriving at Ivy League Harvard), B’s life is going quite poorly (miserable at a SUNY school). Won’t that mean the flourishing depends upon comparable differences in goods?

Don’t we sacrifice some health for more health – amputate toes to save the foot and the like? Is that not violating the practical reason rule against destroying a good, sacrificing some good for more good? Is that the only permissible sacrifice that admits of commensurability? So it is unlike destroying the capacity for one good to save a different type of good.

Stephen K  August 13, 2024 at 11:24 AM

TRADEOFFS AND INCOMMENSURABILITY

David:

I think this is an excellent point.

If one thinks that trading off intrinsic goods (or basic goods or intrinsic prudential goods) has a right answer, how does one make sense of this claim?

(1) If a prudential tradeoff is rational – and its opposite is not – then something makes one prudential option better than a second.
(2) If something makes one prudential option better than a second, then it is the good, the right, or practical reasoning (a reason).
(3) If incommensurability is true, then it is not the good (because it is incommensurate), it is not the right (because it is not wrong to improperly tradeoff prudential goods), and it is not a reason (because the reason here will a goodness-reason, perhaps a covert one).
(4) Hence, if a prudential tradeoff is rational, then incommensurability is false. [(1) – (3)]

I like this argument. Let’s call it the Prudential-Tradeoff Objection.

David H August 12, 2024 at 4:44 PM

Anti-Deontology:

Chris T claims the only way to prevent one sacrificing say a life for the sake of some other benefit is to appeal to incommensurability. But if people had infinite value, isn’t that a reason why we shouldn’t destroy one life to save two or more lives? So, commensurability is compatible with prohibitions on killing the innocent

Why couldn’t being a person put one past a threshold of the utilitarian morality of interests in which tradeoffs are made (one can’t kill a person to take their organs to save five persons). A morality of respect above the threshold, a morality of interests below it (killing one pig to save five pigs). Is the problem it is arbitrary to have a threshold, denying moral status to those just below it and not bestowing more status on those further above the threshold with great autonomy, rationality, agency, self-consciousness or whatever personhood supervenes upon?

David H  August 12, 2024 at 4:47 PM

A Role for the Rational Substance View.

Chris T argues that claims of substantial identity are dependent and derivative on the practical argument. He says that we even have a reason to provide a patient in a PVS with medication that heals an infection. But such a person is not receptive to reasons. If medicine is scarce and one can give it to the non-human animal or the human patient in a PVS state, how does an appeal to reasons settle it. I would think that an appeal to kind does the work in such cases. The PVS being is of a more valuable kind - a rational substance.

Imagine that we had scarce medicine to make the PVS human being healthy again (and transformed into a Lockean person) or make a kitten into a (Lockean) person. We give the scarce medicine to the creature of greater value. Or it that personhood is not a good for kitten (it is not in the kitten’s interest) so the serum goes to the person. Perhaps Chris T can say the human has interests and a good the animal does not. So the appeal isn't to greater value of the human being, but just a recognition of the differences in interests and goods that provide a reason to assist the unhealthy human being rather than the healthy kitten

David H August 19, 2024 at 10:32 AM

Substantial Identity Argument:
Chris T sees it playing a derivative role in showing it is unfair to ignore or downplay the future goods of those not yet rational. But does it not serve to distinguish human goods from non-human goods? Isn’t it because we are more valuable that our goods trump non-human animal goods. There is some commensurating going on if we say human goods are more valuable than non-human goods. And I think that is what we are doing when we say we have a dignity that animals lack

Phil Reed August 16, 2024 at 12:01 PM

Tollefsen argues that inviolability arguments against killing innocents are subordinate to a practical argument, according to which killing innocents is wrong because it destroys a basic good for the sake of another good, a judgment that we cannot make given incommensurability.

I am worried about having the norm against killing depend on the incommensurability thesis. This thesis is very controversial (see above comments e.g.). Does Tollefsen really want to say that rejecting incommensurability leaves one without a justification for an exceptionless rule against killing innocent people? That seems like an extreme view.

I'm not sure why there needs to be one rationale that wins the day. I think inviolability arguments can work alongside a future of value account or practical arguments of the sort Tollefsen favors. There might be multiple reasons to think that killing is wrong.

One benefit of a pluralist account is that it can capture different kinds of intuitions about killing. Inviolability arguments support the idea that killing innocents is equally wrong (in some sense) and Marquis style future of value accounts intuitions such as killing a healthy child is worse (in some sense) than killing a 90 year old. I would be interested in hearing how/whether Tollefsen's "practical argument" accommodates these different intuitions.

David H August 19, 2024 at 10:26 AM

Phil
Saving Deontology: I agree with Phil that it is unwelcome if everything to do with inviolability (impermissibility of killing the innocent) hinges on incommensurability. I would think one could resist destroying one good for a greater good without incommensurability. What about a Nagel-like point In the view from nowhere? that was one shouldn’t aim at evil, making evil one’s end, being the source of the evil, the person who violates the bodily integrity, i.e., takes a life, rather than the person who allows others to violate more bodily integrity

Does Tollefsen succeeds where Kant didn’t? Wow! Kant tried to show it was irrational or unreasonable to be immoral. Few think he succeeded. Many, like Sidgwick, believe it couldn’t be shown that it was irrational to be imprudent and favor one’s good over morality. But if Chris is right, then it is unreasonable to pursue a good the destroys or damages the pursuit of another good

A tangent and Hershenov Hobby Horse: I agree with Phil that it is unwelcome if everything hinges on incommensurability . But I think Marquis’s FLO account doesn’t work because of the epistemic possibility of other metaphysics – unrestricted composition, countless things will have valuable futures. There are also the standard various reductios of potentiality – imagine parthenogenesis is identity preserving, or cloning, or weird environment where Earth chickens become persons because of the atmosphere (Kriegel/Hassoun), enhancements of Tooley’s kittens or McMahan’s dogs.

The latter is especially attractive critique of intrinsic potential as it doesn’t involve a “generous ontology” of odd gerrymandered things or a fictional environment and it seems resistant to the rational substance account of persons that make new potentialities for rationality into dubious substantial changes

What might work is the Marquis/Hershenov thesis – an organism who will be unhealthy if it doesn’t develop into the kind of being with a valuable future. McMahan’s dogs, Tolley’s cats, induced parthenogenesis,

Alex R G  August 17, 2024 at 8:53 PM

I'm not sure I see exactly how Tollefsen's argument goes here. Can someone help me put the pieces together? I understand that he wants to provide a categorical argument for the moral wrongness of killing a human, and that the incommensurability of the good of human life and health is doing a lot of work in his argument. But I don't see what's so unreasonable about making "the choice to damage or destroy an instance of a basic good in order to bring about" some other end, e.g., avoiding tremendous suffering, pursuing justice, etc. (p. 7). Is Tollefsen's argument simply that unreasonable acts are always impermissible and it's always unreasonable to kill a human because it damages or destroys the basic good of life and health? If so, then I need to be made to see what's so unreasonable about damaging or destroying human life and health. If these goods are final ends, to borrow some terminology from Aristotle, then I can see how damaging or destroying them would be unreasonable. But this seems to get the order of the relationship wrong. I want life and health for the sake of some other goods, not all other goods for the sake of life and health. What does it mean for human life and health to be incommensurable, and supposing they are, how does it follow that destroying let alone merely damaging either is always morally wrong?

David H  August 19, 2024 at 10:58 AM

Alex
I don't think I can do that good of a job explaining or defending Chris T's project. But I thought the key idea is that flourishing depends upon some basic human goods. And real choice involves not having a reason to prefer one basic human good to another. If the goods were commensurate, one really won't have a choice as reason would determine the only one response. So against that background, goods "generate reasons for action...Acting to destroy what is good in an option for choice is, then, just in itself, unreasonable - it is literally contrary to reason because contrary to what is only (and always) a reason for action." If the goods are incommensurable, then one can't reasonably destroy one for a greater good. there isn't a greater good.

I think life and health are not always or purely instrumental in the basic goods picture. It is just better to be healthy than unhealthy even if one is permanently unconscious. One is flourishing more, just as a tree is flourishing more when it is healthy than unhealthy. The tree's health is not a means to something else. We don't see this with persons as it is swamped by the other minded/psychological goods that are lost. But all Chris T needs to run his thesis is that there is some good of life that would be lost by death, even in the unconscious. They benefit from being healthy, just as the tree does. He writes after mentioning the benefit of the MD treating the PVS patient's infection, "But the recognition that there are such reasons is all that it takes to get the argument against intentional killing off the ground: If there is a reason at ALL to maintain the life or health of the patient, or indeed, TO DO ANYTHING AT ALL FOR THE PATIENT, that offers some benefit that would not be gained by killing the patient, then there can be no justification for intending the death of that patient.” If you are incredulous, that might be because you are assuming your preferences track goods. You don’t want a life of a PVS patient, so you can’t see any good to it. But if there is some good to it, some reason to be mindless and healthier, than mindless and sicker, then that is a reason that is incommensurable with the benefits brought by killing

Existence (life) too, in traditional Chrisitan thought, is good in itself. Steve mocked the medieval view above, but the good is a transcendental, can't be defined, convertible (interchangeable) with being. There is no genus that it belongs to that can be differentiated. But the good can be characterized as things doing what they ought to do given their nature. So even living is good for things that are supposed to be alive. I don't know if that is playing a role in the New natural law theorist

I think of health as instrumental and sometimes intrinsically goods. Think of mental health - being rational, capable of empathy, prudence, love, pleasure, fun, laughter, and various emotional and cognitive states. They seem good in themselves, not just instrumentally good. Perhaps we could call them immanent means to happiness or flourishing as McIntyre might have said about the virtues in After Virtue.

David H August 19, 2024 at 10:30 AM

Chris T’s minimal incommensurability thesis:
At first glance, I don’t think this is that implausible. All that Chris T is saying if you choose A (play) you lose out on some benefits unique to B (knowledge.) “For the non-philosophically educated agent, that is simply the recognition that in choosing x over y, the benefit of you that makes is choiceworthy by contrast with x simply won’t be realized, and vice versa.” It doesn’t seems wildly counterintuitive that some distinct good is lost when one chooses one activity over a very different one. Steve can’t really believe the only remainder is a difference in pleasure. That is s crude reductionistic view that everything of value is measured in pleasure. Steve is too bright to hold such a view so I assume he doesn’t really believe it.

Incommensurability and Flourishing:
Despite what I said above, I am worried that problems for incommensurability come back with comparisons of flourishing. Can’t we say someone is flourishing more than another? If not, I would like Chris to say so. But if we can say someone is flourishing more than another, or flourishing more than he used to, isn’t it to be grounded in more of the good? So won’t we have to be comparing goods?

Perhaps all we can do is say someone is flourishing more than another if they have the same goods, and one has more of one of the goods than the other. But there is a ceteris paribus clause here that will probably sink efforts of comparison

But can’t we say more knowledge is a greater good than less knowledge? So if two people are otherwise the same in the extent of their goods (perhaps we can say one is flourishing more than another.)

Or will Chris T say that we can’t compare levels of flourishing between people? Or will he allow that such comparisons can be done but (rather mysteriously) they can’t be reduced to more of a good or some goods being better than others. Perhaps Chri T will just say someone with few or no human goods isn’t flourishing but not allow any precise mathematical orderings of flourishing

So I would like to hear more from Chris T about the relationship between goods and flourishing and whether extents of flourishing can be compared, at least roughly. It would certainly be counterintuitive to be told that we can’t say someone is flourishing more now than they were before or more or less than another person.

Alex R G  August 21, 2024 at 9:18 AM

Thanks for explaining, David. I think I understand the incommensurability thesis better now. Steve has already covered some good ground about whether health and life are intrinsically valuable, so I'll focus here on something else. When I read your explanation I had a worry similar to yours about Incommensurability and Flourishing. If damaging or destroying incommensurable is sufficient for doing moral wrong, can we distinguish between degrees of wrongdoing between any two instances of damaging or destroying incommensurable goods? I'm worried T's argument entails that any two instances of killing a human are equally morally wrong, for we can't explain differences in degrees of wrongdoing with respect to goods destroyed insofar as they're incommensurable. Worse yet, if merely damaging an incommensurable good is sufficient for doing moral wrong, does the argument entail that damaging an incommensurable good is equally as morally wrong as killing another human, so that my taking up smoking is just as morally bad as murder?

David H August 21, 2024 at 10:34 AM

Alex
I am sure Chris T will do better in his response to your blog than I can. But here are a few comments. I do remember him saying in his paper that he will ignore the gravity of killing. So I thought he would allow that some killings were more grave than others, but it wasn't important to his thesis about impermissibility. Now I take it your question will be what determines gravity, is there an implicit appeal to the destruction of some lives being worse than the destruction of others? It could be the difference is just in harm - say the young have more welfare to lose than very old from their death. That is compatible with deaths being equally wrong. It is just as wrong to shoot up a hospice as an elementary school, though the harm is greater in the latter. Another possibility is gravity has to do with differences in evil than harm. I don't have an account of evil and how it is different from being wrong. Maybe it has to do with motivations and character. The person who kills reluctantly is not as evil as the one who sadistically delights in killing. Both killings are impermissible, it is not that one is more impermissible. Impermissible doesn't admit of degrees. Perhaps more evil will be met by greater degrees of harmful punishment

I think more troubling for the incommensurability thesis is your example of taking up smoking and damaging the good of health. (Perhaps an escape clause is that the smoker is indirectly damaging his health, not intentionally setting back his health by smoking; the intention is to relax or look cool or avoid the discomfort of withdrawal from an addiction etc.) But let's say that someone intentionally harms himself to get attention, sympathy, back at one's parents, what have you. I take it that you find that it is hard to believe that is as morally bad as murder. But your point may have to be tweaked. Chris T will deny it as morally bad as murder for he thinks the goods are incommensurable. So your objection might be better put that it should be not as bad as murder, the comparison implying commensurability. It is hard to believe that intentionally harming someone's health, let's use the example of another person, is not commensurable with the wrong of killing that person. It seems killing is not only an attack on health but on life and the means to many other goods. The injury is temporary, death is not.

Chris T may allow it to be reasonable to prioritize one good in one's life over another as it makes more sense given the narrative structure of one's life or the life of one's victim. So maybe killing instead of just injuring is more disruptive of one's narrative. In a different narrative (say the victim is an elderly man dying in great pain), killing is not as disruptive as injury. It allows him to die on his terms, to write the last chapter of his autobiography, so to speak. This doesn't mean that life is not a good for the elderly, nor less of a good for the elderly. Death will deprive him of some good that injury does not, even if he prefers death to injury.

Something still seems to be missing. Our intuitions are wrongs can be ranked. The problem is ranking them without ranking or comparing goods lost. So I wish Chris T gave us more of an account of wrongs that don't supervene on the measure of the good lost

David H August 21, 2024 at 11:06 AM

Alex
In response to Jim Delaney's post, I tried to explore the ways that interpersonal flourishing could be compared without that ranking depending upon commensurable goods. Perhaps flourishing consists of narrative structure in which the goods are embedded. And so we can compare the flourishing of two different people with different goods as their focus without comparing those goods.

David H  August 19, 2024 at 10:30 AM

Overemphasis on Future Harm:
Chris T seems sympathetic to Don Marquis’s claim that an approach that focuses on good to be pursued does just that “…”it must concern the victim’s future”. But can’t the present (an early death, divorce, career failure) render the efforts of past in vain and less meaningful?

I think I am just repeating a claim by Velleman in an article in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly entitled "Well Being and Time." But I might be butchering his point. I think John Martin Fischer worked on the issue as well

David H August 19, 2024 at 11:24 AM

is the question of whether the past efforts were in vain not relevant to how well one's life goes, not just relevant to the question of the meaningfullness or significance of the past?

David H August 22, 2024 at 10:53 AM

Harm and Incommensurability:

The standard account of event X being a harm involves comparing the well-being one would have had in a world without X with the well-being one has with X occurring. (I prefer a time-relative-interests account of harm, but the problem posed by incommensurability is the same.) If the goods are incommensurable, what can we say about harm? One has lost out on a good, so that sounds like a pro-tanto harm. But can we compare life with goods A-C in the absence of X to a life with goods D-F given X?

Imagine that one preferred to get into an Ivy League school to study philosophy but ended up getting into a party school on an athletic scholarship. So one has the good of play as one's second choice over the good of knowledge as one's first choice. Is there any way to say that is a harm if one is not a desire theorist or hedonist?

Once more, I am in the very enviable position of having to thank the Romanell Bloggers for their kind attention to a paper of mine, and their willingness to use that paper as a platform to engage in high level philosophical inquiry while also airing out old grudges and settling long outdated scores.

Responding to the Romanell Blog always poses a challenge of organization, and this time around, I am providing order to my response by addressing five different discussions that take place in the course of the blog comments. I’ll occasionally refer back to particular persons and quotations, but not always.

1.  The need to stay within a practical standpoint to understand both the incommensurability I am interested in and the way the argument of my paper works

In his comments on my paper for the conference in which it was originally delivered, and in his comments on the blog, Steve Kershnar makes many arguments for commensurability. But I think most or all of these arguments involve a different kind of commensurability than what I am talking about (as both Jim and David note at different points).

My paper relies entirely on an argument from the practical standpoint of an agent facing options for choice: the option of doing A or doing B. For an agent who takes him or herself to be faced with genuine options for choice, those options must each offer something to the agent good-wise that is not present in the other option.  If one option offered everything that the other did, plus more, it would be unintelligible for the agent to choose the lesser option – it would be literally irrational (and not merely unreasonable, regarding which, see below in section 3). And if the options were equal in value, then there would be nothing at stake in the choice. But we often find that we must choose between two possibilities, each of which offers us something that the other does not, and in which we think that something is at stake. In the face of the need for such a choice, we would not flip a coin to decide, as we certainly could if the options were truly equal in value – in fact, there might be no better way to select in the presence of equality.

So, as I discussed in a different Romanell paper, I might attend the Romanell conference, which offers many knowledge and friendship related benefits, to say nothing of dinner at Dick and Jenny’s, or I can stay home with my family, cook my own shrimp étoufée, which is pretty good, and go to Sunday Mass at my own parish rather than attend the airport Mass, which is often less than edifying. No option offers everything that the other does plus more when I am considering what to choose.  So no option has greater goodness than the other. Nor do they seem exactly equal in value (and thus a coin flip to decide seems a terrible way to choose between them).

That, and only that, is what I mean by incommensurability.  The incommensurability in question is entirely practical, and is entirely an incommensurability of the good-making features of the options from the standpoint of the choosing agent. Such incommensurability is entirely compatible, as I’ll discuss below (section 2), with other practical forms of commensuration; and perhaps also with commensurability of goodness from a theoretical, non-practical standpoint (section 3). It is likewise compatible with distinctions of gravity (section 4). Should I rest everything regarding the inviolability of human life on such incommensurability? I will address that question in section 5.

In any event, when Steve says “Two doppelgangers – with an identical past, present, and future – have identical intrinsic value-makers (for example, five units of pleasure or five units of deserved pleasure). These goods are equally valuable”, I deny that this example has any relevance to what I am talking about, since doppelgangers are not options for choice. Similarly, a vast amount of healthy phytoplankton is not an option for choice and neither, since it is in the past, is the Holocaust. I doubt the intelligibility of the claim that “given additivity, enough healthy phytoplankton generates enough good to outweigh the Holocaust”, but even if true, it is not relevant.

I think that sticking entirely within a practical frame, from which any two options for choice whose commensuration good-wise is in question, casts light on many of the examples that are raised as puzzles throughout the blog comments. Thus, on to the second of the topics:

2. The possibility of non-practical commensuration, and its bearing on practical questions

Jim Delaney and David Hershenov raise some interesting questions about ranking various lives and goods. Some people (such as A, who attends Princeton) seem more flourishing than others (like B, currently at SUNY Fredonia, but maybe headed for SUNY Canton if his grades don’t improve) good-wise – are such judgments counterexamples?

Some options for choice seem like they offer richer or deeper realizations of basic goodness – there are, even according to Finnis, deep realizations of the good of knowledge, and trivial realizations, such as the famous knowledge of how many blades of grass there are on some particular lawn.

Or, again, David writes:

Don’t we sacrifice some health for more health – amputate toes to save the foot and the like? Is that not violating the practical reason rule against destroying a good, sacrificing some good for more good? Is that the only permissible sacrifice that admits of commensurability? So it is unlike destroying the capacity for one good to save a different type of good.

Let me start with this last example first. Toes vs feet does seem genuinely commensurable to me. If your option is to amputate a toe and save your foot, or not amputate the toe and lose the foot later, and everything else is held steady, then these options certainly are commensurable in terms of the good of health. One (losing a foot) is worse health-wise than the other (losing a toe) in exactly the way I’ve been discussing: it contains all the privation of one option plus more.

But even by just adding a distinction of time can make the options incommensurable: the emotional repulsion at getting the toe amputated now does not give you much reason not to amputate the toe, but it does give you some, and the satisfaction of that desire – the desire not to have a toe amputated now – is something that is accomplished only by one option, and not the other. So from a practical standpoint, the two options are genuinely incommensurable, although from a health-based standpoint, they are thoroughly commensurable.  That will be relevant below.

(As a side note, I don’t think one is deliberately destroying health in amputating a toe – assuming there is some ill health in the toe that will spread, then one is protecting the foot, and hence the body, but excising the diseased part, and the loss of any goodness that is left in the toe – and there might not be any – is a side effect.)

What about the blade of grass vs significant knowledge? Counting blades of grass is not usually an option for people, but ex hypothesi, if it were, then it would be practically incommensurable in goodness with the bit of significant knowledge. To give a more plausible example: Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a richer and deeper realization of beauty, and on that score, commensurably much better as a work of art than, Charli xcx’s Brat. As I’ll discuss below, that is a relevant consideration in deciding what to spend my time listening to. But it’s not the only consideration, and Brat offers some things that are not present in the Goldbergs, so it really can be an option to listen to the first Goldberg Variation or Sympathy is a Knife.

And so from the practical perspective it is just not the case that the option “listening to the Goldbergs” has more “good” – more of the property that makes listening to the Goldbergs desirable – than does the option “listening to Brat.” But that does not rule out all kind of third personal quasi-theoretical judgments: that Bach is a greater artist than Charli xcx, that the Goldbergs are a greater work of art than Brat, etc etc. Again, those judgments can sometimes have a bearing on what we should choose as between incommensurable options; but third person judgments of commensuration are not what I am appealing to in my claim that from the first person, agential standpoint, the only thing that could justify intentional destruction of an instance of a basic good would be a greater amount of good realized in the state of affairs brought about by the destruction.

Mutatis mutandis, I think similar claims apply to comparative judgments of an agent’s flourishing. Some agents can be recognized to be more flourishing than others, to be leading better lives, all things considered. But the objects being compared in those judgments are manifestly not options for choice – it’s never among the options for one’s choice that one be that student at Princeton or that student at Fredonia.

3. The possibility of commensuration that is not good-based

I am a big fan of the Goldberg Variations. I have listened to many different recordings many times (my favorite is Andras Schiff’s second go at them; the very recent recording by Vikingur Olafsson is also exceptional). But I have a son who is a big fan of Charli xcx. If I promise him that I will listen to Brat the next time I have an opportunity to listen to an album in an uninterrupted way, then I have a practically commensurating reason for doing so, even though, from a practical standpoint, the two possible listening experiences are incommensurable in goodness, and even though, from a third person theoretical standpoint, Bach is a greater artist than Charli xcx, and the Goldbergs greater than Brat. The promise commensurates my options – it provides a standard against which to measure my choice – that is based on reason, but not on overall goodness.

Of course, making good on this claim would require showing that it is reasonable to make and keep promises, and that the reasonableness of the practice does not depend on the practice of promise keeping being justified because it brings about “the greatest good” – I’m not sure what it would mean to say that the practice could be justified in consequentialist terms, though people have tried to argue for that position. I suspect only act consequentialism could make sense. But I won’t pursue the justification of the practice of promise making here. My point is: granting such a justification is possible, then the fact that one had made a promise could make it reasonable to listen the Brat and unreasonable, here and now, to listen to the Goldbergs instead. But morality just is the directives of right reason, and being morally upright just is being reasonable. So I can be morally obligated to listen to Brat.

Does the third person superiority of the Goldbergs make no difference to practical deliberation? I think it does make some difference. In general, we should prefer richer to shallower realizations of the good (but not always, as the promise example shows). In general, one should cultivate the skills that make it possible to enjoy the Goldbergs, and too much time listening to Charli xcx is unlikely to help much in that project.

But: I think that Shakespeare is an objectively greater writer than Lee Child. Nevertheless, there are many reasons that could, here and now, make it reasonable for me to read Killing Floor rather than Hamlet: the need to relax after working on Romanell commentary all day, for example. And if I am an editor for a living, or Lee Child’s brother, or a screenwriter seeking my next project, then I once again might have very good reasons to read quite a bit of Lee Child, even at the expense of Shakespeare, in order to fulfill vocational responsibilities, without making any assessment of the overall goodness of my options.

David makes a similar point about what Michael Jordan has reason to do and then says:

Perhaps cultures or societies could also have a vocational principle -  they are a type of society that has pursued one good far more often and deeply than another, so it makes more sense to continue to do so.  Thus, it is better for some societies to build libraries, better for other societies to build playing fields – neither is a greater good

I think that is exactly right, and shows that the judgments that societies and peoples make about what kind of society or people to be are like free choices that then do the work of practically commensurating between options that are incommensurable in value. This is why cultural pluralism can be quite reasonable.  Just as different people make different vocational commitments, so do different societies, and those commitments result in “what is reasonable” having a different shape for those different societies.

4. The possibility of distinctions of gravity without commensuration of goodness

Alex Gillham writes:

Worse yet, if merely damaging an incommensurable good is sufficient for doing moral wrong, does the argument entail that damaging an incommensurable good is equally as morally wrong as killing another human, so that my taking up smoking is just as morally bad as murder?

I would qualify: merely intending damage to an incommensurable instance of a basic good is sufficient for doing moral wrong; and David’s reservations about thinking that smoking is an instance of that are well taken.

My main interest is in the paper was in the practical question, what am I to do, or not to do; and if something is not to be done, then its gravity is in a certain sense irrelevant from the agent’s standpoint. John Henry Newman famously – or notoriously – said: "The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse."

That sounds like a third person judgment of greater and less value, a judgment that objectively it is better that millions starve than that one person commits a venial sin. I don’t know if that is true: I have no idea how, even theoretically, to commensurate two such different states of affairs. But, taken not as a theoretical statement but as a vivid way of expressing a practical directive, what Newman says is true: if something is morally wrong, even if only venially sinful, then it is simply not to be done, regardless of whatever else is the case. In relation to the practical question I am interested in, the question of gravity is not that important to me.

But neither Catholic teaching, nor the natural law tradition, nor do I deny that different wrongs are of different degrees of gravity; and so obviously there has to be some way to identify gravity consistent with incommensurability. I don’t have a full theory of this, or even a partial theory, but here are a few brief thoughts:

Some such judgments track differences between goods that are in fact commensurable – offenses against a person are generally more grave than offenses against property, for example. Offenses that leave one permanently impaired are generally more grave than those from which recovery is possible.  Offenses that more extensively damage a basic good, such as health, are more grave than offenses that less extensively damage that good – so a wrong that leaves someone without a toe is, other things being equal, less grave than one that leaves someone without a foot.  None of the commensurability claims involved here threaten my overall incommensurability thesis.

Even when, from the agent’s subjective standpoint, there might be incommensurability of options, it can be recognized that one wrong will do greater or more extensive damage to a good than another. From the agent’s standpoint, there are incommensurable benefits to be gained from either going out drinking with one’s friends when one’s wife has asked one not to or leaving one’s friends to flirt with, and eventually be unfaithful with, someone at the bar. To choose to do the latter is clearly a more grave wrong, more damaging to the good of marriage, than to choose to do the former.

The example illustrates my overall point about the kind of incommensurability I am concerned with. From an agent’s point of view, doing what one’s spouse asks, (or) not doing that and going drinking instead, (or) cheating on one’s spouse, each offers something not found in the other. They are incommensurable in that sense. But they are clearly commensurable by practical reason: one should do the first, in order to honor your freely chosen commitment to your spouse.

Differences in subjective state also seem like they matter to our judgments of gravity in the particular case – the degree to which one was aware that one was engaged in wrongdoing; or that one was motivated by hostility or indifference; or was motivated by some “good” intention, even though one adopted impermissible means – all these can make a difference, and once again, I don’t think this way of distinguishing between the gravity of wrongs will ultimately threaten incommensurability.

Or again, I think one can be more or less selfish, or negligent, or uncaring, without that necessarily tracking a measure of the good involved, and all these states will affect our judgments of gravity. There are also lots of ways of going wrong that don’t involve intentional damage to a good but do involve some failure of virtue – laziness, low level cowardice, low level intemperance, etc. Once more, I don’t see why these would lead to a belief in commensurability.

So I think many, most, or all of our judgments of degree of wrongdoing can be shown compatible with the incommensurability of options.

5. Is my view overly reductionist? Should I be pluralist about inviolability?

That’s a lot about incommensurability, which, to be fair, was the focus of most of the comments. But Phil raises a question, also taken up by David, that I think is very interesting, and that goes to the heart of my paper, so in closing I’ll say a bit in response. I was trying to argue that a practical argument beginning from recognition of incommensurability in goodness of options for choice is the most fundamental and foundational argument for a sanctity of life view that I, and some other “new” natural law folks hold, the view, namely, that it is always wrong to intend the death of a human being. I contrasted that argument with the Substantial Identity Argument, and also with related claims about human dignity, that are also used to ground the inviolability of human life.

Phil first says,

I am worried about having the norm against killing depend on the incommensurability thesis. This thesis is very controversial (see above comments e.g.). Does Tollefsen really want to say that rejecting incommensurability leaves one without a justification for an exceptionless rule against killing innocent people? That seems like an extreme view.

I do hold the “extreme” view, because I think that consequentialism is the inevitable outcome of commensurability, and consequentialists deny – must deny – the existence of exceptionless moral norms, such as that against killing innocent (or any) persons. So I think the stakes are high hereabouts.

But also, I don’t think that properly understood my incommensurability claim, as I’ve tried to explain it here, is all that controversial – it is implicitly accepted by every person who, in making a choice, feels a pang of regret (“rational regret” in Mark Murphy’s discussion in Natural Law and Practical Rationality), something surely felt by every child at some point when they make a choice. The commensurabilist cannot explain that regret (which the child does not feel when, in choosing x, it turns out that they *also* get y, when they thought that they would not). And thus, when Steve says to David, “In addition, such a proponent cannot rely on reasons instead of value in discovering the optimal tradeoff if the relevant reasons depend – at least in part – on commensurate value. Deep in your heart, you know they do,” my first thought is “Only the fool says in his heart ‘Goods are commensurable.’”

But I digress, slightly. Because it is Phil’s next point that interests me here:

I'm not sure why there needs to be one rationale that wins the day. I think inviolability arguments can work alongside a future of value account or practical arguments of the sort Tollefsen favors. There might be multiple reasons to think that killing is wrong.

This is an interesting thought, that there might be multiple routes to the inviolability claim, the claim that, as the Catechism (2307) puts it, “The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life.”  Here are three possible such routes:

One: Human beings possess an essential and inalienable dignity, the dignity of persons, and intentional killing is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.

Two: Human life is a basic good, an intrinsic dimension of the flourishing of human beings; to intend destruction of an instance of that good is contrary to openness to the human good, and to reason, and hence not to be done.

Three: God is Lord of Life, and barring direct command from God it is wrong to, so to speak, force his hand; human life thus has a “sacred and inviolable character.”

What is the relationship between these three justifications, and is or are any more fundamental than others? Which are most at home in the context of a natural law argument against intentional killing, including the killing of unborn and permanently unconscious human beings?

I’ve indicated in the paper my doubts that the first is truly foundational. But I’ll close by saying that I think this question of the relationship between the multiple routes that have been taken to the inviolability thesis is of deep philosophical importance and interest, and I look forward to exploring it with my Romanell friends in the future.