Value Pluralism

First published Tue Jun 20, 2006; substantive revision Sun Jun 4, 2023

The word ‘pluralism’ generally refers to the view thatthere are many of the things in question (concepts, scientific worldviews, discourses, viewpoints etc.) The issues arising from therebeing many differ widely from subject area to subject area. This entryis concerned with moral pluralism—the view that there are manydifferent moral values.

Moral value pluralism should be distinguished from politicalpluralism. Political pluralism, which, like moral value pluralism, isoften referred to as ‘value pluralism’, is a viewassociated with political liberalism. Political pluralism is concernedwith the question of what sort of restrictions governments can put onpeople’s freedom to act according to their values. One versionof political pluralism is based on moral value pluralism, claimingthat there are irreducibly plural moral values and that this justifiesa liberal political system. (See Isaiah Berlin 1969; George Crowder2002, 2019; William Galston 2002, and for a more detailed discussionof this see the entry onIsaiah Berlin). Political Liberalism need not be based on value pluralism: a defenceof toleration of different value systems need not rely on the claimthat there are plural moral values. We shall leave political pluralismaside for the purposes of this entry, and concentrate on moral valuepluralism.

It is also worth emphasising that moral value pluralism does notentail relativism. The idea is not that all values or value systemsare equally true. Value pluralism is independent of any particularmeta-ethical view. It is a claim about the normative domain: aboutwhat value looks like.

Commonsensically we talk about lots of differentvalues—happiness, liberty, friendship, and so on. The questionabout pluralism in moral theory is whether these apparently differentvalues are all reducible to one supervalue, or whether we should thinkthat there really are several distinct values.

There are different ways that value might be conceived, but the debateabout pluralism should be able to cut across different sorts of moraltheory. Traditionally, moral philosophers recognize three differentways of thinking about morality: the deontological way, theconsequentialist way, and the virtue ethics way, although there isdebate about the cogency of these distinctions.^[1] The term ‘value’ as it appears in ‘valuepluralism’ is neutral between these three theories.Deontologists think of morality as being fundamentally about moralprinciples. Thus the question of whether a deontological theory ispluralist is a question about how many fundamental principles thereare. The consequentialist, by contrast, tends to see value as beingrealized by goods in the world, such as friendship, knowledge, beautyand so on, and the question of pluralism is thus a question about howmany fundamental goods there are. Virtue ethicists focus on how agentsshould be, so are interested both in principles of action (ormotivation) and the pursuit of goods, such as friendship.

Deontologists can clearly be monists or pluralists. Kant can beunderstood as a monist—arguing that there is one overarchingprinciple, and that all other principles are derived from it. Ross, bycontrast, is a pluralist, because he thinks that there is a pluralityof prima facie duties. (See Kant (1948), Ross (1930).)^[2]

Many utilitarians are monists, arguing that there is only onefundamental value and that is well-being or pleasure or happiness, orsomething of that sort. In other words, some utilitarians arecommitted to hedonism. Monist utilitarians must claim that all otherputative values, such as friendship, knowledge and so on, are onlyinstrumental values, which are valuable in so far as they contributeto the foundational value. But utilitarians need not be monists.Amartya Sen, for example, argues that utilitarians can take a‘vector view of utility’, according to which there aredifferences in the qualities as well of the quantities of utility ingoods in the world. According to Sen, we should interpret Mill as apluralist in this way. (We return to Mill below: it is not entirelyclear how we should understand his view). Sen points out that desiresatisfaction theorists can be pluralists too. Just as different sortsof pleasure might have different sorts of value, so different desiresmight have different sorts of value. (Sen, 1981). Even utilitarianswho claim that the value to be maximized is well-being can bepluralist: a prominent view of well-being is that well-being itself isplural, an objective list of things that are fundamentally plural.(See Finnis 1980; Griffin 1986; for recent defences see Fletcher 2013;Lin 2014). Another reason to think that hedonistic utilitarians shouldbe pluralists is that it seems essential to say something about thedisvalue of pain. As Shelly Kagan points out (2014), we need anaccount of ill-being in addition to an account of well-being.

In what follows, the presentation will be as neutral as possiblebetween different theoretical approaches to morality, and will focuson the debate between monists and pluralists. Monists claim that thereis only one ultimate value. Pluralists argue that there really areseveral different values, and that these values are not reducible toeach other or to a supervalue. Monism has the advantage of relativesimplicity: once it has been determined what the supervalue is(whether we think of the super value in terms of the goods approach orany other approach) much of the hard work has been done. On the otherhand, monism may be too simple: it may not capture the real texture ofour ethical lives. However, pluralism faces the difficulty ofexplaining how different fundamental values relate to each other, andhow they can be compared.

1. Some Preliminary Clarifications

1.1 Foundational and Non-foundational Pluralism

It is important to clarify the levels at which a moral theory might bepluralistic. Let us distinguish between two levels of pluralism:foundational and non-foundational. Foundational pluralism is the viewthat there are plural moral values at the most basic level—thatis to say, there is no one value that subsumes all other values, noone property of goodness, and no overarching principle of action.Non-foundational pluralism is the view that there are plural values atthe level of choice, but these apparently plural values can beunderstood in terms of their contribution to one more fundamental value.^[3]

Judith Jarvis Thomson, a foundational pluralist, argues that when wesay that something is good we are never ascribing a property ofgoodness, rather we are always saying that the thing in question isgood in some way. If we say that a fountain pen is good we meansomething different from when we say that a logic book is good, or afilm is good. As Thomson puts it, all goodness is a goodness in a way.Thomson focusses her argument on Moore, who argues that when we say‘x is good’ we do not mean ‘x isconducive to pleasure’, or ‘x is in accordancewith a given set of rules’ and nor do we mean anything else thatis purely descriptive. As Moore points out, we can always querywhether any purely descriptive property really is good—so heconcludes that goodness is simple and unanalyzable.^[4] Moore is thus a foundational monist, he thinks that there is onenon-natural property of goodness, and that all good things are good invirtue of having this property. Thomson finds this preposterous. InThomson’s own words:

Moore says that the question he will be addressing himself to in whatfollows is the question ‘What is good?’, and he rightlythinks that we are going to need a bit of help in seeing exactly whatquestion he is expressing in those words. He proposes to help us bydrawing attention to a possible answer to the question he isexpressing—that is, to something that would be an answer to it,whether or not it is the correct answer to it. Here is what he offersus: “Books are good.” Books are good? What would you meanif you said ‘Books are good’? Moore, however, goesplacidly on: “though [that would be] an answer obviously false;for some books are very bad indeed”. Well some books are bad toread or to look at, some are bad for use in teaching philosophy, someare bad for children. What sense could be made of a person who said,“No. no. I meant that some books are just plain badthings”? (Thomson 1997, pp. 275–276)

According to Thomson there is a fundamental plurality of ways of beinggood. We cannot reduce them to something they all have in common, orsensibly claim that there is a disjunctive property of goodness (suchthat goodness is ‘goodness in one of the various ways’.Thomson argues that that could not be an interesting property as eachdisjunct is truly different from every other disjunct. Thomson (1997),p. 277). Thomson is thus a foundational pluralist—she does notthink that there is any one property of value at the most basiclevel.

W.D. Ross is a foundational pluralist in a rather complex way. Moststraightforwardly, Ross thinks that there are several prima facieduties, and there is nothing that they all have in common: they areirreducibly plural. This is the aspect of Ross’s view that isreferred to with the phrase, ‘Ross-style pluralism’.However, Ross also thinks that there are goods in the world (justiceand pleasure, for example), and that these are good because of someproperty they share. Goodness and rightness are not reducible to oneanother, so Ross is a pluralist about types of value as well as aboutprinciples.

Writers do not always make the distinction between foundational andother forms of pluralism, but as well as Thomson and Ross, at leastBernard Williams (1981), Charles Taylor (1982), Stuart Hampshire(1983), Charles Larmore (1987), John Kekes (1993), Michael Stocker(1990 and 1997), David Wiggins (1997), Christine Swanton (2001), andJonathan Dancy (2004) are all committed to foundational pluralism.

Non-foundational pluralism is less radical—it posits a pluralityof bearers of value. In fact, almost everyone accepts that there areplural bearers of value. This is compatible with thinking that thereis only one ultimate value. G.E. Moore (1903), Thomson’s target,is a foundational monist, but he accepts that there arenon-foundational plural values. Moore thinks that there are manydifferent bearers of value, but he thinks that there is one propertyof goodness, and that it is a simple non-natural property that bearersof value possess in varying degrees. Moore is clear that comparisonbetween plural goods proceeds in terms of the amount of goodness theyhave.

This is not to say that the amount of goodness is always a matter ofsimple addition. Moore thinks that there can be organic unities, wherethe amount of goodness contributed by a certain value will varyaccording to the combination of values such as love and friendship.Thus Moore’s view is pluralist at the level of ordinary choices,and that is not without interesting consequences. (We return to theissue of how a foundational monist like Moore can account for organicunities in section 3.)

Mill, a classic utilitarian, could be and often has been interpretedas thinking that there are irreducibly different sorts of pleasure.Mill argues that there are higher and lower pleasures, and that thehigher pleasures (pleasures of the intellect as opposed to the body)are superior, in that higher pleasures can outweigh lower pleasuresregardless of the quantity of the latter. As Mill puts it: “Itis quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize thefact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuablethan others.” (2002, p. 241). On the foundational pluralistinterpretation of Mill, there is not one ultimate good, but two (atleast): higher and lower pleasures. Mill goes on to give an account ofwhat he means:

If I am asked, what I mean by difference in quality in pleasures, orwhat makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as apleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but onepossible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all oralmost all who have experience of both give a decided preference,irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that isthe more desirable pleasure. (2002, p. 241).

The passage is ambiguous, it is not clear what role the expert judgesplay in the theory. On the pluralist interpretation of this passage wemust take Mill as intending the role of the expert judges as a purelyheuristic device: thinking about what such people would prefer is away of discovering which pleasures are higher and which are lower, butthe respective values of the pleasure is independent of thejudges’ judgment. On a monist interpretation we must understandMill as a preference utilitarian: the preferences of the judgesdetermine value. On this interpretation there is one property of value(being preferred by expert judges) and many bearers of value (whateverthe judges prefer).^[5]

Before moving on, it is worth noting that a theory might befoundationally monist in its account of what values there are, but notrecommend that people attempt to think or make decisions on the basisof the supervalue. A distinction between decision procedures andcriteria of right has become commonplace in moral philosophy. Forexample, a certain form of consequentialism has as its criterion ofright action: act so as to maximize good consequences. This mightinvite the complaint that an agent who is constantly trying tomaximize good consequences will often, in virtue of that fact, fail todo so. Sometimes concentrating too hard on the goal will make it lesslikely that the goal is achieved. A distinction between decisionprocedure and right action can provide a response—theconsequentialist can say that the criterion of right action, (act soas to maximize good consequences) is not intended as a decisionprocedure—the agent should use whichever decision procedure ismost likely to result in success. If, then, there is some attractionor instrumental advantage from the point of view of a particulartheory to thinking in pluralist terms, then it is open to that theoryto have a decision procedure that deals with apparently plural values,even if the theory is monist in every other way.^[6]

1.2 A Purely Verbal Dispute?

One final clarification about different understandings of pluralismought to be made. There is an ambiguity between the name for a groupof values and the name for one unitary value. There are really twoproblems here: distinguishing between the terms that refer to groupsand the terms that refer to individuals (a merely linguistic problem)and defending the view that there really is a candidate for a unitaryvalue (a metaphysical problem). The linguistic problem comes aboutbecause in natural language we may use a singular term as‘shorthand’: conceptual analysis may reveal that surfacegrammar does not reflect the real nature of the concept. For example,we use the term ‘well-being’ as if it refers to one singlething, but it is not hard to see that it may not.‘Well-being’ may be a term that we use to refer to a groupof things such as pleasure, health, a sense of achievement and so on.A theory that tells us that well-being is the only value may only benominally monist. The metaphysical question is more difficult, andconcerns whether there are any genuinely unitary values at all.

The metaphysical question is rather different for naturalist andnon-naturalist accounts of value. On Moore’s non-naturalistaccount, goodness is a unitary property but it is not a naturalproperty: it is not empirically available to us, but is known by aspecial faculty of intuition. It is very clear that Moore thinks thatgoodness is a genuinely unitary property:

‘Good’, then, if we mean by it that quality which weassert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, isincapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word.The most important sense of ‘definition’ is that in whicha definition states what are the parts which invariably compose acertain whole; and in this sense ‘good’ has no definitionbecause it is simple and has no parts. (Moore, 1903, p. 9)

The question of whether there could be such a thing is no more easy ordifficult than any question about the existence of non-naturalentities. The issue of whether the entity is genuinely unitary is notan especially difficult part of that issue.

By contrast, naturalist views do face a particular difficulty ingiving an account of a value that is genuinely unitary. On the goodsapproach, for example, the claim must be that there is one good thatis genuinely singular, not a composite of other goods. So for example,a monist hedonist must claim that pleasure really is just one thing.Pleasure is a concept we use to refer to something we take to be inthe natural world, and conceptual analysis may or may not confirm thatpleasure really is one thing. Perhaps, for example, we refer both tointellectual and sensual experiences as pleasure. Or, take anothergood often suggested by proponents of the goods approach to value,friendship. It seems highly unlikely that there is one thing that wecall friendship, even if there are good reasons to use one umbrellaconcept to refer to all those different things. Many of the plausiblecandidates for the good seem plausible precisely because they are verybroad terms. If a theory is to be properly monist then, it must havean account of the good that is satisfactorily unitary.

The problem applies to the deontological approach to value too. It isoften relatively easy to determine whether a principle is really twoor more principles in disguise—the presence of a conjunction ora disjunction, for example, is a clear giveaway. However, principlescan contain terms that are unclear. Take for example a deontologicaltheory that tells us to respect friendship. As mentioned previously,it is not clear whether there is one thing that is friendship or morethan one, so it is not clear whether this is one principle about onething, or one principle about several things, or whether it is reallymore than one principle.

Questions about what makes individuals individuals and what therelationship is between parts and wholes have been discussed in thecontext of metaphysics but these issues have not been much discussedin the literature on pluralism and monism in moral philosophy.However, these issues are implicit in discussions of the well-being,nature of friendship and pleasure, and in the literature onKant’s categorical imperative, or on Aristotelian accounts ofeudaimonia. Part of an investigation into the nature of these thingsis an investigation into whether there really is one thing or not.^[7]

The upshot of this brief discussion is that monists must be able todefend their claim that the value they cite is genuinely one value.There may be fewer monist theories than it first appears. Further, themonist must accept the implications of a genuinely monist view. AsRuth Chang points out, (2015, p. 24) the simpler the monist’saccount of the good is, the less likely it is that the monist will beable to give a good account of the various complexities in choice thatseem an inevitable part of our experience of value. But on the otherhand, if the monist starts to admit that the good is complex, the viewgets closer and closer to being a pluralist view.

However, the dispute between monists and pluralists is not merelyverbal: there is no prima facie reason to think that there are nogenuinely unitary properties, goods or principles.

2. The Attraction of Pluralism

If values are plural, then choices between them will be complex.Pluralists have pressed the point that choices are complex, and so weshould not shy away from the hypothesis that values are plural. Inbrief, the attraction of pluralism is that it seems to allow for thecomplexity and conflict that is part of our moral experience. We donot experience our moral choices as simple additive puzzles.Pluralists have argued that there are incommensurabilities anddiscontinuities in value comparisons, value remainders (or residues)when choices are made, and complexities in appropriate responses tovalue. Recent empirical work confirms that our ethical experience isof apparently irreducible plural values. (See Gill and Nichols,2008.)

2.1 Discontinuities

John Stuart Mill suggested that there are higher and lower pleasures(Mill 2002, p. 241), the idea being that the value of higher and lowerpleasures is measured on different scales. In other words, there arediscontinuities in the measurement of value. As mentioned previously,it is unclear whether we should interpret Mill as a foundationalpluralist, but the notion of higher and lower pleasures is a veryuseful one to illustrate the attraction of thinking that there arediscontinuities in value. The distinction between higher and lowerpleasures allows us to say that no amount of lower pleasures canoutweigh some amount of higher pleasures. As Mill puts it, it isbetter to be an unhappy human being than a happy pig. In other words,the distinction allows us to say that there are discontinuities invalue addition. As James Griffin (1986, p. 87) puts it: “We doseem, when informed, to rank a certain amount of life at a very highlevel above any amount of life at a very low level.”Griffin’s point is that there are discontinuities in the way werank values, and this suggests that there are different values.^[8] The phenomenon of discontinuities in our value rankings seems tosupport pluralism: if higher pleasures are not outweighed by lowerpleasures, that suggests that they are not the same sort of thing. Forif they were just the same sort of thing, there seems to be no reasonwhy lower pleasures will not eventually outweigh higher pleasures.

Ruth Chang argues that values form organic unities, which is to saythat adding more of one value to a situation may not make it betteroverall, the balance of values in the situation is also important. Forexample, a life where extra pleasure is added, and all other valuecontributions left untouched, may not be better overall, because nowthe pleasure is unbalanced (Chang 2002). As Chang puts it, the Paretoprinciple of improvement (if something is better along one dimensionand at least as good on all the others it will be better overall) doesnot hold here.

The most extreme form of discontinuity is incommensurability orincomparability, when two values cannot be ranked at all. Pluralistsdiffer on whether pluralism entails incommensurabilities, and on whatincommensurability entails for the possibility of choice. Griffindenies that pluralism entails incommensurability (Griffin uses theterm incomparability) whereas other pluralists embraceincommensurability, but deny that it entails that rational choice isimpossible. Some pluralists accept that there are sometimes caseswhere incommensurability precludes rational choice. We shall return tothese issues in Section 4.

2.2 Value Conflicts and Rational Regret

Michael Stocker (1990) and Bernard Williams (1973 and 1981) and othershave argued that it can be rational to regret the outcome of a correctmoral choice. That is, even when the right choice has been made, therejected option can reasonably be regretted, and so the choiceinvolves a genuine value conflict. This seems strange if the optionsare being compared in terms of a supervalue. How can we regret havingchosen more rather than less of the same thing? Yet the phenomenonseems undeniable, and pluralism can explain it. If there are pluralvalues, then one can rationally regret not having chosen somethingwhich though less good, was different.

It is worth noting that the pluralist argument is not that all casesof value conflict point to pluralism. There may be conflicts becauseof ignorance, for example, or because of irrationality, and these donot require positing plural values. Stocker argues that there are (atleast) two sorts of value conflict that require plural values. Thefirst is conflict that involves choices between doing things atdifferent times. Stocker argues that goods become different values indifferent temporal situations, and the monist cannot accommodate thisthought. The other sort of case (which Williams also points to) iswhen there is a conflict between things that have different advantagesand disadvantages. The better option may be better, but it does not‘make up for’ the lesser option, because it isn’tthe same sort of thing. Thus there is a remainder—a moral valuethat is lost in the choice, and that it is rational to regret.

Both Martha Nussbaum (1986) and David Wiggins (1980) have argued forpluralism on the grounds that only pluralism can explain akrasia, orweakness of will. An agent is said to suffer from weakness of willwhen she knowingly chooses a less good option over a better one. Onthe face of it, this is a puzzling thing to do—why would someoneknowingly do what they know to be worse? A pluralist has a plausibleanswer—when the choice is between two different sorts of value,the agent is preferring A to B, rather than preferring less of A tomore of A. Wiggins explains the akratic choice by suggesting that theagent is ‘charmed’ by some aspect of the choice, and isswayed by that to choose what she knows to be worse overall (Wiggins1980, p. 257). However, even Michael Stocker, the arch pluralist, doesnot accept that this argument works. As Stocker points out, Wiggins isusing a distinction between a cognitive and an affective element tothe choice, and this distinction can explain akrasia on a monistaccount of value too. Imagine that a monist hedonist agent is facedwith a choice between something that will give her more pleasure andsomething that will give her less pleasure. The cognitive aspect tothe choice is clear—the agent knows that one option is morepleasurable than the other, and hence on her theory better. However,to say that the agent believes that more pleasure is better is not tosay that she will always be attracted to the option that is mostpleasurable. She may, on occasion, be attracted to the option that ismore unusual or interesting. Hence she may act akratically because shewas charmed by some aspect of the less good choice—and asStocker says, there is no need to posit plural values to make sense ofthis—being charmed is not the same as valuing. (Stocker 1990,p.219).

2.3 Appropriate Responses to Value

Another argument for pluralism starts from the observation that thereare many and diverse appropriate responses to value. Christine Swanton(2003, ch. 2) and Elizabeth Anderson (1993) both take this line. AsSwanton puts it:

According to value centered monism, the rightness of moralresponsiveness is determined entirely by degree or strength ofvalue…I shall argue, on the contrary, that just how things areto be pursued, nurtured, respected, loved, preserved, protected, andso forth may often depend on further general features of those things,and their relations to other things, particularly the moral agent.(Swanton 2003, p. 41).

The crucial thought is that there are various bases of moralresponsiveness, and these bases are irreducibly plural. A monist couldargue that there are different appropriate responses to value, but themonist would have to explain why there are different appropriateresponses to the same value. Swanton’s point is that the onlyexplanation the monist has is that different degrees of value meritdifferent responses. According to Swanton, this does not capture whatis really going on when we appropriately honor or respect a valuerather than promoting it. Anderson and Swanton both argue that thecomplexity of our responses to value can only be explained by apluralistic theory.

Elizabeth Anderson argues that it is a mistake to understand moralgoods on the maximising model. She uses the example of parental love(Anderson 1997, p. 98). Parents should not see their love for theirchildren as being directed towards an “aggregate childcollective”. Such a view would entail that trade offs werepossible, that one child could be sacrificed for another. OnAnderson’s view we can make rational choices between conflictingvalues without ranking values: “…choices concerning thosegoods or their continued existence do not generally require that werank their values on a common scale and choose the more valuable good;they require that we give each good its due” (Anderson 1997, p.104).

3. Monist Solutions

The last section begins by saying that if foundational values areplural, then choices between them will be complex. It is clear thatour choices are complex. However, it would be invalid to conclude fromthat that values are plural—the challenge for monists is toexplain how they too can make sense of the complexity of our valuechoices.

3.1 Different Bearers of Value

One way for monists to make sense of complexity in value choice is topoint out that there are different bearers of value, and this makes abig difference to the experience of choice. (See Hurka, 1996; Schaber,1999; Klocksiem 2011). Here is the challenge to monism in MichaelStocker’s words (Stocker, 1990, p. 272): “[if monism istrue] there is no ground for rational conflict because the betteroption lacks nothing that would be made good by the lesser.” Inother words, there are no relevant differences between the better andworse options except that the better option is better. Thomas Hurkaobjects that there can be such differences. For example, in a choicebetween giving five units of pleasure toA and ten units toB, the best option (more pleasure forB) involvesgiving no pleasure at all toA. So there is something torationally regret, namely, thatA had no pleasure. Theargument can be expanded to deal with all sorts of choice situation:in each situation, a monist can say something sensible about anunavoidable loss, a loss that really is a loss. If, of two options onewill contribute more basic value, the monist must obviously choosethat one. But the lesser of the options may contribute value viapleasure, while the superior option contributes value via knowledge,and so there is a loss in choosing the option with the greater valuecontribution—a loss in pleasure— and it is rational for usto regret this.

There is one difficulty with this answer. The loss described by Hurkais not a moral loss, and so the regret is not moral regret. InHurka’s example, the relevant loss is thatA does notget any pleasure. The agent doing the choosing may be rational toregret this if she cares aboutA, or even if she just feelssorry forA, but there has been no moral loss, as‘pleasure forA’ as opposed to pleasure itself isnot a moral value. According to the view under consideration, pleasureitself is what matters morally, and so althoughA’spleasure matters qua pleasure, the moral point of view takesB’s pleasure into account in just the same way, andthere is nothing to regret, as there is more pleasure than there wouldotherwise have been. Stocker and Williams would surely insist that thepoint of their argument was not just that there is a loss, but thatthere is amoral loss. The monist cannot accommodate thatpoint, as the monist can only consider the quantity of the value, notits distribution, and so we are at an impasse.

However, the initial question was whether the monist has succeeded inexplaining the phenomenon of ‘moral regret’, and perhapsHurka has done that by positing a conflation of moral and non-moralregret in our experience. From our point of view, there is regret, andthe monist can explain why that is without appealing to irrationality.On the other hand the monist cannot appeal to anything other thanquantity of value in appraising the morality of the situation. Soalthough Hurka is clearly right in so far as he is saying that acorrect moral choice can be regretted for non-moral reasons, he can gono further than that.

3.2 Diminishing Marginal Value

Another promising strategy that the monist can use in order to explainthe complexity in our value choices is the appeal to‘diminishing marginal value’. The value that is added tothe sum by a source of value will tend to diminish after a certainpoint—this phenomenon is known as diminishing marginal value(or, sometimes, diminishing marginal utility). Mill’s higher andlower pleasures, which seem to be plural values, might be accommodatedby the monist in this way. The monist makes sense of discontinuitiesin value by insisting on the distinction between sources of value,which are often ambiguously referred to as ‘values’, andthe super value. Using a monist utilitarian account of value, we candistinguish between the non-evaluative description of options, theintermediate description, and the evaluative description asfollows:

Non-evaluative description of option		Intermediate description of option		Evaluative description of option
Painting a picture	→	Producingx units of beauty	→	Producingy units of value
Reading a book	→	Producingx units of knowledge	→	Producingy units of value

On this account, painting produces beauty, and beauty (which is not avalue but the intermediate source of value) produces value. Similarly,reading a book produces knowledge, and gaining knowledge producesvalue. Now it should be clear how the monist can make sense ofphenomena like higher and lower pleasures. The non-evaluative options(e.g. eating donuts) have diminishing marginal non-basic value.

On top of that, the intermediate effect, or non-basic value, (e.g.experiencing pleasure) can have a diminishing contribution to value.Varying diminishing marginal value in these cases is easily explainedpsychologically. It is just the way we are—we get less and lessenjoyment from donuts as we eat more and more (at least in onesitting). However, we may well get the same amount of enjoyment fromthe tenth Johnny Cash song that we did from the first. In order todeal with the higher and lower pleasures case the monist will have toargue that pleasures themselves can have diminishing marginalutility—the monist can argue that gustatory pleasure gets boringafter a while, and hence contributes less and less to the supervalue—well being, or whatever it is.^[9]

This picture brings us back to the distinction between foundationaland non-foundational pluralism. Notice that the monist theories beingimagined here are foundationally monist, because they claim that thereis fundamentally one value, such as pleasure, and they are pluralistat the level of ordinary choice because they claim that there areintermediate values, such as knowledge and beauty, which are valuablebecause of the amount of pleasure they produce (or realize, orcontain—the exact relationship will vary from theory totheory).

3.3 Theoretical Virtues

The main advantage of pluralism is that it seems true to ourexperience of value. We experience values as plural, and pluralismtells is that values are indeed plural. The monist can respond, as wehave seen, that there are ways to explain the apparent plurality ofvalues without positing fundamentally plural values. Another,complementary strategy that the monist can pursue is to argue thatmonism has theoretical virtues that pluralism lacks. In general, itseems that theories should be as simple and coherent as possible, andthat other things being equal, we should prefer a more coherent theoryto a less coherent one. Thus so long as monism can make sense ofenough of our intuitive judgments about the nature of value, then itis to be preferred to pluralism because it does better on thetheoretical virtue of coherence.

Another way to put this point is in terms of explanation. The monistcan point out that the pluralist picture lacks explanatory depth. Itseems that a list of values needs some further explanation: what makesthese things values? (See Bradley 2009, p.16). The monist picture issuperior, because the monist can provide an explanation for the valueof the (non-foundational) plurality of values: these things are valuesbecause they contribute to well-being, or pleasure, or whatever thefoundational monist value is. (See also the discussion of this in theentry onvalue theory).

Patricia Marino argues against this strategy (2015). She argues that‘systematicity’ (the idea that it is better to have fewerprinciples) is not a good argument in favour of monism. Marino pointsout that explanation in terms of fewer fundamental principles is notnecessarilybetter explanation. If there are plural values,then the explanation that appeals to plural values is a better one, inthe sense that it is the true one: it doesn’t deny the pluralityof values. Even if we could give a monist explanation without havingto trade off against our pluralist intuitions, Marino argues, we haveno particular reason to think that explanations appealing to fewerprinciples are superior.

3.4 Preference Satisfaction Views

There is a different account of value that we ought to consider here:the view that value consists in preference or desire satisfaction. Onthis view, knowledge and pleasure and so on are valuable when they aredesired, and if they are not desired anymore they are not valuableanymore. There is no need to appeal to complicated accounts ofdiminishing marginal utility: it is uncontroversial that we sometimesdesire something and sometimes don’t. Thus complexities inchoices are explained by complexities in our desires, and it isuncontroversial that our desires are complex.

Imagine a one person preference satisfaction account of value thatsays simply that what is valuable is whatP desires.Apparently this view is foundationally monist: there is only one thingthat confers value (being desired byP), yet at thenon-foundational level there are many values (whateverPdesires). Let us say thatP desires hot baths, donuts andknowledge. The structure ofP’s desires is such thatthere is a complicated ranking of these things, which will vary fromcircumstance to circumstance. The ranking is not explained by thevalue of the objects,rather, her desire explains the ranking anddetermines the value of the objects. So it might be thatPsometimes desires a hot bath and a donut equally, and cannot choosebetween them; it might be that sometimes she would choose knowledgeover a hot bath and a donut, but sometimes she would choose a hot bathover knowledge. On James Griffin’s slightly more complex view,well-being consist in the fulfillment of informed desire, and Griffinpoints out that his view can explain discontinuities in value withouthaving to appeal to diminishing marginal utility:

there may well turn out to be cases in which, when informed, I want,say, a certain amount of one thing more than any amount of another,and not because the second thing cloys, and so adding to it merelyproduces diminishing marginal values. I may want it even though thesecond thing does not, with addition, lose its value; it may be that Ithink that no increase in that kind of value, even if constant andpositive, can overtake a certain amount of this kind of value. (1986,p. 76).

This version of foundational monism/normative pluralism escapes someof the problems that attend the goods approach. First, this view canaccount for deep complexities in choice. The plural goods that P ischoosing between do not seem merely instrumental. Donuts are not goodbecause they contribute to another value, and P does not desire donutsfor any reason other than their donuty nature. On this view, if it ishard to choose between donuts and hot baths it is because of theintrinsic nature of the objects. The key here is that value isconferred by desire, not by contribution to another value. Second,this view can accommodate incomparabilities: if P desires a hot bathbecause of its hot bathy nature, and a donut because of its donutynature, she may not be able to choose between them.

However, it is not entirely clear that a view like Griffin’s isgenuinely monist at the foundational level: the question arises, whatis constraining the desires that qualify as value conferring? If theanswer is ‘nothing’, then the view seems genuinely monist,but is probably implausible. Unconstrained desire accounts of valueseem implausible because our desires can be for all sorts ofthings—we may desire things that are bad for us, or we maydesire things because of some mistake we have made. If the answer isthat there is something constraining the desires that count as valueconferring, then of course the question is, ‘what?’ Is itthe values of the things desired? A desire satisfaction view thatrestricts the qualifying desires must give an account of whatrestricts them, and obviously, the account may commit the view tofoundational pluralism.

Griffin addresses this question at the very beginning of his book onwell being (Griffin, 1986, ch.2).^[10] As he puts it,

The danger is that desire accounts get plausible only by, in effect,ceasing to be desire accounts. We had to qualify desire with informed,and that gave prominence to the features or qualities of the objectsof desire, and not to the mere existence of desire. (1986, p. 26).

Griffin’s account of the relationship between desire and valueis subtle, and (partly because Griffin himself does not distinguishbetween foundational and normative pluralism) it is difficult to saywhether his view is foundationally pluralist or not. Griffin arguesthat it is a mistake to see desire as a blind motivationalforce—we desire things that we perceive in a favorable light- wetake them to have a desirability feature. When we try to explain whatinvolved in seeing things in a favorable light, we cannot, accordingto Griffin, separate understanding from desire:

…we cannot, even in the case of a desirability feature such asaccomplishment, separate understanding and desire. Once we seesomething as ‘accomplishment’, as ‘giving weight andsubstance to our lives’, there is no space left for desire tofollow along in a secondary subordinate position. Desire is not blind.Understanding is not bloodless. Neither is the slave of the other.There is no priority. (1986, p. 30)

This suggests that the view is indeed pluralist at thefoundation—values are not defined entirely by desire, but partlyby other features of the situation, and so at the most fundamentallevel there is more than one value making feature. Griffin himselfsays that “the desire account is compatible with a strong formof pluralism about values” (p. 31).

The question whether or not Griffin is a foundational pluralist is notpursued further here. The aim in this section is to show first, thatmonist preference satisfaction accounts of value may have morecompelling ways of explaining complexities in value comparison thanmonist goods approaches, but second, to point out that any constraineddesire account may well actually be foundationally pluralist. As soonas something is introduced to constrain the desires that qualify asvalue conferring, it looks as though another value is operating.

4. Pluralism and Rational Choice

The big question facing pluralism is whether rational choices can bemade between irreducibly plural values. Irreducible plurality appearsto imply incommensurability—that is to say, that there is nocommon measure which can be used to compare two different values. (Seethe entry onincommensurable values.) Value incommensurability seems worrying: if values areincommensurable, then either we are forced into an ad hoc ranking, orwe cannot rank the values at all. Neither of these are very appealingoptions.

However, pluralists reject this dilemma. Bernard Williams argues thatit is a mistake to think that pluralism implies that comparisons areimpossible. He says:

There is one motive for reductivism that does not operate simply onthe ethical, or on the non-ethical, but tends to reduce everyconsideration to one basic kind. This rests on an assumption aboutrationality, to the effect that two considerations cannot berationally weighed against each other unless there is a commonconsideration in terms of which they can be compared. This assumptionis at once very powerful and utterly baseless. Quite apart from theethical, aesthetic considerations can be weighed against economic ones(for instance) without being an application of them, and without theirboth being an example of a third kind of consideration. (Williams1985, p. 17)

Making a similar point, Ruth Chang points out that incommensurabilityis often conflated with incomparability. She provides cleardefinitions of each: incommensurability is the lack of a common unitof value by which precise comparisons can be made. Two items areincomparable, if there is no possible relation of comparison, such as‘better than’, or ‘as good as’ (1997,Introduction). Chang points out that incommensurability is oftenthought to entail incomparability, but it does not.

Defenders of pluralism have used various strategies to show that it ispossible to make rational choices between plural values.

4.1 Practical Wisdom

The pluralist’s most common strategy in the face of worriesabout choices between incommensurable values is to appeal to practicalwisdom—the faculty described by Aristotle—a faculty ofjudgment that the wise and virtuous person has, which enables him tosee the right answer. Practical wisdom is not just a question of beingable to see and collate the facts, it goes beyond that in someway—the wise person will see things that only a wise personcould see. So plural values can be compared in that a wise person will‘just see’ that one course of action rather than anotheris to be taken. This strategy is used (explicitly or implicitly) byMcDowell (1979), Nagel (1979), Larmore (1987), Skorupski (1996),Anderson (1993 and 1997) Wiggins (1997 and 1998), Chappell (1998),Swanton (2003). Here it is in Nagel’s words:

Provided one has taken the process of practical justification as faras it will go in the course of arriving at the conflict, one may beable to proceed without further justification, but withoutirrationality either. What makes this possible isjudgment—essentially the faculty Aristotle described aspractical wisdom, which reveals itself over time in individualdecisions rather than in the enunciation of general principles. (1979,p. 135)

The main issue for this solution to the comparison problem is to comeup with an account of what practical wisdom is. It is not easy tounderstand what sort of thing the faculty of judgment might be, or howit might work. Obviously pluralists who appeal to this strategy do notwant to end up saying that the wise judge can see which of the optionshas more goodness, as that would constitute collapsing back intomonism. So the pluralist has to maintain that the wise judge makes ajudgment about what the right thing to do is without making anyquantitative judgment. The danger is that the faculty seems entirelymysterious: it is a kind of magical vision, unrelated to our naturalsenses. As a solution to the comparison problem, the appeal topractical wisdom looks rather like way of shifting the problem toanother level. Thus the appeal to practical wisdom cannot be left atthat. The pluralist owes more explanation of what is involved inpractical wisdom. What follows below are various pluralists’accounts of how choice between plural values is possible, and whethersuch choice is rational.

4.2 Super Scales

One direction that pluralists have taken is to argue that althoughvalues are plural, there is nonetheless an available scale on which torank them. This scale is not rationalized by something that the valueshave in common (that would be monism), but by something over and abovethe values, which is not itself a super value. Williams sometimeswrites as if this is his intention, as do Griffin (1986 and 1997),Stocker (1990), Chang (1997 and 2004), Taylor (1982 and 1997). JamesGriffin (1986) develops this suggestion in his discussion of pluralprudential values. According to Griffin, we do not need to have asuper-value to have super-scale. Griffin says:

…it does not follow from there being no super-value that thereis no super-scale. To think so would be to misunderstand how thenotion of ‘quantity’ of well-being enters. It entersthrough ranking; quantitative differences are defined on qualitativeones. The quantity we are talking about is ‘prudentialvalue’ defined on informed rankings. All that we need for theall-encompassing-scale is the possibility of ranking items on thebasis of their nature. And we can, in fact, rank them in that way. Wecan work out trade-offs between different dimensions of pleasure orhappiness. And when we do, we rank in a strong sense: not just chooseone rather than the other, but regard it as worth more. That is theultimate scale here: worth to one’s life. (Griffin 1986, p. 90)

This passage is slightly hard to interpret (for more on why see myearlier discussion of Griffin in the section on preferencesatisfaction accounts). On one interpretation, Griffin is in factespousing a sophisticated monism. The basic value is ‘worth toone’s life’, and though it is important to talk aboutnon-basic values, such as the different dimensions of pleasure andhappiness, they are ultimately judged in terms of their contributionto the worth of lives.

The second possible interpretation takes Griffin’s claim thatworth to life is not a supervalue seriously. On this interpretation,it is hard to see what worth to life is, if not a supervalue. Perhapsit is only a value that we should resort to when faced withincomparabilities. However, this interpretation invites the criticismthat Griffin is introducing a non-moral value, perhaps prudentialvalue, to arbitrate when moral values are incommensurable. In otherwords, we cannot decide between incommensurable values on moralgrounds, so we should decide on prudential grounds. This seemsreasonable when applied to incommensurabilities in aesthetic values.One might not be able to say whether Guernica is better than War andPeace, but one might choose to have Guernica displayed on the wallbecause it will impress one’s friends, or because it is worthmore money, or even because one just enjoys it more. In the case ofmoral choices this is a less convincing strategy: it introduces alevel of frivolity into morality that seems out of place.

Stocker’s main strategy is to argue that values are plural, andcomparisons are made, so it must be possible to make rationalcomparisons. He suggests that a “higher level synthesizingcategory” can explain how comparisons are made (1990, p. 172).According to Stocker these comparisons are not quantitative, they areevaluative:

Suppose we are trying to choose between lying on a beach anddiscussing philosophy—or more particularly, between the pleasureof the former and the gain in understanding from the latter. Tocompare them we may invoke what might be called a higher-levelsynthesizing category. So, we may ask which will conduce to a morepleasing day, or to a day that is better spent. Once we have fixedupon the higher synthesizing category, we can often easily ask whichoption is better in regard to that category and judge which to chooseon the basis of that. Even if it seems a mystery how we might‘directly’ compare lying on the beach and discussingphilosophy, it is a commonplace that we do compare them, e.g. inregard to their contribution to a pleasing day. (Stocker 1990, p. 72)

Stocker claims that goodness is just the highest level synthesizingcategory, and that lower goods are constitutive means to the good.Ruth Chang’s approach to comparisons of plural values is verysimilar (Chang 1997 (introduction) and 2004). Chang claims thatcomparisons can only be made in terms of a covering value—a morecomprehensive value that has the plural values as parts.

A recent suggestion by Brian Hedden and Daniel Munoz is thatbydefinition, overall value supervenes on the dimensions of value(Hedden and Munoz 2023). The basic point is that if overall value isaffected, then there must be a relevant and distinct way that goodnessor badness has been contributed. So, for example, in Chang’scase of adding more pleasure disrupting balance (see section 2.1),Hedden and Munoz argue that balance is a dimension of value, and it isbecause balance has been adversely affected that there is less valueoverall.

There is a problem in understanding quite what a ‘synthesizingcategory’ or ‘covering value’ is. How does thecovering value determine the relative weightings of the constituentvalues? One possibility is that it does it by purestipulation—as a martini just is a certain proportion of gin andvermouth. However, stipulation does not have the right sort ofexplanatory power. On the other hand, if a view is to remainpluralist, it must avoid conflating the super scale with a supervalue. Chang argues that her covering values are sufficiently unitaryto provide a basis for comparison, and yet preserve the separatenessof the other values. Chang’s argument goes as follows: thevalues at stake in a situation (for example, prudence and morality)cannot on their own determine how heavily they weigh in a particularchoice situation—the values weigh differently depending on thecircumstances of the choice. However, the values plus thecircumstances cannot determine relevant weightingseither—because (simplifying here) the internal circumstances ofthe choice will affect the weighting of the values differentlydepending on the external circumstances. To use Chang’s ownexample, when the values at stake are prudence and morality(specifically, the duty to help an innocent victim), and thecircumstances include the fact that the victim is far away, the effectthis circumstance will have on the weighting of the values depends onexternal circumstances, which fix what matters in the choice. So, asChang puts it, “‘What matters’ must therefore havecontent beyond the values and the circumstances of the choice”(2004, p. 134).

Stocker is aware of the worry that appeal to something in terms ofwhich comparisons can be made reduces the view to monism: Stockerinsists that the synthesizing category (such as a good life) is not aunitary value—it is at most ‘nominal monism’ in myterminology. Stocker argues that it is a philosophical prejudice tothink that rational judgment must be quantitative, and so he claimsthat he does not need to give an account of how we form and use thehigher level synthesizing categories.

4.3 Basic Preferences

Another approach to the comparison problem appeals to basicpreferences. Joseph Raz takes the line that we can explain choicebetween irreducibly plural goods by talking about basic preferences.Raz approaches the issue of incommensurability by talking about thenature of agency and rationality instead of about the nature of value.He distinguishes between two conceptions of human agency: therationalist conception, and the classical conception. The rationalistconception corresponds to what we have called the stronger use of theterm rational. According to the rationalist conception, reasonsrequire action. The classical conception, by contrast, “regardsreasons as rendering options eligible” (Raz 1999, p. 47). Razfavors the classical conception, which regards the will as somethingseparate from desire:

The will is the ability to choose and perform intentional actions. Weexercise our will when we endorse the verdict of reason that we mustperform an action, and we do so, whether willingly, reluctantly, orregretting the need, etc. According to the classical conception,however, the most typical exercise or manifestation of the will is inchoosing among options that reason merely renders eligible. Commonlywhen we so choose, we do what we want, and we choose what we want,from among the eligible options. Sometimes speaking of wanting oneoption (or its consequences) in preference to the other eligible onesis out of place. When I choose one tin of soup from a row of identicaltins in the shop, it would be wrong and misleading to say that Iwanted that tin rather than, or in preference to, the others.Similarly, when faced with unpalatable but unavoidable andincommensurate options (as when financial need forces me to give upone or another of incommensurate goods), it would be incorrect to saythat I want to give up the one I choose to give up. I do not want todo so. I have to, and I would equally have regretted the loss ofeither good. I simply choose to give up one of them. (Raz, 1999, p.48)

Raz’s view about the nature of agency is defended in greatdetail over the course of many articles, and all of those argumentscannot be examined in detail here. What is crucial in the context ofthis discussion of pluralism is whether Raz gives us a satisfactoryaccount of the weaker sense of rational. Raz’s solution to theproblem of incommensurability hangs on the claim that it can berational (in the weak sense) to choose A over B when there are nofurther reasons favouring A over B. We shall restrict ourselves tomentioning one objection to the view in the context of moral choicesbetween plural goods. Though Raz’s account of choice may seemplausible in cases where we choose between non-moral values, it seemsto do violence to the concept of morality. Consider one of Raz’sown examples, the choice between a banana and a pear. It may be thatone has to choose between them, and there is no objective reason tochoose one or the other. In this case, it seems Raz’s account ofchoice is plausible. If one feels like eating a banana, then in thiscase, desire does provide a reason. As Raz puts it, “A want cannever tip the balance of reasons in and of itself. Rather, our wantsbecome relevant when reasons have run their course.” In theexample where we choose between a banana and a pear, this sounds fine.However, if we apply it to a moral choice it seems a lot lessplausible. Raz admits that “If of the options available toagents in typical situations of choice and decision, several areincommensurate, then reason can neither determine nor completelyexplain their choices or actions” (Raz, 1999, p. 48). Thus manymoral choices are not directed by reason but by a basic preference. Itis not fair to call it a desire, because on Raz’s account wedesire things for reasons—we take the object of our desire to bedesirable. On Raz’s picture then, when reasons have run theircourse, we are choosing without reasons. It doesn’t matterhugely whether we call that ‘rational’ (it is not rationalin the strong sense, but it is in the weak sense). What matters iswhether this weak sense of rational is sufficient to satisfy ourconcept of moral choice as being objectively defensible. The problemis that choosing without reasons look rather like plumping. Plumpingmay be an intelligible form of choice, but it is questionable whetherit is a satisfactory account of moral choice.

4.4 Accepting Incomparability

One philosopher who is happy to accept that there may be situationswhere we just cannot make reasoned choices between plural values isIsaiah Berlin, who claimed that goods such as liberty and equalityconflict at the fundamental level. Berlin is primarily concerned withpolitical pluralism, and with defending political liberalism, but hisviews about incomparability have been very influential in discussionson moral pluralism. Bernard Williams (1981), Charles Larmore (1987),John Kekes (1993), Michael Stocker (1990 and 1997), David Wiggins(1997) have all argued that there are at least some genuinelyirresolvable conflicts between values, and that to expect a rationalresolution is a mistake. (See also the entry onmoral dilemmas). For Williams this is part of a more general mistake made bycontemporary moral philosophers—he thinks that philosophy triesto make ethics too easy, too much like arithmetic. Williams insiststhroughout his writings that ethics is a much more complex andmulti-faceted beast than its treatment at the hands of moralphilosophers would suggest, and so it is not surprising to him thatthere should be situations where values conflict irresolvably. Stocker(1990) discusses the nature of moral conflict at great length, andalthough he thinks that many apparent conflicts can be dissolved orare not serious, like Williams, he argues that much of contemporaryphilosophy’s demand for simplicity is mistaken. Stocker arguesthat ethics need not always be action guiding, that value is much morecomplex than Kantians and utilitarians would have us think, and thatas the world is complicated we will inevitably face conflicts. Severalpluralists have argued that accepting the inevitability of valueconflicts does not result in a breakdown of moral argument, but ratherthe reverse. Kekes (1993), for example, claims that pluralism enablesus to see that irresolvable disagreements are not due to wickedness onthe part of our interlocutor, but may be due to the plural nature ofvalues.

5. Conclusion

The battle lines in the debate between pluralism and monism are notalways clear. This entry has outlined some of them, and discussed someof the main arguments. Pluralists need to be clear about whether theyare foundational or non-foundational pluralists. Monists must defendtheir claim that there really is a unitary value. Much of the debatebetween pluralists and monists has focussed on the issue of whetherthe complexity of moral choice implies that values really areplural—a pattern emerges in which the monist claims to be ableto explain the appearance of plurality away, and the pluralist insiststhat the appearance reflects a pluralist reality. Finally, pluralistsmust explain how comparisons between values are made, or defend theconsequence that incommensurability is widespread.

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