At the most general level, fitting-attitude theories of value (FAtheories) seek to explain various kinds of evaluative facts (e.g.,facts about what’s good, admirable, or delightful) by appeal toother normative facts about certain types of human responses. FAtheories can differ according to (i) the kinds of evaluative factsthey aspire to explain, (ii) the kinds of normative facts about humanresponses in terms of which they explain the evaluative facts, and(iii) the types of responses to which they appeal in theirexplanations. For example, an FA theorist might propose to explainevaluative facts about who’sadmirable in terms ofnormative facts about thefittingness ofadmiration:they might hold that whenever someone is admirable, that’sfully because it’s fitting for anyone to admire thatperson. And they might offer parallel explanations, in terms of thefittingness of various other types of response, for a range of otherevaluative facts, such as facts about who’s lovable,blameworthy, despicable, delightful, etc.

Explanations like these are the bread and butter of FA theories. Itseems platitudinous that someone is admirable just in casethey’re fitting to admire, lovable just in case they’refitting to love, blameworthy just in case they’re fitting toblame, and so on. What makes these claims of equivalence and their kinso plausible is that the evaluative properties they reference eachseem clearly connected to a human response of a certain kind where therelevant connection seems normative rather than merely descriptive.Being lovable, for instance, isn’t merely a matter of beingsomeone whom onedoes orcould love; instead,it’s a matter of being someone whom it’sfittingto love or whomerits this attitude. And the same goes formany other specific evaluative properties, including but not limitedto those mentioned above (Brandt 1946; Schroeder 2010; Way 2012;Howard 2018). FA theories offer a natural account of theseequivalences. For example, the FA theorist can say that what explainsthe equivalence ofbeing lovable withbeingfitting to love is that facts involving the former propertyare always grounded in, or obtain in virtue of, facts involving thelatter.

Many FA theorists aspire to explain not only various specificevaluative properties, such as being lovable or delightful, but alsogeneric value, i.e., the property of being simply good, or valuablesimpliciter. Assuming that being valuablesimpliciter is identical to being desirable, an FA theory isstraightforward: a thing’s being valuablesimpliciter,or desirable, could be explained in terms of its beingfit todesire. Alternatively, if being valuable isn’t (always) amatter of being desirable, then FA theorists might instead explainfacts about what’s valuable in terms of facts about what’sfitting tovalue, where this attitude of‘valuing’ might consist in various pro-responses,including,inter alia, being glad that, respecting, takingpleasure in, and protecting.

FA theories have many advantages. For example, they seem to constitutean attractive middle ground between “primitivism” aboutevaluative facts—the view that such facts are fundamental orinexplicable in other terms—and“subjectivism”—the view that evaluative facts arefully explicable in terms of non-normative, naturalistic facts abouthuman responses (McHugh and Way 2016). Relatedly, FA theories of valuesimpliciter purport to “demystify” factsinvolving this property (Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen 2004). And FA theories more generallystand to provide unifying explanations of the varieties of value(Schroeder 2010; Rowland 2019) and to explain the structure of, andvarious necessary connections within, certain parts of the normativeand evaluative domain (Way 2013). But FA theories also face a numberof outstanding issues, including concerns about circularity andpotential counterexamples. This entry clarifies the nature of FAtheories of value, highlights some important choice points forproponents of these theories, and surveys and catalogues the mainadvantages of the theories and the most pressing, outstanding issuesthat they face today.

• 1. Clarifying FA Theories: Some Choice Points
  • 1.1 Metaphysical, Conceptual, or Semantic?
  • 1.2 FA Theory, Primitivism, and Subjectivism
  • 1.3 Which Normative Property?
  • 1.4 Fitting for Whom?
  • 1.5 Buck Passing
• 2. Attractions
  • 2.1 Normative-Evaluative Connections
  • 2.2 Value “Demystified”
  • 2.3 Unifying the Evaluative
• 3. Outstanding Issues
  • 3.1 The Wrong Kind of Reason Problem
  • 3.2 The Wrong Kind of Value Problem
  • 3.3 The Problem of Partiality
  • 3.4 Circularity
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Clarifying FA Theories: Some Choice Points

1.1 Metaphysical, Conceptual, or Semantic?

Early proponents of FA theory were sometimes unclear about whethertheir intent was to elucidate the natures of evaluative concepts,terms, or properties (e.g., Brentano 1889/2009; Broad 1930; Ewing1939, 1947). In the last decade, however, FA theorists have tended totheorize mostly in a metaphysical mode, seeking to account for variousevaluative properties and facts (McHugh and Way 2016; Howard 2019;Rowland 2019). This entry follows the current trend and characterizesFA theories as metaphysical theses. That being said, for many of thenecessary equivalences between specific evaluative and normativeproperties that certain FA theories entail, their semantic andconceptual counterparts plausibly hold with the corresponding kind ofnecessity. For example, one might reasonably claim that it’strue in virtue of the meanings of the constituent terms, and soanalytic, that someone is admirable just in case they’re fittingto admire (Brandt 1946; Kjellmer 1986). And some have recently arguedthat it’s also true of conceptual necessity, i.e., in virtue ofthe identity of the concepts, that something is generically valuable,or valuablesimpliciter, if and only if it’s fitting tovalue, or “worth valuing” (Svavarsdóttir2014).

Many contemporary FA theorists, then, take their FA theories toprovide metaphysical accounts of evaluative facts and properties. Butthere are various ways to understand what a metaphysical account of aproperty is. Sometimes such accounts are said to reveal theessences of the properties they aim to explain (Fine 1994),other times to assertproperty identities (Jackson 1998), andstill other times to specifygrounds (Rosen 2015b; Berker2018). Common to many contemporary FA theorists, however, is the claimthat their metaphysical accounts of evaluative properties in terms ofnormative properties of human responses entail that facts involvingthe latter areexplanatorilyprior to factsinvolving the former, such that the former facts are always groundedin the latter. This is important for several reasons. First, itreveals a core commitment of many contemporary FA theories, viz., thatthe evaluative facts they seek to explain obtain in virtue ofnormative facts about human responses, rather than the other wayaround. An FA theory of facts about what’sfearsome,for instance, would entail that whenever something is fearsome,that’sbecause it’s fitting to fear. Second, thisexplanatory commitment would seem to rule out understanding FAtheories as stating property identities, given the irreflexivity ofthe grounding relation (see the entry onmetaphysical grounding).

Some claim that the order of explanatory priority posited by FAtheories conflicts with commonsense (for discussion, see Stratton-Lakeand Hooker 2006; Jacobson 2011): if something is fitting to value, forinstance, isn’t that precisely because it’s valuable? Inother words, doesn’t the fittingness of valuing a valuable thingderive from the value of that thing rather than the reverse? Andindeed, isn’t the value of valuable things, at least inprinciple, independent of any actual or possible human responses tothose things? Such concerns are discussed further in sections 2.1 and3.2.

1.2 FA Theory, Primitivism, and Subjectivism

The explanatory element of FA theories also distinguishes thesetheories from “primitivism” about their explananda.Whereas an FA theory of an evaluative property seeks to explain factsinvolving that property by appeal to normative facts about humanresponses, primitivism about the property holds that facts involvingit are explanatorily basic or fundamental. A paradigmatic proponent ofprimitivism is G.E. Moore (1903), who held this view about theproperty of being (intrinsically) good, or valuablesimpliciter. For Moore, something that’s goodsimpliciter just is good; its goodness can’t beexplained in other terms, and so,a fortiori, can’t beexplained in the way FA theorists propose. Notably, Mooreanprimitivism about good is in principle compatible with FA theories ofvarious other evaluative properties. For example, one might favor anFA theory ofbeing pitiful, but reject such a theory of beinggood (or vice versa). And more generally, FA theorists might beselective, for various reasons, about the evaluative properties theyseek to explain. Possible reasons for such selectivity are discussedin section 3.

FA theories of evaluative properties can also be distinguished from“subjectivist” theories of those properties, which seek toexplain evaluative properties entirely in terms of human responsesthat meet certain non-normative criteria (e.g., Lewis 1989). Forexample, a subjectivist might hold that whenever someone is admirable,that’s because that person would be admired by anyone who knewall the facts, reflected adequately on them, etc. FA theories, incontrast, hold that what makes someone admirable is that admiring themmeets somenormative condition. What this condition is,precisely, is a matter of intramural debate (see section 1.3). If thecondition in question can ultimately be explained in naturalisticterms, then FA theories may also turn out to be subjectivist theories(McHugh and Way 2022a). For example, if an FA theorist explains factsabout what’s good in terms of facts about what’s rationalto value, but then explains the latter normative facts in naturalisticterms, then their FA theory is subjectivist (Smith 1994). However, FAtheoriesneedn’t be subjectivist: instead, they mightdeny that the normative facts in terms of which they explain certainevaluative facts can themselves be explained in naturalisticterms.

1.3 Which Normative Property?

So far, this entry has used the word ‘fittingness’ to pickout the normative property that FA theories appeal to in theirexplanations of evaluative facts. The fittingness relation can beglossed as the relation in which a response stands to its object whenthe object merits, or is worthy of, that response. Thus to say thatsomething is a fitting object of admiration is to say that it meritsadmiration, or is worthy of this attitude. Many FA theorists have heldnot only that fittingness is the right normative relation to appeal toin explaining evaluative facts, but also that fittingness isexplanatorily fundamental relative to the rest of the normative domainsuch thatall other normative facts can be explained in termsof it (Broad 1930; Ewing 1939, 1947; Chappell 2012; McHugh and Way2016; Howard 2019). But FA theorists needn’t be committed toeither of these claims. For instance, FA theorists might agree thatevaluative facts should be explained in terms of facts about fittingresponses, but reject that fittingness is explanatorily fundamentalrelative to the rest of the normative domain. Alternatively, theymight deny that fittingness is the right normative property to appealto in explaining evaluative facts and opt instead to explainevaluative facts by appeal to facts involving a distinct normativeproperty of responses. Other candidates for the normative property inquestion include a response’s being such that one“ought” to have it (Sidgwick 1874), its being“correct” (Brentano 1889/2009), “justified”(Ewing 1959), “rational” (Brandt 1979; Anderson 1993;Smith 1994), “required” (Chisholm 1986; Lemos 1994),“warranted” (Gibbard 1990), or its being such thatthere’s (some, sufficient, or decisive) “reason” forone to have it (Scanlon 1998; Schroeder 2010; Rowland 2019). Thedebate among FA theorists concerning which normative property toappeal to in their theories continues today. Presently, the two mostpopular options are fittingness and reasons. For example, an FAtheorist who favors the latter option might claim that wheneversomething is valuable, that’s fully because there arereasons for anyone to value it (see section 1.5). Some costs andbenefits associated with the FA theorist’s selection of eitherof these currently popular options are discussed in sections 2 and3.

1.4 Fitting for Whom?

FA theories explain evaluative properties in terms of normative factsabout responses that are somehow called for by things that have thoseproperties. Butwho is to have the responses in question?This is undertheorized, but the answer seems to be: it depends. Inparticular, the answer seems to depend on the nature of the evaluativeproperty that an FA theory seeks to explain. If the evaluativeproperty is “agent-neutral”, then everyone, or justanyone, is to have the response in terms of which FA theories aim toexplain the relevant property; if the property is“agent-relative”, then at least someone, but not justanyone, is to have the response. Whether an evaluative property isneutral or relative can be a matter of debate, but considerawesomeness as a plausible example of the former andshamefulness as an example of the latter. The awesome callsfor everyone, or just anyone, to be in awe of it, but the sameisn’t so for shamefulness: not just anyone is to be ashamed of ashameful act; instead, a shameful act calls for shame only on the partof the person who performed it (or perhaps also on the part of thosewho are somehow closely related).^[1]

A further, related question is whether the normative property ofresponses that FA theories appeal to is (or should be)objective, such that all facts are in principle relevant towhether it obtains, orperspectival, such that onlyepistemically accessible or possessed facts are relevant. Here, too,it seems the FA theorist should say that it depends on the nature ofthe evaluative property that an FA theory aims to explain. Forinstance, facts about whether someone isblameworthydon’t seem to depend on anyone’s epistemic position, sosomeone could be blameworthy without anyone knowing it. FA theoristsshould therefore say that such facts are to be explained by appeal toan objective normative property of responses, i.e., a property theobtaining of which can be affected by facts unknown to the subject. Incontrast, since facts about thecuriousness of a question orthecredibility of a proposition can seem to depend on asubject’s perspective, FA theorists should say that such factsare to be explained by appeal to a normative property that’ssimilarly perspective dependent (Way 2020)—for example,subjective reasons (Fogal and Worsnip 2021) or perhapswarrant (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000a). This is a furtherway in which an evaluative property might be agent-relative, asopposed to agent-neutral: if it’s perspectival, as opposed toobjective. To be clear: this doesn’t mean that FA theories arenecessarily disunified, appealing to different normative propertiesdepending on their explanandum. Instead, FA theorists can seek toexplain whatever objective normative property they appeal to in termsof its perspectival counterpart or vice versa, and claim thatevaluative properties can ultimately be explained by appeal towhichever of these is more fundamental. For example, an FA theoristmight appeal to both objective and subjective reasons to explain thefull range of evaluative properties they aim to explain, but thenexplain subjective reasons in terms of objective ones, and thusultimately appeal only to normative facts of a single kind inexplaining the evaluative facts.

1.5 Buck Passing

Some suggest that FA theories date as far back as Kant (1785 [1996])(see, e.g., Suikkanen 2009). More commonly, the progenitors of FAtheory are taken to be Sidgwick (1874) and Brentano (1889/2009).Although many have discussed and defended FA theories in the meantime(for a nice potted history, see Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen 2004) it’s relativelyuncontroversial that T.M. Scanlon (1998) is largely responsible forthe contemporary revival of interest in FA theory (Jacobson 2011).According to Scanlon’s “buck-passing” account ofvalue, “to call something valuable is to say that it has otherproperties that provide reasons for behaving in certain ways withregard to it” (96). There are several things to note aboutScanlon’s account. First, it purports to provide a theoryspecifically of being valuablesimpliciter. Scanlondoesn’t comment on whether he takes the form of his account togeneralize to apply to more specific evaluative properties such asbeing lovable or delightful, though it’s easy to see how itmight. For example, we might claim that to call something delightfulis to say that it has other properties that provide reasons for beingdelighted by it. Second, Scanlon isn’t very specific abouthow we have reason to behave with regard to valuable things,i.e., about the specific human responses in terms of which he aims toexplain facts about valuesimpliciter. This seemsintentional. Scanlon suggests that “to claim that something isvaluable (or that it is ‘of value’) is to claim thatothers also have reason to value it, as you do” (95), but holdsthat “valuing” might consist variously in a range ofpro-responses, where the particular kind of pro-response to a valuablething that we have reasons to have depends on, and so varies accordingto, the kind of valuable thing at issue. For example, onScanlon’s view, the pro-response(s) that we have reasons to havetoward a valuable piece of music can differ from the pro-response thatwe have reasons to have toward a valuable friendship. And it can bematter of substantive normative dispute, he suggests, whichpro-response we have reasons to have toward each. Thus, Scanlonwrites: “understanding the value of something often involves notmerely knowing that it is valuable or how valuable it is, but also howit is to be valued” (100). (For a possible difficulty with thispart of Scanlon’s view, see section 3.4.)

The final thing to note about Scanlon’s account is itscommitment to the claim that the property of being valuabledoesn’t itself provide a reason to value the things that haveit. Rather, Scanlon claims, being valuable is the “purelyformal, higher-order” property of having other properties thatprovide reasons for a pro-response. This is the feature ofScanlon’s view that makes it a “buck-passing”account: the account passes the normative buck from the property ofbeing valuable to lower-order properties of a thing that providereasons to respond to it favorably, where these lower-order propertiescorrespond to the value-making features of the valuable thing inquestion. This feature of Scanlon’s account has been called its“negative thesis” (Schroeder 2009). This is in contrast toits “positive thesis”: that whenever something isvaluable, that’s fully because there are reasons to have apro-response to it. The positive thesis is what makes Scanlon’stheory an FA theory: it claims that certain evaluativefacts—facts about valuesimpliciter—are alwaysgrounded in normative facts about certain human responses, viz., factsto the effect that the relevant responses are favored by reasons. Asseveral authors have pointed out, however, Scanlon’s negativethesis isn’t entailed by the positive one and is otherwiseinessential to FA theory (see esp. Schroeder 2009). The costs andbenefits of the negative thesis are still being debated today (forsome advantages, see Suikkanen 2009; for some costs, see Schroeder2009 and Johnson King 2019). Perhaps the most promising, conciliatoryapproach is to claim that the property of being valuable does providea reason to value the things that have it, but only aderivative reason which doesn’t contribute any weightto the case for valuing the thing in question over and above thatcontributed by the non-derivative reasons provided by certain of thething’s lower-order properties (Schroeder 2009; McHugh and Way2016; Rowland 2019). Regardless, since the negative thesis isn’tplausibly essential to FA theory, whether to accept this or some otherversion of it is a further choice point for FA theorists.

To summarize, FA theorists face a number of choices in formulatingtheir theories: are their theories metaphysical accounts of evaluativefacts and properties, analyses of evaluative concepts, or semanticaccounts of evaluative terms? Which evaluative items, in particular,will they aim to explain? Which normative property of responses willtheir theories appeal to: fittingness, reasons, or some alternative?Who are the subjects of the relevant responses? And do their accounts“pass the buck”? We can characterize FA theories, definingtheir nature and scope, according to our answers to thesequestions.

2. Attractions

This section canvasses three main attractions of FA theories: theirability to explain various interesting connections between certainnormative and evaluative properties (section 2.1); their promise to“demystify” various evaluative properties in various ways(section 2.2); and their potential to unify the evaluative propertiesthey aim to explain by identifying what’s common to them, whilerespecting and clarifying any important differences between them(section 2.3).

2.1 Normative-Evaluative Connections

A central attraction of FA theories is that they promise to explaininteresting connections between certain normative and evaluativeproperties (McHugh and Way 2016). For example, it seems difficult todeny that being valuable and being fitting to value necessarilyco-vary with each other such that something has value if and only ifit’s fitting to value, or merits being valued (though seesection 3.2 for discussion). And, as discussed in the introduction tothis entry, similar equivalences also seem to hold between variousspecific evaluative properties, such as being admirable or delightful,and the fittingness of correspondingly specific types of humanresponses, e.g., admiring, or being delighted by. FA theories offerstraightforward explanations of these equivalences, viz., that factsinvolving the evaluative property on the left-hand side are alwaysgrounded in facts involving the normative property of responsesmentioned on the right-hand side, such that facts of the former kindobtain if and only if, and because, facts of the latter kind do.

As another example, consider that whenever something has value, itseems that there’s at least some reason to value it. Moreprecisely, it’s plausible that, wheneverx is valuablein respectp,p is a reason to valuex (Way2013). For example, if your friendship is valuable in respect of thehappiness it brings, the happiness it brings is also a reason to valueyour friendship. An FA theory that explains facts about value in termsof facts about reasons for valuing is well-suited to explain this:wheneverp is a respect in whichx is valuable,that’s fully becausep is a reason to valuex.And parallel explanations can be given of similarly plausible claimsconcerning the connections between various specific evaluativeproperties and reasons: respects in whichx is admirable,lovable, or contemptible, for instance, are also reasons to admire,love, or contemnx, because facts involving the formerproperties are always grounded in facts involving the latter.

In principle, FA theorists who appeal to fittingness rather thanreasons to explain evaluative facts could also explain the necessaryconnections between reasons and evaluative facts just mentioned. To doso, they’d need only to offer an account of the relationshipbetween fittingness and reasons that, together with their FA theories,explains the connections in question (McHugh and Way 2016; Howard2019). For example, consider a theory of reasons on which reasons fora response consist in facts that contribute to the fittingness of theresponse. Paired with an FA theory of value that says that wheneverx is valuable in respectp, that’s fullybecausep contributes to the fittingness of valuingx, this account entails that wheneverx is valuablein respectp,p is a reason to valuex.Likewise, FA theorists who formulate their theories in terms ofreasons rather than fittingness could try similarly to explain thenecessary connections noted above between evaluative properties andvarious kinds of fitting response (Schroeder 2010). And moregenerally, regardless of which normative property an FA theoristappeals to in their explanations of evaluative facts, explanations ofthe above connections are in principle available to them.

In this respect, FA theories have an advantage over so-called“no-priority views” which hold that evaluative facts andnormative facts of other kinds can’t be fully, non-circularlyexplained by appeal to one another, such that neither kind offact is more fundamental (Ross 1939; Wiggins 1987; McDowell 1998;Tappolet 2011). Indeed, at least barring their ability to providenaturalistic explanations of the normative and evaluative facts thatfigure in the above connections, it seems that no-priority theoristswould need to take these connections as brute. In this way, FAtheories have more explanatory power than no-priority views (Rowland2019).

The potential to explain the above connections, however, isn’tunique to FA theory. For example, consider a version of valueprimitivism, of the kind described in section 1.2, that would reversethe order of explanation posited by FA theories, explaining normativefacts about human responses in terms of evaluative facts about theobjects of those responses. A proponent of this kind of“object-focused” primitivism might hold that wheneversomething is fitting to value that’s fully because thatthing is valuable, and that this is what explains why something hasvalue if and only if it’s fitting to value. And they mightpropose similarly to explain the parallel equivalences between thefittingness of various other types of response and other evaluativeproperties. Likewise, an object-focused view that claims that factsabout reasons to value things are always grounded in the value ofthose things might explain why there are always reasons to valuevaluable things (Orsi 2013b). Object-focused views thus seem able toexplain the normative-evaluative connections noted above. Moreover, aswas mentioned in section 1.1, some find the order of explanationposited by this kind of primitivism more intuitively plausible thanthat claimed by FA theory (for discussion, see Hooker andStratton-Lake 2006; Jacobson 2011). Still, FA theories do seem to haveimportant advantages over object-focused views in explaining theconnections in question.

For one, FA theory is far more parsimonious. Suppose we explainnormative facts about human responses (whether they’re factsabout the fittingness of those responses or facts about reasons forthem) in terms of evaluative facts about the objects of thoseresponses, as object-focused views suggest. So, for example, weexplain facts about fitting admiration in terms of facts about theadmirability of admiration’s object, facts about fitting love interms of facts about the lovability of love’s object, factsabout fitting shame in terms of facts about the shamefulness ofshame’s object, and so on. Assuming these evaluative factscouldn’t then be explained in terms of normative or evaluativefacts of some other kind, it seems we’d thus be left with a(massive) plurality of different kinds of evaluative fact, each ofwhich would be fundamental at least relative to the rest of thenormative and evaluative domain.

Alternatively, if, as the FA theorist proposes, we explain all suchevaluative facts in terms of facts involving a normative relationof asingle kind—e.g., the reason relation or thefittingness relation—then we could in principle take only factsinvolving that relation to be fundamental relative to the rest of thenormative and evaluative domain. Indeed, even if we didn’t takefacts involving the relevant relation to be fundamental and insteadexplained them in terms of facts involving some other normativeproperty of human responses, we’d still have to posit fewerkinds of fundamental facts as compared to object-focused primitivism.Thus, FA theories are more parsimonious than object-focused views.^[2]

A second version of value primitivism, however, fares better alongthis dimension. On this view—call it“response-focused” primitivism—normative facts abouthuman responses are to be explained not in terms of evaluative factsabout theobjects of those responses, but rather in terms ofevaluative facts about the responses themselves (Moore 1903). Inparticular, this view holds that normative facts about our responsesare always grounded in facts to the effect that it’s somehowvaluable (simpliciter) to have those responses.^[3] Similar to object-focused views, response-focused views also seemable to explain the normative-evaluative connections noted above. Forexample, response-focused primitivists might claim that something isvaluable if and only if it’s fitting to value because wheneversomething is fitting to value, that’s because it’sintrinsically valuable to value it; and, as a substantive matter,something is intrinsically valuable to value if and only if it’svaluable (Hurka 2000). And the response-focused theorist mightsimilarly explain the parallel equivalences between various otherevaluative properties and the fittingness of certain other responses,arguing that it’s always intrinsically valuable, e.g., to admirethe admirable, love the lovable, despise the despicable, etc.Likewise, response-focused views might claim to explain why there arealwaysreasons to value valuable things: they might hold thatwhenever there are reasons to value something,that’s because valuing it is valuable and, as a substantivematter, if something is valuable, then it’s valuable tovalue.

In contrast to object-focused views, response-focused viewsneedn’t be less parsimonious than FA theory. In principle, aresponse-focused primitivist could hold that all other normative andevaluative facts are to be explained ultimately in terms of factsabout the valuesimpliciter of various types of humanresponse (or states of affairs, or whatever they take to be thefundamental bearers of value) (Moore 1903). However, response-focusedviews do face potential counterexamples that bear on the plausibilityof their possible explanations of the normative-evaluative connectionsunder discussion (Way 2013; Howard 2018). The main type ofcounterexample targets the response-focused view’s claim that,whenever a response is fitting, it’s valuable to have thatresponse. Perhaps it’s somehow valuable to value what’svaluable, but is it also valuable to be disgusted by the disgusting,to envy the enviable, and to be bored by the boring? If not, thenresponse-focused views would seem unable to explain, e.g., whyit’s fitting to be disgusted by something if and only ifit’s disgusting. And, for similar reasons, they’d also beunable to explain, e.g., why there are reasons to be disgusted by thedisgusting, to be bored by the boring, etc.

FA theories thus look to have some importantprima facieadvantages over at least many of their competitors in explaining thenormative-evaluative connections noted above.^[4] Of course, none of theseadvantages is necessarily decisive with respect to overall theorychoice and there is, in any case, room for rivals of FA theory todispute them. For example, an opponent of FA theory might suggest thatthe outstanding issues for FA theory that we’ll discuss insection 3 are at least as serious as the worries for primitivismraised above. Nevertheless, it remains an attraction of FA theory thatit seems well placed to explain the normative-evaluative connectionsin question.

2.2 Value “Demystified”

A second attraction often claimed for FA theory is its potential to“demystify” value in various ways. Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen (2004) suggest, for example, that FAtheory “removes the air of mystery from the normative‘compellingness’ of values” (391). Their thought isthat it’s no mystery why facts about the value of things shouldhave normative implications for our responses to those things if suchfacts are always grounded in, and so imply, normative facts about ourresponses. But there are other ways in which FA theories have beenclaimed to demystify value and, in particular, valuesimpliciter.

Perhaps the most important way in which FA theory stands to demystifyvalue is by answering skepticism about it. In an influential paper,Peter Geach (1965) argues that there’s no such thing as beinggood or valuablesimpliciter. In particular, he argues thatthe only intelligible kind of “goodness” there is, is“attributive goodness”, i.e., the kind of goodness that athing has when it’s good as the kind of thing that it is. Thus,for Geach, while it makes sense to claim that things can be goodas the kind of thing they are—e.g., that there can begood toasters, baristas, and bombs—there’s no sense to bemade of claims to the effect that something isjust plaingood, i.e., valuable in a way that isn’t relativized to aparticular kind of thing. Citing Geach, Philippa Foot (1985) andJudith Jarvis Thomson (1993, 1997) also marshal versions of this ideaagainst traditional forms of consequentialism, which, on a naturalcharacterization, aim to explain the rightness and wrongness of actsultimately in terms of facts about the (comparative) valuesimpliciter of their outcomes. Although Foot and Thomsondisagree with Geach thatall value is attributive(acknowledging the existence of a distinct property of being goodfor, for instance), they at least agree that there’s nosuch thing as being just plain good, or valuablesimpliciter.This conclusion is independently interesting, but, if true, would alsohave devastating implications for traditional forms ofconsequentialism (not to mention for primitivism about valuesimpliciter of the kind discussed in sections 1.2 and2.1).

As several authors have noted, however, FA theories seem to offer apromising response to this kind of skepticism (Zimmerman 2001; Nye,Plunkett, and Ku 2015; Rowland 2016; McHugh and Way 2016). Inparticular, FA theorists might hold that facts about valuesimpliciter can be explained fully in terms ofcertain kinds of normative facts about certain kinds of valuingresponses. Since skeptics about valuesimpliciteraren’t similarly skeptical about the kinds of normative factsthat FA theorists might appeal to in explaining this property, the FAtheorist’s account of valuesimpliciter would thus seemto render the property intelligible, even by the skeptic’s ownlights. In this way, FA theorists can answer skeptics about valuesimpliciter.

And skepticism about valuesimpliciter isn’t the onlykind of value skepticism that FA theories stand to answer. In the lastseveral decades, a version of consequentialism known as“agent-relative” consequentialism has come to prominence,promising to account for a range of normative phenomena often held tobe incompatible with traditional formulations of the view, e.g.,special obligations and deontic constraints (Dreier 1993; Portmore2005; Smith 2003). This kind of consequentialism can be developed ineither of two ways. On the first way, agent-relative consequentialismposits a distinctive evaluative relation, viz., that of being valuablerelative to an agent, where this ‘agent-relativevalue’ is distinct both from valuesimpliciter, whichis typically held to be agent neutral, and from the relation of beingvaluablefor the agent (see esp. Portmore 2005). According tosome, this relation can be glossed as value from the agent’s“point of view”, where what’s valuable from anagent’s point of view is meant to be distinct somehow, atleast in principle, from what the agent believes, or should believe,to be valuable (see, e.g., Hurka 2003). Agent-relativeconsequentialists who posit this distinctive relation thus claim thatwhich outcomes are bestrelative to an agent might differfrom the outcomes that are either bestsimpliciter or bestfor the agent. And, at least sometimes, what an agent ought to do onthis view is what would produce the outcome that’s best relativeto them. Paired with the right substantive assumptions about how torank outcomes relative to particular agents, this apparatus purportsto allow agent-relative consequentialists to capture the normativephenomena noted above. The second way of developing the view workssimilarly except that, rather than positing a distinctive notion ofagent-relative value, on top of valuesimpliciter and therelation of being valuable for, this variant of the view claims that,in fact, there’s just asingle kind of value, whosenature is fundamentally agent-relative, and which agents ought alwaysto maximize (Smith 2009).

However, in an influential paper, Mark Schroeder (2007b) questions theintelligibility of the kind of agent-relative value to which theseversions of consequentialism appeal. And many others have alsoclaimed, similarly, that they lack any independent, pre-theoreticalgrip on the notion of agent-relative value (Dancy 2000; Hurley 2017;Maguire 2016; Zimmerman 2011). In response, agent-relativeconsequentialists (of both kinds) have turned to FA theory, claimingthat the relevant evaluative relation can be rendered intelligible byexplicating it in terms of certain normative properties of preferenceor desire (see esp. Portmore 2011 and Smith 2009). For example, theagent-relative consequentialist might claim that the agent-relativevalue of an outcome can be explicated in terms of agent-relativereasons for preferring it to its alternatives. They might then claimthat what agents ought to do is to bring about the outcomes they oughtto prefer, all things considered, with the stipulation thatagent-relative reasons for preference can be relevant to whichoutcomes agents ought to prefer. The details are important here, andcertain ways of developing this view seem less tenable than others(see, e.g., Schroeder 2007, 292–94). Still, FA theories do seemto offer agent-relative consequentialists the most promising line ofresponse to their skeptical critics. (For more on this application ofFA theory, see the entry onvalue theory).

2.3 Unifying the Evaluative

A third attraction of FA theory is its potential to unify theevaluative properties it aims to explain, by identifying what’scommon to those properties, while also clarifying importantdifferences among them. As an initial example, consider the variousways of being goodsimpliciter. A thing might be goodinstrumentally, noninstrumentally, intrinsically, extrinsically, insome respect, or overall. An FA theory of being goodsimpliciter can be applied to provide unifying explanationsof all these ways of having this property (McHugh and Way 2016;Rowland 2019). Perhaps the most popular way to do this is to appeal todifferent ways ofvaluing. For instance, an FA theorist mighthold that whenever something is noninstrumentally goodthat’s because it’s fitting to valuefor its ownsake, whereas when something is instrumentally good,that’s because it’s fitting to value ultimatelyfor the sake of something else (viz., something that’sfitting to value for its own sake). For example, they might say thathard work is instrumentally good because it’s fitting to valueultimately for the sake of any reward it brings that's itself fittingto value for its own sake. Similarly, FA theorists might hold thatwhenever something is intrinsically (extrinsically) good,that’s because it’s fitting to value that thingintrinsically (extrinsically), i.e., for its intrinsic (extrinsic)properties. For example, they might say that wisdom is intrinsicallygood because it’s fitting to value for certain of its intrinsicfeatures, whereas money is extrinsically good because it’sfitting to value for certain of its extrinsic, relational properties.Likewise, the FA theorist might explain facts about a thing being goodin some respect (overall) in terms of facts to the effect thatit’s fitting to value that thing in that respect (overall). Forinstance, they might hold that one outcome is good overall becauseit’s fitting to value on the whole, whereas another outcome isbad overall, but good in some respect, because it’s fitting tovalue in that respect (but not overall). And these accounts can ofcourse be combined to explain any way of being good that consists in acomplex of some possible subset of any of the above ways of possessingthis property. For example, an FA theorist might claim that wheneversomething is noninstrumentally, extrinsically good in some respect,that’s just because it’s fitting to value that thing forits own sake, for its extrinsic properties, in the relevant respect.And there are other possibilities for the FA theorist here, beyondappealing to different ways of valuing. For example, an FA theoristmight propose to explain the difference between something being goodin a respect as opposed to being good overall not by appeal todifferences in the ways of valuing that figure in their accounts ofthese properties, but rather by appeal to differences in the normativeproperties that their accounts deploy. For instance, Rowland (2019)suggests that whenever something is good in a respect, that’sbecause there’s apro tanto reason to value it, whereaswhen something is good overall, that’s because there’ssufficient reason to value it. Which approach is moreplausible is a matter of intramural debate.

In addition to offering unifying explanations of all the ways of beinggoodsimpliciter, FA theories also promise to unify othervarieties of value. For example, just as we might offer FA theories ofbeing goodsimpliciter, we might also offer them of theproperties of beingattributively good and of being goodfor some person or thing (Schroeder 2010; Skorupski 2010;McHugh and Way 2016; Rowland 2019). For example, McHugh and Way (2016)suggest as a first pass that whenever something,x, isattributively good, or good as a kind of thingK,that’s fully because it’s fitting for anyone for whomit’s fitting to want aK to valuex. Andaccording to Rowland (2019), whenever something,x, is goodfor some person or thing,S, that’s because thereare reasons for anyone who has reasons to care aboutS tovaluex, because they have reasons to care aboutS.And the prospects seem at least equally good for a fittingness-basedFA theory to explain the relation of being good for, and for areasons-based FA theory to explain the property of being attributivelygood. So, regardless of which normative property of responses FAtheories appeal to, they have the potential to unify these differentvarieties of value. And since it’s plausible that differentvarieties of value must have something in common in virtue of whichthey all qualify as varieties ofvalue, it’s anadvantage of FA theories that they’re able to explain what thisis—viz., that each can be fully explained in terms of factsinvolving normative properties of responses to be had by certain setsof agents—while also respecting the real, important differencesbetween the kinds of value in question.

And FA theories also seem able, similarly, to unify the variety ofspecific evaluative properties that populate the evaluative domain,e.g., that of being admirable, delightful, praiseworthy, etc. Forassuming that, for each such property, facts involving it can beexplained in terms of facts involving a certain normative property ofa certain type of response, FA theorists can claim that this is whatall such properties have in common, while also properly distinguishingamong them according to the particular type of response that theyappeal to in their explanation of each. And, according to some, thereare likewise prospects for applying FA theories to so-called“thick” evaluative properties, such as that of beingcourageous and kind (for extensive discussion, see Rowland 2019, ch.9). If so, FA theories stand to provide unifying explanations not justof proper subsets of evaluative properties, but ofall suchproperties. Indeed, the most ambitious FA theorists might claim thatall evaluative properties have in common that they can each beaccounted for in terms of a certain normative property of a certaintype of human response.

3. Outstanding Issues

Despite the attractions discussed above, FA theories also face severaloutstanding issues, which challenge both their extensional adequacyand explanatory commitments. This section covers four outstandingissues for FA theory. The first three consist in putativecounterexamples that pose extensional challenges: the Wrong Kindof Reason problem (section 3.1); the Wrong Kind of Value problem(section 3.2); and the problem of partiality (section 3.3). The fourthand final issue challenges the explanatory element of FA theory,alleging that at least certain FA theories may be viciously circular(section 3.4).

3.1 The Wrong Kind of Reason Problem

Perhaps the most famous challenge to FA theories is what’s knownas the Wrong Kind of Reason problem (WKR problem). At a first pass,the WKR problem is the problem that, at least sometimes, it seems thatwhat’s valuable doesn’t correspond to what there’sreason to value. For example, consider an FA theory likeScanlon’s buck-passing view from section 1.5, which entails thatsomething is valuable if and only if (and because) there are reasonsfor just anyone to value it. The trouble is that, intuitively, therecan be reasons to value things that have no value as well as reasonsnot to value things that do have value. To adapt an example from RogerCrisp (2000), suppose an evil demon will kill you unless you value acup of mud. This fact seems like a reason to value the cup, but thecup, being a cup of mud, has no value. Hence, an FA theory likeScanlon’s buck-passing view seems sometimes to predict that theobject of a valuing attitude has value when, intuitively, itdoesn’t. Similarly, consider an FA theory that explains factsabout what’s valuable in terms of facts about what there’ssufficient reason to value. Now suppose the demon will killyou if you value something of value. Here, we might think you lacksufficient reason to value the valuable thing. If so, then thisversion of FA theory also seems subject to counterexample. This classof counterexamples is known as the “Wrong Kind of Reasonproblem” since the reasons that figure in theexamples—reasons that (dis)favor a valuing attitude withoutmaking the attitude’s object (dis)valuable—are of the“wrong kind” to figure in FA theories: they’rereasons to valuex that are irrelevant to whetherxhas value, and hence can’t be appealed to in order to explainwhyx is (or isn’t) valuable.

The WKR problem generalizes in two important ways. First, it seems toarise not only for certain FA theories of valuesimpliciter,but also for certain FA theories of more specific evaluativeproperties. For example, Crisp’s demon might equally threatenharm unless you admire someone who’s not admirable, despisesomeone who’s not despicable, love someone who’s notlovable, etc. Second, in addition to arising for versions of FA theorythat explain evaluative facts in terms of facts aboutreasonsfor certain responses, the WKR problem also arises for FA theoriesthat try to explain evaluative facts by appeal to deontic facts ofvarious other kinds—for example, by appeal to facts about whichresponses we ought to or may have. Indeed, just as the demon’sthreat might give you a reason to value the mud, it might also make itthe case that youshould or that you’rerequired to value it, or that valuing it would bejustified. The question of whether the WKR problemgeneralizes to apply to all versions of FA theory is discussed indetail below.

As is always the case when a theory is confronted with putativecounterexamples, two broad responses are available: proponents of thetheory might either reject the counterexamples or concede them, buttry somehow to revise the theory so as to avoid them. Proponents of FAtheory have explored both kinds of response.^[5] The first kind of response amounts to skepticism about wrong-kindreasons, the view that such “reasons” aren’t reallyreasons at all and hence aren’t counterexamples to FA theory. Onthis view, the demon’s threat doesn’t give you a reason tovalue the mud (or make it the case that you should or may value it);instead, it at best gives you a reason towant to value themud, or to bring it about that you do if you can. Thus, FA theoriesthat explain facts about value by appeal to facts about reasons (oroughts, permissions, etc.) don’t falsely predict, e.g., that themud has value. Hence, for WKR skeptics, putative WKRs pose no problemfor FA theories (Parfit 2011; Skorupski 2010; Way 2012).

The success of this response is a matter of debate. According to many,the claim that WKRs for attitudes aren’t reasons for thoseattitudes seems implausible on substantive, first-order grounds. Afterall, the fact that the demon will kill you unless you value the muddoes seem to speak in favor of valuing it, and it also seems this factcould contribute to making it the case that you ought to value themud, or that you’d be justified in valuing it. And, for variousreasons, many have found unsatisfying the skeptic’s attempt tosave the phenomenon by claiming that, although the demon’sthreat gives you no reason to value the mud, it does give you a reasonto want or to try to bring it about that you do (see, e.g.,D’Arms and Jacobson 2000b, Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen 2004, Danielsson and Olson 2007, Reisner 2009,and Rosen 2015a).

WKR skeptics thus need to argue that WKRs aren’t reasons for theattitudes they seem to favor and to explain why they’re not(McHugh and Way 2016). One popular proposed explanation of why WKRsaren’t reasons appeals to a response-condition on reasons,according to which a considerationp can be a reason for youtoA only if you couldA for the reason thatp (Kelly 2002; Shah 2006; Parfit 2011). However, proponentsof FA theories that explain facts about value in terms of facts aboutreasons seem committed to there being reasons that violate such acondition (Way 2012). To adapt a case from Schroeder (2007a), supposeNate loves successful surprise parties thrown in his honor but hatesunsuccessful ones. Plausibly, if there’s a surprise party forNate next door, then there’s value in his going and hence, on areasons-based FA theory, a reason for him to want to go. However,since Nate hates surprise parties he expects, this isn’t areason for which he could want to go: “for as soon as you tellhim about it, [the reason] will go away” (Schroeder 2007a, 165).Hence, reasons-based FA theories seem committed to there being reasonsthat violate a response condition. Thus, an appeal to this conditionto explain why WKRs aren’t reasons looks untenable as part of areply to the WKR problem as it applies to these theories.

The second strategy for responding to the WKR problem, in contrast,accepts that WKRs are reasons. Proponents of this second strategyconcede the counterexamples that constitute the WKR problem and try torevise FA theories in light of them. The idea is to distinguishbetween the “right” and “wrong” kinds ofreasons to figure in FA theories, and to reformulate the theories suchthat they reference only reasons of the “right” kind. Thedistinction between right-kind reasons (RKRs) and WKRs for valuingattitudes can of course be easily drawn by appeal to the property ofbeing valuablesimpliciter: RKRs to valuex arereasons to valuex that also makex somehowvaluable, whereas WKRs to valuex are reasons to valuex that don’t also makex valuable. Likewise,RKRs to admirex are reasons to admirex that alsomakex admirable, RKRs to despisex are reasons todespisex that also makex despicable, etc. But suchaccounts of the RKR/WKR distinction are of course unavailable to FAtheorists, at least insofar as they aspire to provide non-circularaccounts of evaluative properties.

Over the last two decades, many have attempted to draw the RKR/WKRdistinction in a way that doesn’t render FA theories circular.An early proposal held that RKRs are given by facts about the objectsof the attitudes they favor, whereas WKRs are given by facts about thefavored mental states themselves (Stratton-Lake 2005; Piller 2006;Parfit 2011). But the object-/state-given theory is extensionallyinadequate: some WKRs are object-given (Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen 2004) and some RKRs may be state-given(Schroeder 2012). For example, if a demon will kill me unless I admirehim, this looks like a reason to admire the demon that’s givenby the object of this attitude, but it’s irrelevant to whetherthe demon is admirable, and hence a WKR. On the flip side, the factthat I’ll soon get more information relevant to deciding whetherto φ might be an RKR to hold off intending to φ, despite itsconcerning not the object of intention, and whether it’sworthwhile, but the state of intending itself.

Another view—the “alethic view”—holds thatright- but not wrong-kind reasons toA are reasons toA that bear on whetherA accurately represents itsobject (Tappolet 2011; Rosen 2015). But this proposal also facessignificant difficulties. First, it seems to require taking oncontentious commitments about how various types of attitudes representtheir objects in order to guarantee the account’s extensionalcorrectness (McHugh and Way 2016; Schroeder 2010); and second, thesecommitments may render FA theories circular, if it’s held thatcertain of these attitudes represent their objects as havingevaluative properties (Ross 1939). For example, if we assume thatdesire represents its object as desirable, then the alethic view wouldyield the plausible result that RKRs for desire are reasons for desirerelevant to whether the object of desire is desirable. But (1) thisview about the representational content of desire is contentious, and(2) this commitment would seem to render an FA theory of desirability circular.^[6]

In addition to these, many other accounts of the RKR/WKR distinctionhave been offered and criticized (see, e.g., the proposals inSchroeder 2010 and Rowland 2019 and the criticisms of each,respectively, in Sharadin 2013 and McHugh and Way 2022a). Common tomany proposed ways of drawing the RKR/WKR distinction is a commitmentto the idea that the distinction can be drawn in terms of reasons andcertain non-normative properties alone. This commitment is common, forinstance, to all of the proposals mentioned so far. But none of theseproposals has gained wide acceptance. Partly in light of this, anumber of authors have opted to avoid this commitment, and instead tooffer an account of the RKR/WKR distinction that takes FA theoriesback to their earliest roots. On this approach, the RKR/WKRdistinction can be drawn in terms of the normative notion offittingness. Roughly, RKRs for attitudes are considerations thatcontribute to the fittingness of those attitudes, whereas WKRs forattitudes are reasons for attitudes that lack this feature. On thisproposal, an FA theory of valuesimpliciter amounts to thethesis that facts involving valuesimpliciter are alwaysfully and ultimately grounded in facts about thefittingnessof certain valuing responses, rather than in facts aboutreasons for those responses.

Proponents of this position argue that the WKR problem poses noproblem for FA theories of value so understood (Danielsson and Olson2007; Chappell 2012; Sharadin 2015; McHugh and Way 2016; Howard 2019).They claim that while facts like the demon’s threat may providereasons for the attitudes they support, or even make it the case thatyou ought to have those attitudes, such facts are irrelevant towhether those attitudes are fitting. For example, even if the fact ofthe demon’s threat gives you a reason to value a cup of mud, ormakes it the case that you ought to have this attitude, this factisn’t one in virtue of which the mudmerits beingvalued, or is worthy of this attitude; hence, this fact fails to makethe attitude fitting (see the characterization of fittingness, interms of merit and worthiness, offered in section 1.3). The judgmentthat WKRs such as the demon’s threat are irrelevant to thefittingness of the attitudes they favor is widely shared. In additionto the authors cited above, see,inter alia, Broad 1930;Brandt 1946; Ewing 1939, 1948; Wiggins 1987; and McDowell 1998. Hence,some have argued, drawing the RKR/WKR distinction in terms offittingness, and so formulating FA theory ultimately in terms offittingness rather than in terms of some (other) deontic notion,offers a promising solution to the WKR problem for FA theories ofvaluesimpliciter.^[7] Further, this strategy promises to generalize to address the problemas it occurs for FA theories of other, specific evaluative propertiesas well.

At least on the face of things, then, FA theories that explainevaluative facts ultimately in terms of facts about the fittingness ofcertain types of response seem to have an advantage when it comes toanswering the WKR problem. Still, some have raised concerns with theproposed appeal to fittingness in addressing this problem. Forexample, some authors claim to lack a pre-theoretical grip on thenotion of fittingness, and thus find explanations of evaluative factsin terms of facts involving the fittingness relation uninformative(Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004). And others have argued,on various grounds, that facts involving the fittingness of humanresponses will ultimately need to be explained in terms of reasons (ofa certain kind) for those responses (Schroeder 2010, 2020). A fullysatisfying answer to the WKR problem that appeals to the notion offittingness will thus need to address these challenges.

3.2 The Wrong Kind of Value Problem

The Wrong Kind of Value problem (WKV problem) also posescounterexamples to at least certain FA theories. It alleges that therecan be cases in which something has value without calling for anyvaluing response on the part of anyone—i.e., the thingisn’t fitting for anyone to value, there’s no reason foranyone to value it, it’s not the case that anyone ought to valueit, etc. In short: there are cases where facts about valuecan’t correspond to normative facts to the effect thatsome valuing response is called for, since in some cases the formersort of fact can obtain without the latter.

To illustrate, consider an example, the spirit of which is due toKrister Bykvist (2009), in which there are happy egrets, but no past,present, or future agents, i.e., beings capable of having a valuingresponse. Plausibly, the egrets’ pleasure has value. But, thethought goes, since there are no beings in this world capable ofvaluing the egrets’ pleasure, the egrets’ pleasurecan’t be valued and hence a valuing response to it can’tbe fitting or otherwise called for. Thus, the value of theegrets’ happiness doesn’t correspond to a normative factabout a valuing response. Hence, FA theories must be extensionallyinadequate.

Another kind of example is due to Andrew Reisner (2015). In this kindof example, the value of something in a given world depends on whetheranyone in that world values that thing. If anyone in the relevantworld does value the thing, then the thing becomes disvaluable, orbad. However, if no one values it, then it’s valuable. (Thereare various ways of filling out this kind of case, but these are itsimportant structural features; for Reisner’s preferred version,see ibid., 467–8.) In this kind of case, valuing somethingvaluable extinguishes its value. Reisner claims that it thereforecan’t be fitting to value the valuable thing; hence, FA theoriesare extensionally inadequate.

Defenders of FA theory have responded to these cases in various ways(Orsi 2013a; Way 2013; Elliott 2017; Rowland 2019). Perhaps the mostpopular response to each is one that purports to answer both. Thisresponse agrees that it’s not fitting (or otherwise called for)for anyone in the happy egret world to value the egrets’pleasure (since there are no beings capable of valuing in this world)and that it’s not fitting for anyone in the world Reisnerdescribes to value the thing whose value would be extinguished ifanyone in that world were to value it. But, the response goes,it’s nonetheless fitting for beings inother possibleworlds—us, for example—to value the egrets’ pleasure(so far as it goes) and to value the valuable thing whose value wouldbe eliminated were to it be valued by its worldmates (Orsi 2013a; Way2013; Rowland 2019). Hence, in both kinds of case, the value at stakecan still be said to correspond to normative facts about a certainvaluing response, albeit a response to be had by beings of otherworlds.

Reisner (2015) anticipates and criticizes the above response onvarious grounds, though see Rowland (2019, ch. 7) for an extendedreply. A different response, also offered by Rowland, suggests that FAtheorists might state their theory counterfactually, claiming(roughly) that whenever something has value, that’s fullybecause valuing itwould be called for were there any beingscapable of valuing it around. On this formulation of FA theory,something has value if, in the nearest world where there are beingscapable of valuing it, their valuing it is called for. Since a valuingresponse to the egrets’ pleasure is evidently called for in thenearest world where there are beings capable of valuing it, thisformulation of the theory thus predicts that the birds’ pleasurehas value. Thus, this formulation of FA theory seems at least to avoidBykvist’s kind of counterexample. However, it doesn’t alsoobviously avoid Reisner’s. In Reisner’s case, unlikeBykvist’s, the nearest world where there are beings capable ofvaluing the valuable thing in question is the same world that containsthe valuable thing. But recall: if beings in that world were to valuethe valuable thing, the thing wouldn’t be valuable. Andaccording to Reisner, this means that it can’t be fitting orotherwise called for, for those beings to value the thing in question.Reisner here relies on a principle according to which it can befitting for an agentS to value a thingx only ifx would be fitting to value, conditional onS’s valuing it. If this principle is true, then thecounterfactual proposal fails to address Reisner’s case; but seeRowland (ibid.) for arguments that it’s false.

Which of these responses to the WKV problem is preferable, and whethereither is ultimately acceptable, remain open questions, and soconstitute avenues for further research. Two final points are worthemphasis. First, the force of the WKV problem, unlike that of the WKRproblem, seems to depend not at all on which normative property ofresponses that FA theories appeal to in their explanations ofevaluative facts. In particular, the problem seems to apply with equalforce to FA theories that appeal to thefittingness of humanresponses and to those that appeal toreasons for those responses.^[8] Hence, the WKV problem may apply more widely than the WKR problem.But, secondly, the WKV problem seems in another way narrower than theWKR problem. For while the WKR problem applies not only to FA theoriesof valuesimpliciter, but also to FA theories of specificevaluative properties, such as those of being shameful or disgusting,the WKV problem may not generalize in this way. For notice that theWKV problem illustrates and supports the worry, mentioned in section1.1, that facts about valuesimpliciter can seem independentof (normative) facts about actual or possible human responses. Butfacts about what’sshameful ordisgustingseemingly couldn’t be independent of (normative) facts about thehuman responses of shame or disgust (D’Arms and Jacobson 2006;Jacobson 2011; D’Arms 2022). Perhaps something could be valuablein a world without valuers, but could something be shameful in a worldwithout shame? If not, then the WKV problem may be a problem for some,but not all, FA theories, depending on the evaluative properties thetheories target. At best, then, the WKV problem wouldn’t be areason to reject FA theorytout court, but only to be moreselective about which FA theories we accept.

3.3 The Problem of Partiality

In addition to offering accounts of monadic evaluative properties,such as being lovable or valuable, FA theories can offer accounts ofdyadic, comparative evaluative properties, such as those of being morevaluable orbetter than. For example, FA theorists mightclaim that wheneverx is better thany, that’sfully because it’s fitting to valuex more thany, or to preferx toy. Likewise, theymight hold that wheneverx is more lovable thany,that’s fully becausex is fitting to love more thany. Indeed, according to some, FA theorists should takemonadic properties like that of being valuable or lovable to beexplanatorily posterior to their comparative counterparts (Schroeder2010). But the problem of partiality poses potential counterexamplesto FA theories of at least certain comparative evaluative properties,for example, that of being better than. The problem, roughly, is thatin some cases wherey is no better thanx—orindeed, wherex is worse thany—it can seemfitting to be partial tox, or to preferx toy. For example, suppose that either My Pal or a Stranger canbe rescued from drowning, but not both. And suppose also that, exceptfor the fact that My Pal is my pal and that Stranger is a stranger,everything else is equal. Plausibly, then, My Pal’s beingrescued is no better than Stranger’s being rescued and viceversa—the two outcomes seem equally good. Still, it can seemfitting for me to prefer that My Pal is rescued. Hence, it can seemfitting for me to prefer one outcome to another when the outcomes areequally good. This is the kind of example that constitutes thepartiality problem; and instances are easily multiplied.

The partiality problem was noticed and discussed by one of theprogenitors of FA theory, A.C. Ewing (1939), but has only recentlycome to occupy the attention of contemporary authors (e.g., Bykvist2009; Olson 2009; Lemos 2011; Zimmerman 2011; and Orsi 2013).Importantly, the problem seems to apply only to FA theories ofcomparative evaluative facts that propose to explain the relevantfacts in terms of normative facts that call for just anyone to have acertain response. For example, that it’s fitting for me toprefer that My Pal is rescued seems problematic only for FA theoriesof betterness that propose to explain facts about what’s betterthan what by appeal to facts about what’s fitting for justanyone to prefer (or to value more). This way of explaining theproperty of being better than is a natural way of capturing thepopular and plausible idea that betterness is an agent-neutralevaluative property (see section 1.4). However, if we holdinstead that betterness is fundamentally agent-relative, in themanner of Smith (2009), then we might reject the idea that facts aboutit are to be explained always in terms of normative facts aboutwhat’s fitting for just anyone to prefer (as Smith himselfdoes). This would be one way of avoiding the partiality problem as itapplies to FA theories of better than, though the view aboutbetterness on which it rests is controversial; by far, the majorityview is that the property is agent-neutral.

A second way of dissolving the partiality problem is suggested byJonas Olson (2009). On Olson’s view, the partiality problem isstructurally the same as, and indeed a special case of, the WKRproblem (see section 3.1): the fact that My Pal is my pal gives me(some, sufficient, or decisive) reason to prefer the outcome wherethey’re saved to the outcome where Stranger is, but itdoesn’t make the former outcome any better than the latter.Hence, according to Olson, a solution to the WKR problem should alsosuffice to solve the problem of partiality. On Olson’s favoredsolution to the WKR problem, FA theorists should explain evaluativefacts in terms of facts about fittingness rather than reasons. Olsonsuggests that while the fact that My Pal is my pal might give mereason to prefer that they’re rescued, this factdoesn’t also make this preferencefitting. Hence, FAtheories that explain betterness in terms of what’s fitting forall agents to prefer, rather than in terms of what there’sreason for all agents to prefer, can avoid the problem ofpartiality.

However, there are two worries for Olson’s diagnosis of theproblem of partiality as an instance of the WKR problem. First,whatever we might think about the plausibility of WKR skepticism as asolution to the WKR problem, this view seems less plausible as asolution to the problem of partiality. Even those inclined to denythat the demon’s threat gives you a reason to desire a cup ofmud would likely find it hard to deny that My Pal’s being my palgives me a reason to prefer that they’re saved. Further,it’s not obviously incoherent for the WKR skeptic to deny thatthe former fact is a reason while accepting that the latter one is.Thus, the fact that WKR skepticism seems at least more viable as asolution to the WKR problem than it does as a solution to the problemof partiality suggests that these problems aren’t the same.

Second, as indicated above, it can seem plausible not only that I havereason to prefer that My Pal is rescued, but that, contrary to Olson,this preference is fitting. This, too, would distinguish the examplesthat constitute the problem of partiality from those that constitutethe WKR problem. As discussed in section 3.1, the demon’s threatseems not to make it fitting to the value the mud—it’s nota fact in virtue of which the mudmerits being valued. Bycontrast, the fact that My Pal is my pal can seem to merit mypreferring that they’re rescued; and if it does, this preferenceis fitting.

Both of these considerations put pressure on the idea that the problemof partiality is an instance of the WKR problem. But they also suggestthat, like the WKV problem (section 3.2), the problem of partialitymay pose a problem for certain FA theories regardless of the normativeproperty they appeal to: Just as the fact that My Pal is my pal givesme a reason to prefer that they’re saved, or perhaps makes itthe case that I should have this preference, this fact may also makethis preference fitting. Hence, the problem of partiality in this waythreatens to be a rather general problem for FA theories, specificallyfor those that aspire to explain certain comparative evaluativefacts.

Beyond Olson’s proposal, various other solutions to thepartiality problem have been suggested and debated (see, e.g., Lemos2011; Zimmerman 2011; Orsi 2013a; and Nye, Plunkett, and Ku 2015).However, it’s fair to say that, so far, none has gained wideacceptance. Thus, the partiality problem, perhaps more so than the WKRproblem or the WKV problem, remains an outstanding and pressing issuefor FA theory.^[9]

3.4 Circularity

As noted in the introduction to this entry, some FA theorists identifywhat’s valuablesimpliciter with what’sdesirable, and explain facts about what’s desirable in terms offacts about what’s fitting to desire. Other FA theorists,however, reject that the valuable can be identified with thedesirable, often on the grounds that some valuable things seem not tocall for desire but for other pro-responses (Ewing 1939; Anderson1993; Scanlon 1998). For example, we might think that persons have aparticular kind of value that calls fundamentally for responses likerespect andpreservation, and indeed that desireisn’t the proper response to the special value of persons atall. And more generally, FA theorists might hold that the pro-responsecalled for by a valuable thing can vary according to the kind of thingat issue. For example, as Scanlon (1998) suggests, the pro-responsecalled for by a valuable friendship might differ from that called forby a valuable piece of music. Hence, Scanlon (and others) opt toexplain facts about value in terms of normative facts aboutvaluing, where valuing can consist variously in a range ofpro-responses.

But such FA theories face a challenge. As Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen (2004) put it, the challenge is to specify“the common denominator for all the responses in the‘pro’-category”, to tell us “what makes them‘pro’” (401). What makes respect and reverence, forexample, positive responses (as opposed to negative ones)? And why isprotecting something a pro-response to it while pondering it is not? Apossible and extensionally plausible answer would be to definepositive responses as responses that are called for by valuable things(and negative responses as responses that are called for bydisvaluable things), but this makes FA theories circular. Thechallenge is for FA theorists to specify what makes pro-attitudes“pro” without circularity.

An early version of this challenge was pressed by W.D. Ross (1939), asa criticism of Ewing’s (1939) FA theory of valuesimpliciter. Ross suggests that Ewing’s account ofvalue in terms of fitting positive emotional responses is circularbecause the positive emotional responses he appeals to are alwaysaccompanied by the thought that the object of the response is somehow“good”. Since positive emotional responses to a thinginvolve taking the thing to be good, the goodness of a thingcan’t be non-circularly explained by appeal to (fitting)positive emotional responses. Ewing’s (1947) response was toinsist that positive emotional responses aren’t necessarilyaccompanied by the thought their object is good. Instead, a positiveemotional response need only be accompanied by thoughts about itsobject’s non-evaluative,good-making characteristics.Hence, positive emotional responses needn’t involve the thoughtthat their objects are good.

The success of Ewing’s reply to Ross continues to be a matter ofdebate (Hurka 2014, ch. 2). In any case, Ewing’s replydoesn’t offer a positive account of what makes pro-responses“pro”; it merely rejects a possible answer to thatquestion that would make FA theories circular. Another possibleresponse to the challenge is to embrace circularity. According tosome, even if we can’t adequately characterize pro-responseswithout reference to the kind of value that FA theories seek toexplain, FA theories can nonetheless remain illuminating andinformative (see esp. Wiggins 1987 and Tappolet 2011). In short, wecan concede the circularity, but claim it’s not vicious. Thisresponse pairs well with the “no-priority view” discussedin section 2.1, but seems contrary to FA theories of value, insofar astheir explanatory element is essential to them.

A third response is to concede the purported circularity of certain FAtheories of valuesimpliciter, to reject such theories inlight of that circularity, but to embrace FA theories of more specificevaluative properties, which, on the face of it, seem less vulnerableto circularity worries. According to this response, the right responseto the present challenge isn’t to abandon FA theorytoutcourt, but to be more selective about which FA theories weaccept. For example, we might reject an FA theory of valuesimpliciter on grounds of circularity, but accept FA theoriesof being delicious, trustworthy, admirable, despicable, lovable,delightful, and so on. Of course, proponents of even this more limitedapproach may still ultimately need to characterize the responses interms of which they seek to explain these evaluative propertieswithout referring to those properties, but, according to some, theprospects for doing so seem at least comparatively promising (Gibbard1990; D’Arms and Jacobson 2000b; Rabinowicz andRønnow-Rasmussen 2004; Jacobson 2011; Rosen 2015a).

A fourth and final response, of course, would be to try to tackle thecircularity challenge head on by offering a plausible account of whatmakes pro-responses “pro” that doesn’t refer to thenotion of valuesimpliciter. Perhaps, for example, what makespro-responses “pro” is some common descriptivemotivational element (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004). Orperhaps there’s some common normative element to allpro-responses that FA theorists could non-circularly appeal to. At thetime of writing, however, this issue is underexplored, and the task ofdeveloping this kind of response remains outstanding.

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• Jacobson, Daniel, 2022, “Fitting Attitude Theories ofValue”,Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/fitting-attitude-theories/>. [This was the previous entry on this topic in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy – see theversion history.]

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