Hope for Fools: Four Proposals for Meeting Temkin’s Challenge

CHRISTIAN COONS

Rethinking the Good’s central argument—spanning nearly 500

clear, candid, and carefully constructed pages—closes with

the following remark:

Ultimately, then, we may consider or juggle a number of

different positions in a valiant attempt to preserve

the Axiom of Transitivity, but the aim of trying to

reconcile the Axiom of Transitivity with each of the

other views that we care deeply about, or retaining it

at little or no practical or theoretical cost, is, I

think, a fool’s quest. (476)

His argument, readers will find, cannot be ignored:

Something central must go. Of course, Temkin’s earlier work

on these issues is by no means ignored. It is some of the

most important and influential work in value theory over the

last 30 years. Nevertheless, some of us may have thought we

could quarantine the deep puzzles his work raises and safely

pursue other important axiological topics. It may not be

possible to carefully read Rethinking the Good and retain this

opinion. Temkin, with a book to unify and develop his case,

convincingly shows that the famous ‘spectrum arguments’—so

often associated with the case against transitivity—cannot

be dismissed as instances of general paradoxes that tell us

nothing about value in particular. (chapter 9). Further,

Temkin clearly shows that the case for non-transitivity does

not rest ultimately on these arguments; rather the

availability of spectrum arguments is a predictable result

of our fundamentally comparative evaluation of outcomes. It

is this feature—ubiquitous in our common-sense evaluative

principles—that threatens transitivity, and thereby perhaps

even the practical relevance of value itself (508-21).

My comments will not serve as an introduction to

Temkin’s work—I apologize in advance when knowledge is

presupposed. Instead, I’ll briefly highlight the deeper

threat Temkin’s case may pose, and sketch four responses

that Temkin does not consider explicitly. Concerns about

each approach will motivate the next. In short, I aim to

offer hope for the ‘fool’s quest’: although something

central must go, perhaps it needn’t be something we care

deeply about.

The Essentially Comparative View and Temkin’s Challenge

At the heart of Rethinking the Good, and the challenge it

poses, lie opposing views about the supervenience base of an

outcome’s value—the Internal Aspects View (‘IAV’) and the Essentially

Comparative View (‘ECV’):

IAV: How good that outcome is depends solely on its internal features. (370).

ECV: There is at least one outcome such that there is no answer to the question of how good it is based solely on its internal features (371).

So construed, ECV is just the negation of IAV. Temkin,

understandably then, does not focus on alternatives.

However, Temkin sometimes characterizes ECV as the more

specific view that an outcome’s value depends on the

alternatives to which it is compared, indeed, he calls this

‘the distinguishing mark of the essentially comparative

view’ (445). These formulations are equivalent only if

facts about alternative outcomes are the only relevant non-

internal factors. But—as I’ll highlight below—our outcome

evaluations depend on features beyond those internal to an

outcome and sets of alternatives. Facts about the present

or past, for example, may be central to ranking outcomes.1

This slide in the characterization of ECV is dangerous: we

may overlook views that are inconsistent with IAV but deny

that outcome values depend on comparisons with

alternatives.2 Indeed, below, I’ll suggest this class may

be our best bet for addressing the Temkin’s challenge.

In its most bare form, Temkin’s challenge might be

summarized as revealing a tension in our evaluative thought:

on the one hand, a range of seemingly indispensible

substantive views—including our rejection of the Repugnant

Conclusion, obvious principles regarding the desirability of

some trade-off between two evaluativly relevant variables,

and the famous judgments behind the Mere Addition Paradox—are in

1 Temkin implicitly acknowledges as much when discussing the Mere Addition Paradox: section 11.5, 390, and conceding that narrative may bear on how good one’s life goes: 112.2 Though I claim Temkin neglects this class, some may plausibly claim this is unfair as Temkin briefly acknowledges it: 228, and later criticizes two views within it: Chapter 13.

tension with IAV.3 On the other, only IAV secures the

transitivity of better than.4 Although I won’t directly argue

for it here, I believe—and Temkin is inclined to agree—that

IAV is an unacceptable option. So, for the purposes of this

paper, I proceed as if IAV is not an option. And so the

3 Temkin, like in many places in the book, is extremely helpful to his reader and offers a full list: 486-7. I should note that some of these views can be captured by IAV when supplemented with a “capped model for comparing ideals” but these come with their own unique and powerful set of counter-intuitive implications (Chapter 10).4 That IAV entails transitivity should be clear: if an outcome’s internal features are fixed, and its value a function of those features alone, then its value is also fixed. Consequently, if three outcomes A,B, and C respectively earn fixed “scores”, Va, Vb, Vc, it cannot be thatA is better than B, B is better than C, and C is better than A. However,let me note that IAV guarantees transitivity only if outcomes are individuated by their internal features, a view that some—including defenders of the “Fine Grained Approach”—might be inclined to deny. So, arguably, it may be possible that better than is non-transitive even if IAV is true. “Fine-Grained” approaches attempt to preserve better than’s transitivity despite the worries raised in Re-Thinking the Good and earlier works: 215-18. On this view—first fully articulated by Broome 1991, a prospective state of affairs constitutes two distinct alternatives depending on the other states to which it is being compared. If “alternatives,” on these views, are meant to be interchangeable with “outcomes” then this approach denies the individuation of outcomes by their internal features. Alternatively, the view could be construed as claiming that the same outcome can constitute more than one alternative and that it is alternatives, not outcomes, which are the bearers of the better than relation. Though I do not endorse the fine-grained approach(see Temkin’s objections to it: 217-18, 230-31, 459-65, 472-76), below I’ll similarly suggest that Temkin’s challenge might be best addressed by re-considering whether outcomes are the objects of the better than relation.

question becomes ‘how problematic is it if better than is not

transitive?’

It seems to me that an intransitive better than

relation isn’t just odd; when intransitivity obtains value

cannot play its characteristic normative role. If A, B, and

C are my alternatives and A is better than B, B is better

than C, and C is better than A, then there seems to be no

fact about which option is best and which is worst. What’s

more, it does not even follow that they’re equally good or

‘on a par’. In short, when all three options are present the

most natural conclusion is that no evaluative relation holds

among the options—local evaluative nihilism obtains.

Normative facts characteristically might be described

as facts that offer some sort of advice, and an ‘evaluative’

fact—especially about what is ‘all things considered better

than in the wide reason implying sense’—that is not

normative appears to be no evaluative fact at all. And not

just any advice counts as ‘normative’ in the relevant sense—

the advice of an enemy does not have the kind of authority

we ascribe to evaluative facts—what value tells us to desire

is in fact desirable. If that sounds roughly right, then

it’s not hard to see why evaluative intransitivity just

might amount to evaluative nihilism.5 Extending the advice

analogy, imagine asking a friend for advice—‘which is better

A, B, or C?’ And they answer by giving the three

intransitive pairs. Your friend seems to offer no advice at

all. The friend might reply that he has given you advice—

pair-wise advice regarding your preferences. But now the

advice seems irrelevant and bad: ‘what does that have to do

with my question?’ or ‘why are setting me up to be money

pumped?’ you might ask. Your friend might reassure you

—‘don’t worry I’m not telling you to act on those

preferences; in fact, I’d advise you not to.’ But now it

seems the earlier advice is taken back, leaving you with

none at all. Finally your ‘friend’ may reply, ‘you’ve

confused dispositions and preferences—a preference is a pro-

attitude often underlying dispositions—I’m telling you that

you have a reason to feel certain ways, just don’t act on

those feelings—that’s my advice!’ But now we can be sure 5 Temkin is more sanguine about this prospect than I am—claiming that we’re not threatened with evaluative skepticism or nihilism: 514-520.

this person offers you bad advice as they’ve advised you to

take on mental states of no practical import other to cause

you irresolvable frustration—advice that seems irrelevant to

your original question.

This merely suggestive dialogue should motivate the

worry that if value is conceptually normative, as described

above, then the better than relation must be transitive. To

make matters worse, in a fascinating and compelling passage

in his last chapter, Temkin suggests it may be that if the

relation is ever intransitive, it always is (516-518).

These plausible results, when combined with the

unacceptability of IAV, yield global evaluative nihilism.6

Those of us who reject IAV then, may feel pressed to meet

the challenge of plausibly preserving transitivity (or

something near enough). The remainder of this paper

introduces four strategies that might inspire hope.

Privileged Comparisons

6 One cheap reply might be to claim that one cannot derive nihilism fromevaluative premises, and the argument uses evaluative premises (the intransitive rankings of pairs are premises). But one can just as well claim that this is a proof that when they are intransitive they are not normative, and hence not evaluative.

One strategy may be to identify a privileged comparison

(‘PC’). PC strategists acknowledge an outcome’s value

depends on comparisons with other outcomes, and claim

further that for any particular all things considered

evaluative question (e.g. ‘What’s best A, B, or C?’) there

is a unique privileged comparison for A, B, and C that ranks

the three. The strategy-type can be characterized as

follows:

Privileged Comparison: The relative value of any set of

outcomes [A, B, C….] is determined by the value of each

[V(A), V(B), V(C)…] when directly compared with a

privileged outcome (P). Such that—using ‘/’ to

represent ‘when directly compared with’:

If V(A)/P > V(B)/P then, A is better than B

If V(A)/P < V(B)/P then, A is worse than B

If V(A)/P = V(B)/P then, A is equally as good

as B7

7 This type of strategy might not require expressing the comparisons with numeric scores. Like Temkin, I think that views in this way may bebenign and certainly helps on for presentational purposes.

Is any privileged comparison strategy plausible? Temkin

warns (475) that any strategy reconciling transitivity and

ECV must reject the compelling Independence of Irrelevant

Alternatives Principle or Independence:

Independence: The relative goodness of two outcomes, A and

B, is determined solely on the basis of how they compare

with each other, and cannot depend on how either or both

of those outcomes compare with respect to some other

outcome or set of outcomes (201, n5).

However, as we turn to three specific privileging

strategies, we’ll see that Independence may not be so

compelling after all.

The Naïve View

Consider, first, what I’ll call the ‘Naïve’ privileging

strategy. On this view, the privileged comparisons are

comparisons with all other relevant outcomes. So, quite simply,

if only A and B are relevant, one need only compare A and B

directly—the view always conforms with Independence when only

two options are relevant. However, the view’s naïveté, and

conflict with Independence, appears in cases with more than

two relevant options. Consider a situation—perhaps

ubiquitous if ECV is true—wherein:

B is better than A (when compared directly)

B is better than C (when compared directly)

C is better than A (when compared directly)

The Naïve view claims that if our alternatives are A, B, and

C, then the comparisons above are of no import. Instead,

the comparisons that determine the ranking are:

The value of A (when compared with BC)

The value of B (when compared with AC)

The value of C (when compared with AB)

Before discussing the glaring concern that it’s impossible

to directly compare an option with two others at once, note

that this view now violates Independence. Independence would

have us rank A and B by comparing them directly, whereas the

Naïve view ranks A and B by their value when compared with

the other relevant alternatives (BC and AC respectively).

Provided we can make sense of such a comparison the

violation is not counter-intuitive. After all, if one

claims A is better than B because A is better than B when

compared to all relevant alternatives, the charge that the

ranking was based on an irrelevant comparison is less

stinging.

The Naïve approach is importantly different from two

similar proposals Temkin discusses: The Fined Grained

approach and the Sports Analogy [Chapter 14]. Unlike the

Fine-Grained approach, the Naïve view does not treat an

outcome as a different alternative when relevant

alternatives change. Consequently, it avoids the Fine

Grained Approach’s dubious metaphysics (459). However, for

this reason, the Naïve approach cannot provide a transitive

ranking of outcomes across contexts. Instead, rankings will

be transitive only given a fixed set of relevant

alternatives.8 Nevertheless, the Naïve approach would

8 Interestingly, however, if it’s impossible to narrow the scope of relevant alternatives, such that all logically possible outcomes may count as relevant, then the Naïve view actually will preserve robustly transitive ranking for A, B, and C because the context never shifts. Of course, this virtue would come at an apparently steep price—determining the relevant ranking would require a seemingly infinite number of comparisons, and each of these will require one to compare an outcome with a infinite number of alternatives all at once! I’ll speak a bit more about this sort of complexity problem below.

arguably preserve transitivity in the most important sense—

it can make good on our faith that when we raise evaluative

questions and identify an array of relevant outcomes, there

is some fact about how they rank.

Finally, the Naïve View, unlike the Fine Grained (461),

may offer a principled solution to the threat of being

“money pumped.” All that’s needed is the assumption that

when and where “exchanges” among three options are

available, all three options are relevant, and thus the

Naïve view delivers a transitive ordering. One might reply

that the relevant alternatives are always the two options

one faces in the “pumping” sequence, as they are the only

alternatives one faces at a single time. But surely when a

bride-to-be picks gowns from a stock presented one by one,

all of the gowns are relevant alternatives!

Temkin’s ‘Sports Analogy’ shares the Naïve view’s

injunction to rank by comparing each outcome with all

alternatives. The Naïve view does so directly, whereas the

Sports analogy ranks via individual “wins”—by the number of

times each outcome is better than alternative rivals (468).

The Naïve view also avoids most of Temkin’s concerns about

the Sports Analogy. First, Temkin notes that the Analogy

makes rankings practically unwieldy: to rank n items, (n/2)

x (n-1) comparisons are required (469). But the Naïve view,

if otherwise feasible, will rank n items with n comparisons.

Second, Temkin worries that the Analogy’s ranking via “wins”

forces it to discard relevant factors like “margin of

victory”—how much better options compare to alternatives

(470); a worry also inapplicable to the Naïve view.

Most importantly for our purposes, Temkin claims the

Analogy may be flawed because proper rankings of three or

more outcomes may not be any function of how pairs compare

—‘the relevant factors for making pairwise comparisons might

not even be relevant for making three-way comparisons…the

same may be true of…four way comparisons, five way

comparisons and so on’ (471). Notice that in raising this

objection—i.e., n-place comparisons may have unique relevant

features that would be missed by breaking these comparisons

into component comparisons—Temkin appears to concede both

that something like the Naïve view may be true and our only

hope for ranking three or more alternatives. This raises

the interesting possibility that if the Naïve View is

unacceptable, the Sports Analogy is plausible.

But perhaps it’s not enough that such transitive

orderings do or could exist. Perhaps there’s something

disquieting or paradoxical about fundamental evaluative

facts that must remain beyond our ken. What we’d hoped to

do, says Temkin, isn’t merely preserve transitivity but do

so while preserving value’s practical relevance (462). And

while there might be a chance the Naïve view can address

these concerns, prospects look dim.9

9 One might reply that though we don’t currently have axiological principles suitable for three and more place comparisons, we may developthem in the ordinary way by consulting judgments in multiple (3+) outcome cases. What’s more, one might argue that we must have some ability to directly assess many options at once, otherwise we could not whittle down the innumerable alternatives we face to a manageable set ofrelevant alternatives. Furthermore, mundane examples suggest we can compare many items without implicit use of a series of pairwise comparisons: we seem able to more quickly rank a room of people by height while looking at all individuals than via comparing pairs. And this is also true of non-intrinsic properties: a spreadsheet and a careful census could easily order the entire world’s population by number of children without us (even collectively) having made the roughly 24 quintillion pair comparisons this would require. However, these are not cases where our ranking of any two individuals will changeif a third is removed. Accordingly, they may provide no evidence we canmake multi-place evaluations when the factors are essentially comparative.

Ultimately, the Naïve view’s elegantly direct response

to some of Temkin’s deepest challenges may be worth more

careful development. But, for many of us, the idea that

there may be different evaluatively relevant factors—and

hence different principles for each possible number of

relevant alternatives—is hard to comprehend. And without

knowing much about these features/principles the view surely

can’t be said to conflict with our cherished substantive

judgments; but it cannot be said to conform either. With

that in mind, let me introduce two further versions of the

PC strategy that employ only pairwise comparisons.

Nihilo

Rethinking the Good is enriched by Temkin’s willingness to

share his personal views and doubts beyond his more official

positions; I found a particular pair of these asides both

puzzling and inspiring. Temkin tells us he believes that

goodness is ‘the fundamental notion from which the notion of

betterness is derived’ (369). But he also says that on ECV,

which he also prefers, ‘it may not even make sense to

consider how good an outcome is just by itself”; instead

determining how good an outcome is may necessarily involve

comparison with an alternative (372). While both these

views may be plausible, it’s difficult to understand how one

could be inclined towards both. If goodness, on ECV, can

only be understood relative to some comparison (presumably

of relative value) it seems one is committed to treating the

good as some function of better than. Yet knowing how

alternatives compare tells us little about how good they are—

not in the ordinary sense. For example, one outcome may be

better than another and yet both are bad, or both are good.

Thus, we seem committed to an ‘absolute’ goodness that

outcomes may possess independently of how they compare.

However, there is a natural way to view this absolute

sense of good comparatively: an outcome counts as good

absolutely when it’s better that it obtains than that it

does not. Stated like this, it appears we’re comparing an

outcome with its negation. But the real idea may be to

compare outcomes to nothing obtaining—an outcome devoid of

concrete states of affairs. Surely if any outcome is of

neutral value—an Archimedean-point for making comparisons—

this is it! Perhaps our ‘privileged comparison’ for each

alternative A, B, and C should be this outcome where no

concrete states of affairs are realized—call the outcome

‘N’ and the view ‘Nihilo’.

Nihilo: for any outcomes A, B, and C the correct ranking is determined by the following comparisons:

The value of A (when compared with N)The value of B (when compared with N)The value of C (when compared with N)

Nihilo, then, must offer alternative rankings in the Mere

Addition Paradox’s A, A+, B, and in the various outcomes in

Temkin’s spectrum arguments—as these rankings are

intransitive. Of course, this prompts the question—what

substantive principles will the view reject? One possible

answer is that we should reject any principle that entails

that some alternative is better than the one Nihilo deems

best, and we can then try to recast the principle as

fallible but useful “rules of thumb.” However, Nihilo’s

adherents could technically also accept the principles

implicated in the Mere Addition Paradox and spectrum

arguments; but reject applying them in direct comparisons of

alternatives—as these do not bear on all things considered

rankings. The trouble with that reply is that these

principles are often inapplicable to N comparisons. For

example, any possible ‘person-affecting’ principle whose

application requires overlapping populations never applies—

as no one exists in N. Thus, if Nihilo is correct, whole

classes of our evaluative principles end up false or

condemned to irrelevance. This should lead us to seriously

question whether this really is a natural and compelling way

to rank outcomes.

More importantly, a further objection to Nihilo reveals

a deep worry about every view discussed above and indeed

every proposal Temkin considers as well. Nihilo exploited

the intuition that A’s being better than B is for A to be a

greater improvement than B. The view then specifies that

being a greater improvement is not determined by comparing

options directly, but by comparisons with a neutral state—N

—where nothing obtains. But outcomes are not improvements in

virtue of being better than nothing. Rather, in ordinary

thought, an outcome is an improvement insofar as it is

superior to what obtained before it. The idea and its

significance is easy to illustrate by considering two

alternatives A and A’:

Both A and A’ contain populations of very well off

individuals. The difference is that A’ contains different

individuals—there is no population overlap. So which

outcome is better? Presumably, they’re equally good. And,

surely, A and A’ compare in the same way to N and hence will

be equally good on Nihilo. If the current or actual world

were like N, this would be the right result—it would be

just as good to realize A or A’. But now suppose that the

actual or ‘prevailing’ world is A (or has its population)

and A and A’ are our alternatives. In that case, Nihilo’s

verdict of equal value is an embarrassment. Clearly, A

would be much better than A’—it would be positively tragic if

the current well-off population were annihilated and

‘replaced’ with counter-parts.10 Mutatis mutandis, if the

prevailing world is A’ (or contains its population) then A’

is much better than A. Strikingly then, A and A’ compare

radically differently in these three cases even though each

involves precisely the same alternatives and internal features.

Notice that no view conforming with IAV or Independence can

get the intuitive verdict here. Also notice that these

rankings appear fixed regardless of the introduction of any

third alternative. Perhaps, then, outcomes should not be

evaluated on their internal features nor how they compare

with alternatives, but by how they compare with the actual

or ‘prevailing’ outcome. Let us call this the ‘Prevailing

State View’ (Hereafter ‘PSV’).

The Prevailing State View

10 Notice that the powerful intuitions here are not deontic, as they persist if the ‘replaced’ were children (or child-like) and it occurred via non-agential forces.

Like the Naïve view, PSV only gives us a transitive ordering

of alternatives given a context. On the Naïve view,

contexts shift with relevant alternatives, whereas on PSV

contexts shift with the prevailing outcomes. Aside from the

unique ability to capture our intuitions in the replacement

case above, PSV can accommodate comparative population

principles—like the Narrow Person-Affecting Principle—which

are not discriminatory on Nihilo. The difference, however,

is that the principles—now applied to a prevailing state and an

alternative--now effectively distinguish on the basis of

population ‘overlap’ between an alternative and the current

state, rather than overlap among the alternatives

themselves. Let’s call these ‘PSV variants’ of comparative

population principles.

PSV variants of principles like the Narrow Person

Affecting view are attractive. For one thing, merely

comparing overlap in alternatives with no eye to who already

exists renders one blind to replacement cases like those

illustrated in A and A’ above. Moreover, it does seem

crucial whether the ‘independent’ persons (those appearing

in all compared outcomes) already exist or not. For

example, suppose that god decides to create humans. His

alternatives are to create Adam, or create Adam and Eve. He

cannot create only Eve—perhaps because, as the story goes,

Adam’s rib is required for that. In this case, it seems

that prior to the creation of either it is a mistake to

value Adam and Eve’s well-being differentially. Whereas,

when a population already exists, it seems much more

plausible to claim it’s undesirable to make his life worse

simply so we can add more individuals.

However, one might plausibly object that without

comparing alternatives directly, PSV is blind to a crucial

evaluative feature—comparative harms. Unlike IAV, PSV

evaluates alternatives on the basis of comparisons—

comparisons with the state of affairs that currently

obtains. But without comparing alternatives to one another,

PSV evaluations cannot directly take into account how well

particular individuals fare between alternatives. Arguably,

if a particular indiviudal does better in one alternative

compared to a second, then one is in some sense harmed or

made worse if the second is realized—call these comparative

harms. Whether this poses a serious problem for PSV is a

complex issue— too complex to properly address here, and

certainly too complex for me to address. However, permit

me to make some cavalier remarks in favor of PSV on this

score.

Despite the cases Temkin uses to suggest the contrary,

it’s not clear to me that comparative harms are

axiologically relevant.11 Indeed, I think, from one

perspective at least, it makes sense to wonder whether any

direct comparisons of alternatives are evaluatively

relevant. For one thing, they don’t seem necessary for

valuation. To illustrate, first notice that if change is

11 The most compelling case for illustrating their relevance may be Temkin’s Progressive Disease-third version (441). But insofar as one has the intuitions in this case, I suspect that they are deontological. Let me explain. Note that the third version is just like the first except thatthe pilot can only reach villages 1 and 2 via helicopter, whereas in second version he can reach all of them. The relevant feature then is the inaccessibly of the other villages and not the pilot’s awareness of this fact. With that in mind, consider a version four, presented just likeversion two but with the accessibly of various villages via helicopter being unspecified. If we really had the narrow person affecting intuitions here, we would expect a very odd result. Specifically, if the case closed with the following two sentences “The pilot landed in village two first, and unbeknownst to her, weather conditions would haveprevented her from landing anywhere but village one or two”, then respondents should feel this result lamentable—that it would have been ‘good fortune’ had the pilot been blown towards one.

truly inevitable, then the prevailing outcome, P, will not

count as a genuine alternative. And if a particular change is

inevitable—i.e. if the world is strongly deterministic—then

there will be only one alternative. But if evaluation of an

outcome requires a comparison with another alternative, it

follows that no inevitable outcome can be evaluated. Yet

surely it’s bad when everyone goes from welfare level 10 to

5 even if it could not have gone otherwise! PSV can readily

explain this, without resorting to IAV.

Direct comparisons of alternatives, may not only be

unnecessary, perhaps they’re never relevant at all. Imagine

three life histories—a sequence of outcomes that obtain over

the course of three person’s lives—William, Will, and Bill.

The first sequence—William’s--contains most of what one

might hope for, and in the optimal order. The Will and

Bill’s sequences look just the same—with all the same events

types in the same order. So described, all else being

equal, surely these three histories must have been equally

good for each of them. However, suppose you learn that

Will’s sequence has a unique extrinsic feature: once every

five days he faced and avoided a very bad alternative—being

murdered—perhaps a killer murdered someone at random from

the population every 5 days, but never picked Will. You

also learn that Bill’s sequence also had a unique extrinsic

feature: every five days Bill had a very positive

alternative—winning a lottery jackpot—perhaps Bill was

unknowingly enrolled in a lottery every 5 days and never

won. Surely these additional facts have no bearing on which

life went best. And this seems to suggest that comparisons

with alternatives don’t matter at all. And, notably, to the

extent that they did matter (in the case above) it would be

best to have been Will, with the random killer!

However, even if all this were granted, one might note

that all this shows is that with respect to some ideals

ranking alternative prospects involves looking back and

comparing them to prevailing outcomes. Perhaps PSV

therefore cannot generate plausible all things considered rankings,

because many ideals cannot be assessed in this way. But

it’s reasonable to wonder whether any ideal is a-historical.

Consider first, Fred Feldman’s Desert-Adjusted Hedonism

wherein the value of pleasure depends partly on the

recipients’ levels of desert (Feldman 1997). What someone

deserves, presumably, depends on that person’s previous

acts. To properly evaluate a given distribution of pleasure

or pain on this view, then, requires information about the

sequence of prevailing states.12

Even equality seems to be a historical ideal. Most

egalitarian views are responsibility-sensitive.13 On

responsibility-sensitive egalitarian views, a distribution’s

value depends not just on the degree of equality, but on

whether each person’s share is proportional to his level of

responsibility for his share being what it is. Like desert,

a person’s degree of responsibility depends on facts about

12 Of course desert ‘levels’ are often depicted as internal features of alternatives when represented by static diagrams (e.g. Temkin’s ‘Sinnersand Saints’). However, appearances are deceiving: the diagram contains information about previous states of affairs assuming that the virtuous and the vicious are distinguished by their earlier behavior. Moreover, if we build historical features into our characterization of outcomes itwould be impossible for two worlds (at a time) to be qualitatively identical but have different histories, and, impossible for the current outcome to have been produced by distinct causes. This is a deep distortion of the ordinary notion.

13 The locus classicus here is Dworkin:1981, 246-62.

previous states of affairs. Indeed, Temkin’s own view

apparently treats equality as an ideal that cannot be

assessed by directly comparing alternatives, as it too

relies on desert and thus historical comparisons (384).14

Furthermore, as Temkin acknowledges, two lives with

identical components can have very different value for a

person depending on the life’s narrative (110). But

narrative is constituted by temporally ordered outcomes—

changes. And many more of our most deeply held values are

broadly narrative, including achievement, personal

development, learning, self-expression, emancipation, and

autonomy. Even features as simple as preference-

satisfaction appear to be historical: satisfying a preference

presumably requires an antecedent preference!

Consequently, omniscience about the internal features

of prospective outcomes and even how alternatives compare to

one another, leaves us clueless as to how to rank these

14 Also note that, following Temkin, other possible relevant features including Pareto Superiority, Maxi-Min, and Perfectionism, are either best or only applied comparatively. As with the Narrow Person AffectingPrinciple, PSV can accommodate these factors in its comparisons with P, though admittedly not among the alternatives themselves.

alternatives. For it seems that how good a particular

outcome would be relative to most (maybe all) evaluative

ideals depends on historical features of the actual world.

Thus, PSV may be safe in comparing only future prospects

with the prevailing states they would follow.

However, if we apply PSV to the Mere Addition Paradox,

its warts are exposed. PSV, again, simply denies that there

is any fact about how A, A+, and B compare without a

specified prevailing outcome.15 So let’s specify one:

suppose the prevailing world were A and that remaining in A

or changing to A+ were our available alternatives. Here it

seems reasonable to conclude that A+ is no worse. The

reasons should be familiar, and they needn’t involve

comparing the alternatives directly. So it’s plausible to

claim a move to A+ would be as good as staying in A. And if

we find ourselves in A+ and could stay or opt for B, then

surely we have every reason to move to B—we’ll get higher

15 Were we really were pressed to provide such a ranking, we might stealNihilo insight and compare each to N where nothing obtains. While there will be dispute about which of these compares most favorably to N; my own view is that A would be best—presumably an outcome will be better to the extent any “added” individuals (or less bad) fare well.

average and net well-being plus no inequality!

Interestingly, although PSV may deliver verdicts that so far

correspond with the intuitive judgments in the Mere Addition

Paradox, the view is not susceptible to the ‘cycling’ and

hence money pumping: a ‘return’ to A would be very bad—half

the population would be annihilated. But we’re also now

able to see why PSV is not fully satisfactory: the reasoning

from A to A+ to B can be reiterated for B, B+, and C and

then so on down the alphabet to Z. The result? Though PSV,

when supplemented with a plausible substantive axiology,

presumably will entail A is better than Z when one is in A;

it will also entail that from A, one may arrive at Z via a

sequence of positive or neutral changes. It’s contentious

whether this result, strictly speaking, constitutes a

violation of transitivity or not. Regardless, I find it

unacceptable. First, because I don’t think a sequence of

positive or neutral exchanges could land us in Z from A.

Second, because the view exhibits deep internal tension:

effectively claiming it’s bad to go from A to Z, but

apparently desirable to meander to Z through a route of

outcomes that are all worse than A (aside from A+)! But I’m

also not prepared to reject the view that individual moves

from A to A+ to B are neutral or positive, nor to try to

“stop the slide” at a seemingly arbitrary place down the

line. So, despite PSV’s virtues, it is unlikely to offer us

a simple and fully satisfying path out.

A Fool’s Call for Change: The Transitional View

On page 498, Temkin tells that the sort of view that is best

suited to resolve our problem has two features: it will be

“messier” and “more complex.” Let me introduce a final view

that may meet these desiderata. If we are willing to take

PSV seriously, we’re poised to take one further step towards

a much different way of looking at value—one with an outside

shot of preserving much more of what we want to say about

value and that is more faithful to how we actually do value.

This view agrees that the ranking of outcomes is essentially

comparative, and that the factors relevant for making the

comparisons vary with what’s being compared; and, like PSV,

it claims the relevant comparison is between prospective

outcomes and antecedent states of affairs. The step forward

becomes clear upon thinking about what PSV really boils down

to—it evaluates options by which would produce the best

change. ‘So,’ says the fool, ‘it’s not outcomes that have

the value its changes.’

There’s something to this suggestion. More carefully,

on this view, outcomes themselves are not fundamental

bearers of goodness or better than—temporally-ordered pairs

of outcomes are—we might call these state or outcome

‘transitions’. Further, perhaps they can be evaluated on the

basis of their internal features, and hence exhibit a value

that is fixed across contexts and therefore transitive.

This proposal is more faithful to some of what we’re

inclined to say about value. We expect the fundamental

bearers of value to have an invariant value—as on IAV—which

most of us find plainly implausible. Just as instrumental

goods entail and are explained by the existence of non-

instrumental goods, so too it seems that the varying value

of outcomes should entail and be explained by the invariant

or unconditional value of something else. As such, any view

wherein the value of an outcome is contextually dependent

does not seem to reach axiological bedrock. State

transitions may be a better candidate for such bedrock.

Conditional goods are items that are unconditionally good

only when the relevant conditions are met: If x is good

conditionally only on its being accompanied by y, then it’s

the conjunction of x and y that is good. The value of

prospective outcomes also behaves like a conditional good:

they possess a certain value (or disvalue) depending on the

presence of particular prevailing states. Accordingly, the

most natural conclusion is that these transitions are the

object of value. Call this ‘the Transitional View.’ The

Transitional View is also more in line with the findings of

empirical psychology, for it is becoming increasingly clear

that people evaluate transitions rather than outcomes.16 As

Jonathan Haidt recently concluded it is ‘change that

16 See, for example: Kahneman and Tversky 1979: 263-92 and Haidt 2006: 8-

31.

contains vital information, not steady states’ in

understanding our evaluations (2006: 85).

PSV’s mistake is, arguably, not going far enough. PSV

meanders down the crooked path from A to Z because it

effectively evaluates outcomes on the basis of which would

instantiate the best change from one prevailing state of the

world to the next. But not all changes have ‘antecedents’

and ‘consequents’ that are temporally contiguous. Many

small changes can entail larger ones—just as many simpler

states of affairs will entail the complex states of affairs

represented by our classic diagrams. And just as those

simpler states often have different values (and presumably

no value at the simplest level) than the wholes they

compose, so too may shorter changes and the larger wholes

that they compose. Thus, if we begin in A, move to A+, and

then finally move to B, and we’ve accepted that it’s changes

that are fundamentally relevant—then an outcome can be

evaluated by the value of all the changes it instantiates.

Thus, by realizing B, in this sequence we’ve also changed

the world from A to B. I presume this is a bad change, and

its disvalue may be greater than the summed value of changes

A to A+ and A to B—though I won’t argue for that here. If this

is so, we’ve shown why it would be quite bad to meander from

A to Z.

These verdicts do not require a wholly exotic

substantive axiology. It would employ the same types of

principles PSV employed. And what were those? The familiar

principles we’ve been arguing about all along; they’re just

not applied to sets of alternatives. And, unlike with PSV,

one doesn’t merely compare alternatives with a prevailing

state: one also needs to compare alternatives with other

historic prevailing states—the rest is addition and presumably

an amendment(s) to avoid the ‘double-counting’ that besets

any attempt to calculate wholes and parts independently.

While this view may seem comically complex, it’s largely a

complexity we already face. Granted, the transitional model

is clearly more complex numerically—the number of changes an

outcome instantiates will always be much greater than the

number states of affairs. But don’t forget that every actual

prospective outcome—even if we neglect the past, present,

and other alternative outcomes entirely—is really a highly

complex state of affairs supervening on countless simpler

states. Some of these are bearers of value in their own

right, and some are not. And we can be sure that the value

of the complex states is no simple function of the value of

the simpler states; the simplest states may have no value.

In one way or another, then, we would apparently need to

evaluate all of them, and then adjust for double-counting.

I’d say it’s impossible for us to do, and surely we’ve all

known this may be impossible. But being able to give a

fully precise and accurate appraisal of any actual outcome’s

value is not required for its practical relevance. What is

required is a model that can help us think through these

issues and get us to approximate answers. And of course, no

such model can be one that also a) appears to predict that

there are no answers, or, b) engineers an ‘answer’ by

betraying our ideals. What we appear to arrive at by

Rethinking the Good’s end is choice between options (a) and (b).

Perhaps there are other relevant alternatives.17 17 A further, less cursory, defense and introduction to the TransitionalView, including its unique advantages, possible demerits, and how it

Bowling Green State UniversityShatzel Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403-0001

clcoons@bgsu.edu

References

Broome, J. 1991. Weighing Goods. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Coons, C and Weber M. 2012. Transitional consequentialism and the mere addition paradox”: unpublished manuscript.

Dworkin, R. 1981. What is equality: part 1, equality of welfare, Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 246-62.

Feldman F. 1997. Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert: Essays in Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haidt J. 2006. The Happiness Hypothesis. New York: Basic Books.

Kahneman D. and Tversky A. 1979. Prospect theory: an analysisof decision under risk. Econometrica 47 (1979.

Temkin, L. 2012. Rethinking the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

aggregates, can be found in Coon and Weber: 2012.