Abstract
Many including Judith Jarvis Thomson, Philippa Foot, Peter Geach, Richard Kraut, and Paul Ziff have argued for good simpliciter skepticism. According to good simpliciter skepticism, we should hold that there is no concept of being good simpliciter or that there is no property of being good simpliciter. I first show that prima facie we should not accept either form of good simpliciter skepticism. I then show that all of the arguments that good simpliciter skeptics have proposed for their view fail to show that we have good reason to accept good simpliciter skepticism. So, I show that we do not have good reason to accept good simpliciter skepticism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Foot (2001, esp. pp. 2–3).
See Korsgaard (2014, lecture 1).
Some relativists such as Stephen Finlay argue that we should adopt a relativistic semantics for ‘good’ and it might seem that Finlay’s arguments for this view are independent of his arguments for adopting relativistic semantics for ‘ought’, ‘reason’, and ‘wrong’; see Finlay (2014). However, this is not the case, since if we should make the moves that Finlay makes to explain why we should adopt a relativistic semantics for one of these terms, and to explain away the surface appearance of absolutism, we should make analogous moves with regards to these other terms too. The good simpliciter skeptics that I am concerned with in this paper would take the argument that if they are skeptics about good simpliciter, then they should be skeptics about non-end-relational notions of ‘reason’, ‘wrong’, and ‘ought’ as a very serious objection to their good simpliciter skepticism.
See Kraut (2012, chapters 16–27). The arguments that Kraut makes in the first half of his book are the arguments that I am concerned with in this paper.
We can perhaps further positively characterise what it is to say that X is good simpliciter in the following way: the claim ‘X is good simpliciter’ is synonymous with the claim, ‘X is desirable for its own sake’. See infra note 23.
See Thomson (2008, pp. 1–12).
See, most clearly, Geach (1956, p. 34).
See Kraut (2012, p. 27).
I mean to be—and can be for the argument in this paper—agnostic on whether these two reasons to refrain from accepting conceptual and metaphysical goodness simpliciter skepticism are sufficiently weighty that they could outweigh reasons to accept conceptual or metaphysical goodness simpliciter skepticism.
See Helm (2009, §2.1).
See, for instance, Nozick (1981, pp. 374–379).
Cf. Olson (2005, pp. 34–35).
Good simpliciter skeptics might object to my claim that it is conceptually possible to hold that X is good in a way that exceeds X’s goodness for others or as a particular kind of thing on different grounds. Good simpliciter skeptics might hold that we should doubt that any ordinary speaker would assert that it is just good simpliciter that the Nazis lost the war because it would seem bizarre for an ordinary speaker to say that ‘it was good that the Nazis’ lost, but by that I don’t mean that it was good for anyone that they lost’; call this claim claim. However, if there is anything bizarre about claim it is that it is hard to read claim and not read the bizarre implication that (a) the fact that the Nazis’ lost was not good for anyone and claim implies that (b) it is not the case that at least part of what was good about the Nazis’ loss was that their loss made many peoples’ lives go better than they would have done otherwise. The bizarreness of (a) and (b) explains the bizarreness of claim. But although (a) and (b) seem false, their falsity does not entail that the Nazis’ loss was not good simpliciter. So we can explain why claim is bizarre without holding that it is bizarre to claim that the Nazis’ loss was good simpliciter.
It also seems to me that given the resources that I have just utilized to argue that other things equal we should not accept good simpliciter skepticism we can show that if we are not provided with a reason to accept good simpliciter skepticism, we should also reject good simpliciter skepticism. Remember that in the last section I clarified that the types of good simpliciter skeptic that I am arguing against are those, such as Geach, Thomson, Ziff, and Kraut, who hold that: (i) we should be skeptics about good simpliciter in particular, that is, there are reasons to be skeptical of good simpliciter that are not reasons to be skeptical of other moral and ethical notions; and that (ii) there is something suspicious in particular about the concept or property of good simpliciter, that is, it is not that because of first-order normative arguments we have good reason to believe that there are no instances of good simpliciter but rather that we should believe that even if there were good substantive first-order arguments for there being things that are good simpliciter, we should doubt that there could be things that instantiate the property of being good simpliciter or that fall under the concept of good simpliciter.
Given that the only versions of good simpliciter skepticism that I am discussing are views that instantiate (i) and (ii) we should not only not accept but also reject (such) conceptual good simpliciter skepticism if we are given no reason to accept (such) conceptual good simpliciter skepticism because, as I have been arguing, and argue further in the next section, many normative ethicists, other philosophers, and ordinary people seem to use the concept of good simpliciter. And if we are given no reason to doubt that these people are mistaken or conceptually confused, we should accept that they are not mistaken or conceptually confused and so reject conceptual good simpliciter skepticism.
It seems to me that it is a little more complicated whether we should reject metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism if prima facie we should not accept metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism for the reasons that I have discussed in this section (that is §2) and if there are no reasons to accept metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism. Suppose that, other things equal we should posit as many properties as we need so long as we do not thereby posit any new fundamental kinds of properties—see Rowland (forthcoming b, §2)—and that, as I argue in §5 below, positing a property of good simpliciter does not commit one to positing a new fundamental kind of property. In this case it might be that given that (a) the only type of metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism that I am concerned with is a form of good simpliciter skepticism that instantiates (i) and (ii), (b) that we should not accept metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism, and that (c) many normative ethicists, other philosophers, and ordinary people claim that many things have the property of being good simpliciter (see §5 below), then other things equal, that is before engaging in substantive first-order normative ethical debates about whether anything is good simpliciter, we should reject metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism.
Pigden (1990, p. 141).
Cf. Thomson (2008, p. 13).
See Pleasants (2009, esp. p. 677).
Even those, such as Moore, who hold that good simpliciter is unanalysable accept this view; see Moore (1993, p. 68, p. 237, p. 242).
See Grice (1989, p. 26).
See also supra note 18.
See Rowland (forthcoming a). In ibid. I also argue that all claims about goodness can be analysed in terms of claims about reasons; this view would explain (E) even if (F) did not.
See ibid. and Schroeder (2010, esp. pp. 45–48). As I argue elsewhere (Rowland, forthcoming a, §5), seeming counter-examples to (F) such as ‘good roots’ and ‘good doomsday device’ are not really counter-examples. Since if F is a good doomsday device, there are reasons for merely possible agents who want or have reason to want a doomsday device to want F even if no actual agents want or have reason to want a doomsday device.
It might be argued that other claims entail claims about reasons for positive responses but do not seem similar to claims about goodness; for instance, claims about rightness might entail claims about reasons for positive responses. However, we can distinguish claims about goodness from claims about rightness because claims about goodness do not entail claims about the appropriateness of certain reactive attitudes such as blame but claims about failing to do what’s right do, or often do, entail claims about the appropriateness of such reactive attitudes.
See Thomson (2008, p. 36).
ibid. p. 11.
See ibid.
For an introduction and survey of such buck-passing and fitting-attitude accounts of goodness see Suikkanen (2009).
Thomson (2008, pp. 20–21).
Furthermore, denying that the above defence of (iv)—the defence that begins: ‘Ah, but…’—conflates the difference between meta-ethics and normative ethics entails that all response-dependence theorists hold that there are no actions that are morally wrong but only actions that are morally-wrong-for-us or from our perspective; but many proponents of response-dependent views precisely do not make this claim.
Though, to reiterate, this is not to say that there are no advantages to adopting full blown reductionist relativist views of ethics and morality; see Sect. 1 and supra note 4.
Kraut (2012, p. 27) clarifies that his view is metaphysical not conceptual good simpliciter skepticism.
Kraut (2012, p. 46).
See Parfit (2011, p. 39).
Parfit (2011, p. 39).
Cf. Kraut (2012, p. 57 and pp. 59–62).
Kraut provides another objection against the view that there are properties of being good simpliciter that he claims to be the converse objection to the double-counting objection; see Kraut (2012, p. 79). According to this objection, (i) if ϕ-ing is good simpliciter but ϕ-ing is bad for you or others, then we should not ϕ. But (ii) if some things are good simpliciter, it should be the case that sometimes you should ϕ because ϕ-ing is good simpliciter even though ϕ-ing is bad for you or others; see ibid. ch. 14.
However, I am not convinced that we should hold (ii). We should hold
(ii*) If some things are good simpliciter, it should be the case that we should sometimes respond positively to ϕ-ing (or have reasons to respond positively to ϕ-ing) because ϕ-ing is good simpliciter even though ϕ-ing is bad for you or others.
But it is clear that there are cases in which we should respond positively to ϕ-ing (or have reasons to respond positively to ϕ-ing) because ϕ-ing is good simpliciter even though ϕ-ing is bad for you or others. For instance, supposing that mathematical discoveries are good simpliciter, we have strong reason to hope that strangers make these discoveries even if these discoveries have no good consequences for anyone and if it would be slightly worse for these strangers if they did make these discoveries. Similarly, suppose that Wittgenstein’s life was in fact bad for him and would have been better for him if he had not been a philosopher. Even if Wittgenstein’s philosophy were not good for anyone but were only good simpliciter, we would still have strong reasons to be glad that Wittgenstein was a philosopher because his work was so insightful, and the fact that it is insightful, on its own, makes it good simpliciter.
It might be claimed that defenders of good simpliciter should hope a defence of good simpliciter to show that we should reject good simpliciter skepticism and not only to show that we should not accept good simpliciter skepticism. But even if this is the case, in supra note 18 I argued that the arguments that I gave in Sect. 2 of this paper can be used to show that unless we are given good reasons to accept conceptual good simpliciter skepticism, we should reject conceptual good simpliciter skepticism and may well be able to be used to show that unless we are given good reasons to accept metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism, we should reject metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism. So, since I’ve shown that there are no such good reasons to accept either form of good simpliciter skepticism, I’ve also show that we should reject conceptual good simpliciter skepticism, and I may have also shown that we should reject (as well as not accept) metaphysical good simpliciter skepticism.
I would like to thank Brad Hooker and Philip Stratton-Lake for their comments on early versions of this paper and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on more recent versions of this paper.
References
Carter, I. (1999). A measure of freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, G. A. (1995). Self-ownership, freedom, and equality. Cambridge: University Press.
Crisp, R. (2008). Goodness and reasons: Accentuating the negative. Mind, 117(466), 257–265.
Dancy, J. (2004). Ethics without principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dworkin, R. (2001). Sovereign virtue. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Finlay, S. (2014). Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foot, P. (1985). Utilitarianism and the virtues. Mind, 94(374), 196–209.
Foot, P. (2001). Natural goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geach, P. (1956). Good and evil. Analysis, 17(2), 33–42.
Grice, P. (1989). Logic and Conversation. In his studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Helm, B. (2009). Friendship. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (fall 2009 edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/friendship/.
Korsgaard, C. (2014). Fellow creatures: The moral and legal standing of animals. The Uehiro lectures 2014. University of Oxford. http://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/events/old_events/2014/2014_uehiro_lecture_1.
Kraut, R. (2012). Against absolute goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, G. E. (1993). Principia ethica revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explorations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Olson, J. (2005). Axiological investigations. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
Parfit, D. (2011). On what matters (Vol. 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pigden, C. (1990). Geach on “Good”. Philosophical Quarterly, 40(159), 129–154.
Pleasants, N. (2009). Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty. Philosophia, 37(4), 669–679.
Rabinowicz, W., & Rønnow-Rasmussen, T. (2000). A distinction in value: Intrinsic and for its own sake. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 100(1), 33–51.
Ridge, M. (2014). Impassioned belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rowland, R. (forthcoming a). Reasons as the unity among the varieties of goodness. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
Rowland, R. (forthcoming b). Rescuing companions in guilt arguments. Philosophical Quarterly.
Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schroeder, M. (2007). Slaves of the passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schroeder, M. (2009). Buck-passers’ negative thesis. Philosophical Explorations, 12(3), 341–347.
Schroeder, M. (2010). Value and the right kind of reason. In R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaethics 5 (pp. 25–55). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stratton-Lake, P., & Hooker, B. (2006). Scanlon versus moore on goodness. In T. Horgan & M. Timmons (Eds.), Metaethics after moore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Suikkanen, J. (2009). Buck-passing accounts of value. Philosophy Compass, 4(5), 768–779.
Temkin, L. (1986). Inequality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 15(2), 99–121.
Thomson, J. J. (1994). Goodness and utilitarianism. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 67(4), 7–21.
Thomson, J. J. (2008). Normativity. Ithaca: Open Court.
Ziff, P. (1960). Semantic analysis. Ithaca: Cornell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rowland, R. In defence of good simpliciter . Philos Stud 173, 1371–1391 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0551-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0551-9