1
AMBIVALENCE OF VALUE JUDGEMENT CANNOT BE
DELIBERATED AWAY*
Hili Razinsky
I. SOME DIFFICULTIES WITH AMBIVALENCE OF VALUE JUDGEMENT
Suppose that Hannah judges ambivalently that she ought and that she ought not to
apologize for something; or suppose that Samuel ambivalently judges his mother to be a good
mother and a not-so-good one; or suppose that David is ambivalent as to whether a certain
example is convincing. Let us use the term ambivalence of value judgement to refer to such
attitudes.1 In attributing such an ambivalent attitude to a person, by the same token we
attribute opposed attitudes to them. Such a person is said to hold two antithetical judgements
at the same time: she judges that something or someone is of value V, and she also judges that
this same thing or person is not-V or that it is of a contrary value, W. When this pattern
depicts ambivalence of judgement, it is not the merely the case that the term “V” reappears in
the descriptions of both judgements, though not in the same sense. Rather, the very value that
* I wish to thank Eran Dorfman, Liran Razinsky, and Ben Young for their help and suggestions. An
earlier version of this paper has been discussed with my colleagues in the philosophy department of
Ben-Gurion. I thank them for their comments.
This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: ‘Ambivalence of Value Judgment Cannot
be Deliberated Away’, The Philosophical Forum 44(4): 395–412, which has been published in final
form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phil.12020/full.
1 It might be more adequate to speak here of a certain important form of ambivalence of value
judgements.
2
is applied to the judgement at one pole appears at the other pole of the ambivalence (and
similarly for the version of the pattern framed in terms of “V” and “W”). Moreover the
judgements are conceived as opposed from the ambivalent person’s own point of view: she
holds each judgement as competing with the other.
We often express ambivalence of value judgement and see it in other people; and
such ambivalent attitudes are not mere confusions, and do not, in general, amount to paralysis
or vacillation. Yet ambivalence of value judgement – henceforth I shall freely omit the
“value” – is supposed to be impossible in more ways than one. One cluster of difficulties
arises from the relations of attitudes to behaviour. If judgements, qua mental attitudes, dispose
one to behaviour – or, under a different emphasis, if judgements are such dispositions to
behaviour – then, it may seem, ambivalence excludes action or at least significant action. This
worry might seem even more pressing with respect to attitudes in favour of enhancing a state
of affairs, such as ambivalence between a judgement that one ought to apologize and a
judgement that one ought to avoid an apology. For here the opposition of the judgements
capturing the agent’s dispositions is defined in terms of mutually exclusive required actions.
The difficulty of behaviour in light of ambivalence is not unique to ambivalence of
judgement. However, another cluster of problems, which is peculiar to such ambivalence,
here joins in. It appears that if Hannah judges that she ought to do X, she by definition does
not judge that she ought not to do X. It seems that in attributing the opposed judgements to
Samuel, we attribute to him a judgement that his mother is a good mother and that she is not;
and it seems that in accordance with this he accepts a contradiction, and thus does not in fact
judge anything. It appears that if David judged an example convincing and also judged it
unconvincing, these judgements would destroy one another, leaving him clueless as to the
character of the example. Underlying this second cluster of problems is what may be called
the objectivist character of ambivalence of value judgements.2 One thing that is held in
2 Davidson 1980 and Jackson 1985 analyse forms of ambivalence in light of both the conduct and the
objectivity problem, and their views amount to denying genuine ambivalence. Donald Davidson, “How
is Weakness of the Will Possible?” Essays on Actions and Events, ed. Donald Davidson (Oxford:
3
common by Kant, Mill, and various authors who take a naturalist attitudes to ethics, is that
judgements are, partly or wholly, objectivity-directed; and another is that if ambivalence is
possible, it cannot be objectivist (a third agreement will be suggested below).
II. OBJECTIVIST AMBIVALENCE OF VALUE JUDGEMENT
Ambivalence is objectivist if its poles contend with one another regarding some
objectivity. This implies, first, that each pole makes some objectivity-aiming claim: for
instance, that the value of being a good mother applies to Samuel’s mother. The definition
requires, secondly, that the very objectivity claimed at the one pole is disclaimed at the other
pole. Samuel’s judgements do not divide the value of being a good mother into two separate
values, of which only one applies to his mother; if they did, the opposed judgements would be
consistent in what they claim, and Samuel would not be ambivalent as to where the
objectivity lies.
In order to see what that second requirement involves, we should note that one’s
judgements may be ambivalent without comprising objectivist ambivalence, in a manner
similar to ambivalence of desire or of emotion. Thus, for example, Samuel’s brother can think
that his mother is a loving and caring mother and that she is, at the same time, too strict. Both
judgements, paradigmatically and in the imagined case, claim some objectivity, and moreover
holding both these claims together would typically comprise ambivalence on the part of
Samuel’s brother. However, it would not be objectivist ambivalence, in so far as the claims
are held as perfectly consistent.
The possibility of ambivalence which is not objectivist extends to phenomena in
which the agent’s ambivalence can be articulated in terms of only one value term.
Attributions of ambivalence that take the form “He judges that A is V while he also judges
that A is not V” need not be objectivist, if it is part of their point that V has “split”. In such
Clarendon Press, 1980), Frank Jackson, “Internal Conflicts in Desires and Morals,” American
4
“splitting” cases, one’s pair of judgements identifies two separate values within a broader
value concept; and one may still be ambivalent, not as to the objectivity of the matter, but
only in one’s own attitude. Let us, for instance, attribute to Samuel (of the Bible) an
ambivalence of judgement regarding Eli, the great priest in whose hands Samuel’s mother put
him in early childhood. Was Eli a good mentor to him? Samuel answers both in the negative
and in the positive, for Eli was too close to corruption to be a good mentor, but at the same
time Samuel acknowledges that Eli has trained him perfectly. Samuel thus judges Eli
ambivalently, with gratefulness and reservation, but he is not ambivalent as to where the
objectivity lies. The value of being a good mentor splits into two values, of which Samuel
deems one but not the other to apply to Eli.
Let us, however, consider a case of objectivist ambivalence, in which Samuel judges
his mother ambivalently as both a good mother and as a not-so-good one: the case is one in
which there is more to Samuel’s ambivalence than merely combining longing and love with
bitterness. Rather, by contrast with non-objectivist ambivalence, his mother’s being a good
mother denies for Samuel the judgement that she has not been not a good mother and vice
versa. Now, what could these denials consist of? Let us suppose, first, that the notion of a
good mother is sharpened in different directions in Samuel’s opposed judgements. Perhaps
one direction emphasizes the love of one’s child and doing what is best for him, while the
other direction lays stress on the intimacy of daily care.3 However, in so far as this part of the
description stands alone, it can suit cases of applying separate values to Samuel’s mother as
well. When the description concerns Samuel’s objectivist ambivalence as regard to his
mother, it must be complemented: the point is that both directions are directions for settling
the question of whether his mother is a good mother. Ambivalence that involves contention of
the opposed judgements with respect to objectivity typically involves contention over what
the value – e.g., a good mother – ought to be, in the case concerned.
Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985): 105-14.
3 The mother of the biblical Samuel left him as child at the hands of Eli, the religious leader, to raise
him.
5
Some philosophers describe judgements as objectivist or “cognitive,” while others
analyse them as similar to desires and emotions (we may speak of judgements conceived
under the second outlook as judgemental engagements).4 I shall here briefly suggest that this
is a dispute in which all parties are right, and that value judgements typically have both
aspects. What is important is that these two aspects are mutually constitutive. When Samuel
deems his mother a good mother, he applies to her a value, rather than a dictionary entry;
moreover, the concept applied comprises a value from his own point of view, rather than
merely according to some public feeling or convention (e.g., he does not determine that “his
mother would be called by common opinion a good mother”). In other words, by the same
token that Samuel finds that his mother is good, his attitude “lays” goodness upon his mother:
to say that Samuel’s judgement, considered as objectivist, is directed at value, is already to
bring up the other dimension of a value judgement, namely that Samuel is judgementally
engaged with his mother as a good mother (and vice versa: in the typical cases, to regard
one’s mother as good mother involves holding that she is in truth a good mother).
Turning now to objectivist ambivalence of value judgement, let us remember that if it
focusses on the relations between objectivist judgements, it nonetheless concerns at once and
jointly the way one is judgementally engaged. In fact, while one’s ambivalence of value
judgement may happen not to be objectivist, the opposition between the poles cannot be only
from an objectivist point of view. For so far as one’s judgements do not engage one in
opposed directions, one does not maintain objectivist ambivalence about the application of a
value.
4 For the second approach, see Stevenson’s classic account. C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944). Bernard Williams advocates this view precisely in order to
allow ambivalence. “Consistency and Realism,” Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956-
1972 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973) 204-5; however, as I elsewhere show, Williams’s
more subtle discussion of ambivalence of judgement, “Ethical Consistency” (chap. 11 in 1973)
undermines this view and acknowledges objectivist ambivalence. It may be worth noting that, unlike
Stevenson’s account, many anti-realist and non-cognitivist views reflect the objectivist structure of
value judgement in their accounts. When this is the case, they also tend to share with “officially”
objectivist views the denial of objectivist ambivalence.
6
Thus, the objectivist emphasis in what follows does not aim at any independent
objectivist dimension of the phenomena. Rather, it concerns ambivalence, which
judgementally engages the person by being about the objective application of a value.
Complementarily, the discussion that follows ought to support the analysis above: we shall
see that the objectivist dimension of value judgements is mutually constituted with a
dimension of judgemental engagement.
In any case, I shall argue in this paper that attributions such as in the cases of
Hannah’s and David’s judgements, or in the case of Samuel’s judgements in regard to his
mother, often suggest objectivist ambivalence in which the person’s opposed judgements
contend with one another, or in which, if you wish, the contents of the judgements contradict
each other. I say “If you wish” because the philosophical notion of contradiction belongs to
the logic of factual truth, which is not analogous to that of the objectivity of value. This
logical difference also affords an additional character to objectivist ambivalence of value. In
many cases, the opposed judgements which objectivist ambivalence combines may also be
said to judge one thing together, i.e., the poles jointly judge their object as “V and not V.”
However, V and not V, in cases of ambivalence, is a tension-fraught value, only ambivalently
applied to the object, since the application of any of its parts undermines the application of the
other.
I have already mentioned the philosophical position that denies that paradigmatic
value judgements make claims of objectivity. Rather than confronting this approach directly
or explicitly analysing the misconceptions in the supposition that ambivalence denies action
or significant action, I shall argue against the approach that reduces ambivalence to an aspect
of deliberation.
Indeed, objectivist ambivalence and deliberation are conceptually connected. In the
first place, the very acknowledgement of the objectivist dimension of value judgements is
supported by the role of deliberation – possible or actual deliberation, which need not be
explicit or comprehensive – about the value of something. Is the example convincing? Ought
I to apologize? (A concern bound up with, but different from, a concern about what to do).
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What ought I to do? Let us deliberate.5 I shall thus make some points about the intricate
relations between objectivist ambivalence of value and deliberation, and, in so doing, the
objectivist dimension of value judgement and ambivalence, and the possibility of ambivalent
significant behaviour, will be revealed.
III. DELIBERATION AND AMBIVALENCE
In so far as the logic of truth is considered to be one and the same wherever in
language truth is at all relevant, the objectivist character of judgements encourages the
interpretation of conflicts in terms of pairs of prima facie judgements that seem opposed if
their prima facie character is ignored. In particular, this sort of analysis is often connected
with understanding conflict as an intermediary state on one’s way to resolution. Thus Kant
tells us:
Since, however, duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the
objective practical necessity of certain actions and because two mutually
opposing rules cannot be necessary at the same time, then, if it is a duty to act
according to one of them, then it is not only not a duty but contrary to duty to
act according to the other. It follows, therefore, that a conflict of duties and
obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntur). It may, however,
very well happen that two grounds of obligation (rationes obligandi), one or
the other of which is inadequate to bind as a duty (rationes obligandi non
5 Consider, for reference, any of the Socratic dialogues.
The objectivist character of judgements is not reducible to the possibility of deliberation, and claims of
objectivity sometimes entail that there is nothing to deliberate upon there (“She is thirsty. It is good to
bring her water”). Indeed, this is the point of departure for Moore’s objectivist view of value
judgements. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903) chap. IV.
In addition, deliberation is also not only about objectivity. It belongs to our development and
examination of our attitudes and coming to act.
8
obligantes), are united in a subject and in the rule that he prescribes to
himself, because then one of the grounds is not a duty.6
And this is how Mill objects to the understanding of justice as an independent value:
Who shall decide between these appeals to conflicting principles of justice?
Justice has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to bring into
harmony, and the two disputants have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to
what it is just that the individual should receive, the other to what it is just
that the community should give. Each, from his own point of view, is
unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be
perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference7.
There are many others in the respectable company of Kant and Mill. In general, according to
the stricter approaches,8 the person in conflict about A being V only judges that something
stands in favour of A being V and that something else stands against it. In such an account, a
person who is searching for a place to rent and is considering the suitability of a certain
apartment would only entertain judgements such as “considerations of air-circulation suggest
that that apartment is suitable,” but never absolute judgements such as “the apartment is
6 Immanuel Kant, “Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals,” Metaphysical Elements of Justice: The
Complete Text of the Metaphysics of Morals, Part I, 2nd
edition, trans. John Ladd (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1999) 17-18. My Italics. I use Ladd’s translation, except for the “because then”
[da dann in the original].
Even if Kant’s use of “conflict” concerns the objective level, ambivalence in which the tension is partly
taken as objective would mean that the conflict is conceivable. In any case, as the quotation continues,
Kant focusses on the judging subject. In addition, the present paper shows that value discourse is bound
up not only with legitimate ambivalence, but also with ambivalently acknowledged conflicts at the
objective level.
7 John S. Mill, Utilitarianism, Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. Maurice Cowling (New York:
Mentor Books, 1968) 298.
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suitable.” The person is assumed to try to reach a value judgement on the basis of such
attitudes, which are conceived as factual beliefs. More moderate approaches permit the
reasoning to include value judgements which are mutually consistent – e.g., judgements on
what is suitable from different respects (the apartment is suitable with respect to air-
circulation).9 Holding such consistent judgements, the agent can actually want or care for
things for the time being, until she learns and decides whether the absolute value – the value
that is not from some respect or other – applies: whether the apartment is suitable, whether
mother is a good mother, etc. The idea then is to assimilate conflicts about value to
investigations regarding the unknown and undecided, which are intended for practical
conclusions. Could this work? The following points regarding the entanglement of objectivist
ambivalence of value with deliberation show that deliberation for the sake of a practical
univocal conclusion cannot be seen as an alternative model for objectivist (or any) practical
conflicts.
We shall also derive a secondary, and in a sense opposed, benefit from the discussion
that follows: the few philosophical explications of objectivist ambivalence of judgement that
do recognize genuine ambivalence tend to describe it as the end point of deliberation. The
poles of ambivalence are supposed to establish foreign, non-negotiable, points of view.10
It
will emerge, however, that in objectivist ambivalence the two poles mutually mould and
undermine both one another and the values that they respectively apply; hence, the opposed
points of view which together constitute objectivist ambivalence are necessarily not foreign.
8 See Davidson 1980 for an explicit analysis in these terms.
9 We may think of the value, or, in some cases, also of the object, as thus qualified.
For a moderate reduction of ambivalence to an aspect of deliberation, see Philippa Foot, “Moral
Realism and Moral Dilemma,” The Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983): 379–98, section I. Foot
differentiates there two senses of “ought,” in one of which it is consistent to judge that one ought to do
A and ought to do not-A, similarly to judging that it is dangerous both to do A and to avoid it.
According to Foot, such judgements, without necessarily being cancelled, play a role in judging what
one ought to do in another and decisive sense of the term.
10 See Foot 1983, Sect. II; Michael J. Zimmerman, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” Metaphilosophy, 24
(1993): 382-389.
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We shall see in what follows just how far the ambivalently held value judgements in fact are
from being judgements that cannot be jointly deliberated upon. Rather, deliberation is a
central form through which ambivalence and its poles take their character.
IV. ATTEMPTS AT SOLVING AMBIVALENCE
When a person holds opposed value judgements, this would often include
deliberation intended to acquire a non-ambivalent value judgement. This is true even if we
think of narrowly conceived intentional acts of deliberation, and all the more so as regards “as
if” deliberation, construed perhaps as coming to view something on the basis of reasons.11
The first challenge to the reduction of ambivalence to deliberation derives from considering
states of affairs in which a person (actually, or “as if”) tries to reach univocal objectivity
while holding opposed actual judgements. Her opposed judgements then function also as
interim judgements, which are considered together in order to achieve a final judgement.
This is to say, first, that during her deliberation, the person keeps on living, and her
opposed judgements express themselves in various ways. Consider, for example, a film critic
who is excited about a film in which, however, she finds major faults. This person might well
pursue an all-things-considered judgement, but meanwhile watch it again since it is so good.
Second, working towards a conclusion may be significantly different in cases where
one’s actual judgements are opposed. In such a case, the ambivalently held judgements are
part of what the agent considers. They are her judgements on the issue, i.e., her attitudes, and
she may considers them as such (“It’s only because I’m so impressionable that I take the film
to be a piece of art”). She may also deliberate upon the objectivities she ambivalently accepts
(it is one thing to be prepared to reconsider the greatness of a movie and the explication of its
11
Since the technical use of “reasons” is perhaps misleading – much of that which is rational is not
done “for a reason” – the following alternative formulation might be welcome: One would manifest
extended deliberation in acquiring an attitude on the basis of a concern with finding the right (or an
appropriate) attitude.
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greatness, as may be the case under ambivalence, and another to wonder, deliberating rather
than being ambivalent, whether greatness is there in the first place).
Moreover, the ambivalence of the agent who tries to come to a wholehearted final
judgement changes the character of the deliberation, and not merely its contents. Our film
critic’s ambivalence perhaps takes the form of thinking that she is being too hasty to find
greatness in a work whose potential is impaired by a careless performance. This view, which
both recommends deliberation and is a part of it, she may in turn subject to criticism, or may
pursue it and further penetrate into the greatness, and so on.12
Furthermore, note that while the present paper deals with cases of clear ambivalence
of judgement of the form “Hannah judges that A is V and that A is not V,” this fundamental
structure finds widespread and multifarious expression in more vague ambivalent attitudes.
For the language of value judgement is not content with allowing only full-fledged value
judgements: it often presents semi-judgements, which are not prima facie judgements, but
rather are “only half” genuine (objectivist and engaging) judgements. In particular, semi-
12
Aristotelian ethics, and in particular Aristotle himself (2000), are also of interest here, since, firstly,
this ethics presents ethical conduct and judgement in particular matters as normatively based on the
person’s prior attitudes, including her virtues. Secondly, the particular conduct and judgement do not
logically or actually follow, but rather it is a difficult matter of joint identification and pursuing of the
normative target. This makes the possibility of deliberation (and the use of phronesis in general) an
important element of ethical life, and one which, in light of the former point, is part and parcel of the
virtuous agent’s ongoing engagements (see Martha C. Nussbaum, “The discernment of perception,”
Love’s Knowledge: Essays of Philosophy and Literature, ed. M. C. Nussbaum (New York & Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990). Thirdly, Aristotle himself is especially relevant, since, as I elsewhere
argue, for him the virtuous person has to be inherently ambivalent in aiming at her target. By contrast,
Nussbaum’s account conceives of deliberation in terms of a harmonic course of appreciating the
situation; an ambivalent agent takes up, according to Nussbaum, two parallel courses, which meet only
at the end when the agent selects (or sometimes fails to select) between them.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Roger Crisp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
For a recent treatment of ethical virtue, phronesis, and ambivalence, see Kristján Kristjánsson, “The
Trouble with Ambivalent Emotions,” Philosophy 85 (2010): 485-510.
Humean accounts of normative motivation can also be sensitive to the relevancy of the person’s mental
attitudes for rational deliberation. See Dalia Drai, “The Normative Significance of Desires,” Journal of
Value Inquiry 2013 (planned) for an illuminating discussion in this spirit.
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judgements and pairs of opposed semi-judgements are far more central in the process of
pursuing an appropriate judgement than pure prima facie judgements. Thus suppose Hannah
begins to wonder whether she ought to apologize after people suggest to her that she should.
This may be a case in which ambivalence is not there to start with. At the outset, the idea that
she should apologize might be only the merest idea. However, more or less anything that
makes its way into her deliberations shall become a kind of judgement: she sees now that she
hurt Bob, and that an apology is not absurd. But at the same time all she did was speak
frankly; “Is that a crime?” she may protest to herself. Yet Hannah is uncomfortable. She could
have been more considerate, it’s not like there is nothing for her to apologize about… and so
on. It might be that we do not want to say that Hannah at any time judges that she ought to
apologize to Bob and that she ought not (or that it is not something that she ought to do).
However, we cannot really understand an ordinary case of deliberation of this kind without
appealing on the way to semi-judgements (alternatively conceivable as judgements in favour
of the ought-judgements), which are undermined by opposing (semi-) judgements.
V. AMBIVALENCE TO STAY
Another dimension of the relationship between deliberation and ambivalence of
judgement is that the agent will not always try to solve or cancel her ambivalence. She will
not always pursue an all-things-considered judgement. Our film critic may well cling to her
ambivalent judgement that the movie is and yet that it is not a piece of art. This aspect
belongs to factual beliefs (abbreviated to “beliefs” in what follows) as well as to value
judgements. In other words, I am here suggesting, first, that people hold ambivalent beliefs,
and second that they do not always try to resolve them. Indeed, people can even intentionally
hold fast to their ambivalence of judgement or of belief. Self-deception is a form of
ambivalence in which the person takes care to be ambivalent regarding objectivities on which
her judgement could be univocally settled. For example, a director who understands that his
new film is not good enough may try to undermine this better judgement of his, even if he
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cannot abandon it as misconceived. He may, for instance, emphasize the film’s good points or
focus on reasons for lowering the criteria, while remaining aware that the good points do not
add up to much and that the criteria in fact ought not to be lowered.13
Self-deception is in important ways irrational; however, a person can be highly
rational in not trying to solve her ambivalence, whether of value judgement or of belief. The
grounds for ambivalence of our film critic can at the same time be grounds for her to keep her
ambivalence. The film critic judges that the movie’s flaws are significant and that because of
them the film is less than great, while at the same time she deems the film to be a piece of art
which transcends its flaws. The film critic sees that trying to adopt a univocal conclusion
would mean closing her eyes to one of these lines of thought. This is an appropriate response,
in which the ambivalence can even take the form of a joint judgement: the film is and is not a
piece of art, a judgement that is uncomfortably ambivalent while positing a value whose
internal tension does not make meaningless. Suppose our critic is forced to adopt a final
conclusion in terms of the “stars” rating system. In such a case she may balance stars with
words. Meanwhile, a film director who wishes to create a piece of art, and is ambivalent as to
whether he is capable of such a feat, may be highly rational in not trying to resolve his
ambivalence.14
His positive belief would induce him to make artistic efforts, and these efforts
could be all the more fruitful given that the fact that his belief in his powers is undermined by
doubts has made him wary of lousy films.
Still, the rationality pertaining to the judgemental ambivalence of the film critic is of
another character than the director’s – or anybody else’s – ambivalence of belief. Here the
differences between these two forms of objectivist ambivalence come into view. It is often
highly rational for us to maintain ambivalence of belief; yet, at the same time, such
ambivalence poses us serious problems. Consider ambivalence in which a person holds two
13
I explicate self-deception as intentional ambivalence of belief against Davidsonian and naturalist
views in “Rational Irrationality, Unitary Ambivalence – The Partition Approach to Self-deception
Reexamined,” in review.
14
positive beliefs (that creating a great work of art is within his power and that it is not). To
keep the ambivalent attitude is to knowingly keep an error, and in this respect not trying to
solve such an ambivalence of belief might be considered irrational.15
In other words, a
harmonic all-things-considered judgement that will resolve one’s ambivalence of belief can in
principle be pursued. Nothing similar could generally be said in regard to ambivalence of
value judgement. The character of the ambivalence may be such that any all-things-
considered judgement would be undermined and a resolution of the ambivalence may seem
entirely impossible or inappropriate. This is so since in the case of ambivalence of value
judgement, the contention of the judgements is relevant for the characterization of the value.
In particular, the way the judgements are opposed may not be ignored in cases in which the
judgements together apply a tension-fraught value on their object. Yet in pursuing a harmonic
solution, one has to disavow the relevance of the contention itself.
This brings us to another dimension of the relation between deliberation towards a
conclusion and ambivalence. Ambivalence can survive deliberation and the drawing of a
conclusion, as shown by Williams in “Ethical Consistency” (1973). In the cases in which the
agent judges “what is for the best”, in Williams’s terms, this need not cancel the contrary
judgement (172). Objectivity is settled in a sense: she judges that doing D is for the best,
rather than avoiding A (at least, there is a point of view that permits us to attribute to the
agent such a harmonic judgement). Yet the objectivity is not settled in every sense: in
Williams’s discussion the agent may regret doing D or seek to compensate for it. And we may
take Williams’s analysis further still: after all, nothing guarantees that the repudiated pole will
survive, univocally and irreversibly, only in the minor form of a “remainder”. The film critic
judges that the movie is not a genuine piece of art and she does not present it in her review as
one. On the other hand, it may guide the way she views films from now on. She has, in short,
an ambivalent value concept of great art.
14
In order to make it a clear case of ambivalence of belief, assume that it does not rely on ambivalence
on what a piece of art should consist in.
15 We might accordingly judge ambivalently the rationality of various ambivalent beliefs.
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VI. DELIBERATION AND OBJECTIVIST AMBIVALENCE OF VALUE JUDGEMENT
ILLUMINATE EACH OTHER
What have we learned so far? Most basically, the previous sections have afforded us a
glimpse into the complex field of objectivist-ambivalence-of-value-judgement as it combines
with the phenomena of deliberation. We have seen that ambivalence regarding the value
shows itself in the very way in which deliberation proceeds: for when one actually judges
contrary things, one’s deliberation would (and should) often take the judgements and their
contention into account. Moreover, being part of one’s life, deliberation then expresses the
ambivalence, which, at the same time, deliberation shapes and changes. Even when
ambivalence is not the point of departure, ordinary deliberation often proceeds through
contrary semi-judgements which one adopts. We have also observed that deliberation does
not always focus on resolving one’s ambivalence, as well as that when deliberation aims at a
solution (or decision), the ambivalence and its validity would often survive the resolution.
Objectivist ambivalence hence cannot be reduced to deliberation of prima facie
judgements or mere options for action. Moreover, its interrelations with deliberation reveal
how ambivalence plays a part in rational discourse. The closing section aims at clarifying and
strengthening several of the implications of the earlier discussion for objectivist ambivalence
of value judgement.
The Details of Deliberation Reveal Objectivist Ambivalence
This paper has dealt with objectivist ambivalence, in which one finds (contrary)
objectivities but is ambivalent as to where the objectivity lies. In our central case, the
objectivity that one’s antithetical judgements contend for is a value, or, differently put, the
objectivity consists in that the value applies or does not apply to the object of the opposed
16
judgements.16
I began by showing that ambivalence is often objectivist, and yet that
objectivist ambivalence is generally unacknowledged even by those who acknowledge some
kind of ambivalence. However, the examination of deliberation in cases of ambivalence
regarding the value of something puts us in a position to see the misconception inherent in
such approaches, according to which only alien or incommensurable values allow one to be
ambivalent between them. We may thus exploit the discussion above to briefly characterize
and criticize two problematic lines of thought, both of which would make objectivist
ambivalence of value judgement impossible.
According to the first line of thought, accepting an objectivity – a truth or a value –
implies that we do not find it doubtful. The thought is that a judgement or belief, as long as it
stands, may be qualified by doubt, whereas it is not possible that the belief is held and yet is
also undermined. According to this conception, if one’s doubts do not amount to complete
rejection of belief, the standing doubts must qualify the absolute potential belief. The belief is
supposed to be necessarily weaker than it would be without the doubts – or, to put it another
way, one’s attitude is supposed to be a cognitive attitude that is weaker than belief. One way
or the other, objectivist ambivalence and its opposed poles are supposedly reducible to a
belief to some degree.
Yet such a reduction cannot hold. This is shown most clearly when we notice that
objectivist ambivalence implies that one doubts her belief-to-a-degree as well. Consider the
case of the potential director who is ambivalent regarding his abilities and prospects for
making a worthwhile film: it might be that he thinks that such an achievement is quite
possible for him, sufficiently so that he may devote himself to film-making, whereas this
belief-to-a-degree is precisely that which his contrary belief challenges. In probabilistic terms,
the “sum of probabilities” of the contending judgements would be greater than one.17
16
Or that a contrary value applies to it.
17 Objectivist ambivalence may thus be contrasted with a lottery paradox situation. In the lottery
paradox, while one reasonably believes of each ticket in a sufficiently big lottery that it will lose, one
nevertheless believes that some ticket will win. This may be explained by the fact that one actually
17
Thus, deliberative ambivalence reveals that it is misconceived to understand the
conceptual relations of belief and doubt in terms of mutual exclusion. While the analysis of
this misunderstanding, including the element of truth it undoubtedly contains, is beyond the
scope of this paper, we have seen that objectivist ambivalence consists partly in doubting one
judgement on the basis of the opposed judgement and vice versa. That which speaks for one
judgement invites us to reconsider the other judgement, and such reconsiderations may take
the form of unstable re-articulations of the pair of judgements that together display the agent’s
attitude rather than lead to the collapse of one or both of the judgements.
The Details of Deliberation Reveal Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgement
Against the first problematic line of thought, the former section summarizes the
judge-and-doubt structure binding the opposed attitudes in objectivist ambivalence. This
structure is an aspect of the rationality both of factual beliefs and of value judgements. The
character of the attitude at the one pole, be it a judgement or a belief, is not independent of the
other pole of the ambivalence. Rather, the fact that the judgement is held by the agent as
opposed to another judgement of her, and furthermore the concrete character of the contention
of these judgements, shapes both poles. However, contending value judgements have the
further element that the contention need not be only subjective: in addition to the attitudes, the
character of the object A being of value V is challenged and moulded by the judgement that A
is not V, and vice versa. This shows itself once we think of the target of deliberation under
typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgement. For the target of such deliberation is not
only to find which of the judgements should be dropped, but also, and at the same time, we
try to understand our object in terms of both evaluations together. Deliberation may even
believes about the tickets only that they have a very high chance of losing, and this is of course true of
each ticket but not of collections of them: one raises one’s chances by buying many tickets. (The above
description follows Christensen 2004, who infers that belief is a probabilistic idea in the first place.
David Christensen, Putting Logic in its Place: Formal Constraints on Rational Belief (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2004).) Unlike the contradiction in the lottery paradox, the contradiction in objectivist
ambivalence cannot be explained away by probabilistic measures.
18
identify a tension-fraught value that objectively applies, and in so doing may re-articulate,
rather than solve, the ambivalence.
The former section treats one out of two origins of the mistaken philosophical
assumption that it is impossible to judge that a value applies to object A and yet to judge that
this same value does not apply to A. To see that the judgements in objectivist ambivalence of
value judgement typically contend on how the value should be characterized is to challenge
the second origin as well. This second thought takes deliberation of value as analogous to
deliberation of fact in the following sense: questions of fact are guided by an ideal of
examining the application of a concept without interfering with that concept. We sometimes
identify an uncertainty or ambivalence as “about fact pure and simple,” and this we may
express in statements such as: The concept standing as it is, there is still the question of the
truth of the matter.18
Now, by analogy, we may appeal to a notion of pre-determined value
concepts, and to the significance that such a notion would have for the structure of value
judgement; and such prejudice leads to inadequate ideas of measurability and
incommensurability. Supposedly, when there is a question of A (making an apology; a piece
of art) being V (due; great), we know what V (or the word “V”) means and the only thing to
deliberate on is whether V applies to A. Similarly, when there is a conflict between V and W
applying to A, then, supposedly, we know what V as well as W mean, and one of the
following is the case: (1) “V” and “not-W” mean the same (or one entails the other), and we
can try to settle whether V or W (or none of them) applies to A, but there is no question of
rational ambivalence between them; or, alternatively, (2) “V” and “not-W” mean different
things. In such a case perhaps V and W could be analysed into more basic values. Yet in the
end, so runs this line of thought, we shall either return to the option of sameness or be forced
to describe them as incommensurable. Of course, some incommensurability does not commit
us to ambivalence: take, for example, “Dan is handsome and friendly.” The idea I criticize
here, however, is that ambivalence of value judgement means only that the person admits two
19
values which engage him in opposite directions. Recall Samuel, who found his mentor
corrupted but also devoted to Samuel’s education. For him, the corruption of the mentor did
not raise questions about his devotion and vice versa. Such cases surely exist, but they cannot,
as we have seen, provide the key for ambivalence of value judgement in general.
Such framing, which sees the concept as pre-determined, or as something that is not
the business of a judgement, is misconceived: value judgements typically apply the value to
the object and, by the same token, they determine how the value applies, i.e., they
characterize the value. In deliberation we inquire how the value applies (or does not apply).
For example, we may ask ourselves what would make this piece of art great.19
Now suppose
that we indeed judge that it is great and (by the same token) that greatness should be inflected
such that the work would be found to be a great art. How does this bear on our judgement
(when there is one) to the contrary? Our earlier considerations of deliberation in concrete
cases has reminded us that it includes shaping and reshaping of the value concept, which in
unsolved ambivalence does not converge towards harmony
A consideration of Michael Stocker’s analysis of rational conflicts in terms of plural
values may help sharpen our conclusion20
. Stocker offers subtle observations regarding
conflicted human beings who are rationally engaged in situations in which both taking action
and avoiding it have some irremovable value. The values in such conflicts, he argues,
however, must be different from each other (chaps. 6 and 8). The assumption underlying his
position is that finding one common value in mutually exclusive states of affairs does not
leave any room for rational deliberation between them: to the extent that epistemic questions
have already been settled, one has, according to Stocker, to choose the option which has
“more of the value,” and if the two options are equal in this respect as well it simply does not
18
This should by no means be read as a claim that in factual contexts truth and belief come after the
character of pertaining concepts has been determined.
19 This aspect is often intertwined in intricate ways with factual questions in regard to the object, which
inform the value judgement.
20 Michael Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1990).
20
matter what one does. However, as we have seen, objectivist ambivalence requires21
a unitary
value, but this would not be a univocally determinate concept.
If the objectivist ambivalence requires a unity of value, let us not infer from this that
the plurality of values is unimportant. Deliberation and ambivalence often concern plural
values. Moreover, many real-life cases combine objectivist ambivalence regarding a
particular value with plural values. Furthermore, ambivalence regarding an object often
involves ambivalence as to whether the one judgement applies the same value that the other
denies, or whether they apply different values. But is it true, at least, that plural values are
irrelevant to objectivist ambivalence per se? Quite the contrary: plural (unstable) perspectives
belong to the unity of a value, though we must remember that they are not separate from each
other or from the value concerned.
The Details of Deliberation Reveal that Ambivalence Can Be Acted On
It may be worthwhile to examine Stocker 1990’s other main claim in view of the
discussion above. Stocker claims that rationally conflicted people need not aimlessly
vacillate. Their conflict may be expressed in the way in which they deal or live with it, in so
far their dealing with the conflict is understood in broad terms. Thus far, I agree; however,
Stocker supposes that this claim requires another claim: he argues that such conflicts are
harmonious in so far as one’s action or acting is concerned. To show that this is the case,
Stocker argues that half the judgements about what one ought to do could be reconstructed as
non-action guiding (see, esp., chap. 4).
Focussing on the objectivity-aspiring character of ambivalence of value judgement
rather than on its character as judgemental engagement, I have been only indirectly discussing
21
One may be also objectivistically ambivalent between different values, as may be the case when we
find a piece of art “impressive and yet insignificant.” Yet to say that these words may express
objectivist ambivalence is to refer to a situation in which insignificance threatens the impressive
character of the work. In other words, in such formulations of objectivist ambivalence, and in the
phenomena that they describe better than one-value formulations, the unity of value comprises the
hidden aspect.
21
the role of deliberation in deciding the required action under ambivalence as to something’s
value. However, since objectivity-directedness and judgemental engagement are two sides of
one coin, and since judgemental engagement is generally bound up with, and often consists
in, desire, it is not surprising that we may draw conclusions in this respect as well. In
particular, the opposed judgements in ambivalence, according to which something ought to be
done and yet ought not to be done, would often be action-guiding. The traces of Williams’s
thought that we followed earlier can now lead us in this direction: we have seen that action in
accord with one of the opposed judgements often forms part of a larger action or conduct,
which respects both judgements and their opposition. Consider, for example, the critic who
judges ambivalently that she ought and that she ought not rate a certain film as “five stars.”
Let us suppose that while, narrowly speaking, she acts on one pole and rates the film as only
four stars, her more general action includes such things as warm words of praise, expressions
of discomfort when somebody mentions the review, and a lower rating to other films in the
following weeks. Thus far Stocker might agree, except for distinguishing acting in accordance
with the action-guiding judgement from all sorts of other behaviour. This dispute could be
verbal if there was a way to distinguish the two levels of behaviour. We may, however, ask
whether the lower rating of films in the following weeks does not transform the “four stars”
given by the critic to the film into a “five stars of honour.” Moreover, we have had a glimpse
of the power of deliberation to aim at some narrow action, which ambivalently satisfies both
judgements in a way that is not arbitrary and which respects their particular tension. Consider,
in particular, such cases in which the object of ambivalence is a potential action under a
certain description A (e.g., apologizing), and in which the agent judges one – tense and
ambivalently held – thing regarding A-ing, namely that it ought and yet ought not be carried
out. In some such cases, this tension-fraught judgement may be fulfilled by, or reflect, action,
which comprises A-ing and not A-ing.22
Thus, let us consider my judgement that I ought and I
22
See Hili Razinsky, “An Outline for Ambivalence of Value Judgement,” in review. In particular, I
show there that it is central to the logic of action and desire, that some actions call for a tension-fraught
description of the form A-ing and not A-ing.
22
ought not to apologize for something unpleasant I said in response to an insult. I may say to
the person concerned something like, “I am really sorry, although I must also remark that you
have challenged my better attitudes,” where the idea is that the second part of this sentence is
sufficiently friendly not to annul the point in the first.
VII. IN GUISE OF CONCLUSION
Objectivist ambivalence, thus, is not an impossibility. It neither should nor can be
assimilated to deliberation over prima facie judgements in order to reach a final judgement.
Rather, both deliberation and objectivist ambivalence must be acknowledged if either is to be
understood. In particular, pursuing some of their interrelations enabled us to take note of three
elements of objectivist ambivalence of value judgement: mutual moulding and undermining
of the opposed judgements (VI, first subsection); ambivalence regarding how to inflect the
value; and the openness of the values themselves to inflection, and, in ambivalence, to the
tension-fraught mutual moulding of conflicting inflections (VII, second subsection).23
Finally, if objectivist ambivalence and its interrelationships with deliberation and
ambivalence are acknowledged, this may recommend certain philosophical course changes.
For one, the complex interrelationships between deliberation and ambivalence call for
opening up the field of study of deliberation.24
Thus, we should ask such questions as how
deliberation aims at action and at value under actual ambivalence as well as in other cases. In
particular, it cannot be generally supposed that deliberation aims at dissolving ambivalence.
Even when deliberation aims at harmony, the deliberation as well as its result cannot usually
be isolated from the ambivalence. More generally, the present investigation shows that we
should not be thinking of deliberation in terms of pre-given procedures, but rather be sensitive
23
I expound this tripartite structure in “An Outline for Ambivalence of Value Judgement,” in review.
24 For two studies of deliberation that treat it as part of the agent’s concrete and possibly conflictual
situation, see Amelie Rorty, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of
Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 425-44 and Adam Morton,
Disasters and Dilemmas: Strategies for Real-life Decision Making (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991)
esp. chaps. 3 and 4.
23
to how deliberation expresses, responds to, and reshapes one’s actual perspective, including
judgements and their objectivist ambivalence; to how deliberation maintains our attitudes and
transforms them; and to how it may both solve ambivalence and generate it. Such an approach
would afford a new appreciation of the rationality to which deliberations appeal.
At the same time, deliberation, when it is not excluded from life, is key to the analysis
of the structures of objectivity-identification and of action. We can, in particular, inquire into
diverse forms of ambivalence, and we can ask how ambivalence could or should intermingle
with indifference, uncertainty and wholeheartedness. In short, I hope to have shown that the
study of human life and value ought to take ambivalence seriously. If my argument is correct,
it has two broad consequences:
First, and meta-theoretically, it appears that theories of value and of ethics that cannot
allow for objectivist ambivalence are inappropriate and that ethical theories must be re-
thought jointly with objectivist ambivalence. I refer here in particular to the debate between
cognitivist and non-cognitivist views on the one hand, and to more substantial explications of
ethics on the other. As regards the latter theories, it could perhaps be objected that they are
spared this challenge if they are conceived as revisions of ordinary ethical discourse. The
present study suggests, however, that the notion of value requires that values (e.g., of utility,
of moral ought, of rationality, of desirability) invite ambivalence. In any case, these
difficulties also have a more positive aspect: the insights of ethical theory can be complicated
and sharpened once ambivalence is allowed into the frame. This brings us to the second
aspect of taking ambivalence seriously: that the concept of ambivalence (objectivist
ambivalence included) may now form part of the instruments of philosophical investigation.
Human possibilities are related to ambivalence in various ways, and once the concept of
ambivalence is at our disposal, a philosophical investigation can be concerned with particular
forms of ambivalence and their particular relations with other aspects of human life. Indeed, it
is also to the variety of life and rationality, and their ambivalence, that appeal must be made
in order to characterize, ambivalently or not, certain ways of dealing with things as better than
others.
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