University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1999 Species of goodness. William Benjamin Bradley University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Bradley, William Benjamin, "Species of goodness." (1999). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2318. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2318 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SPECIES OF GOODNESS A Dissertation Presented by WILLIAM BENJAMIN BRADLEY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1999 Department of Philosophy © Copyright by William Benjamin Bradley 1999 All Rights Reserved SPECIES OF GOODNESS A Dissertation Presented by WILLIAM BENJAMIN BRADLEY Approved as to style and content by: 7 /U^l Fred Feldman, Chair Phillip Bricker, Member ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people I must thank for their help in my completion of this dissertation. First and foremost, I thank my thesis director, Fred Feldman. The idea for this dissertation came out of Fred's Ethics seminar in Spring 1996; it was Fred who encouraged me to pursue this project. He also provided helpful comments quickly on countless drafts. Anyone who knows Fred's work will recognize his obvious influence on this dissertation. I also thank Phil Bricker, Gary Matthews, and Angelika Kratzer for serving on my committee. Several people deserve thanks for helping me develop whatever philosophical skills I have. These especially include Bill Boardman, John Dreher, and Tom Ryckman at Lawrence University, and Phil Bricker, Fred Feldman, and Ed Gettier at the University of Massachusetts. Portions of Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 are adapted from my “Extrinsic Value” {Philosophical Studies 91 (1998), pp. 109-126). They are reprinted here with kind permission from Kluwer Academic Publishers. Many parts of this dissertation have been presented to audiences. Portions of Chapter 2 were presented at the Symposium on Intrinsic Value at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in April 1998. Portions of Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 were presented in Fred Feldman's seminar on Axiology in Spring 1996, at the Brown University Graduate Student Conference in February 1997, at the Mid-South Philosophy Conference in March 1997, and at an Ohio University philosophy colloquium in April 1998. Portions of Chapter 6 were presented at a UMass IV philosophy colloquium in October 1997 and at the Brown University Graduate Student Conference in February 1998. I thank all those people (too many to list here) who gave me helpful feedback at these events. I especially thank my excellent commentators. Ed Abrams, Jason Kawall, and Erik Wielenberg. Many other people have helped me to develop the ideas contained in this dissertation, through conversation and through comments on drafts. These people include Earl Conee, Tom Hurka, Shelly Kagan, Arthur Kuflik, Ned Markosian. Ted Sider, and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies. I am certain there are other people who I am forgetting. I thank all of these people. Finally, I thank my parents, my wife Cathy and my dog Frank for supporting me in this project. ABSTRACT SPECIES OF GOODNESS FEBRUARY 1999 WILLIAM BENJAMIN BRADLEY BA., LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Fred Feldman The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. I contend that the distinction has never been properly drawn. My main task is to formulate the distinction in a way that avoids the problems of the traditional formulations. After defending the traditional Moorean conception of intrinsic value against John Mackie’s arguments from relativity and “queemess,” and against recent attacks by Elizabeth Anderson and Shelly Kagan, I attempt to define two important types of extrinsic value in terms of intrinsic value. First, I define instrumental value. The main problem with traditional definitions of instrumental value is that they fail to account for the fact that preventing something intrinsically evil from occurring seems to be just as worthwhile as bringing about something intrinsically good. I attempt to account for this fact by introducing a “contextualist” analysis of instrumental value. Next, I present and defend an analysis of contributory value. I compare contributory value with conditional intrinsic value, and present an argument to show that the notion of conditional intrinsic value faces problems that can be avoided by admitting the VI existence of contributory value. I then expand on the contextualist analysis of instrumental value, and provide an analysis of extrinsic value that explains what is common to instrumental and contributory value. I contend that my analysis can also account for other types of extrinsic value — for example, signatory value — and I defend my analysis against recent objections by Alastair Norcross involving the extrinsic values of actions. Finally, I argue that contributory value can help to solve a current problem in environmental ethics. The problem is this: how can it be that the last member of a species is more valuable than a similar member of a flourishing species (irrespective of human interests)? I argue (following Leibniz and Brentano) that diversity of goods increases the value of a whole; therefore, the last member of an endangered species has contributory value in virtue of its contribution to the world’s biological diversity. VII PREFACE When thinking about value, nearly all philosophers have noticed that there are important distinctions between different types of value. For example, in Republic 357 Plato distinguishes three kinds of goods: “Tell me, is there in your opinion a kind of good that we would choose to have not because we desire its consequences, but because we delight in it for its own sake — such as enjoyment and all the pleasures which are harmless and leave no after effects other than the enjoyment in having them?” “In my opinion, at least,” I said, “there is a good of this kind.” “And what about this? Is there a kind we like both for its own sake and for what comes out of it, such as thinking and seeing and being healthy? Surely we delight in such things on both accounts.” “Yes,” I said. “And do you see a third form of good, which includes gymnastic exercise, medical treatment when sick as well as the practice of medicine, and the rest of the activities from which money is made? We would say that they are drudgery but beneficial to us; and we would not choose to have them for themselves but for the sake of the wages and whatever else comes out of them.” “Yes, there is also this third,” I said, “but what of it?” Aristotle seems to endorse a similar view in Nicomachean Ethics : “Clearly, then, things can be called good in two senses: some as good in their own right, and others as means to secure these” (Aristotle 1096b 13). The types of value apparently introduced by Plato and Aristotle are today often referred to as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” value. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value is one of the most fundamental distinctions in ethical theory. Axiology cannot be done without this distinction. One essential task of a substantive theory of viii value is to provide a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for having intrinsic value in 1 the most basic way. Differences between theories of value can usually be seen as disagreements over what these necessary and sufficient conditions are. There is another essential part of axiology, however. This part consists of the attempt to formulate rules determining the (non-basic) intrinsic, extrinsic, and overall values of things. This part of axiology has been largely overlooked. The question of to how determine the intrinsic value of something based on the values of its parts has 2 received some attention, most notably from G.E. Moore (1903). However, the question of how to determine something’s extrinsic value has been mostly ignored; even when it has not been ignored, it has typically been given a simplistic one- sentence answer. Most axiologists seem to think that rules determining extrinsic value are easy to state and uncontroversial. One of the things I hope to show is that these rules are neither easy to state nor uncontroversial; they deserve more attention than they have received. They deserve attention not simply because they have never been properly stated, but also in virtue of the fact, noted by William Tolhurst, that difficulties in distinguishing intrinsic from extrinsic value have “led some who grant that there are some things that are good to deny that anything is intrinsically good” (Tolhurst 383). One important preliminary issue concerns the meaning of the word ‘good.’ It has often been noted that there are many senses of the word ‘good.’ Since we will be focusing on the attempt to define extrinsic value or goodness, we must be clear on the sense of ‘value’ or ‘good’ we have in mind. One sense of ‘good’ is the sense in which IX it is used in sentences like “This is a good knife; it is very sharp,” or “He’s a good thief, he s never been caught.’ In this sense of ‘good," it does not make sense to say ‘x is good’ without having in mind a particular way in which x is good - x is a good thief, knife, etc. To say that something is a good X is to say that it has all (or many) of the qualities that we look for in something of type X.