Value in Ethics and Economics

VALUE IN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS Elizabeth Anderson

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Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

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Copyright © 1993 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Second printing, 1995

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anderson, Elizabeth, 1959Value in ethics and economics / Elizabeth Anderson, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-93189-0 (cloth) ISBN 0-674-93190-4 (pbk.) 1. Values. 2. Value. 3. Reason. 4. Economics—Moral and ethical aspects. 5. Markets—Moral and ethical aspects. 6. Decision -making. I. Title. BD232.A48 1993 121'.8—dc20 93-365

For David

Contents

Preface ! 1/ A Pluralist Theory of Value

1

1.1 A Rational Attitude Theory of Value

1

1.2 Ideals and Self-Assessment

5

1.3 How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation

2

3

1.4 How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization

11

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

11

2.1 Value and Rational Action

11

2.2 The Framing of Decisions

22

2.3 The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs

26

2.4 Consequentialism

30

2.5 Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self

38

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

44

3.1 The Advantages of Consequentialism

44

3.2 A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value fudgments

41

viii •

Contents • ix

Contents

3.3 Incommensurable Goods

. 55

3.4 Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods 4

59

168

8.1 The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood

168

8.2 Children as Commodities

110

8.3 Women's Labor as a Commodity

115

65

4.1 The Test of Self-Understanding

65

8.4 Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women

182

4.2 The Hierarchy of Values

66

8.5 Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law

185

4.3 Agent-Centered Restrictions

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Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality

190

9.1 Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification

190

9.2 Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life

195

9.3 Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment

203

9.4 Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis

210

Conclusion

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Notes

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References

231

Index

241

Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense

86 91

5.1 A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity

91

5.2 The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons 5.3 How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical 5.4 Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense Monistic Theories of Value\ 6.1 Monism

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4.5 A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason?

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Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints

4.4 Hybrid Consequentialism

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91 104 112

111 V

6.2 Moore's Aesthetic Monism 6.3 Hedonism 6.4 Rational Desire Theory 7 \ The Ethical Limitations of the Market 1.1 Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics 1.2 The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market 1.3 Civil Society and the Market

111 119 123 129 141 141 143 141

1.4 Personal Relations and the Market

150

1.5 Political Goods and the Market

158

1.6 The Limitations of Market Ideologies

163

Preface

Why not put everything up for sale? I first began wondering about this question more than a decade ago, when political theories that advocated virtually unlimited market expansion were enjoying a resurgence that continues to this day. Since then the market itself has expanded into new domains, such as human organs and women's reproductive powers. We have seen the labor union movement, which once imposed powerful constraints on labor markets, in dramatic retreat from the private sector in the United States. Market deregulation and privatization have dominated economic policies in North America and Western Europe, while Eastern Europe is now opening up to capitalist development. People have increasingly withdrawn from civic life to malls and privately developed, sheltered "communities," while public spaces in inner cities are used to "house" the homeless and the mentally ill. Most of the debates about these developments have concentrated on questions of efficiency and income distribution. Although these are important issues, I do not--believe~itet~th^^ concerns we should have about theve^t^aHimitations of the markej. We should also care about what sorts of people and eeimrnirritiH^ of ourselves when we treat women as commercial baby factories, public spaces of social interaction as places either to shop or to avoid, and the natural environment as just another economically exploitable resource. In this book I attempt to articulate and justify these other sorts of concerns. When I first turned to philosophy and social science to help me think about the proper scope of the market, I didn't find what I was looking for. The dominant models of human motivation, rational choice, and value in

xii • Preface

these disciplines seem tailor-made to represent the norms of the market as universally appropriate for nearly all human interaction. According to the prevailing theories of value, people realize their good in having their wants satisfied. Markets are represented as generically appropriate vehicles for satisfying anyone's wants. According to the prevailing theories of rationality, people act rationally when they maximize their "utility" (welfare or want-satisfaction). Market choices provide the paradigm for this kind of rationality, which social scientists have eagerly generalized to cover the entire domain of human action. So markets are represented as the generically rational form of human organization. To count as rational, any other domain of human interaction would have to be governed by the same principles as the market. People can maximize utility only if they can find a common measure of value for all their options. Markets seem to provide such a common measure because they can put a cash value on almost anything people want. One could find room within the prevailing .theories of value and rational choice to question much of what markets do. Still, these theories share with economistic political theories several features that make this task more difficult. One is a socially impoverished conception of the individual. TQie^ejheojie^reE£ esen ^^ individual adult as freely forming and expressinj^^ apart from any particular social contexts or relations to others. TmTiE3rvT3uaIis^c picture of1 aTational person, as self-sufficient and independent, of others, supports a consumerist ideology that represents the individual as most free and rational in his market choices, where he need not concern himself with anyone else in deciding what to buy. This obscures the role of dialogue with others in making sense of ourselves and the role of social norms in shaping reasonable desires. It also leads to a psychologically impoverished conception of an individuals concerns. The prevailing theories of value and rationality suppose that when people value or care about something, they are engaging only one basic attitude or response—desire, perhaps, or pleasure—which can vary quantitatively but not qualitatively. And this view, in turn, leads to a drastically reductionistic or monistic view of value. Being valuable becomes a matter of having a single property or arousing a single response in us. Goods differ in quantity, as they arouse more or less of the same response, but not in quality or in kind. My original interest in the limits of markets led me to formulate a new theory of value and rationality that avoids the defects of the dominant theories. My theory emphasizes the richness and diversity of our concerns and finds a place for the full range of our responses to what we value. We

Preface • xiii

don't respond to what we value merely with desire or pleasure, but with love, admiration, honor, respect, affection, and awe as well. This allows us to see how goods can be plural, how they can differ in kind or quality: they differ not only in how much we should value them, but in how we should value them. In trying to make sense of the different ways we have of valuing things, we arrive at a socially integrated conception of the rational person. Being rational is a matter of intelligibly expressing our varied concerns to others. To do this, we must govern our conduct by shared norms established in dialogue with others, norms that are constitutive of different spheres and roles of social life. This socially grounded view of value and rationality, in turn, provides the key to understanding the ethical limitations of markets. If different spheres of social life, such as the market, the family, and the state, are structured by norms that express fundamentally different ways of valuing people and things, then there can be some ways we ought to value people and things that can't be expressed through market norms. We have to govern their production, circulation, and enjoyment through the norms of other social spheres to value them adequately. This book covers a lot of ground, from theories of value and rational choice, to disputes about justification and the objectivity of values, to theories of freedom, autonomy, markets, and politics. Different readers are therefore likely to be interested in different parts of this book. Those who are primarily interested in markets and politics should read Chapter 1, and then Chapters 7, 8, and 9. Those who are primarily interested in the theory of value should read Chapters 1 and 6, then §2.3, §§3.2—3.3, and §4.2. Those who are primarily interested in the theory of practical reason should read Chapters 1 through 5. Those who are interested in asking what value judgments mean, whether they express beliefs or emotions or other attitudes, and whether they refer to really existing values will not find me much engaged with these issues. Because my own inclinations are pragmatic, I prefer to set aside these semantic and metaphysical disputes and concentrate on normative questions. However, my investigations expose some features of our evaluative practices and experiences that any metaethical theory should accommodate. In Chapters 1 through 6 I discuss phenomena potentially relevant to these disputes. The last three chapters of this book contain material I have published before. Chapter 7 is a revised and expanded version of "The Ethical Limitations of the Market," Economics and Philosophy 6 (1990): 179-205. Chapter 8 is a revised version, with replies to my critics, of "Is Women's Labor a Commodity?" Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990): 71-92.

Preface

Portions of Chapter 9 are drawn from "Values, Risks, and Market Norms," Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (Winter 1988): 54-65. I thank Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint the first article, and Princeton University Press for permission to reprint the last two. I am grateful for the support of several institutions in aiding my research. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation awarded me a Charlotte W Newcombe Fellowship in 1986-1987. The Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan supported my research in 1989-1990. The University of Michigan and the Philosophy Department provided course relief in Fall 1990 and Fall 1991. Numerous departments and academic conferences have invited me to present work in progress. I thank them for the opportunity to open my views to critical scrutiny before I committed them to print. I take great pleasure in thanking the many friends and colleagues who have offered me support, advice, and criticism while I was writing this book. I owe an immense debt to Hugh Lacey, who first set me on the path of philosophy and has provided insight and inspiration to me ever since. John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, and Burton Drdben advised me on my first attempts to formulate my views about markets\and values when I was in graduate school. My colleagues at the University^of Michigan, including Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, Don Herzog, David Hills, Peter Railton, and David Velleman, read various chapters in painstaking detail and offered criticisms that have made this book immensely better than it otherwise would have been. I learned a lot from collaborating with Rick Pildes on a paper that helped me frame some central arguments of the book. I have profited from conversations with Jim Conant, Ann Cudd, John McDowell, Michael Pakaluk, Michael Sandel, Marion Smiley, Michael Stocker, Cass Sunstein, Charles Taylor, and Paul Weithman. Alan Wertheimer, Debra Satz, Charles Beitz, and Richard Zeckhauser offered invaluable criticisms of published or presented versions of the last three chapters of my book. Ruth Chang and Heidi Feldman also provided numerous helpful comments. I am deeply grateful to my parents and my husband, David Jacobi, for their unflagging support of my philosophical pursuits.

Value in Ethics and Economics

1 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

1.1 A Rational Attitude Theory of Value People experience the world as infused with many different values. Friendships can be intimate, or merely convenient, charged with sexual excitement, or mellow. A subway station can be confining, menacing, and dumpy, or spacious, welcoming, and sleek. When people attribute goodness or badness to some thing, person, relationship, act, or state of affairs, they usually do so in some respect or other: as dashing, informative, or tasty, delightful, trustworthy, or honorable, or as corrupt, cruel, odious, horrifying, dangerous, or ugly Our evaluative experiences, and the judgments based on them, are deeply pluralistic. I aim to explain and vindicate this pluralism of ordinary evaluative thought and to develop some of its practical and theoretical implications. This requires an investigation^ in J in valuing or caring about things, in expressing and ^6^^2^^^^ these phenomena will help us home in on what it is to be good and how we know things to be good. The suggestion that we have evaluative experiences has struck many philosophers as metaphysically eerie: science has discovered no "evaluative facts," or any organs of "moral sense," that enable us to discern the properties of "good" and "bad" in the world (Mackie 1977, pp. 38—42). We can dispel this mystery by recalling what ordinary experiences of value are like. We experience things not as simply good_o^jba^^buL^s_gQQcl or J3aj__in_particular Ijspgctsjjiat elicit distinct responses in us. There is nothing mysterious about finding a dessert delectable, a joke hilarious, a soccer match exhilarating, a revolution liberating. We also can find someone's compliments cloying, a task burdensome, a speech boring. To experience something as good is to be favorably aroused by it—to be

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 3 2 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

inspired, attracted, interested, pleased, awed. To experience it as bad is to be unfavorably aroused by it—to be shocked, offended, disgusted, irritated, bored, pained. Evaluative experiences are experiences of things as arousing particular positive or negative emotional responses in us. Evaluative experiences are relevant to questions concerning the good because they typically arouse or express our concerns about what we experience. Valuing or caring about things is more fundamental to understanding values than are experiences of value, for many things can be good which are not directly encountered in experience, but are known only through theory or description (Johnston 1989, p. 142). No particular qualities of experience need to accompany knowledge of the literacy rate, the justice of patterns or processes of wealth distribution, or the stability of habitats for endangered species. What makes such things candidates for goodness seems to be that we can care about them or value them. To value something is to have a complex of positive attitudes toward it, governed by distinct standards for perception, emotion, deliberation, desire, and conduct. People who care about something are emotionally involved in what concerns the object of care. Parents who love their children will normally be happy when their childlen are successful and alarmed when they are injured. They will be alert\o their needs, take their welfare seriously in their deliberations, and want ro take actions that express their care. These all express the way loving parents value their children. To experience something as valuable and to value it are not to judge that it is valuable. A person may laugh at a racist joke, but be embarrassed at her laughter. Her embarrassment reflects a judgment that her amusement was not an appropriate response to the joke. The joke was not genuinely good or funny: it did not merit laughter. A person could also judge that a joke is funny, but be so depressed that she can't bring herself to laugh at it. Such a judgment could be the occasion of further depression, because it makes her aware of her own deficient state of mind, too miserable even to appreciate a good joke. These observations support the following proposal: to judge that something is good is to judge that it is properly valued. And to judge that UlsT bad is.tp judge that it is prop,QrJy_4isyalued. Often people judge that something is good in some particular respect, as in being charming, or inventive. I suggest that the proposition "x is F," where F is a respect in which something is judged to be genuinely valuable, entails that x meets a particular standard F, and that x merits valuation in virtue of meeting F.1 One intrinsically values something when one values it in itself—that is,

apart from valuing anything else. I propose that the judgment that x is intrinsically valuable entails that (under normal conditions) x is properly intrinsically valued, independent of the propriety of valuing any other particular thing. Extrinsic values include but are not confined to instru-1 mental values. One may treasure an ugly, useless gift because it was given 1 ^~~ by a loved one. Such a gift is extrinsically valuable, in that one's valuation/ of it depends upon one's valuation of the giver. — R^ejlej^iyE-Jzaluej^ forms of self-assessment which are_embodied in second-order attitudes, or attitudes about «~^ other attitudejL_As we saw above, one may be embarrassed or depressed by one's failure to respond appropriately to what one judges to be good. One may be pleased by or proud of one's appropriate valuations. Ij3ror>ose_lhat thi^s so because the concepts of m e r i t i ^ : valued are rationality ^concepts. When we wonder whether something is appropriately valued, we wonder whether we would be making sense in valuing it. On my view, the investigation into what is worth our caring about is a quest for self-understanding, an attempt to make sense of our own valuational responses to the world. In §5.1, I will tie the project of rational self-understanding to social practices of justification. Here I will offer a provisional account of the story to come. The link between selfunderstanding and justification is provided by the fact that valuations are expressive states. They are bearers of meanings and subject to interpretation. Since meanings are public, I can understand my own attitudes only in terms that make sense to others. Attitudes are also partly constituted by norms that determine their proper objects. So the interpretation of attitudes involves their evaluation as well. I will argue that people interpret* and justify their valuations by exchanging_reasons Jor_them with the aim of reaching a common point of view from which others can achieve and reflectively endorse one another's valuations. To judge that one's valua- ^ tions make sense is to judge that they woulcTrSe endorsed from that \s!f^^^^^o^x^J2L^£SN. To Be rational is to be suitably responsivejtp reasons ojgered by those a t t e m p t i n g t o J ^ ^ L I ^ ^ J ^ ^ s ^ ^ S S ^ The terms in which we make sense of our valuations are given by our evaluative concepts. The opening of this chapter sampled some of the rich variety of concepts through which we describe evaluative experiences and express value judgments. Call a person's values whatever standards she accepts for evaluating persons, actions, and things. Evaluation is the process by which a person judges how far and in what ways different things meet her standards. An object's values consist of whatever properties it has, in virtue of which it meets various standards of value. I have proposed that

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 5

4 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

the judgment that an object meets an authentic standard of value entails that its meeting that standard makes it sensible for someone to value it. The standards of value for objects are standards of rationality for our responses to them. One of my values could be that bedrooms be cozy. If a given bedroom is cozy, then coziness is a value it has. Its coziness gives me a reason to feel comfortable in it and makes sense of my feeling snug when I retire there. Standards rationally adjust our valuations to their appropriate objects. Although all authentic values set standards for rational valuation, not every rational valuation of something depends upon its meeting some standard of value (Gaus 1990, pp. 70—71). Some ways of caring about things do depend upon their measuring up to particular standards of value—people don't admire athletes or musicians who lack dedication and skill—but other ways of valuing things do not. Parental love is like this. Parents can love infants independent of any valuable qualities they may have. Of course, loving another person will usually involve delight in some of that person s qualities, as when parents rave over the fact that little Melissa has her father's eyes. But this doesn't imply thatjthe parents think that having father's eyes merits anyone's raving, much less that their love for Melissa depends upon her having her father's eyesl Rather, parents express their love for an infant in part by adoring whatever features she has which can be adored. These features need not merit Valuation in their own right: parents can dote even on an ugly face. It follows that we have_two_conceptions of goods that_do not exactly coincide. On one view, a good is something that is appropriately valued. On the second, a good is a bearer or bundle of equalities that meet certain standards or requirements we (correctly) setJbrjt (Mackie 1977, pp. 55— ; 56). The_^e£oj^c^nce£tion defines a subset of the_ob^j^thatJa31-under the first: those things that merit valuation by meeting prior standards of /value? But jie^figt^amcepuon^ij^rnore basic, for it can be appropriate to / Yjlue.SQrne-thi»g&.-ox.persons mxeitain ways without.. their ni&etiagjndeV pendent standards oXevaluation—that is, without their meriting valuation. _]•__. twO conceptions of goods lead to two conceptions of the plurality of goods. On the first, goods are plural in that they are sensibly valued in fundamentally different ways. The opposing monistic view holds that all goods are the proper objects of a single evaluative attitude, such as desire, pleasure, or admiring contemplation. On the second conception, goods are plural in that the authentic evaluative standards they meet are fundamentally diverse. The opposing monistic view maintains that the apparently diverse standards for rational valuation can be reduced to some single

ground or explained by reference to a single good-constituting property, such as being desired or pleasant. The^rst conception of pluralism is more basic than the second because it explains why the second is true: we neecTa plurality of standards to make sense of the plurality of emotional responses and attitudes we have to things. The things that sensibly 'elicit delight are not generally the same things that merit respect or admiration. Our capacities for articulating our attitudes depend upon our understandings of our attitudes, which are informed by norms for valuation. To attempt to reduce the plurality of standards to a single standard, ground, or goodconstituting property threatens to obliterate the self-understandings in terms of which we make sense of and differentiate our emotions, attitudes, and concerns. To adopt a monistic theory of value as our self-understanding is to hopelessly impoverish our responsive capacities to a monolithic "pro" or "con" attitude or to mere desire and aversion. In identifying what is good with the proper objects of positive valuation, my theory follows Franz Brentano's. Brentano (1969, p. 18) hddjhat an object is good if and only if it is correct to love it, and bad if and only if it is correct to hatejt. My theory adds two main points to Brentano's. First, it views the concept of "correctness" as a rationality concept, H^jltP , ti^ My theory of value could be called a "rational_attitiicie_lhejor^'' according to which the attitudes engaged when we care about things involve not just feelings but judgment, conduct, sensitivities to qualities in what we value, and certain ways of structuring deliberation concerned with what we value.2 Second, thej^ej.s not justjoneJ^ay^to love or have a ^ro-attimde" toward things. There^are: different forn^^^ and there are ways of valuing things that are not love at all, such as respect and admiration. The variety of ways of caring about things is the source of^ pluralism in my theory of value. 1.2 Ideals and Self-Assessment Valuing and evaluation are distinct activities. In evaluation, people determine how far something meets the particular standards they set for it. In valuing something, people meet certain standards for caring about it, although they may be unaware of, may not endorse, and may not try to govern their actions by those standards. A person could care about something but judge himself contemptible for caring about it. For example, Max could discover to his dismay that he is absorbed by his own good looks, even though he judges his vanity contemptible. Evaluation is a

(Tie

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 7 6 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

means by which people come to rational self-understanding and selfgovernance of their own valuations. BepiiS£JtlLe.-S£aDiia^ J b j t j x e th^s^andards o£ i d valuations luations into into harmony, harmony, people people judge judge In bringing their evaluations and themselves worthy of positive valuation, or at least not worthy of negative valuation. This suggests that the grounds of a person's reflectively held values (if she has any) lie in her conceptions of what kind of person she ought to be, what kinds of character, attitudes, concerns, and commitments she should | have. I call such self-conceptions ideals. Ideals are objects not merely of desire, but of aspiration. The desires to be an exemplary mother or a U.S. Marine, to be a suave, sophisticated cosmopolitan or a self-made man, to be a champion of science over superstition or a zealous missionary devoted to spreading God's word are aspirations toward ideals with which we are familiar. Members of communities may have shared ideals, such as to be a citizen republic, culturally or racially pure, to be the artistic avantgarde, to live in holy matrimony or in harmony with nature. As these examples suggest, to call a self-conception an ideal is not necessarily to endorse it, but to imply that it is a possible object of admiration or condemnation, honor or disdain, and that the people who adapt it regard it as worthy. J Ideals set the standards of conduct and emotion people expect themselves to satisfy with regard to other people, relationships, and things. A U.S. Marine is supposed to be patriotic—to love his country, obey its leaders, and fight to the death for the causes it esteems. A connoisseur of fine art is supposed to cultivate an appreciation of subtle qualities in painting and sculpture and to be appalled at damage done to great works. A labor union activist is supposed to build solidarity with fellow members of the working class and to feel that "an injury to one is an injury to all." Such standards of conduct and emotion tell us how to care about things and people. We care about things and people in different ways, which express what I call different modes of valuation, such as love, respect, and admiration. Ideals give us perspectives from which to articulate and scrutinize the ways we value things. The core of an ideal consists in a conception of qualities of character, or characteristics of the community, which the holders regard as excellent and as central to their identities. Associated with this core is a conception of admirable conduct or worthy practices and projects that demand the cultivation, exercise, and expression of these qualities. An ideal is constitu-

tive of a person's identity if it governs her self-assessments and her responses to her achievement and failure and if she uses it to discipline her desires and frame her choices. Failure to live up to one's ideals will prompt shame, guilt, self-contempt, or other negative self-assessing emotions. Circumstances which prevent a person from realizing her ideals are likely to be experienced as humiliating and degrading, not just as frustrating. Ideals ground some crucial distinctions in the theory of value. One is between value and importance to a person. I have claimed that goods are things whose valuation is rational. An ambiguity exists here between what anyone could rationally value if she were in appropriate circumstances and what it makes sense for a particular person to value, given her circumstances and characteristics. I reserve the impersonal sense of rationality for the attribution of value to something and the personal sense for what is important to a person. There is a great diversity of worthwhile ideals, not all of which can be combined in a single life. Different ideals may require the cultivation of incompatible virtues or the pursuit of some projects that necessarily preclude the pursuit of others. Individuals with different talents, temperaments, interests, opportunities, and relations to others rationally adopt or uphold different ideals. Since ideals direct a person to specially value some worthwhile projects, persons, and things over others, they distinguish from among all goods those that are particularly important to the individual. That incompatible ideals are properly adopted by different persons explains why it doesn't make sense for everyone to take up the same attitudes toward the same things. There are far more potentially worthy objects of valuation than could occupy any one person's concern. The different relations individuals have toward persons and things help determine their proper attitudes toward them. This is obviously true for love. Radically different kinds of love are appropriate to different members of one's family, depending on one's relationship to them. That an individual stands in a particular relation to some persons or objects—say, as daughter, business partner, or inventor—partly determines the ideals rationally available to her, the importance these persons and objects have for her, and hence the appropriate attitudes she should take up toward them. So ideals distinguish among goods that play a more or less important role in a person s life. They also distinguish between goods that are important to a person just because she happens to care about them and goods that are important to her because they command her concern (Frankfurt 1988). In the former case, as long as the goods don't violate minimal impersonal standards for rational valuation, it doesn't matter for her self-

8 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

regard whether she cares about them or loses interest in them. In the latter case, whether she cares about them can reflect well or poorly on herself. A person sees her failure to live up to her core ideal aspirations in this light. Call goods of the former type weakly valued and those of the latter type strongly valued.3 People use ideals to cultivate and discipline their desires. Ideals function in this way because they are expressed in second-order desires, or desires to have or change other desires. If I uphold an ideal of integrity, I want myself to be motivated to stand up for my beliefs, and I want this desire to govern my actions even when it conflicts with my desire to maintain a favorable reputation. Not every second-order desire expresses an ideal. I could want to get rid of a desire simply because it is inconvenient. Perhaps my desire to linger on the telephone prevents me from getting on with my evening. Here I engage only my weak valuations, for I regard the desires in question as merely optional. I could choose to adopt a more leisurely attitude toward my affairs rather than to get rid of my desire to carry on with my friends over the phone. But I don't regard my desire for integrity as merely optional. No simple, unobjectionable change of perspective is available which would allow me to pander to others' opinions when my integrity is at stake. If I lack the desire for certain weakly valued ends, such [ as physical comfort, this might make me weird or quirky but not worthy I of contempt. If I lack the desire for strongly valued ends, such as integrity, ] this makes me base or deplorable in my own eyes.4 J In telling us how to value different goods, and in tying our valuations to our judgments of self-worth, ideals help structure the world of goods into different kinds. They draw boundaries between different classes of goods, setting them into circulation within distinct networks of social relations governed by distinct norms. This differentiation of ways of valuing things, socially embodied in different social spheres, provides the key to understanding how goods differ in kind. 1.3 How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation Kant's moral philosophy provides a particularly illuminating example of how goods differ in kind: "In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced byjomething else as its equivalent; . . . whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity" (Kant 1981, p. 40). In thjs-passage^ Kant expresses the view that there are two kinds of value, (elative worthand , intrinsic worth. £ very thing is either a mere means, wfthTTprice or

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 9

relative value, or an end in itself, with an intrinsic worth which Kant calls "dignity." Things that differ in the kind of worth they have merit different kinds of valuation. People value mere means by using them, but they value persons with dignity by respecting them. People express these different modes of valuation in part by deliberating about their objects in different ways—engaging in prudential calculation for use-values and in deliberation according to the categorical imperative for ends-in-themselves. Kant's ideal of human rationality grounded his distinction between the way we should value persons and the way we should value things. By considering other ideals that are widely recognized in U.S. culture, we can see that Kantian ethics is hampered by the fact that it recognizes only two ways of valuing things, use and respect. These two modes of valuation are not enough to account for the richness of our experiences of value and our practices. Three examples from his Lectures on Ethics, concerning the status of animals, inanimate nature, and adultery, illustrate some problems a two-valued ethic has in attempting to account for our concerns in a many-valued world (Kant 1979, pp. 239-241, 169). Although Kant recognized aesthetic value as a distinct category of non-moral worth, he failed to see that even the domain of morality is many-valued. Animals cannot be respected in a Kantian ethic, for to respect something in the Kantian sense is to act toward it in accordance with laws it would accept as a legislating member of the Kingdom of Ends. Animals are incapable of entering into the reciprocal relations based upon a conscious acceptance of common principles which membership in the Kingdom of Ends requires. But Kant's conclusion does not follow—that animals are mere means and may be used by us for any purpose that does not violate our duties to humans. We shouldn't be cruel to animals. Kant tried to account for this commonsense view by arguing that we have an indirect duty to humans to refrain from animal cruelty, because cruelty to animals makes us more likely to treat humans cruelly. This attempt to account for our duties to animals is strained. If someone is cruel to her pet, people condemn her action whether or not this behavior will increase her cruelty to people. Neither Kantian respect nor mere use captures the appropriate treatment of pets. The ideal of a pet owner includes much more than even the avoidance of cruelty and the provision of basic necessities—we criticize an owner for failing to show proper affection for her pet. Although we make fewer demands for our treatment of animals in the wild, there is a base line of care which we should show for all animals. I suggest that we call this

10 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

kind of valuation "consideration." Consideration is a way of caring which pays due regard for the interests of sentient beings, apart from whether they are rational.5 Kant also regarded inanimate nature as a mere means. The only duty we have to conserve natural habitats follows from our duty to leave future generations enough resources. Kant saw no reason to preserve natural habitats from destruction through consumption, only reason to ration this destruction over time. In the United States today, we recognize ideals expressed in environmental movements to preserve ecosystems and natural wonders which express a deeper concern for nature. Most U.S. citizens view the redwoods and the Grand Canyon as beautiful and wondrous things to be intrinsically valued. To regard these wonders only from the standpoint of their use-value to humans is base. But inanimate nature can neither be respected in a Kantian sense nor given the consideration owed to animals, since it has no interests of its own. What seems to be an appropriate mode of valuation for inanimate nature is rather what we may call "appreciation." A third problem for Kantian ethics concerns the difference between the badness of cheating on a business deal and the badness of cheating on one's husband or wife. Kant condemned both actions for one reason: theyf reflect a lack of respect for persons. He argued that adultery is a graver sin I than fraud because the marriage contract is more important than any business contract. This does not explain why the victims of these actsy typically experience different kinds of diminishment. The significance of adultery seems to lie not so much in its failure of respect—which it shares with fraud—as in its betrayal of love. Modern ideals of marriage demand of partners deeper forms of care for each other than commercial contracts do. When these forms of care are no longer forthcoming, their loss is felt more personally Use, respect, appreciation, consideration, and love are five different ways of valuing things. A little reflection suggests more modes of valuation, such as honor, admiration, reverence, and toleration. We are familiar with numerous modes and expressions of disvaluation as well: to shun, humiliate, mock, despise, ignore, desecrate, and so forth. My provisional account of how goods differ in kind is thus that they differ in kind if they are properly valued in different ways. Talk of different kinds of goods may be somewhat misleading, if we think of kinds as non-interbreeding species. I think of kinds of goods as more like literary genres: they can be hybridized, like the comedy-thriller; they can stand in different relations to different audiences, as heroic odes do to oral and written cultures; and

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 11

they can be categorized differently by different cultures, as myths are by cultures having and lacking a scientific cosmology. Ideals tell individuals how they should value different things, depending on their value and personal importance. Some goods merit a particular mode of valuation because they meet a standard of value: beautiful things are worthy of appreciation, rational beings of respect, sentient beings of consideration, virtuous ones of admiration, convenient things of use. Here the pluralism of values or standards underwrites the pluralism of kinds of goods. Other goods are appropriately valued in a particular way because of their relation to the valuing agent, which makes them important to him. People who have helped someone are owed gratitude, brothers and sisters are to be loved, one s children to be nurtured. Romantic love, patriotism, loyalty, the treasuring of heirlooms, and the cherishing of friends are modes of valuation connected to importance judgments, not just to impersonal value judgments. Here the kind of good a thing is for a person depends on her particular biography and social situation, her place in a network of relationships. To value or care about something in a particular way involves a complex of standards for perception, emotion, deliberation, desire, and conduct that express and thereby communicate one's regard for the objects importance. To love someone involves the performance of many actions which express that love, which show the beloved that he or she has a special importance to the lover. It entails particular ways of deliberating about questions concerning what is valued, questions which distinctively engage the agents perceptual dispositions and set certain considerations in priority over others. Parental love involves perceiving and attending to a child's needs and wants and giving the child's needs a certain priority in deliberation (over his wants and over other concerns). Finally, a mode of valuation includes distinctive emotional responses to the apprehension, achievement, and loss of things related to what is valued. Romantic love involves feeling grief when the beloved dies, despondency at her lack of reciprocation, exultation at her confession of a reciprocal love, jealousy when her affections are turned to another, alarm at her being harmed. These different ways of flourishing and suffering with regard to the beloved show her that she is loved, as opposed to merely liked or tolerated. 1.4 How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization I have thus far explained how goods differ in kind in terms of the different ways people properly care about them. Individuals are not self-sufficient in

12 * A Pluralist Theory of Value

their capacity to value things in different ways. I am capable of valuing something in a particular way only in a social setting that upholds norms for that mode of valuation. I cannot honor someone outside a social context in which certain actions, gestures, and manners of speaking are commonly understood to express honor. More important, I do not adequately express my honor for another unless others recognize my honor as appropriate. To care about something in a distinctive way, one must participate in a social practice of valuation governed by norms for its sensible expression. So the difference between, for example, appreciating something and using it lies in the social relations and norms within which we produce, maintain, distribute, preserve, and enjoy or otherwise realize the value of that thing. To realize a good as a particular kind of good we place it in a particular matrix of social relations. The following shall be my primary account of the heterogeneity of goods: goods differ in kind if people properly enter into different sorts of social relations governed by distinct norms in relation to these goods. It is proper for them to do so if it makes sense to value the goods in the ways expressed by these norms. For example, consider the status of music in the United States. We enjoy live "classical" music in special social settings—music halls—governed by distinctive cultural norms that express a regard for this art form as worthy of awe. Silence is to be observed as soon as the orchestra starts playing; even the pauses between movements may not be interrupted by applause. We are supposed to concentrate all our attention on the music itself. The audience may not openly criticize a performance in progress or suggest alterations. We are to be humbled by the majesty of the work and its performance, to receive it as instructive and uplifting, as somehow above us, yet as ennobling us through our polite, restrained admiration of it. To value the music in this way demands a clear separation between the audience and the music, expressed spatially in the separation of the orchestra pit or the stage from audience seating, temporally by the strictly separate times in which the musicians and the audience may express themselves, and functionally by the fact that audience members don't participate in the creation of the music itself. This ideal of classical music often involves the subordination of orchestral musicians to conductors and composers, who are regarded as superior aesthetic authorities. One extreme expression of this ideal can be found in the authentic music movement, where the virtuosity and interpretive skills of the musicians themselves are subordinated to the goal of reproducing as exactly as pos-

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 13

sible the musical sounds, and the techniques for producing those sounds, as they existed in the composer's time. The composer is considered a genius whose original intentions regarding performance must be absolutely respected, lest we fail to do justice to his music. Through these kinds of social norms, classical music in this culture is deemed a kind of sacred good. North Americans didn't always value classical music as a sacred good, worthy of awe (Levine 1988). Until the late nineteenth century, they celebrated classical music, especially Italian opera, as a highly popular form of entertainment, to be valued as audiences value athletic contests—and closer to the ways they value professional wrestling than golf or tennis! Audience members regarded the music as theirs to criticize, applaud, change, and perform at their own inclination. They made a raucous crowd, prone to rioting when performers did not heed their wishes. They often demanded that popular songs of the day be included in operas at a moment's notice, interrupted performances with critical comments, sat on stage, talked loudly and ate during performances. The social norms of music appreciation gave the audience a powerful set of claims on how the music was to be performed and enjoyed that expressed a view of its value as properly reflecting popular taste and sentiment rather than as educating or uplifting it from a higher standpoint. And they often participated en masse in performing the music itself. At the National Peace Jubilee of 1869, the Anvil Chorus from // Trovatore was performed with one hundred Boston firemen beating anvils with sledgehammers (Levine 1988, p. 105). So the kind of good classical music is—how we value it—is determined by the norms governing the relations among audience, composers, and performers. These norms in turn are governed by different aesthetic ideals. In the ideal of classical music as a sacred expression of supreme genius, performers are subordinated to composers, and audience to performers. The sharp distinction between classical and popular music also functions as a class-marker, giving the wealthier and more educated classes claim to a higher standing in the cultural hierarchy than those who prefer other genres, such as rock and country-Western. In the ideal of music as a popular expression of public taste, the hierarchy is reversed, or rather blurred, since the social roles of composer, performer, and audience are not as sharply distinguished as in the former case and the arbiters of good taste are not confined to a specific class. The aesthetic conceptions are ideals, because they give us standards for self-criticism as well as for criticism of art itself. We make ourselves different kinds of persons by creating, performing, disseminating, and

14 * A Pluralist Theory of Value

appreciating music in different ways, through different kinds of social relations. Music mediates our relations to one another and thereby creates different forms of community with different virtues and vices. Aesthetic ideals are highly contestable. By upholding the sacralized ideal of art, do we heighten our aesthetic appreciation or merely make snobs of ourselves? By upholding popular ideals that celebrate virtuosity and public participation, do we corrupt works of genius and debase ourselves by pandering to uneducated taste? Or do we rejuvenate our cultural identities by providing outlets for creative reinterpretation of our musical heritage? Our answers to questions like these help determine how it makes sense to value music. In §5.1, I will consider the prospects for justifying answers to such questions. An ideal-based pluralistic theory of goods does not concern itself exclusively with the qualities of the goods people enjoy. It also focuses on the realization of distinct ideals of the person and community, and it views goods as mediating these relations among people. Ideals require people to care about goods in particular ways, by embedding them in appropriate relations of production, protection, distribution, and enjoyment. Treating a good as a particular kind of good is as much a way of realizing and expressing appropriate relations among people as it is a way of properly valuing the good itself. So far I have just sketched the outlines of a map of the world of goods, taking ordinary practices and commonsense judgments as my guide. Most theories of value acknowledge a pluralism of goods, such as friendship, knowledge, and pleasure. My map reveals a proliferation of pluralisms beyond this. First, it recognizes a plurality of evaluative attitudes, such as love, admiration, and appreciation. Second, it recognizes a plurality of values or standards, such as beauty, convenience, and loyalty, by which we evaluate different goods and adjust our attitudes toward them. Third, it recognizes a plurality of different kinds of goods, distinguished by the complexes of attitudes it makes sense to take up. toward them and by the distinct social relations and practices that embody and express these attitudes. Finally, it recognizes a plurality of contestable ideals, by which we try to govern the development of our attitudes, character, values, and aspirations. In dividing goods into different kinds, I do not claim that for any one good there is just one mode of valuation appropriate to it. Inanimate nature is a proper object of both use and appreciation, as well as of awe and wonder; animals are proper objects of kindliness and even admiration, as well as of consideration and use. These modes of valuation are often incompatible. The pluralism of ideals and the relational character

A Pluralist Theory of Value • 15

of importance also imply that the ways one person should value a particular thing or person need not be the ways another person should value it or him. The respects in which anything is properly valued, and the ways and circumstances in which it makes sense to value it, remain problems. In introducing the notion that goods differ in kind, I suggest that these are the kinds of problems we should be posing ourselves, not that the answers are to be found in establishing a rigid classification of things into kinds. My socially grounded, ideal-based, pluralistic theory of value goes against the grain of a long philosophical tradition. Philosophy has traditionally expressed impatience with the pluralistic, contestable, historically contingent and socially informed evaluative practices in which ordinary people participate. Since Socrates, a^conmon^rnlosoghical aspiration has been to find some means of grasping the good or the rigliF directly, 13irune3i^ed"by"ffi"e"plurffistic hodgepodge of socially particular evaluative concepts and ideals (Plato 1961a). To reach sound ethical judgments, we are thought to require an entirely new mode of ethical justification, independent of the historical and social contingencies in which common* ^sense"'ev^uaidye'reasb1riingis mired. Many motivations support this aspiration: the determination to make value judgments unconditionally universal (Plato 1961a) or to represent them as subject only to purely personal intuition (Moore 1903); to overcome ethical disagreement (Bentham 1948; Plato 1961b); to find a determinate rational decision procedure in ethics (Bentham 1948; Brandt 1979; Hare 1981; Harsanyi 1982); to naturalistically reduce "values" to "facts" (Brandt 1979; Railton 1986); to enable critical reflection on our own practices (Brandt 1979; Hare 1981). The attempt to bypass the varieties of pluralism I affirm leads to a monistic or drastically reductionist theory of value. In emphasizing the intimate connections between the plurality of our evaluative attitudes and the plurality of our ideals, evaluative concepts, and social practices, I aim to highlight the problems involved in adopting such monistic and reductionist programs. If we bypass the plurality of values and ideals in attempting to get a direct grasp on what is good and right, we will lose the resources to make sense of our attitudes and even to have highly differentiated and nuanced attitudes. We could be reduced to expressing a crudely generic "pro-" or "con-" attitude. Monistic theories of value tend to overlook this problem, because they assume that value is normative for just one attitude or response, such as desire, mere liking, or being pleased. It is no accident that the moral psychologies of such monists rarely acknowledge the existence, much less the importance, of other attitudes besides their favored one (§§6.2—6.4). But if it makes sense

16 • A Pluralist Theory of Value

for us to have a variety of evaluative attitudes, we can't do without our commonsense pluralistic practices. Monism is inherently defective, because it cannot make sense of the phenomena of values and valuation that any theory of value must account for. Some of the following chapters will be devoted to elaborating this argument, considering monistic replies to it, and defending pluralism against monistic challenges. My larger ambition is to explore some of the practical implications of my socially grounded, pluralistic rational attitude theory of value. In the next three chapters, I will show how it supports an alternative to the dominant theories of rational choice. In the last three chapters, I will explore some of the political implications of pluralism. In providing an account of how economic goods differ in kind from other kinds of goods, pluralism sharpens our view of the ethical limitations of the market and helps us determine what goods should and should not be treated as commodities.

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

2.1 Value and Rational Action A theory of value should help us rationally guide our actions. A rational attitude theory of value must solve two puzzles to show its relevance to rational action. First, it represen^s_^ue_a^immediately normative for our favorable attitudes, not for our choices. Ijts_associa^3^€ory of gractical reason must jtherc^ Second, my rational attitude theory locates intrinsic value in persons, animals, communities, and things, whereas action aims at the realization of states of affairs. Hence my theory must show how the intrinsic values of people and things are related to the values of states of affairs. The theory of rational action that I propose to solve these problems can be called an expressive theory. theory p y An expressive p ^^^££^ ^ our rational attitudes toward people and other to the ^ ^ H l H H H of value, something is valuable if and only if it is rational for someone to value it, to assume a favorable attitude toward it. And to adequately care about something requires that one express one's valuations in the world, to embody them in some social reality. This is a demand of self-understanding (Taylor 1979, p. 73). To fully make sense of one's rational concerns, one must be motivated to actually establish the relationship to the object of one s concern which is implicit in one's attitudes toward it. If this project leaves one unmoved and one does not suffer from weakness of will, weariness, or other motivational deficiency, one cannot sincerely ascribe to oneself the attitude it expresses. The rational requirement that attitudes seek their expression is confirmed, not undermined, by the thought that an expressive project may leave one deeply conflicted and ambivalent because one holds attitudes that require incompatible projects.

18 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

Practical reason demands that ones actions adequately express ones rational attitudes toward the people and things one cares about. Because expression is a meaningful activity, it requires a publicly intelligible vehicle to make its point. This is provided by the social norms that are constitutive of rational attitudes. To have an evaluative attitude toward something is in part to govern one's deliberations and actions by social norms that communicate distinctive meanings to others. By distinguishing the kind of kiss romantic lovers may exchange from that which "just friends" may exchange, social norms for kissing enable people to effectively communicate distinct attitudes toward others. Social norms typically tell us to direct our desires and actions to the realization or prevention of particular states of affairs. Norms for expressing charitable benevolence direct us to satisfy people's basic need for food, clothing, and education. Norms for expressing civility direct us to avoid embarrassing others. We acquire our rational aims partly by determining what the norms for adequately expressing our attitudes require, encourage, or make apt. Thus, a fully rational action expresses a way of valuing something in being governed by norms constitutive of that mode of valuation. In tying rational action to social norms, the expressive theory may appear to endorse a form of conventionalism. Conventionalism identifies appropriate action with action governed by whatever norms prevail in society. The expressive theory need not endorse extant social norms for expressing attitudes, however. A social order can be criticized for failing to provide adequate normative vehicles for the expression of attitudes that have come to make sense to its members. The social aspect of the expressive theory reflects not a conventionalist but an anti-individualist theory of rationality. It claims that individuals^ are not self^sufFicient bearers of practical reason: they require a context of social norms to express their, atti^"tucles^aclequately and intelligibly in action, to express them in ways others can grasp. - ff Tsociety lacks the social norms needed to adequately express its members' reflectively endorsed valuations, the rational thing to do is to invent and institute such norms. West European and North American societies lack adequate normative vehicles for expressing heterosexual affection on egalitarian terms, although many members of these societies seek to establish loving relationships on such terms. Norms for bodily contact between heterosexual lovers—for example, that the man may express his affection by wrapping his arm around his lover, or by leading her on the dance floor—also express a status hierarchy in which the man is the protector and leader, the woman the dependent follower (Tannen

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 19

1990, pp. 283—287). Until alternative norms for expressing heterosexual affection can be instituted, egalitarian couples will not be able to express fully and adequately the kind of love they have for each other. This gives them a reason to invent and institute norms adequate to their attitudes. The expressive theory of rationality distinguishes between two different sorts of ends for the sake of which we act. First, there are the people, animals, communities, and things toward which we direct our actions. These are the things it makes sense for a person to care immediately about, independent of its making sense for her to care about any other particular thing. Call these intrinsic.^oo^s^ Intrinsic^oods are the immediate objects of our intrinsic valuations (|1JJ7- Persons are the immediate oBjects of our respect, benevolence, and love; beautiful paintings of our admiring contemplation; pets of our affection; and so forth. These are the things we rationally value in themselves. Extrinsic goods^Jbyjcontrast, are goods which it makes^ensejfor a person to value onlyjbecause it makes sense for her to value some other particular thing. The value of an extrinsic good Sepencirupon tKe value of seTin that one's rational valuation of it is mediated by one's rational valuation of something else. Sharon may cherish an ugly bracelet because it was given to her by a dear friend. The bracelet, valued as a token of friendship, is an extrinsic good. Sharon's valuation of the bracelet is mediated by her valuation of her friend. Were they to become enemies, it would make sense for her to stop cherishing it. Two points should be noted about the definitions of intrinsic and extrinsic goods. The first is that the definitions are agent-centered: a good is extrinsically valuable if one's rational valuation of it depends on one's rational valuation of some other particular thing. It may be a condition of any given person's rationally valuing something in a particular way that other people also rationally value it. This is true for all impersonal valuations, such as respect, although not for personal valuations, such as love. The second is that the definitions refer to the valuation of particulars, not of universals. Universals—the standards for rational valuation—provide the grounds for our valuations, not their objects. A condition of any person's rationally valuing something in a particular way may be that it merit valuation by meeting certain general standards. This is also true for impersonal valuations. The only condition that makes a thing extrinsically valuable is that one's rationally valuing it depends on one's rationally valuing some other particular good. Kant's famous imperative to regard humanity as an end in itself expresses something like the first sense of "end" I have in mind when I say that

20 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

intrinsic goods are the ends for the sake of which we act. To take humanity as one's end is to act for the sake of or with due regard for the persons affected by one's actions. Such action involves not only promoting their welfare, but can also include such activities as participating in projects important to them or taking their opinions seriously in discussion. Kant, however, restricted the possible objects of unmediated rational concern to rational beings alone. The second kind of end for the sake of which we act is our final aims or goals, the states of affairs we seekxo bring about in our actions. These~en3s are contrasted with means, which are the actions and states of affairsTriair "are* rationally desired or chosen because they tend to bring aboufisome offier slates of affairs (our ultimate goals). It is important to distinguish between intrinsic goods and final aims (Korsgaard 1983). The distinction is often conflated by theories that contrast intrinsic with instrumental goods or that identify intrinsic goods with the states of affairs we rationally and ultimately aim to bring about. Although all instrumental goods are also extrinsic goods, there are some extrinsic goods, such as the ugly bracelet, which are not instrumentally good. According to the rational attitude theory of value, states of affairs, whether they be final aims or mere means, are for the most part only extrinsically valuable. It makes sense for a person to value most of them only because it makes sense for a person to care about the people, animals, communities, and things concerned with them.1 This follows from the fact that our basic evaluative attitudes—love, respect, consideration, affection, honor, and so forth—are non-propositional. They are attitudes we take up immediately toward persons, animals, and things, not toward facts. Because to be intrinsically valuable is to be the immediate object of such a rational attitude, states of affairs are not intrinsically valuable if they are not immediate objects of such attitudes. Evaluative attitudes take up states of affairs as their mediated objects through the desires, hopes, wishes, and other propositional attitudes that express them. Jack's love for Margaret can be expressed in the hope that he will be able to see her soon. His favorable attitude toward her is what makes sense of his favorable attitude toward the state of affairs in which he sees her soon. Margaret is the immediate object of his love. The states of affairs he desires, hopes, or aims at are the mediated object of his love. They are mediated by norms for desire, hope, and intention that express his evaluative attitudes. I do not claim that people actually value states of affairs only because they value the people, animals, or things involved in them. Many of our

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action * 21

motivational states, such as appetites, whims, habits, compulsions, and addictions, can express a concern for the realization of states of affairs without any regard for ourselves, other people, or other things. When we care about states of affairs in these ways, the fact of our caring does not depend upon our caring about anything else. However, these motivations also do not generally depend or change upon reflection on their objects or on our own attitudes and reasons for action. This is why these motivational states are neither rational nor irrational. They are not the motivational states by which we rationally or reflectively govern ourselves. Because what is intrinsically valuable is the object of a rational favorable attitude, not just the object of any favorable attitude, the fact that we have favorable attitudes such as appetites and whims toward states of affairs does not show that these states of affairs are intrinsically valuable. Although appetites and similar motivations are arational, it can be rational or at least not irrational to act on them. It is rational to do so when they fulfill the aims that would anyway be given to us by our rational valuations of people and things. It is not irrational to act on these motivations, provided that our acting on them does not violate the expressive norms constitutive of our rational attitudes. Consider a person with a gluttonous appetite, who is motivated to eat without any regard for himself. It is rational for him to indulge his appetite to the extent that this promotes aims that are rationally related to his self-concern—for example, to the extent that it promotes his health or pleasure, or to concern with others, as when eating realizes communal relations among people. It is irrational for him to indulge his appetite to the destruction of his health, pleasure, or relationships with others, supposing it makes sense for him to care about these. Between these two extremes, he has considerable scope for indulging his appetites, an activity neither rationally required nor prohibited, but simply permitted. Raw appetites and similar motivational states do not express rational attitudes toward people and things because they are not the kinds of motives governed by reflection and meaningful social norms. Their expression is not mediated by norms but is at most constrained by them. We can say then that we act with full rationality when we govern ourselves by objectively valid expressive norms constitutive of our rational valua^ "tions^—that is, when we adequately express our rational valuations. And we act in accordance with reason when we act on other motives within the constraints posed by the norms that adequately embody our rational attitudes.

22 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

2.2 The Framing of Decisions The fundamental task of a theory of rational choice is to select, from among the many actions a person could perform, the action which it makes most sense to perform, or at least some action which makes sense. The theory must generate and rationally ground a ranking of actions from which the top ranked option, or at least some option above a threshold of appropriateness, is to be chosen. The dominant view of rational action, which I call consequentialist (§2.4), characterizes the end of rational action as the realization of valuable states of affairs. On this view, it is difficult to locate any other basis for ranking actions except the value-rankings of the states of affairs they tend to bring about. Rational action maximizes the value of states of affairs. The expressive conception of action specifies fully rational action as characteristically having dual ends: it seeks to bring about states of affairs for the sake of the people and things we rationally care about. In acting rationally, we generally express our rational valuations of people and things by pursuing particular states of affairs. In exposing the incompleteness of the consequentialist conception of action, the expressive theory opens up an alternative basis for ranking actions besides the value of their consequences. Actions are ranked according to how well they express our rational valuations, and this is determined by judging how well our actions live up to the norms constitutive of these valuations. This conclusion may seem puzzling. While there are some types of action, such as those expressing civility, for which our deliberations are preoccupied with living up to social norms, there are others, such as those expressing benevolence, in which the consequences of actions appear to be decisive in ranking alternative courses of action, quite independent of social norms. This thought has prompted some theorists to postulate two radically distinct types of action: one rationally oriented toward bringing about consequences, the other (non-rationally) oriented toward obeying social norms (Weber 1968; Elster 1989). The expressive theory rejects this false dichotomy. Rational action is characteristically oriented in both ways. Where consideration of consequences alone appears to be relevant to justifying an action, closer examination reveals that background expressive norms implicitly set a context of response and decision which makes some consequences of action more important than others and which determines how they will be incorporated in deliberation. Where benevolence is the primary way we value the people for the sake of whom we act, it makes sense to follow norms that

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 23

bring welfare considerations to the foreground and ignore many nonwelfare consequences of action. Emergency aid workers do not worry about the aesthetic consequences of setting up refugee camps where they do. And no coherent form of benevolence is generically oriented toward all the welfare consequences of action. Different social norms govern the expression of distinct benevolent attitudes appropriate to persons who stand in different relations to their beneficiaries. These norms identify different welfare consequences of action as important for choice. So, philanthropists provide institutionally given food, shelter, and education to the needy. Friends offer their sympathy, companionship, personal effort, and advice. Parents involve themselves in promoting their children's welfare in ways which are none of a benevolent acquaintance s business. Thus, our preoccupation with the consequences of action in much of our deliberation reflects not the irrelevance of social norms to rationally ranking actions, but rather the fact that to express our concern for what we intrinsically value we must generally follow social norms that direct our attention to consequences concerning them. These norms are often embodied in unreflective habits and become objects of deliberation only when their expressive significance is called into question. Expressive norms typically tell us to pay attention to particular consequences of, action described in terms of particular evaluative distinctions and to incorporate these consequences into our deliberations in a particular way. They select from all the authentic candidates for rational valuation those states of affairs which are important to the agent at this time and place. A state of affairs becomes important to evaluating action when the conditions for its having extrinsic value are satisfied—that is, when pursuing it would express ones rational valuations of persons and things. Call th£rwa^s«a«^^^ relevant options and her conceptiorTof what is at stake in her choice^. £er "decision^ ). The norms for expressing a persons vaTuiaHons fundamentally shape the decision frame she uses to ground rankings of her actions. She solves the problem of deciding what frame to use in deliberation when she successfully reaches an interpretation of her predicament that enables her coherently to continue her life. This task amounts to a continuation of the project of rational self-understanding (§§1.1, 5.1). I believe that this project issues in two global norms for making sense of one's actions: one synchronic, the other diachronic. The synchronic norm tells a person at any given time to act in such a way as to adequately express the ways she rationally values all the persons and things for whose sake she should act. This norm tells a person to

24 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

appropriately distribute her concern among the different persons and things she properly cares about in acting. The diachronic norm tells a person to act in such a way that over time her actions can be fit into a coherent narrative (Maclntyre 1981, ch. 15; Velleman 1991). The demands of this norm have only recently begun to be explored. Thus, I will suggest only that the coherence of a narrative of one's life will depend .upon an account of how our valuations and evaluations can rationally evolve and develop in the light of new experience (Anderson 1991). Both of these global norms are regulative ideals, which can rarely, if ever, be completely satisfied. Many conflicts arise when we cannot satisfy the demands of caring about one person without violating the demands of caring about another, or when we no longer have the context or resources to coherently continue our lives. I have argued that only in the context of a decision frame do particular consequences of actions emerge as relevant for evaluating action. This is because the consequences of action generally have no intrinsic value. Their importance emerges only in a setting in which an agent's rational attitudes toward people and things are interpreted through a decision frame. But what determines the rational choice of a decision frame? Ideals that embody conceptions of how goods differ in kind play an indispensable role here. Recall that the plurality of goods arises from the fact that people care about different goods in different ways, care about the ways they care about goods, and institutionalize different ways of caring about goods by embedding them in distinct social practices of production, distribution, and enjoyment. These social practices are governed by norms that highlight some features of the goods in question as important for action concerning them and subordinate others. In classifying a good as one kind or another, by embedding it in one set of social practices over another, people select the relevant decision frames which will be applied to it. For example, to classify dogs as pets is to call for decision frames regarding dogs as proper objects of affection and domestication and to rule out decision frames which consider their edibility, or their potential life in the wild, as relevant to choices concerning them. To adopt the ideal of being an outstanding defense lawyer in an adversary system of justice is to call for decision frames that reject the justice of punishing ones guilty clients as a consideration important to preparing a defense before trial. Thus, a fundamental implication of the thesis that goods differ in kind is that people should deliberate about them in different ways, according to different frames. In determining which frame a person should use to describe the

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 25

optiojisjitjiand, she consults how she cares about the_2eogle_concerned ^wjjflijJie_^r2donsl_her ideals of how she ought to care about them, ancTTrTe social roles she occupies that embody these ideals. Teople tend^to take decision frames for granted because they are often e"mBodied injiabits and social roles. SociaTroTe differentiation, in enabling peope to occupy different roles at different times and places, enables them to establish different priorities in different parts of their lives. The "same" action described in terms of its consequences can have a different expressive significance, and hence a different degree of appropriateness, depending on the social context in which it is performed. When a parent sets aside his child's demands for attention in order to deal with a client's needs, it typically makes a big difference for the expressive meaning, and therefore the appropriateness of the act, whether the parent should be acting in his role as parent or in his role as businessperson at that time, and this in turn typically but not always depends upon whether he is at home or at work. In the former case, the act is more likely to express an inappropriate neglect or indifference toward his child than in the latter. What things a person cares about, as well as how and how much she cares about them, are not solely a function of the social practices, roles, and relationships she participates in. Her character, history, mood, energy, actions, and reading of her predicament play a profound part in influencing what she values, especially in influencing which practices, roles, and relationships she will make her own, how she will interpret, criticize, and change them, and so forth. In emphasizing how a person's ways of valuing things are structured through social roles, practices, and relationships, I do not want to imply that these structures are to be regarded as simply given to agents, unmediated by their own understandings, or beyond critical scrutiny. Although decision frames embedded in social roles are frequently taken for granted, it is often important to make them an object of deliberation. Do the norms constitutive of these frames adequately express the ways we should value the persons whose interests are at stake in the choices they guide? The parent/worker example presented above offers material for deliberation about appropriate decision frames, since society does not structure social roles and decision frames suitable for parents of either gender. It assigns different meanings to mothers and fathers making the same tradeoffs of work and parental responsibilities, which express such views as that children need to be with mothers more than fathers, that mothers and fathers should value their children differently, and that paid work is more important to fathers than to mothers. As these judgments, along with the gender hierarchies they

26 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

help sustain, come to make less sense to people, new social roles and decision frames must be devised. 2.3 The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs I have argued that states of affairs are generally only extrinsically valuable, because our intrinsic evaluative attitudes do not generally take them as their immediate objects. It makes sense for a person to value most states of affairs only because it makes sense for him to value people, animals, and other things. This claim may seem counterintuitive. Because its implications for practical reason are dramatic, it is worth exploring in greater depth. Reflection on a few examples should convince one of its truth. All states of affairs that consist in someone's welfare are only extrinsically valuable. If it doesn't make sense to value tHe"persqn (in a particular way), then it doesn't make sense to carelibout promoting her welfare (in the way that expresses that mode of valuation). Enemies, who hate each other, have no reason to promote each other s welfare. Mary may rationally feel self-contempt for betraying her profession as a journalist. (Perhaps she published a story she knew to be false, as a favor to a government official.) Under this condition of self-disvaluation, it doesn't make sense for her to seek her own advancement in it until she has made amends, for she regards her advancement as undeserved and, hence, unworthy of pursuit. Some believers in the intrinsic values of states of affairs agree that welfare is not intrinsically valuable (Moore 1903; Regan 1989). They find intrinsic value in such states of affairs as knowledge and the existence of art. But states of affairs which consist in the existence of something are valuable only if it makes sense to care about the thing that exists. It doesn't make sense to care about the existence of a painting unless it makes sense to care about the painting itself, perhaps because it is beautiful. And beauty is a valuable attribute of the painting, not of the fact that the painting exists. One may suppose that it doesn't makes sense to care about something unless it makes sense to care about its existence. This would suggest a mutual dependence of the values of a thing and the value of its existence and, in this case, the collapse of the intrinsic/extrinsic value distinction. But the supposition is not true. It may make sense for me to love a person, but this does not imply that I must want that person to continue living. If he is gravely ill, it may be the best expression of my love for him to wish that he die quickly and mercifully. A remarried widow may still love her long-dead husband, but be appalled if he were to pop back into existence.

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 21

Knowledge is not intrinsically valuable, for it makes sense to care about knowing something only if the object of knowledge is interesting or important or the knowledge itself is useful. It doesn't make sense to care intrinsically about knowing a boring subject. Can bare facts be intrinsically interesting? I am inclined to say that facts are interesting only if the things they are about are interesting. But I won't press my case here. Perhaps some things are interesting because we have discovered interesting facts about them. Interest does seem to be an evaluative attitude that can take a state of affairs as its immediate and independent object. This is an exception to the general rule that states of affairs have no intrinsic value. Infamous utilitarian population paradoxes follow from the thought that welfare states have intrinsic value (Parfit 1984, ch. 17). Utilitarianism identifies the morally best state of affairs as that in which total or average welfare is maximized, and it defines the right act (rule, motive, and so forth) as that which tends to bring about the morally best state of affairs. On the total utilitarian view, we should increase the population until each individual is so burdened from overcrowding that an additional birth takes away more welfare from others than the newborn could be expected to enjoy. On the average utilitarian view, we should do away with people of below-average happiness, provided that we can do so secretly and without hurting others. There are, of course, ways utilitarians can dodge these paradoxes, which depend on contingent facts making these recommendations seem not so bad or very unlikely to maximize welfare. But they don't explain the root of the problem. Who is better off under the utilitarian population policies? No one need be better off in the average utility case. The newborn may be the only person "better off" in the total utility case. But even the rationale for bringing the newborn into the world seems to get things backward. To pile up people so that more "welfare" can exist, or to get rid of them so that a higher average level of welfare can exist, is to regard people as merely the extrinsically valuable containers for what is supposedly intrinsically valuable—states of affairs in which welfare exists (Sen and Williams 1982, p. 4). The mistake in both cases is to lose sight of the fact that what gives the pursuit of or desire for welfare its only point is that we ought to care about the people who enjoy it. Utilitarians can take either of two paths of response to this. The first is fo accept the dual-ended logic of attitudes and to concede that welfare has /only extrinsic value. It is not good in itself, but good only for persons. This path is taken by theorists who derive utilitarianism from an ideal observer theory of morality (Firth 1952). They identify the moral point of

28 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

view with the point of view of a perfectly impartial, benevolent, omniscient observer. The state of maximum welfare gets its moral value from the fact that such an impartially benevolent observer desires it. This rationale for utilitarianism avoids the mistake of thinking that people are just the extrinsically valuable containers for welfare. Impartial concern for people mediates between the ideal observer's desires and the value ascribed to maximizing welfare. Such concern could not endorse the average utilitarian population policy because benevolence would not approve of a policy that makes no person better off. Although it would endorse the total utilitarian population policy, it would do so because here at least the newborn is better off, and benevolence would approve of that. The cogency of this response depends on the claims that impartial benevolence toward people issues in a desire that welfare be maximized and that impartiality makes one indifferent to which people are enjoying it. Whereas concern for people mediates between the moral point of view and the conferral of extrinsic value upon the maximum welfare, impartiality could be said to make transparent its mediating role. The impartially benevolent observer sees right through people to the welfare states they enjoy, which guide desire immediately, without being modified by any regard for the particular people that mediate between them and the moral point of view. This position does not offer a plausible interpretation of impartial benevolence. Once the dual-ended logic of evaluative attitudes is accepted, then so should be its constitutive expressive norms. Benevolence is not just a desire that welfare exist: it is a concerned attitude toward people. It does not just give us states of affairs to desire or achieve. It gives us norms by which to pursue it, by which we express our concern toward the people for whose sake we act. Among these are norms for distributing our care among persons. If benevolence is to be impartial, it must be expressed toward each person. The total utilitarian population policy, in gravely burdening those other than the newborn, does not seem to express benevolence toward them. Benevolence is also especially concerned with the people who are most needy and is not satisfied when welfare is taken from them to gratify those who already enjoy much or when the number of needy people or the severity of their neediness increases. (Neediness can increase simultaneously with total welfare.) This concern for the needy is not a violation of impartiality, which demands only that one abstract from one s personal likings, interests, and biases in expressing ones valuations of persons. Neediness is an impartial basis for determining where benevolence is most called for. Benevolence is also

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 29

constrained by norms expressing the other ways we ought to care about people (Foot 1985). Actions that promote welfare ruthlessly, manipulatively, or unjustly are not benevolent. Actions that maximize welfare by exploiting some so that others may benefit do not express benevolence toward those exploited. If the dual-ended logic of attitudes is accepted, then impartiality toward persons cannot be reduced to indifference over which equal-sized instance of welfare occurs. Hence it cannot be expressed in a desire that welfare be maximized, without regard for the distribution of welfare across persons or for how this distribution is brought about. The mediating function of concern for people can never be made transparent: the appropriateness of desires for states of affairs must be subject to the constraint that they adequately express their correlative attitudes toward people. If the concern we ought to show for people causes such trouble for utilitarianism, perhaps people should be removed as distinct objects of concern. This is the second path of utilitarian response to the population paradoxes. Derek Parfit (1984, ch. 11) denies that persons have any distinct existence beyond the bundles of mental states they contain. If this were the case, it would not make sense to take persons as distinct objects of evaluative attitudes, which should take only states of affairs as their end. This argument supposes that our psychologies can be exhaustively analyzed in terms of phenomenal states and propositional attitudes. But most evaluative attitudes are essentially non-propositional: they essentially take persons and other things as their objects. We cannot make practical sense of ourselves without grasping ourselves as beings who take up attitudes such as love, hate, respect, and contempt toward other people. I do not believe that we are making any metaphysical mistake in doing so. But if we are, the mistake is one we have to live with, because we cannot get rid of our non-propositional attitudes by reflecting on the metaphysical mistake they supposedly embody. We cannot act as if we don't have these attitudes, nor could we make reflective sense of ourselves if we did. Practical reason, necessarily taking the logical structure of our evaluative attitudes as given, must postulate the existence of persons to make sense of them. If this contradicts the deliverances of theoretical metaphysics, this shows only that theoretical metaphysics has no practical import (Kant 1981, sec. 3). The preceding analysis of the population paradoxes suggests the following conclusions about practical reason. Firstjractical reason cannot get by without employing the logic of evaluative attitujje^^whlcK take £ e r s o n s and other things as their imrnediate^objeciL Second, because states of affairs do not generally hav^ intrimir VQ1^PI o^r attitudes toward them

30 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

must be conditioned by our attitudes toward the things that do have intrinsic value. This means that the rational thing to do cannot be defined simply in terms of the pursuit of states of affairs. The rationality of pursuing states of affairs is mediated by expressive norms. The ground for pursuing them is that in doing so, we express our appropriate regard for people and other things. Third, the content of expressive norms is not given simply by specifying states of affairs to be preferred. No adequate interpretation of a way of valuing something can reduce its motivational component to a desire or preference that some states of affairs occur. They must be brought about in the right ways, by the right agents, in the right context (Aristotle 1985, 1106b20—24). Whether desiring, aiming at, or achieving a given state of affairs adequately expresses the right attitudes toward people and things depends on the context that determines its expressive meaning. The argument that states of affairs generally lack intrinsic value depends upon two types of consideration. One is the survey of our intuitions about what makes sense, which has occupied this section. The other is the rational attitude theory of value^, which identifies^jjiejcandidates for tive attitudes. Many theorists hold that intrinsic values are signified by propositional attitudes such as desire. I will argue in §6.4 that the only value-signifying desires are those that express rational non-propositional evaluative attitudes. If this is true, then the only value they can signify or confer upon states of affairs is extrinsic. The claim that states of affairs do not generally have intrinsic value has enormous implications for the theory of rational choice, for the dominant theories of rational choice suppose that they do have intrinsic value. I call these theories "consequentialist." The confrontation between expressive and consequentialist theories of rational choice will occupy the remainder of this and the next two chapters. 2.4 Consequentialism I call any theory of rational or moral action consequentialist if it meets the following three conditions: First, it gives people the sole ultimate airn^of maxjinmng^toaa^yjlue. Second, it holds the fundamental object of intrinsic value to be the state of affairs. It assesses the value of a state of ajjairs independent of the values of persons, actions, motives, norms, practices, states of character, or anything else. Third, it assesses the values of these other sorts of things, or at least actions, rules, or practices, solely in terms of

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 31

their consequences, broadly construed—that is, in terms of how effectively they bring about or embody the best states of affairs. My use of the term "consequentialism" is more expansive than most people's. In my usage, egoism as a theory of rationality, which gives each agent the sole ultimate aim of maximizing his own personal welfare, is a consequentialist theory. In most philosophical writing, "consequentialism" refers only to a subset of the theories fitting my definition: only moral theories that give all agents the common aim of maximizing impersonal value. Such theories add to the above three conditions a fourth: that all values are "agent-neutral." Avalue is agent-neutral if it gives everyone a reason tojralue it. A value is agent-relative if it gives only some people a reason to value it, or different agents reasons to value it in different ways (compare Sen 1982; Nagel 1986). Together, these conditions state an agent-neutral principle of morality—a principle that gives all agents a common moral aim, the maximization of agent-neutral value (Parfit 1984, P- 27). I reserve the term "consequentialist" to fit theories meeting just the first three conditions because they share a common conception of the relation of action to states of affairs. They_jdlmaintain that statesof affair^ai^, immediately normative for actions or for other practical responses such as jrules, choices, preferences, or desires. The relevance of the states of affairs produced by action to the evaluation of action is not mediated by norms that express the worth of persons, motives, or anything else. Alternatively, the mediating norms are transparent, as in the case of the utilitarian interpretation of impartial benevolence: the norms themselves unconditionally specify some states of affairs, identifiable independent of expressive contexts, to be desired, chosen, preferred, or promoted. In either case, a given state of affairs is always relevant in the same way to its correlative response, regardless of its context. For example, the standard decision theoretic account of rational action begins with a preference ranking of states of affairs and generates a ranking of actions according to their expected utility—the sum of the products of their possible outcomes with the probabilities that they will bring about those outcomes. The act to be chosen is that which maximizes expected utility (Jeffery 1965). This immediate and unconditional relevance of consequences to choices in consequentialist theories contrasts with the expressive theory. In the expressive theory, expressive norms determine whether and in what way a given state, of affairs is normative for practical responses. The same state of affairs may have a different relevance, depending on the decision frame that applies to a persons responses.

i

32 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

My definition of consequentialism may be thought to be too narrow. It appears to fit Moore's brand of consequentialism best, since Moore explicitly formulated his theory in terms of the intrinsic value of states of affairs. But some theories I wish to include in my account don't take an explicit stand on the nature of value or what has it. The economic theory of rational choice says that the rational thing to clo isTo~actasl£one were Ft leaves to the metaphysicians to decide whether utility as definecTlnTKe behavioristic manner of decision theory is really an intrinsically good thing. And decision theory, like Moore's theory, rejects the account of intrinsic value I offer, which ties it essentially to favorable attitudes. That people ought to act as if they are maximizing expected utility does not demand that they actually value this end or desire to bring it about. My definition of consequentialism requires a suitably theory-neutral definition of intrinsic value for it to cast its net as widely as I would like. The following minimalist account of intrinsic value seems to capture the common features of the theories I call consequentialist. To ascribe value to something is to make it normative for some response in us, such as attitudes, value judgments, emotions, desires, actions, preferences, rules of action, or motives. These things ought to be favorably responsive to that to which value is ascribed. To ascribe intrinsic value to somethingis to make it immediately normative for something else; that is, its normativity is not conditioned on the normativity of some other thing. The theoriesj^ call consequentialist all make states of affairs immediately normative JCQX actions, rules of action, preferences, desires, or motives. They all identify, independent of the expressive context in which they appear, certain states of affairs as unconditionally to be chosen, desired, preferred, or brought about, such as the maximum welfare, maximum pleasure, maximum desire- or preference-satisfaction (in each of these cases, either for oneself or for everyone), or the maximum intrinsic value in some thicker sense, as in Moore's theory. (In §4.4 I discuss a hybrid form of consequentialism that makes the values of some states of affairs dependent on their expressive context.) Consequentialist and expressive theories of rationality pose sharply contrasting ways of thinking about value and action. Consequentialist theories make intrinsic value immediately normative for desire, preference, choice, or rules of action. Expressive theories make it immediately normatiyejor evaluative attitudes and derive desires, preferences, and choices from norms for expressing attitudes. Consequentialist theories conceive of rational action as directed toward one end: the production of conse-

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 33

quences. & 4 m ^ £ i y £ ^ action as^directed toward twojends: a final end—the production of consequences—and an end for the sakejpf which£he fmal end is sought—the people, animals, and things the agent cares about. Cojis^c|u^ntmlisttheories evaluate action in terms J theories evaluate action in terms of its . gyaluate the: relevance of consequences through * expressive norms. Consequentialist theories justify action by showing that it maximizes value. Expressive theories justify action by showing that it is normatively appropriate, that it conforms to the expressive norms constitutive of a person s rational valuations. Consequentialist theories recognize just one norm for action—that it maximize intrinsic value. Expressive theories recognize a wide variety of norms, which have several features that are puzzling from a consequentialist point of view: they are intentional, backward-looking, distributive, and non-instrumental. Each of these features of expressive norms merits a closer investigation. Expressive norms are intentional. They tell people to intend or aim at certain things. The basic form of an expressive norm is: act so as to adequately express attitude B toward Z. Although it is possible for a person to express attitudes inadvertently, or by mistake, as when one unintentionally insults someone, to adequately express one's attitudes requires that one intend their expression in some way This means not that people must always have their minds on what they do, but rather that they must be prepared to acknowledge their actions as expressing their attitudes. Consequentialist norms, by contrast, simply tell people to achieve certain consequences, whetheir they intend them' or riot. of a. cqnsequejntiajis^^^ so as tc^bring about consequericeJK, Jkis_ possible that the best way to bring about X is to aim at Qjr u thing else. The, famous "paradox of hedonism" maintains that the best way '"to achieve happiness is not to try to become happy, but to devote oneself to distinct ends, success in which will bring happiness as an unintended consequence (Sidgwick 1981, p. 136). And the best way to devote oneself to distinct ends may be to care about them independent of happiness, perhaps not to care about one's happiness at all. Consequentialism may give people an end whose achievement requires that they not identify with it. The intentional character of expressive norms supports fundamental distinctions, deeply rooted in commonsense morality, that have no evident rationale in consequentialist terms. They include the distinctions between doing something and allowing it to happen, between foreseeing and intending certain consequences, between the consequences you and I are

34 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

responsible for when either of us is in a position to cause or prevent them. These concerais_ajl^ mark distinctions in the. expressive significance, of ^cHonTalid, hence, b e ^ u p o n t h e i r appropriatenejss.j&di±iin theterins^f expressive tneory DeEBerately tripping someone is worse than accidentally doing so, because the former expresses contempt or hatred for someone, whereas the latter does not. Committing adultery with a stranger's husband is expressively worse than failing to prevent him from committing adultery with someone else. In the latter case, one may properly be respecting others' privacy, including the victim's, but committing adultery cannot express respect for the victim. Yet these distinctions do not track differences in the consequences of the actions or happenings they are applied to: in either case, a tripping or a betrayal has occurred. (Granted, people are more likely to take offense at a deliberate tripper or the adulterer, but it isn't evident what consequential are to make of this. For the grounds for offense presuppose an expressive logic not itself endorsed by consequential. The world may be better off if people didn't respond differently to actions with the same consequences.) Because the concepts marking these distinctions do not track differences in consequences, they cannot be fundamental to a consequentialist theory. At best, their use in guiding moral practice could be justified indirectly, as leading to better consequences overall. Ex£ressjvejiorms are backward-looking: what it makes sense to do now essentially depends on what one has done in the past. This follows from &e requirement of narrative unity (§2.2). The past sets a context that confers expressive meaning on present choices. Had the past been different, the same present act could have a different meaning and therefore a different appropriateness. Consider a couple who struggle for years through long workdays and financial difficulties to establish a distinctive family restaurant.' Now, just as the restaurant is at the threshold of steady success, a franchise operation wants to buy it from them and build dozens of similar restaurants around the country. In return for relinquishing control of the restaurant, they would get far more money than they could by continuing to operate it. The couple might think of their choice as follows: Selling the restaurant would offer them important financial security, but it would also undermine the point of their lives' personal investments and struggles, which were aimed not just at making money but at creating an alternative to the humdrum, homogenized, and predictable chain restaurants taking over the area. Dropping their life projects for this reason would leave them with life stories as "successful" sell-outs, rather than as people who had made something of their early struggles and

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 35

fulfilled the dream of a lifetime. They did not work all those years to make millions for some brand-x corporation. A concern for the narrative unity of their lives, for what meaning their present choices make of their past actions, could rationally motivate them to turn down the offer. Consequentialist theories reject thisJbnd of reasoning. The point of action^j^jta-jziaximize.,value, and action realizes value only through its niture consequences. Consequentialists view the couple's reasoning as irrationally weighing "sunk costs" in their calculations. If a greater amount of future good can be achieved by taking up an entirely new path than it could by sticking with one's past investments and personal commitments, one should disregard the past and take the option with the greater future payoff. This does not mean that people should weigh only crude material gains in their calculations. If having alternatives to mass-produced commercialism in restaurants is a good thing, perhaps because it gives the town a certain charm, this consideration counts in a calculation of future good. The consequentialist point is that it should count no differently for a couple who had devoted their lives to promoting it than for a couple who judge that it is as good as the devotees say, but who had just come into the restaurant by inheritance. The meanings a choice confers on one's past actions are irrelevant to the future payoffs, which are by hypothesis the same in either case. Another distinctive feature of expressive norms is their distributive structure. They tell people to express their concerns toward each person, animal, or thing for the sake of which they act. Concern is something people distribute to each of their ends. It is not an attitude that is held only toward some aggregate. Consequentialist norms, by contrast, have an aggregative structure: they tell people to maximize something. As the utilitarian population paradoxes show, the distributive structure of expressive norms typically imposes constraints on a person's maximizing behavior, since not every way of maximizing something expresses the appropriate respect, benevolence, or other attitudes we owe to each person affected by our actions. The distributive character of expressive norms explains some phenomena that are thought to be puzzling from a consequentialist point of view. It explains why it can make sense to feel ambivalence, regret, or guilt over a decision we rightly judge to be the best, all things considered (Williams 1981a; Stocker 1990, ch. 4). The expressive view calls for mixed feelings toward an action whenever the diverse ends for the sake of which we act are not each properly and adequately served by it. For example, one may feel both satisfaction and guilt in the same action, if this action both

36 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

adequately expresses one's love for one's family and neglects one's business clients. Became action is characteristi£ajly_j^iTrOTQe^jwith many ends at once, it can be evaluated For its expressive adequacy toward each end. Each evaluation of the act calls fora different emotional response, leading to mixed emotions toward the act overall. If no available alternative adequately expresses one's attitudes toward each person whose interests are at stake in a decision, then even the best alternative will merit regret. And if the attitudes are obligatory, even the best alternative will merit guilt. William Styron's Sophie, forced to choose one child to turn over to certain death at the Nazis' hands as a condition of being able to save any of her children, had no alternative by which she could properly express her love for the child she chose to relinquish. However justified her choice was under grave coercion, it would have been absurd for her to have viewed it with satisfaction or righteousness rather than anguish. (And the anguish is over her choice, not just over its unavoidably disastrous consequences.) There is no guarantee that circumstances will be such that we can satisfy the demands of all the expressive norms binding us and, therefore, no guarantee that we will always be able to act in ways that are above reproach. The world is not that cooperative (Stocker 1990, ch. 4). The puzzle over cases like Sophie s arises from two thoughts tempting to consequentialists. One is that all evaluations are inherently actionguiding. Regret, then, would be appropriate only if one judged that one shouldn't have performed the act. The second thought is that the appropriate consequentialist attitude to take toward a value-maximizing choice is satisfaction, righteousness, or some other unified, unmixed pro-attitude. If one really did one's best, and things turned out as best they could under the circumstances, there is no ground for regret, because the components of a state of affairs produced by an action have no distinctive significance. They are significant only as enlarging or diminishing an aggregate. Consequentialists are not committed to this reasoning, for it employs the expressivist notion of a state of affairs giving us grounds for or meriting regret. A pure consequentialist theory has no room for the idea of an emotion or attitude being merited by the intrinsic characteristics of a situation. Emotions should be evaluated in terms of their causal consequences. A person s regret for a consequentially justified action may be instrumentally valuable in deterring her from overlooking important consequences of her actions that could be rightly action-guiding in the future. If this were so, then a consequentialist could endorse a person's feelings of regret for having committed a justified act that brought harm

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 37

to someone. The real difficulty for consequentialism is that it cannot make sense of the reasoning that leads the agent to feel regret, since this reasoning makes use of an expressive logic not accessible to consequentialist reasoning. This logic, unlike consequentialist logic, does leave room for evaluations, such as that an act is regrettable, which are not actionguiding but rather immediately emotion-guiding (Stocker 1990, ch. 4). Consequentialists argue that if it is a good thing for the agent to feel regret, but she can feel it only by thinking in terms of expressive rationality, then she should believe the expressive theory even though it is false. A final distinctive feature of expressive norms is that they are noninstrumental. They are justified not by reference to any independent value that the consequences they recommend are thought to have, but by reference to the rational attitudes they express. In fact, expressive norms determine whether and in what way a state of affairs has any value or importance for an agent in the context at hand. Because different contexts alter the meaning of pursuing the same state of affairs, expressive norms give agents different final ends in different contexts. In consequentialist theories, by contrast, agents are given just one final end—the maximization of value. The fact that non-instrumental norms give agents different final ends in different contexts explains the "silencing" of considerations in virtuous people (McDowell 1978, p. 26; Wiggins 1980, pp. 234-235). Consider the captain of a sinking ship, who must coordinate the efforts of the crew to get people into lifeboats. It could be a fact about this captain that slipping off to his quarters to catch a nip of sherry would be a great relief and pleasure for him in these stressful hours. If the captain is virtuous, this fact will not even enter his mind as a potentially relevant consideration bearing upon what he should do now. The consideration is "silenced." This is not just a psychological fact about virtuous people; it reflects the point of view of virtue itself, which regards the consideration as strictly irrelevant. The expressive theory has an easy explanation for this. In the context of a sinking ship, the fact that the captain could get pleasure and relief from drinking really is irrelevant to what he should do. The relevant decision frame bearing upon the captain's actions accords it no value at all, for in this context there is no way his self-indulgence could mean anything other than a gross failure to respect his passengers. From a consequentialist point of view, the captain's pleasure and relief are intrinsically valuable and carry some small but positive weight in favor of his slipping off. If he should not consider this fact relevant, it is not because it is really irrelevant,

38 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

but because thinking about it would likely have worse consequences than not, perhaps by distracting him from the duties at hand. These differences reflect the fact that consequentialists recognize only one frame for justifying actions, whereas expressivists recognize different frames for different contexts. Consequentialists assert that tHere is'One, fixed, canonical description of states of affairs under which they are uniformly relevant for assessing all actions. They disagree over the relevant terms of description—are states of affairs relevant qua pleasures, qua satisfactions of desire or preference, or qua instances of intrinsic values such as knowledge, beauty, and friendship? But they all agree that there is some noncontextual value inherent in states of affairs which is given independent of interpretations of expressive meanings. Expressive theories deny that states of affairs generally have such intrinsic value. Apart from a deliberative context structured by expressive norms, states of affairs have no value or immediate action-guiding relevance. Their value is derived from the values of the people, animals, and things for the sake of which people act. Because states of affairs have only a context-dependent extrinsic value, it doesn't make sense to globally maximize the value of states of affairs. This is as incoherent as trying to globally maximize the instrumental value of tools, apart from the contexts which give them any usefulness. The latter incoherence is just an instance of the former, since instrumental value is one kind of extrinsic value. Thus, expressive theories of rationality contradict all three tenets of consequentialist theories. 2.5 Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self How are we to assess these disagreements between consequentialist and expressive theories of practical reason? If my rational attitude theory of value is right, then consequentialism is a nonstarter, because its criterion of rational action—that which globally maximizes the value of states of affairs—is incoherent. Extrinsic value can't be coherently maximized on a global scale. But this argument is not conclusive, since consequentialists naturally propose theories of intrinsic value incompatible with mine. These will be critically examined in Chapter 6. Another way to assess the relative merits of the two theories of practical reason is to consider what sense these theories can make of ourselves, of our motivations, desires, emotional responses, attitudes, and intuitive value judgments. Does either theory give us an adequate framework for self-understanding? In particular, does either theory enable us to under-

Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 39

stand ourselves as unified persons whose psychological states, when they are rationally justified, are coherently related to one another? This section poses some di^^Ue^xQIiSSauentiaHst theorie^have in accounting for the unity of the self. ***Consider first how expressive theories conceive of the unity of a person s psychological states. A person's psychological states are rationally justified if they are reflectively endorsable from a common point of view established in dialogue with others (§1.1, §5.1). This point of view is one from which a person's psychological states can be grasped as having a fully coherent, publicly communicable meaning. When a person's psychological states are rationally justified, or come tolerably close, they bear expressive relations to one another that give them an internal coherence and unity. A persons emotional responses and attitudes are merited by or appropriate to their objects. A person s values provide grounds for simultaneously evaluating objects and supporting the attitudes she takes up toward them. A person s rational desires, motives, and actions adequately express her attitudes in being governed by the norms constitutive of those attitudes. The entire ensemble of a person's attitudes, desires, motives, and actions is globally unified over time by her attempts to make her life meaningful in accord with the requirements of narrative unity. (^nrK^qi^e.ntLili^, jn rnnfrast^ foVe iip.an instrumental perspective on the self. They represent the self as a locus of causal forces projected into tneTuture and significant only as they bring intrinsically valuable states of ^ISaiftririfo anH out of existence^ This conception of the self is instrumental Because it views a person's psychological states as rationally justified on instrumental grounds. Motives, beliefs, emotions, attitudes, value judgments, internalized norms, and modes of deliberation are justified to the degree that they bring better states of affairs into existence. This is not to deny that the state of being constituted in a certain way—say, believing a truth—can be intrinsically good. But the overall justification of a belief is fundamentally a function of its consequences, including itself. The unity of the instrumental self is based on the unity of its preferences, that is, a person's dispositions to act so as to bring about certain states of affairs over others. Preferences are unified if they can be ranked in a single complete, consistent preference ordering. They are complete if for any two items, one is either more, less, or equally preferred to the other. They are consistent if transitive: for any three items, if A is preferred to B and B to C, then A is preferred to C. On some theories the unity of a person's preferences is secured by the supposition that it tracks independently identifiable intrinsic values of states of affairs. On other theories the

40 • An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

fact that a state of affairs is an object of a person's already unified preferences is what makes it intrinsically valuable (immediately normative for choice). A choice or action is rational if and only if it tends to bring about the person's rationally preferred states of affairs. The instrumental theory can explain the rational coherence of prefer-' ences with choices and true value judgments, provided that its conception of intrinsic value can support the strong ordering principles of completeness and transitivity. I will argue in §3.3 that these principles cannot be sustained. The instrumental theory runs into deeper trouble in attempting to account for the rational unity of our emotions, attitudes, internalized norms, intentions, and ways of deliberating. In unifying a person's preferences and choices around the achievement of particular consequences, the instrumental view creates discord among other aspects of the self. Consider the cases that arose in contrasting consequentialist and expressive views in §2.4. The paradox of hedonism shows that consequentialism may require a person to aim at ends that aren't really valuable, so that the really intrinsically valuable states of affairs can be produced as an unintended by-product. It may require people to focus on and intrinsically care about what, from its own perspective, is not really or ultimately important. The tripping and adultery cases show that consequentialism has difficulty^ making sense of the different h h same consequences brought bh about through different meansr have to the The rationally justified emotion is that wTiich^constitm states of affairs. But, as the above cases show, the emotions people actually have are responsive not to consequentialist but rather to expressive considerations. People can't reflectively endorse an emotional state which is induced by mechanisms or thoughts that don't internally warrant it on expressive grounds, even if consequentialism says it would be instrumentally good to have that state. In other words, the instrumental account of what makes an emotional state rational cannot provide a coherent basis for self-understanding. This fact is abundantly illustrated in popular cultural representations of androids and robots, who exhibit the purely instrumental, calculative, unemotional rationality extolled by consequentialism and thereby reveal themselves to be social clods and emotional dolts. Lieutenant Commander Data, an android officer of the Starship Enterprise on the television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation," provides a case in point. Attempting to forge his first romantic relationship with a woman, he feigns anger and picks a fight with her for no apparent reason. She objects to his behavior, pointing out that she has done nothing to warrant such anger. Data replies

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 41

that he knows this perfectly well. The point of his instigating a fight was not to express any real objections he had to her but to establish an occasion for reconciliation after a falling out: his anthropological studies had taught him that such events tend to strengthen and deepen romantic friendships. She politely tells him that their relationship simply can't make sense if conducted on these terms. Data failed to grasp that the instrumental value of emotions and of the acts that express or elicit them is parasitic upon people understanding them in terms of the non-consequentialist, expressive logic of appropriateness. If his anger isn't proper and sincere, and if their reconciliation is not based on a mutual agreement about what behaviors warrant anger, on sincere apologies by whoever misbehaved or misjudged the other, and on resolutions to act and feel appropriately as judged in terms of expressive logic, it won't be an authentic reconciliation on the basis of which the relationship can coherently continue. The same failures of reflective coherence mark other proposals to reform ordinary practices along consequentialist lines. Blame should be meted out to wrongdoers only if it would deter future wrongdoing, and to anyone else unlucky enough to be in a position where being made an example of (however unjustly) would deter further wrongdoing (Smart 1973, pp. 69—71). Honors and prizes should not be meted out to those who merit them, if distributing them on some other basis would produce better consequences, say, by raising the self-esteem of those who don't merit them. Again, th£Sjejtnaiiir^ practices can have their intended effects only if people think they are being governed in accord with expressive logic. Blame will rationally inspire outrage and resentment rather than guilt if people know it is being assigned on grounds of expedience rather than justice. Prizes will hardly inspire selfesteem if people know that they are awarded just to make them feel better, because the prize-giving would then express a misguided, patronizing "benevolence" rather than genuine honor or admiration. Consje^uentiaHst reasoning does not provide a coherent basis for us to understand and reflectively endorse our own emotions arid attitudes. Exrrre?siwYeasoriing does provide such a ground for rational self-understanding. If the practices and relationships that require an expressive self-understanding are intrinsically valuable by consequentialist lights, then consequentialism recommends that we adopt the expressive theory for our own self-understanding, even if it is false. This move creates a dramatic division between the consequentialist standpoint of authentic justification and the purportedly mistaken standpoint we are supposed to take up for purposes of deliberation, self-evaluation, and self-government. Consequentialism

42 * An Expressive Theory of Rational Action

tells people to cultivate states of character, emotions, and modes of deliberation that accept as genuine reasons for action considerations which do not really justify the actions. The consequentialist explanation of "silencing" in the virtuous sea captain's case reflects a similar division of justification from deliberation and motivation. It represents the standpoint of virtue as one that mistakenly regards certain consequences of action as unimportant. Agent-neutral versions of consequentialism, which give all agents a common final end, produce other divisions in the self. The motives it is best to cultivate may not be the rational ones to act on in a particular case. Cultivating love toward those close to oneself may generally lead to the best consequences, but sometimes, by forgoing the rescue of loved ones, one may be able to save a greater number of strangers' lives. Such an act would be contrary to loving motivation, but would lead to impersonally better consequences and would thus constitute the right action (Slote 1985, p. 93). Consequentialism rejects conceptions of personal responsibility that recognize an evaluatively significant boundary between one's own and others' actions. If another person, however unreasonably, makes his action contingent on some choice of mine, then he establishes a causal link between my choice and the consequences of his action. My aims thus become hostage to his unreasonable ones. So, famously, consequentialist moral theories tell people to cooperate in evil projects if others can credibly threaten to perform worse deeds if they don't cooperate (Williams 1973, pp. 95-99). \ Thus, consequentialism demands that the instrumental self aim at and \care about what isn't really important, deliberate in terms that don't mthenticaHy justify its actions, accept false beliefs and value judgments, md have motivations that it would be wrong to act on. These are all udgments that consequentialism makes from its own point of view on the ;orts of instrumental selves it recommends we become. In addition, consequentialism tells people to have emotions and attitudes that aren't really j warranted by their objects, to abandon any robust conception of personal | responsibility, and to repudiate (via adoption of the rule to ignore sunk Icosts) any attempt to construct meaningful connections between its past land future actions. These are judgments that expressivism makes on the ^sorts of instrumental selves consequentialism recommends we become. From an expressive point of view, all these divisions in the instrumental self make a life conceived in its terms a gigantic fraud. Consequentialists reply by pointing out that by their own lights, there is nothing bad about leading a fraudulent life. In fact, it is the intrinsically best way of life.

An Expressive Theory of Rational Action • 43

This response, however internally consistent, is repugnant to common sense. The instrumental conception of the self fails to provide us with a coherent basis for self-understanding and requires disturbing divisions among different aspects of the self. Common sense agrees with the expressive view that to fail to integrate the perspectives ofjustification, deliberation, motivation, and intention is to engage in expressively incoherent and hence irrational action. If an alternative theory is available that provides a coherent basis for self-understanding and that does not require these repugnant divisions in the self, it has these two advantages over consequentialism. The expressive conception finds a basis for self^understanding and for the unity of the self where the instrumental conception often demands disunity. On the expressive view, a person's conception of justification, of'who, what, where, when, and how to sensibly value, is directly expressed in her attitudes, motives, deliberations, intentions, and actions. She need not adopt a false or delusional standpoint of deliberation and motivation to do the rational thing. Consequentialists have three responses to this argument. First, they point out some advantages they purport to have over expressive theories and argue that expressive theories suffer from their own incoherencies. These advantages are mainly tied to the appeal of a calculating, maximizing logic of rationality and will be discussed in Chapter 3. Second, they attempt to incorporate some of the advantages of expressive logic in a hybrid theory that still retains the fundamental features of consequentialism. This response will be examined in §§4.4—4.5. Third, they reject the criteria by which expressive theories claim an advantage in this preliminary comparison of the two theories. Because these criteria are based on commonsense intuition, consequentialists have a stake in attacking the authority of common sense. This response will be considered in Chapter 5.

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods •

3 • Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

3.1 The Advantages of Consequentialism Expressive theories have an advantage over consequentialist theories in providing a coherent basis for self-understanding, in accounting for the unity of the self, and in making sense of ordinary intuitions about intrinsic value and norms of appropriate behavior and feeling. But consequentialism would not have such a firm grip on philosophical and social scientific accounts of rational choice if it could not claim important advantages of its own. Often rational choice and deliberation are explicidy oriented toward achieving optimum results. Consequentialism, unlike the pluralist-expressive theory, has a straightforward account of this. Call this consequentialism s explanatory advantage. Consequentialism promises to provide a single, simple, precise, and determinate procedure of justification that employs objective calculation to overcome disputes about what to do. The pluralist-expressive theory calls for action to be guided by norms described in terms of ideals and evaluative concepts such as "respect," "friendship," and "charity." These norms require interpretation to be applied. Because their constitutive concepts are essentially contestable (§5.2), the expressive theory cannot provide a determinate procedure for resolving conflicting interpretations. Call this consequentialism s pragmatic advantage. This will be discussed in §§3.2-3.3 and in Chapter 4. Consequentialism follows a long tradition in Western philosophy that contrasts reason with emotions and social norms and that seeks an independent perspective from which our emotions and social practices can be criticized. Consequentialism provides a dispassionate, ostensibly asocial method for criticizing emotions and social norms: see whether they produce the best consequences. The pluralist-expressive theory rejects the

45

dichotomies between reason and emotion and reason and social norms. It represents rational action as expressing emotions and attitudes through social norms. It needs to show how it can do this and still be able to criticize our emotions and social practices. Call this consequentialism's critical advantage. This will be discussed in Chapter 5. In this section I critically examine consequentialism's explanatory advantage. The phenomenon to be explained is that people often seek to maximize value: to get the best buy for their money, to make the best of a bad day, to send their children to the best schools, to perform their best in a musical competition. Consequentialism has a natural explanation for this, since maximizing value is just what practical reason demands. The expressive theory denies the coherence of the project of globally maximizing the value of states of affairs. States of affairs mostly have only extrinsic value relative to the context of decision. They have little actionguiding significance independent of a person's attitudes, relations to others, ideals, past, and present predicament. It makes no more sense to globally maximize the value of states of affairs, independent of a person's context of decision, than it does to globally maximize the value of tools, independent of the purposes to which they will be put. This difference between consequentialism and expressivism is not conclusive. For the phenomena to be explained include only cases of local maximization. Consequentialism tries to explain maximizing value within a decision context as instrumental for globally maximizing acontextual value. The expressive theory claims that global rationality need not be conceived as local rationality writ large. It needs to show how maximizing value can play a local role in a theory of practical reasoning globally governed by expressive norms. To see whether it can do this, we need to ask: what requirements must the theory of value meet if local value maximization is to be possible? This question may be answered by considering what the theory of value would have to do to meet stronger demands of rational choice. As the conditions are relaxed, we can see what flexibility becomes available to the theory of value. A venerable tradition in philosophy upholds three claims about the demands of practical reason: that reason can settle all questions about what to choose; that it requires the global maximization of value; and that the grounds for rational choice must be fully and decisively articulable, leaving no room for judgment and hence none for dispute (compare Rawls 1971, pp. 548—560). These claims provide a powerful argument for monism, the view that there is only one ultimate standard of value. The first two claims imply that the values of all options are com-

46 * Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

mensurable, that their values can comprehensively be measured on a single scale.1 More technically, two goods, A and B, are commensurable if and only if there is a scale of overall value by which they can be at least ordinally ranked. An ordinal ranking says that either A is better than B, B is better than A, or they are equal in value. Unlike a cardinal ranking, it doesn't say how much more valuable one good is than the other. If goods are not commensurable, then it does not make sense to maximize their values. The third claim supports the inference from commensurability to the existence of just one value. For the only plausible scheme of fully articulate and decisive reasoning applicable to all goods seems to be the monistic one of dominant-end reasoning. If there is only one value, reason demands that people make its maximization their sole ultimate or dominant end. Choices among seemingly diverse goods are justified by their instrumental value in promoting this end. Monism offers a simple and compelling way to satisfy the three claims about rational choice. This argument for monism has often appeared in philosophy, usually in defense of hedonism (Kant 1956, pp. 20-22; Plato 1961b, 356a-357b; Sidgwick 1981, p. 406). Monism triumphs for lack of an alternative that promises to settle decisively all questions of choice. Many contemporary consequentialists find monism unattractive. They have dropped the third requirement of exhaustive articulability and accordingly relaxed the demands placed on the theory of value. If only the first two claims are accepted, the theory of value must be reductionist. While it can be pluralist in accepting many distinct standards of value, it must hold that there is a single measure of value which commensurates all goods. This theory is reductionist because even if every standard provides its own measure of value, it supposes that these measures can be reduced to a common overall measure. James Griffin (1986, pp. 26-31) offers a reductionist theory of value in arguing that there are many objective standards of value, but that informed preference provides the common measure of goods meeting any of these standards. Reductionist theories lack a fully articulate justification for action, for at some point they must appeal to brute preferences or brute facts about the relative weights of different values. Welfare economists often appeal to the first two demands of rational choice to argue for a single measure of value. The necessity of choice between two goods, such as money and life, requires their commensurability, preferably in terms of money (Arrow 1967, p. 5; Maler and Wyzga 1976, p. 6). A theory that meets the first two claims of practical reason by showing

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods * 41

how to globally commensurate options promises important pragmatic advantages. It would be extremely simple and applicable everywhere. It would offer precision in practical matters and, if it were monistic, offer complete articulateness as well. It would yield a determinate result better than or equal to any alternative. Most important, it would eliminate the problem of apparently conflicting values by reducing deliberation to a matter of calculation. These are the pragmatic advantages that can be claimed on behalf of consequentialism. The pluralist-expressive theory cannot offer these pragmatic advantages, for it rejects the notion that the values of states of affairs can be globally compared. Suppose the second claim about practical reason were relaxed and demanded only the possibility of local value-maximization, within a decision context. Then, instead of providing one measure of value that commensurates goods for all contexts, the theory of value would have to provide only, for each context, a measure of value that commensurates goods within it. It isn't obvious that the pluralist rational attitude theory can provide this. According to it, intrinsic value judgments guide emotional and attitudinal responses. These are expressed through actionguiding norms, which tell us to realize a plurality of values in states of affairs. Sometimes these norms tell us to maximize the value of some good that possesses many different valuable features. Maxirnization requires commensurability. How are the plurality of values to be combined" in one measure of overall evaluation? There cannot be one answer here as in rea^trdmsttheories, for different values are relevant in different ways in different decision contexts. 3.2 A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value Judgments The pluralist-expressive theory yields a pragmatic theory of comparative value judgments. The theory is called pragmatic because it represents comparative value judgments as constructed for particular purposes, rather than as discovered in the intrinsic natures of the items being compared or in their immediate relation to some response in us, such as preference or pleasure. The pragmatic character of comparative value judgments follows from the fact that the goods it compares are extrinsically valuable. They derive their importance or action-guiding relevance from the decision frame in which they appear. And the decision frame, in turn, is conditioned by the purposes and attitudes of the agent. There is no single thing people are doing when they seek the "best" and hence, contrary to reductionist theories, no single formula for calculating the "best." Dif-

48 • Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

ferent comparative strategies are appropriate for different purposes and functions and for different kinds and objects of overall evaluation. The pragmatic theory explains comparative value judgments by considering their functions, why people care about them, and what practices of evaluation serve these functions. Authenticity and importance are two values of standards of value particularly significant for this investigation. If a standard lacks authenticity, it is arbitrary, unfounded, or illusory. A standard is authentic if and only if it is a candidate for some rational response-guiding function—if it could make sense for a person to guide her responses by it. Authentic standards must meet the following conditions: they must identify differences among the objects being evaluated which people are capable of caring about, and their claims to authority must not rest on delusion, error, or other cognitive defects. The second condition rules out evaluative standards people care about, such as racist ones, whose authority depends upon pseudoscientific claims or selfdeception. Not every authentic standard can claim to guide a person's responses, since it may not make sense for the person to care about it. I don't ski, so it doesn't make sense for me to care about authentic differences in the value of snow for skiing. A standard is important to a person if it makes sense for her to care about it. Importance measures the degrees to and the ways in which an authentic standard properly informs a person's concerns and actions. Suppose we are considering whether to adopt a new standard or method of evaluation to govern a practice. We must judge how important the standard is. It could be important if it serves functions valued by the participants in the practice or if the practice would be improved by adopting it. Such a judgment was recently made in competitive figure skating. This sport has been strongly shaped by a contest between two standards of value—"athleticism," expressed in the execution of difficult jumps and spins, and "artistry," expressed in precisely tracing geometrical patterns on the ice. (The latter is distinct from the standard of "artistic impression," which a skater meets by expressively coordinating her movements to accompanying music.) Figure skating began as a purely artistic endeavor, but gradually the athletic component gained prominence. People recently challenged the inclusion in international competitions of the "school figures," in which skaters must trace perfect circles and other shapes in the ice. They successfully argued that, although figure skating originated in such endeavors, today they are just training exercises. Including them in a skating competition now makes as much sense as including scales in a piano competition. Skating competitions would be improved if the school

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods • 49

figures were dropped, because then the choice of winners would more truly reflect the athletic values that practitioners of the sport really care about. No one claimed that artistry was an unauthentic standard, that past awards informed by this standard were fraudulent. They claimed only that it was no longer important. The power of the pragmatic approach to explain comparative value judgments can best be illustrated by considering examples. I will focus on two types of comparative evaluations: impersonal goodness-of-a-kind judgments, typically applied to products and performances of athletic, artistic, academic, and similar practices; and personal judgments of which good would be better to have or choose. Each of these kinds of multicriterion evaluation serves different functions, has different action-guiding implications, and is arrived at by different methods, depending upon its objects and functions. Goodness-of-a-kind judgments applied to achievements within practices compare different goods as exemplars of a particular kind of excellence. These judgments are impersonal: in evaluating a gymnastics routine, judges consult not their personal preferences but shared standards constitutive of excellent performance, such as balance, difficulty, and confidence of execution. Goodness-of-a-kind judgments consider only values internal to and constitutive of the practice, not values the object might realize externally to its contribution to the excellences definitive of the practice. The overall excellence of a portrait as a portrait could depend upon its subtle revelation of a persons character, but not upon how good it is as a commercial investment, or how good it is for covering a stain on a wall.2 Goodness-of-a-kind judgments involve evaluation against several standards of value. The component-value strategy attempts to commensurate goods by representing the overall value of a good as an objective function of its component values. If each standard can be assigned a weight, then the overall value of an object is the weighted sum of its component values. The component-value strategy possesses many of the pragmatic advantages of reductionism, without assuming that it provides a global solution to commensuration. It represents evaluation as essentially a matter of calculation, with the aim of making the process precise and decisive. Sometimes the component-value strategy offers a successful solution to the multi-criterion evaluation problem. An excellent example is found in decathlon scoring, in which times and distances in different events, such as the hundred-meter dash, the shot put, and the long jump, are converted to a common point scale. This is achieved by assigning equal weight to each

50 * Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

event (twelve hundred potential points)—zero points to just below the worst recorded performance, twelve hundred points to a performance just beyond the present world record—and dividing the resulting interval by twelve hundred to get the incremental speed or distance per point. Adjustments are made for the peculiarities of different events, as well as to ensure that increments close to the world record earn more points than increments further away (MacKay 1980, pp. 61-71). The pragmatic theory explains the adequacy of this scheme of evaluation better than reductionist or monistic theories of value. The decathlon scoring system is reasonable because it serves the functions assigned to it: it fairly, decisively, and precisely ranks different athlete s performances across different events according to a process that experienced devotees of the practice find reasonable and relevant to what they care about (Luban 1990). It offers one authentic scheme for answering the question "who is the best all-around athlete?" But other scoring systems, or even other kinds of competition, could do so as well. It makes sense for judges, athletes, and sports fans to care about scoring differences on this system because it is the only authentic scheme that has been socially instituted. Consider how rival reductionist theories would try to explain the decathlon scoring scheme.3 Three basic measures of value are available to reductionists: (1) the degree to which we take pleasure in it; (2) the degree to which it satisfies our preferences; (3) the degree to which it possesses a distinct property, "intrinsic value," that supervenes upon its component values. The decathlon point scale determines which performances in different events represent equivalent athletic achievements. For instance, 10.1 seconds in the hundred-meter dash earns the same number of points (1043) as 812 centimeters in the long jump. Intrinsic value theory must explain the equivalence of the two performances in terms of the values of their intrinsic features. But it is absurd to suggest that the decathlon scoring system tracks independently existing relations among values, that there is something inherent in the value of an 812 centimeter jump that makes it as good as a 10.1 second run of 100 meters. This would not explain why equivalent performances change as greater advances are made in some events than in others. The pleasure and preference theories claim to set either the standard of value or a measure of value that tracks the authentic standard. On the standard view, they must be able to explain the equivalent performances as reflecting the judges' independently equivalent preferences or pleasurable feelings in witnessing the two performances. This gets the explanation backward, both logically and causally. We construct a point-scale in the

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods • 51

first place so that we can guide and train our preferences and pleasures over the performances being judged. Without the point-scale, our preferences and pleasures would not be discriminating enough to ground precise, calculable, and articulate comparative value judgments. On the measure view, we must suppose that preferences and pleasures faithfully track the authoritative standard. Bias, fan loyalty, and considerations of meaningfulness disrupt this tracking. One performance can be more pleasing than another because it represents a greater triumph for the athlete who performed it than the highest-scoring performance represents for the winning athlete. Often we would like to see the most meaningful performance be the winning performance, for example, the one that vindicates an athlete who had until then choked in crucial contests. This preference does not track the best performances. The component-value strategy cannot be extended to cover all best-ofa-kind value judgments for at least two reasons. First, Arrow and Raynaud have proven the following theorem (1986, pp. 18—21). If goods can only be ordinally ranked by a standard of value, if their rankings along one standard vary independent of rankings along others, and if the relative ranking of any two goods is not affected by the entry or elimination of other items, then the component-value strategy will either yield inconsistent evaluations or collapse into the ranking generated by one of the standards. An inconsistent evaluation is intransitive: it says that A is better than B, B better than C, and C better than A. Since many reductionists concede that their favored measures of value yield only ordinal rankings, this theorem undermines pluralism and pushes them toward unattractive monistic views. Pragmatists have more flexibility in using the component-value strategy than reductionists, for they are free to give up the entry/elimination constraint.4 This constraint is plausible only if we assume that comparative value is derived from a prior measure of the intrinsic values the items possess independent of the context of comparison. Pragmatists deny that we have any reason to postulate such acontextual values. The reasonableness of scoring in skating competitions confirms the pragmatic view. The winner of a contest is determined by combining skaters' scores in two events, an original and a long program. Although cardinal rankings are reported for each event, only the ordinal rankings they generate are used to compute the winner.5 This permits a skater to win in a three-person competition who would have lost had one of the other two dropped out. (Skater A could win the contest if the rankings in the original program are (A, C, B) and in the long program (B, A, C). B would beat A if C hadn't

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competed because the long program is weighted more heavily than the short. But B loses to A when C enters because B skates third-best in the first event and A never skates worse than second.) Rules for scoring skating competitions can't be rationalized in terms of intrinsic values, but can be rationalized on pragmatic terms. The second reason the component-value strategy is not generalizable is that some practices don't support the calculations it requires, nor would they be improved if they did. Consider the evaluation of fiction. Limitations in literary standards prevent the precise calculations available in athletic scoring. It makes sense to say (in decathlon scoring) that one athlete s jump was twice as good as another's but not that one author's story was twice as suspenseful as another's. This is not due to a lack of precise measuring instruments. We could invent an operational definition of "suspensefulness" susceptible to precise measurement, but the differences this would capture would be unlikely to be authentic. We wouldn't even know how to begin to measure other aesthetic values, such as originality, in operationalizable terms. This problem cannot be solved by inventing more precise evaluative concepts. The different dimensions of aesthetic value would still have to be ranked against one another. How should we weigh suspensefulness against the ingenuity of the plot in evaluating thrillers? Any formula for weighting these standards would be groundless. The functions of aesthetic evaluation are not well served by precise, quantifiable standards placed in fixed relations to one another. The precision, articulability, and decisiveness of the component-value strategy comes at the cost of more important functions of aesthetic evaluation, such as promoting interpretive richness and creative growth. The point of much Western artistic production has been to challenge received standards and invent new ones, so as to develop new ways of perceiving, appreciating, and producing art. These purposes are not served by substituting new sets of fixed standards for the old. Progress is achieved in part by reinterpreting existing standards in surprising, interesting, and contestably new ways. This kind of invention, growth, and dynamism is facilitated by evaluative standards that are openended, fluid, susceptible to competing interpretations, but not so empty of content that anything could satisfy them. These are standards described in terms of essentially contestable evaluative concepts, which lack the features (full operationalization, fixed boundaries, quantifiability) required to be amenable to calculative strategies of reasoning. Goodness-of-a-kind evaluations serve other functions besides guiding choices. Adherence to them defines membership and authority in a prac-

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods • 53

tice devoted to an excellence or in a camp contending for ownership of the practice. They set standards for admiration and aspiration, for training members' sensibilities, and for disciplining their participation in the practice. They provide a framework through which the practice can progress. These goods would be undermined by a system of aesthetic evaluation that generated precise and fixed rankings. The choice-guiding functions of impersonal aesthetic evaluations—the ones which are supposed to be served by precision and decisiveness—are, by contrast, relatively unimportant. They are helpful in awarding prizes and honors. A person's other aesthetic choices are not bound by goodness-of-a-kind evaluations. I might judge that one book is a much better novel than another, yet choose to read the inferior work for many good reasons connected to my varying moods, interests, tastes, and cares (perhaps I like trashy novels, or I'm in the mood for something light). Because options may belong to more than one kind, best-of-a-kind judgments can conflict. A thriller with welldeveloped characters but a less suspenseful plot may be better as a novel but worse as a thriller than one with a gripping plot. The pragmatic theory explains better than intrinsic value theory which standard of comparative value is important to my choice: it depends on the purposes I have for choosing the book. The aims of entertainment and insight make relevant different standards. Personal judgments of what option is best for one to choose constitute a different type of multi-criterion evaluation from impersonal goodness-ofa-kind judgments. Unlike the latter, they take into account the individual's personal circumstances, tastes, moods, interests, and responsibilities. They also permit comparisons of options that differ in kind or share few valuable features that could afford a basis for intrinsic, impersonal comparison. The higher-order good strategy provides a way to compare different choices in a personal evaluation by relating them to a larger whole. In choosing between getting a job and going to school, a person may consider how either choice would contribute to her having a good life, or a good family life, or a good career. Conceptions of a good life, a good career, and so forth are conceptions of second-order goods, which consist of particular arrangements and connections of first-order goods.6 A good day in the life of a person is a second-order good consisting of a sequence of activities and events. The overall worth of a higher-order good is not a function of the individual values of its component goods, for it may be judged by standards, such as balance, variety, meaningfulness, and harmony, that may not be applicable to their component first-order goods. It is an organic unity

Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods • 55

54 • Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods

judged against a scheme for recognizing when its components are well organized, distributed, and connected. Consider how the higher-order good strategy can inform the choice between doing errands on Sunday and going on a daytrip (Stocker 1990, pp. 172—173). These activities share few advantages and disadvantages. Yet one might compare them by considering how they would contribute to the second-order goods of a good day or a good week. These are not ends distinct from the activities and events which constitute them. But they do include some conception of how these activities and events should be structured: a basic framework is provided by routines, responsibilities, and other necessary tasks, as well as by a view of how labor and leisure may be favorably scheduled. For example, one might prefer to relax after daily chores are finished, so that this time may be enjoyed without worrying about duties which lie shortly ahead, or so that the relaxation can be deserved. The choice between errands and going on a daytrip can then be made by seeing which option would make for a better overall arrangement of goods constituting a good day (perhaps a good Sunday) or a good week. The pragmatic theory of comparative evaluation has a better account than reductionist theories of how the higher-order good strategy works. Reductionism claims that there is a single measure of overall value applicable to all contexts. If overall value is organic, then any local use of a second-order good in deliberation, such as of a good day or a good week, must be rationalized as promoting the value of some more comprehensive higher-order good, such as of a good life. This good does not provide a unique standard: are we concerned with a happy, meaningful, or virtuous life? Nor does it provide a global standard: only those lower-order choices that have some impact on the worth of the higher-order good can be rationalized by moving to the more comprehensive level. Decisions that may affect the quality of one's day but have no prospect of influencing the overall meaning, happiness, or virtue of one s life cannot be justified by referring to the more comprehensive standards. It is not even true that reason demands the use of the higher-order standard when a decision could influence both the higher- and the lower-order good in different directions. There is no one aspect, dimension, or unit of life whose value we must be maximizing if our choices are to be rational. Which higherorder good it makes sense to use in justifying a person s choices depends on the context of decision, especially on the agent s reflective understanding of her own predicament. The kind of reflection called for in choosing among goods by referring to a higher-order good is more a matter of interpretation than of calcula-

tion. A conception of a higher-order good is not like a rigid template which measures first-order goods according to the precise degree to which they match its shape. Or rather, it may be like that for people of extremely inflexible habits. But it is better viewed as an open-ended and flexible schema, which can be filled out and reshaped in an infinite variety of ways, as circumstances, opportunities, purposes, principles, mood, taste, and imagination recommend. There is no fixed pattern to a good day or a good career. The schema provided by a higher-order good is too open-ended to support a fixed set of tradeoff schedules for different values; people turn to it to guide their imagination and interpretive powers, not to engage in mathematical calculation. Although deliberation using higher-order goods thus sacrifices the pragmatic advantages of consequentialist models of rational choice, it has its own advantages. The open-endedness of higher-order goods encourages creativity and growth, independence, individuality, flexibility, exploration, and play 3.3 Incommensurable Goods My investigation has proceeded thus far on the assumption that practical reason demands at least the local maximization of value. But the expressive theory of practical reason permits us to relax this assumption. If the norms properly governing choice in a context do not prescribe the maximization of extrinsic value, there may be no content to the thought that there is some extrinsic value there to be maximized. If the norms properly governing attitudes do not prescribe that one intrinsic good be valued more intensely or in a higher way than another, or that they be valued in exactly the same way, there may be no content to the thought that either one good is intrinsically more valuable than another or they are equal in value. A theory of value adequate to the demands of rational choice could thus leave open the possibility that some goods are incommensurable. Two goods are incommensurable with respect to some scale if one is neither better, worse, nor equal in value to the other in the respects measured by the scale (Raz 1986, p. 322). Incommensurability generally arises when the following three conditions are met: (1) the goods in question meet the standards measured by the scale in very different ways; (2) there are no gross differences in the degree to which each good exemplifies its own way of meeting the standards; and (3) meeting the standard in one way is not categorically superior to meeting it the other way. The standard of brilliance can be met in very different ways, for example, musically and scientifically. Neither

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way of being brilliant is categorically superior to the other. Bach and Darwin were each highly successful in their own ways of being brilliant. Neither was superior in brilliance to the other, nor were they roughly equal in brilliance. If this were so, then a small but significant improvement in the brilliance of one would suffice to tilt the judgment in his favor. But it is silly to claim that, say, had Darwin achieved some brilliant insights into genetic theory as well as evolution, he would thereby have exceeded Bach in brilliance. There is an intransitivity in value judgments here: our imagined Darwin is not more brilliant than Bach, Bach is not more brilliant than Darwin, yet our imagined Darwin is more brilliant than Darwin himself. Joseph Raz calls this intransitivity (in the relation "is not superior to") the mark of incommensurable value (1986, pp. 325326). The more a given scale of value encompasses very different, categorically unranked ways of meeting it, the more scope there is for incommensurability. So incommensurability is more likely to arise for more global judgments of overall value, in which a goods ranking on many standards is relevant to its overall standing. This poses a serious problem for reductionist consequentialists—those who accept the pluralist claim (that there are many distinct standards of worth) but also hold that rational or moral action must maximize the global value of states of affairs. If pluralism is right, and different ways of being a valuable state of affairs are not categorically ranked, then we should expect widespread incommensurabilities among states of affairs. If options cannot be compared in overall worth, then consequentialism will offer a very incomplete and fragmented perspective for agents to justify their actions. The pragmatic theory of comparative value judgments explains why this is so. It makes sense to construct a comparative scale of evaluation only if there is some point to doing so. Comparative value judgments make sense only if they serve some function. The more global scales of comparison serve no authentic choice- or attitude-guiding function, since the expressive norms constitutive of decision and response frames do the work that consequentialists think must be assigned to global evaluations. The pluralist-expressive theory implies that there is no fact of the matter about what is the best state of affairs from a consequential point of view and hence, no consequential fact of the matter about what is the best action. Phenomena surrounding incommensurability provide a powerful test case for the relative merits of pluralist-expressive and reductionist-consequentialist theories. Suppose we encounter deliberative situations with the following features: (a) we seem to be at a loss to make any credible relative

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judgments about the values of two options; (b) Razian intransitivity, the mark of incommensurability, is present; (c) the expressive theory explains why comparative value judgments have run out here; (d) the expressive theory provides other bases besides their relative values for choosing between the options. The ability of the pluralist-expressive theory to make both theoretical and practical sense of such situations would be powerful evidence in its favor. Situations meeting the above conditions are familiar. Consider Sarah, who must choose between two ways of life (compare Raz 1986, pp. 341— 344). One is secure, content, and parochial, focused on the cultivation of fulfilling and loving relationships among a small circle of friends and family. The other sacrifices lasting relationships with intimates for the sake of an outstanding career in ballet, which offers excitement, glamour, significant contributions to world culture, and broader knowledge of the world. Each way of life is good in its own way and defective in others. Suppose Sarah has equal prospects for leading either life successfully. I claim that consequentialists cannot plausibly argue that the value of Sarah s leading one way of life is commensurable with the value of her leading the other. Consequentialists can evaluate Sarah's options by either a welfare or an impersonal intrinsic value scale. (Because other reductionist scales incorporate at least one of these two, incommensurabilities in these will infect all other measures.) We have no grounds for claiming that one way of life is impersonally better overall than the other. Nor are they judged equal in value. Improvements in the degree to which one way of life exemplifies its characteristic merits need not make it superior to the other. A consequentialist could argue that this indecision only reveals our ignorance. If we reflected more deeply on the issue, we could make a determinate value judgment. The problem is that our society no longer reflects on these issues (Regan 1989, p. 1060). The expressive theory explains why reflection runs out here: in our liberal, pluralist, egalitarian society, there is no longer any point in impersonally ranking all legitimate ways of life on some hierarchy of intrinsic value. Plural and conflicting yet legitimate ideals will tell different people to value different lives, and there is no point in insisting that a single ranking is impersonally valid for everyone. The project of ranking all legitimate ways of life on an impersonal scale of intrinsic worth is action-guiding only for upper-class members of status-based societies, who have the freedom to choose the most "honorable" ways of life and to force others to perform the less "intrinsically valuable" but socially necessary functions.

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Welfare considerations also fail to rank Sarah's two ways of life. Let's leave aside questions of comparing welfare between persons, where consequentialists concede grave difficulties, and stick to the intrapersonal case. By hypothesis, Sarah is capable of leading each way of life happily and successfully; that is, either way of life is equally likely to turn out satisfactory to whichever of her future selves she will become. Each could be regarded by her as an attractive, but very different, prospect. Neither is superior to the other. But nor are they equal in value, for the situation meets the Razian in transitivity test. Consequentialists may object that if the values of the two ways of life are really incommensurable, then it wouldn't make sense to agonize over the choice between them. Why not just flip a coin? Agonizing must reflect the judgment that the values of options are commensurable (Regan 1989, p. 1059; Chang 1992, p. 28). I will argue in §3.4 that expressive theorists have bases for choice other than the values of options. They can also choose on the basis of what it means for them to make the choice for the reasons that motivate them. It does make sense to agonize about this. But the objection can also be turned against consequentialists. If two options are equal in intrinsic value, then consequentialism says that, leaving aside the value of valuing itself, it doesn't make sense to value one more than the other. But it always make sense to care about the radically different ways in which options meet a standard, if none is grossly less successful in its own terms than the others. It always makes sense to care about the composition of partial values making up a successful and satisfactory option (Sen 1981; Herzog 1985, pp. 123-132; Stocker 1990, pp. 291302). There just is no scale of overall value for all options about which we cannot sensibly judge that it is worth sacrificing some total quantity for a different composition of the whole.7 Some consequentialists reject a Moorean intrinsic value scale and take the measure of intrinsic value to be given simply by one's informed preference rankings (Griffin 1986, pp. 11—15). Whatever one most prefers when calm and informed is the option that maximizes value. This view avoids the above objection because it requires that a person be indifferent only among options about which she would be indifferent anyway when suitably calm and informed. If preferences are complete, then any two options are commensurable. And preferences are complete, because it is always possible to force someone to make a choice and hence express a preference between any two options. So all options are commensurable. This argument equivocates on the meaning of "preference." When preferences are identified with choices, they are complete. But when a person is

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forced to make a choice, she may lack any confidence that the choice is best, even if it is calm and informed. The kinds of preferences which we know are complete therefore cannot be identified with the kinds of preferences capable of being interpreted as measuring, tracking, or constituting value judgments. The completeness of a persons choices does not imply the completeness of her value rankings. These arguments put pressure on consequentialists to reject pluralism. Although monism is deeply implausible, given the obvious fact that we do find things valuable for more than one reason, it at least promises that all options are commensurable. Michael Stocker argues that even monistic views such as hedonism cannot guarantee this, if they permit, as seems inevitable, different pleasures to have different qualities. In that case, it can always make sense to prefer a different mixture of qualities of pleasure to a maximum quantity. One may find a peculiar, piquant pleasure more interesting than a greater quantity of a familiar, languorous pleasure (Stocker 1990, pp. 184—188). And certain mixtures may not be commensurable, as demonstrated by Raz's intransitivity test. Consequentialism, whether pluralistic or monistic, cannot explain how rational choice in many situations is possible. It cannot unify the self around a unified structure of aims. 3.4 Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods The failure of consequentialism to solve the problem of rational choice between incommensurable goods would not count against it if the expressive theory could do no better. This would show only that the structure of values does not always fix a rationally determinate choice. But the expressive theory can guide choices among incommensurable goods, for it provides other bases for choice than just the values of their consequences. Recall that the expressive theory conceives of rational choice as oriented toward dual ends and, therefore, as having both an expressive and a causal dimension. People try to bring about consequences for the sake of the people and things they care about. Even if the values of the consequences of choice are incommensurable, the act of choosing one option for the particular reasons motivating it may have a different expressive significance from the act of choosing the other. These expressive differences provide grounds for rational choice unavailable to pure consequentialists. Consider again Sarah's choice between two ways of life. By hypothesis, neither is impersonally better than the other, and neither offers a superior prospect of future welfare to the person Sarah will become. But Sarah has more concerns toward herself and others than are expressed in self-love or

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benevolence, understood consequentially. First, she may be concerned about the sort of person she will become. Her commitment to an ideal may incline her toward one choice. This is not a welfare consideration. She may even rationally choose to sacrifice some of her welfare for the sake of achieving an ideal. This is also not a judgment of impersonal value. She need not claim that the ideals expressed in the rejected alternative are impersonally inferior to hers. It is a judgment of personal importance. Such judgments are partly independent of and normative for her preferences and pleasures and hence are not merely reflections of the other two available reductionist scales of value. Second, she may evaluate her choice by evaluating the reasons motivating it. Although there are good reasons for choosing one option, her motivations may also be informed by bad reasons. She may not want to yield to the fear of a challenge which impels her toward the secure life, or to the fear of intimacy which impels her toward the artistic life. Third, her sense of personal responsibility may demand that she make a narrative unity of her life. In choosing the secure life, would she be turning her back on everything to which she has devoted her life so far? Would this make her life up to that point a meaningless episode? Even if she would find neither future more satisfactory to herself at the times she would be living it, one future might make better sense of her whole life than the other. Fourth, she may consider her choice in the light of the other ends she cares intrinsically about. She may turn down the opportunity to live the artistic life, because choosing it might express callousness toward those she loves. Although this choice may deprive audiences of welfare and edification, it doesn't make sense for her to care about their interests at this stage in her career. She has no obligations to them yet. So, states of affairs may be incommensurable by any of the scales of global evaluation available to consequentialists. But choices among such states of affairs may be commensurable by expressive considerations. The expressive theory can explain why comparative value judgments run out, and it can guide choices even when they do. It does seem, then, that there are familiar situations for which the expressive theory has a better practical and theoretical explanation than consequentialism. A consequentialist may reply to this argument by trying to incorporate the expressive considerations just mentioned into a sophisticated accounting of the values of states of affairs. This response will be considered in §4.4. The expressive theory has a further advantage over consequentialism, in that even when it does need to commensurate goods, it does not call for the scope of commensurability to be as wide as consequentialism requires.

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Compare the demands made on the concept of welfare by consequentialist and expressive conceptions of benevolence. Expressive conceptions of benevolence, tied to social roles and special relationships, do not require the notion of overall welfare that consequentialist benevolence does (§2.2). The relationship between a given person or community and a benefactor circumscribes the aspects of welfare which properly concern the latter—perhaps to health, or literacy, or housing in typical charitable or welfare state projects; or to the sharing of personal intimacies, advice, and time in certain friendships, where financial well-being is not a proper concern. Comparative value judgments using scales limited to specific dimensions of welfare are considerably more plausible, justifiable, and easier to make than judgments of global welfare. A theory that doesn't require us to construct global welfare scales has these advantages over a theory that does. Consequentialists may dig in their heels at this point and argue that there is no way to avoid the need for global commensuration. They argue that the norms constitutive of decision frames, which are supposed to do the work in expressive theories that global commensuration does in consequentialist theories, inherently conflict. These conflicts can be resolved only by finding a more fundamental principle that justifies or explains the point of each in a way that allows us to determine what to do in every case (Mill 1979, pp. 53-57; Hare 1981, pp. 39-40; Sidgwick 1981, pp. 360, 406). The fundamental principle prescribes an ultimate end, such as welfare maximization, and intuitive principles are commensurated as more or less efficient instruments for achieving that end. Or, if obeying the intuitive principles is partially constitutive of the end, then weights must be attached to them to determine how they balance out in a particular choice situation. This argument misrepresents the function of expressive norms. Consider, for example, the demands of kindness and of respect. Kindness is partly expressed in obeying the norm not to hurt others' feelings. Respect is partly expressed in obeying the norm of telling the truth. Consequentialists suppose these principles function in commonsense moral thought as unreflective rules (Hare 1981, ch. 2; Sidgwick 1981, bk. 3, ch. 11). If this were true they would often conflict and reason would have to appeal to more fundamental norms to resolve the conflict. Consequentialists propose either that these two principles be evaluated as instrumental to some dominant end independent of each, such as happiness, or that their distinct ends be somehow compared in value. In either case, we need some comprehensive answer to the question: how much is this true belief

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worth compared to that quantum of hurt feelings? But pluralism implies that there are widespread incommensurabilities among these states of affairs, that any weights assigned to the different principles will be arbitrary, and that there is no dominant end that can reconcile conflicts between principles. We can resolve apparent conflicts within the terms of the expressive theory by reflecting more deeply on the respective demands of kindness and respect and by considering what the actions of telling the truth or avoiding hurt feelings would mean in the present context. They mean different things, depending on the agents relationships to the people for whose sake he acts. An adviser to a legitimate official is duty-bound to tell the truth about the failure of the official's policies, even at great cost to his self-esteem. In contrast, it is absurd to charge a person with dishonesty for not expressing her frank opinion, when solicited, of her elder aunt's taste in dress. A mere acquaintance may rightly be judged intrusive for telling a dying person that he is dying, even if she correctly judges that the dying person ought to know and that his relatives do him a disservice in misleading him. Yet a close friend may subvert her friendship in refusing to share this information with her friend. In each of these choices between truth-telling and sparing someone's feelings, one does not simply ask how much this piece of truth is worth in comparison with that instance of self-esteem. Rather, choice is made against a background of appropriate relations among people, as defined by institutional responsibilities, rules of etiquette, ideals of friendship, and so forth. Within a given relationship, telling the truth or sparing someone's feelings has different expressive meanings. Telling the truth in one case is simply tactless or presumptuous; in another, an act of honesty and courage; in yet another, an expression of a kind of loyalty and respect proper to friends. Sparing someone's feelings may in one case constitute an act of sycophancy; in another, of considerateness; in yet another, of love. These examples illustrate how expressive norms, such as those favoring truth-telling and sparing people s feelings, have authority to the extent that they are adequate expressions of the ways people ought to value one another. These norms, expressed at such a high level of generality, are only crude approximations of the actual demands of respect and kindness in different situations. The application of intuitive principles requires an interpretation of their underlying expressive point in light of the relations the agent has to the people for whose sake she acts.8 If different principles appear to generate conflicting recommendations, the task for a rational

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agent is not to weight and aggregate their consequences, but to seek more refined interpretations of their demands so that all of them can be satisfied. This is the traditional task of casuistry, reasoning by analogy, and the other commonsense modes of practical reasoning familiar to ordinary life (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988). Nothing guarantees that an agent's rational evaluative attitudes will all be reconcilable in a particular situation. Sometimes the demands of love or of piety fundamentally conflict with the demands of particular ideals, such as patriotism. It may be impossible to adequately express one's love for two people if they become enemies. In such cases, there is no guarantee that either choice will make better sense of one's valuations than the other or that either will make adequate sense of them at all. Such a choice becomes tragic, as opposed to merely unfortunate or painful, only when it threatens the very coherence of the chooser's life. No matter what he does, he will deeply violate or betray something he values highly. In such cases, an agent's choices may well be incommensurable. We need not look to tragic choices to find incommensurable actions. There may be very different and incommensurable ways of adequately expressing one's valuations of one's ends. Such incommensurabilities do not disable rational choice. If either option makes adequate, but very different sense, of one's valuations, then reason permits the pursuit of either one. Joseph Raz has argued that reason demands that one choose not on the basis of reasons that beat all others, but only on the basis of reasons that are undefeated. Either can be rationally chosen for the distinctive reasons it offers. If reason does not dictate which option to choose, people can nevertheless form a preference for one over the other and avoid perpetual indecision by giving play to motivational states, such as habit and temperament, that do not track or rely on comparative value judgments (Raz 1986, p. 339). The explanatory and pragmatic advantages claimed on behalf of consequentialism are not what they purport to be. No compelling theoretical or practical reasons demand the global maximization of value. Evidence from our actual practices and failures to construct plausible global measures of value suggests that there is no single measure of value valid for all contexts. There are many measures of value valid for different contexts and purposes. The pragmatic theory of comparative value judgments that follows from the expressive view explains these measures better than reductionist theories do. It explains why the pragmatic advantages claimed on behalf of reductionist-consequentialist theories are often not important, because many comparative value judgments are not primarily action-guiding or

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because the ways they guide action, by stimulating imagination, innovation, play, and so forth, are not well served by the calculative model of rational choice. The pragmatic theory also explains why attempts to construct more global measures of value have failed, and hence it explains the phenomena of incommensurability better than consequentialism can. The expressive theory makes only modest demands on our capacity to commensurate states of affairs. It offers more resources for commensurating actions than consequentialism does, thereby enabling rational deliberation to proceed even when confronted with incommensurable goods. The expressive theory can lay a better claim to explanatory and pragmatic advantages, even in the domains where consequentialism claims its greatest strengths.

Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints

4.1 The Test of Self-Understanding In the last two chapters I have shown that the expressive theory of rationality provides a more coherent basis for self-understanding than consequentialism does. It is better at explaining what we care about and what it makes sense to care about, in ways we can reflectively endorse and successfully adopt in practice. I believe this is the fundamental test of a theory of practical reason (compare Taylor 1985d, 1989). To be practically rational just is to make sense of ourselves and our actions on the basis of reasons we can reflectively endorse. Consequentialists have a complex response to this test. They argue that commonsense self-understandings are deeply irrational, inconsistent, or self-defeating. This leads to a familiar dialectic between consequentialism and common sense. Consequentialists bxginjby^ attacjdng the rationality of certain distinctions common sense takes to be fundamental to moral and practical reasoning: distinctions between higher and lower goods, between jloing and allowing, and between intending and foreseeing a consequence _of ones action. These distinctions are applied in norms that prohibit people from trading higher for lower goods in some contexts but not others and that prohibit them from intentionally sacrificing certain higher goods to preserve more of the same kind from sacrifice by others or by natural causes. Consequentialists regard such norms as irrational because they prescribe different final ends, realize different consequences, and accept different tradeoffs of the same goods in different contexts. Norms embodying these distinctions appear not to be maximizing value, but rather to be inconsistent and self-defeating. Advocates of common sense respond by noting that these distinctions are deeply entrenched in our lives and that we feel repugnance for conse-

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quentialist systems that refuse to acknowledge them. This provokes two consequential responses. One is to dismiss commonsense intuitions as having no normative authority without some further grounding. Alternatively, consequentialists attempt to show how, on a sophisticated analysis of remote effects, some simulacrum of the original intuitive distinctions can be preserved in practice after all, so the gap between consequentialist prescriptions and ordinary intuitions is narrowed. In this chapter, I argue that the apparent irrationality of commonsense norms and distinctions is due to the fact that_consequoitialismJacks the conceptual resources to represent the evaluative point of thesejdistinctions. But there is a pluralist-expressive rationale for them. This adds a spin to the usual dialectic by undermining the dismissive consequentialist response. It forces consequentialists on the path of accommodation, where they stand on weaker ground, given their need to take their lead from intuitions that have no natural roots in consequentialist thought. The kinds of rationales they can offer for such intuitions must rely on obscure calculations and distant, highly contingent improbabilities. The expressive theory turns out to be superior to consequentialism because it makes better sense of evaluative distinctions fundamental to a meaningful life. At this point, consequentialists take issue with the test of self-understanding itself. They argue that the truth of a theory of practical reason must be distinguished from its adequacy as a basis for self-understanding. The true theory may tell us that the practically rational thing to do is to believe a false theory of practical reason. I will argue that this is a desperate move for a theory of practical reason to take. A theory that can avoid making it has a clear advantage. 4.2 The Hierarchy of Values In commonsense ethical debate, people often speak of some goods as incomparably higher in worth than others. Money, commodities, conveniences, luxuries, and sensual pleasures represent paradigmatic lower goods. They are seen not simply as less valuable, but as not even comparable on the same high scales as those on which paradigmatic higher goods such as human life, friendship, freedom, and human rights are measured. Pluralist-expressive and consequentialist theories can be compared according to how well they make sense of these commonsense intuitions about such "hierarchical incommensurability." Consequentialists attempt to represent such claims about relative worth in terms of preference rankings over states of affairs. Because consequen-

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tialism gives people the end of maximizing value, any difference in relative values should be reflected in a difference in preferences. Yet attempts to interpret hierarchical incommensurability in terms of preferences lead to absurd or catastrophic recommendations or fail to capture anything like the same class of judgments intuitively made about it. Lexical preference orderings offer the most popular way of representing a hierarchy of goods. A person lexically prefers C to B if she is unwilling to give up any amount of C for any amount of B. Lexical orderings prohibit tradeoffs of one good against another. Rawls s claim that rights to basic liberties must not be traded off against greater economic benefits, Dworkin's claim that rights "trump" claims to advance aggregate social welfare, and Nozicks claim that individual rights operate as "side-constraints" on others' actions can all be represented by lexical rankings of rights over other goods (Rawls 1971, p. 61; Nozick 1974, pp. 29-33; Dworkin 1977, p. xi). Lexical orderings sometimes capture liberal practices concerning rights. In First Amendment adjudication, no amount of prospective psychic distress suffered by witnesses to a political rally can justify censoring its message, however vicious. The right to free speech is lexically ordered over the avoidance of psychic distress from exposure to it. Lexical orderings, however, fail to capture many aspects of liberal practice. Liberal states do not spend unlimited amounts of money on the law enforcement measures needed to protect rights. Other interests, such as economic security, can justify some marginal sacrifices of effective power to exercise one's rights. Poor countries reasonably spend less money than wealthy countries on protecting civil liberties. Although human life is said to be of incomparably higher worth than money, saving money on small cars and cheaper roads, which are less safe than alternatives, is reasonable. It would be absurd, even disastrous, to prohibit such tradeoffs. Modifications of the lexical ordering scheme fail to escape these problems. Rawls proposes that lexical preferences of rights over economic development should take effect only if a country has reached a threshold of prosperity (1971, p. 152). Nozick entertains a loophole permitting the violation of individual rights to avoid catastrophes (1974, p. 30n). Neither proposal accounts for the reasonable tradeoffs of effective rights and safety against other policy goals routinely made by prosperous liberal regimes. Discontinuous preferences offer another way to represent the difference between higher and lower values. C might be thought to be higher than B if no amount of B could make one indifferent to less than some quantity of C. John Stuart Mill used discontinuity as a criterion for higher pleasures: one pleasure is higher than another only if people who have

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experienced both "would not resign it [give it up entirely] for any quantity of the other pleasure" (1979, p. 8). Mill's test marks a difference in quality but not a difference in the rank of goods. Many goods are such that a person would not prefer to give up either for any amount of the other. I feel this way about the pleasures of reading fiction and of eating chocolate. Even if we constrained the test to pairs of goods ordered asymmetrically by it, it would not capture anything like our ordinary judgments concerning higher and lower goods. Some people are happy to give up the pleasures of listening to LP records for the pleasures of listening to compact disks and are unwilling to accept the converse. But this does not make the latter listening pleasure a higher good than the former, in the sense this has when goods like convenience are compared with human rights, justice, and friendship. Furthermore, convenience is sometimes rationally preferred to such higher goods as justice. Correcting small injustices, such as being shortchanged a quarter at a hot dog stand, isn't worth the court's time. So courts reasonably impose a threshold of damages a case must claim before they will hear it. Other representations of a hierarchical difference in the values of goods in terms of preference have been explored and rightly rejected by James Griffin (1986, ch. 5). For example, preferences for higher goods might be non-optional, while preferences for lower goods are optional. We are not permitted to ignore human life, but it doesn't matter if we don't care about sushi. This is true, but it doesn't prevent us from comparing the relative worth of marginal amounts of the two goods. There seems to be no way to capture any rationally supportable jdaims about a hierarchy of values in terms of preferences. Consequentialists often conclude that the claim that one value is incomparably higher than another means only that it is much more valuable than the other, perhaps also that the speaker is squeamish about specifying precisely how much more. Perhaps a human life is worth several million dollars, but its monetary worth is still finite. Since we could not reasonably spend the entire GNP to save a life, it is merely a pious myth to claim that life is priceless (Melmck 1990, pp. 24, 35-36; Russell 1990, pp. 17, 21). If a claim to hierarchical incommensurability is supposed to support a norm prohibiting all tradeoffs between a higher and a lower good, the results are absurd or catastrophic. If the claim is supposed to support a norm sometimes prohibiting and sometimes permitting such tradeoffs, it is inconsistent. This consequentialist conclusion is repugnant to common sense. Common sense does appear to express judgments that one good is incomparably higher in worth than another, through norms that prohibit trade-

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offs of higher for lower goods in certain contexts, but not others. For example, commonsense morality categorically prohibits gravely humiliating a person just for fun. A consequentialist would have to permit such a humiliation, if enough people got enough fun from it to outweigh the humiliation of the victim. Appeals to discontinuity (claims that no amount of fun can be equal in value to a given avoidance of humiliation) cannot prevent this conclusion. Considered just as an event in his life, the humiliation might be judged by the victim to be less bad than the pain he suffered from a broken leg. Many people reasonably judge their own fun to be worth some pain to themselves—certainly enough, over hundreds of hours of enjoyment, to exceed the pain of a broken leg (consider skiing). If the fun enjoyed in the humiliation is worth more than avoiding the pain of a broken leg, a consequentialist must accept, by transitivity, that it exceeds the value of avoiding the humiliation and hence that the humiliation is justified. The consequentialist focus on the values of states of affairs rather than on the ways we should value people permits this conclusion. Consequentialists resort to many devices to avoid such embarrassing conclusions—rule consequentialism, slippery slopes, remote effects, and so forth. I find these devices to be lame, but I don't think counterarguments at this level of dispute are productive. More telling is the fact that many consequentialists are so confident, without ever exhibiting the calculations, that the numbers accord with commonsense intuitions in these kinds of cases. Notably, consequentialists sometimes willingly exercise their ingenuity in thinking up remote effects to tilt the balance in favor of common sense, when in other cases they deploy their ingenuity (and credulity) in the other direction. In the absence of real calculations, these arguments show only that the costs of the questionable action may be higher than originally thought, not that the costs outweigh the benefits. The confidence and ingenuity that consequentialists display in these cases seem to be motivated not by genuine consequentialist considerations, but by an expressive intuition that deliberately harming an individual in certain ways for certain reasons is wrong, because it expresses an improper contempt for another human being. The expressive intuition masquerades in consequentialist discourse as an intuition into the outcomes of arcane and unexhibited calculations. This_re,CUrxingMneed to appeal to occult quantities to avoid conclusions they are uncomfortable with suggests that consequentialists lack the conceptual resources to represent their own concerns and, therefore, lack the resources to achieve real self-under"stahding (Williams 1973, pp. 100—101). If another theory can transparently make sense of these intuitions, this is strong evidence in its favor.

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The pluralist-expressive theory can make sense of intuitions that some goods are incomparably higher in worth than others. There is an air of paradox surrounding such claims: in the same breath, one denies that two goods can be compared and goes on to compare them. The paradox is dispelled by the following expressive analysis. Two goods are incomparable in intrinsic worth if they are not candidates for the same mode of valuation. One good is of incomparably higher worth than another if it is worthy of a higher mode of valuation than the other—worthy of a love, awe, or honor beyond the respect owed to persons in general, worthy of respect beyond the consideration owed to animals, worthy of consideration beyond mere use, worthy of appreciation and care as a superb usevalue of its kind, like finely crafted tools, as opposed to being an acceptable object of abuse, as is a piece of junk that can be destroyed in use and discarded without a second thought. One way of_yaluing something is higher than another if the things^ concerning^ it make^deeper^u^litatively more significant demands on the attitudes, deliberations, and actions of the valuer. And one way to express this difference in demands, Js_ to prohibit tradeoff between.,.states of ; affairs concerning thejgoods^diat express a lower kind of valuation for the higher good than it merits. Such expressive considerations support norms that distinguish among intending, allowing, or unintentionally causing tradeoffs of different goods. Whereas it is not rational to prohibit all preventable tradeoffs between a higher and a lower good, it can be rational to prohibit certain tradeoffs of higher for lower goods chosen for particular reasons or in such a way as to express an inappropriate regard for the higher good. To the extent that causing and allowing, intending and foreseeing the same consequences express different, more or less appropriate, ways of valuing a good, these actions may be evaluated differently. For example, the same tradeoff of friendship against money has a different expressive significance, depending on the reasons people have for acting in ways that result in the tradeoff. It is usually no offense against a friend for one to move to a distant city to obtain a higher paying job, even if the friendship is attenuated because of reduced contact. But it is a betrayal for someone to accept another's offer of money on condition she not see her friend so often (Raz 1986, p. 349). The expressive analysis makes sense of liberal theorists' appeals to lexical orderings. In practice, liberal theorists categorically prohibit only those tradeoffs of rights against other goods that express disrespect for persons (Pildes and Anderson 1990, pp. 2150-2158). The idea that a given tradeoff would express disrespect or other inappropriate regard for persons is often

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expressed in the thought that a higher good is at stake in a choice. Freedom of movement is not really at stake in a town's decision to enforce traffic laws for safety; that is, enforcing this tradeoff between effective freedom of movement and safety does not throw into question one's commitment to valuing persons as free. Prohibiting all overseas travel in the name of citizens' safety typically does. The categorical prohibitions required by liberal theory need not lead to disaster or absurdity. If the reasons motivating the tradeoff are serious enough, they need not fall under the prohibition, for they may express in the present context an obligatory valuation of higher goods at stake in the choice. Liberal states recognize the need to impose curfews during a riot. But this emergency restriction of liberty is justified in the name of respecting persons whose lives would be in jeopardy if the usual freedom of movement were permitted. The expressive analysis of hierarchical incommensurability explains other intuitive ideas, such as those of degradation, fetishism, and idolatry, which are difficult to grasp in consequentialist terms. A practice is degrading when it expresses a lower valuation of something than it merits. We speak of slavery as degrading to persons because in slavery, individuals are valued as mere commodities or use-values, rather than as persons, worthy of the higher valuation of respect. Idolatry and fetishism make the opposite error: worshipping or otherwise valuing in a higher way things unworthy of all but lower modes of valuation. Commodity fetishism, a characteristic vice of capitalist societies, consists in a blind devotion to consumer goods, attributing powers and values to them that are properly to be found in relations among people. A consequentialist might argue that different modes of valuation can be reduced to preferences over states of affairs. Valuing something highly merely amounts to valuing it intensely. Valuing something intensely amounts either to wanting more things of that sort around, or to weighing its interests more heavily than things valued less intensely. Neither interpretation is plausible. The first does not account for romantic love, which is directed toward a unique other. It also reflects a confusion, inherent in the instrumental theory, between the ends for the sake of which one acts and the aims of one's action. Respecting humanity as an end becomes, absurdly, a matter of increasing the number of human beings, as the population paradoxes show (§2.3). The second interpretation attempts to reduce qualitative differences in valuing things to quantitative differences in the weights one assigns to their interests. The difference between loving and respecting someone is captured in a preference structure that weights the beloved's interests as

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some multiple of the interests of respected persons. But the relative demands of love and respect cannot be captured by any such acontextual weightings. These demands are embodied in different networks of social relations regulated by discrete norms for different social roles. In private life, one may of course give the interests of the beloved priority over those of strangers. But in public life, as in assigning jobs, one may not weight the interests of the beloved more heavily than the interests of a random applicant. Nepotism is prohibited by the demands of respect, and it is not required by the forms of love compatible with life in modern liberal societies. No single weightedpreference ranking can explain a person's choices across all of her social roles. A consequential might argue that, in principle, she can represent different ways of valuing things in terms of preferences. She would make the rankings of states of affairs relative to the specific factual circumstances that make their being chosen expressive of one mode of valuation rather than another. For example, whenever factual circumstances make a tradeoff of life against money expressive of contempt for life, the consequentialist would represent an individual as preferring life to money. But such a preference ranking would merely record an individual's choices, not ground or justify them. It would be parasitic upon the expressive theory that provides these preferences with a rationale (Pildes and Anderson 1990, pp. 2153-2154). There would be no way to sensibly extend these preference rankings to novel situations apart from interpreting the expressive demands of different modes of valuation. There is no reason to think that occult quantities lie behind and justify the qualitative evaluative distinctions embodied in different forms of life. I can now frame the following challenge to consequentialism: I claim \ that it makes sense to value different goods in different ways and that we have, little idea what human Hfe could be if it did not engage in social practices that supported different ways of valuing things. The pluralistexpressive theory offers a perspicuous understanding of and rational support for differentiated social practices of valuation. It can effectively articulate and justify the concerns we express in common, deeply entrenched intuitive value judgments. Consequentialism cannot do so, at least not with the same clarity and ease. So it faces a dilemma. Either it must find a rationale for these concerns, and for the differentiated practices of valuation that embody them, which neither appeals to occult quantities nor is parasitic upon the pluralistic-expressive theory. Or it must dismiss these concerns as irrational and propose a more appealing way of life than that embodied in anything like our current self-understandings.

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The latter horn of the dilemma is difficult to grasp. Somehow, we would have to imagine a human life without love, without respect, without any of the social practices that embody our highly differentiated attitudes, emotions, and modes of valuation. And somehow, we would have to find it a worthier kind of life to live than our own. Some ancient philosophers, notably the Stoics, argued that we would lead better lives if we learned not to care about goods that were not in our complete control. They recognized that the relentlessly reductionistic value-system they proposed called for the suppression of the emotions (Nussbaum 1992). Modern-day consequentialists are not prepared to defend this austere and chilling view of human life. The former horn appears more tractable to modern sensibilities. But there consequentialism faces the challenge of a competing theory that accounts with ease for profound features of our self-understandings that it is likely to explain only through arcane considerations. 4.3 Agent-Centered Restrictions We have seen that the expressive theory supports practical principles that prohibit certain kinds of tradeoffs between higher and lower goods. Another set of intuitions deeply entrenched in commonsense practices concerns practical principles known as agent-centered restrictions. Xhes£ same principles prohibitxertain.^ kindrjh^y teU_each person that there are^some.OT may not intentionally yiolate a principle or duty^x^ejiJfjioirj^jo could i piewntmoxe violations.of exacdy...the:..same.Mnd..feom,being committed byjDthers. Agent-centered restrictions structure relations of special obligation among friends, family members, professionals and their clients, fellow members of communities, and so forth. A person may not betray his friend to prevent two others from betraying their friends. A doctor may not neglect the health of her patient, a corporate executive whose demise will cause his firm to cease neglecting its workers' health. Commonsense morality views such actions as outrageous, because it gives each person responsibility to care particularly for the others specially related to them. Agent-centered restrictions also apply to relations among strangers. One may not, in general, murder innocents to prevent others from murdering more innocents, although commonsense morality permits certain exceptions in a just war. Advocates of consequentialist morality argue that agent-centered

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restrictions are instrumentally irrational, because they identify a bad to be avoided—the destruction of human life, the betrayal of a friend—and then restrict the means people may take to prevent that bad, even if these means are less bad than the bads they prevent. It seems irrational to forbid the minimization of objectionable conduct (Scheffler 1985, p. 409). Consequentialist theories of morality admit as fundamentally justifying only agent-neutral principles, which give every person the common aim of minimizing the bad, no matter who commits it. Derek Parfit goes further, arguing that agent-centered restrictions make commonsense morality directly self-defeating: in following it, we each achieve our moral aims less well than if none of us had followed it (Parfit 1984, pp. 55, 95-98). Particularly troublesome are the special relations of obligation, which give each person a different moral aim, to advance the interests or welfare of his own friends, kin, compatriots, or clients. If a storm causes a boat to capsize, pitching children into a lake, commonsense morality tells parents to try to save their own children's lives, even if it would be easier for them to save strangers' children from drowning. In obeying this principle, parents make lifesaving as a whole more difficult, and fewer children overall will be saved. Their morally given aims of protecting their children are achieved less well than if none of the parents had shown special favor toward their own children. Consequentialists conclude, from their failure to make sense of agentcentered restrictions, that these norms are irrational. The expressive theory attributes inadequacy not to the norms, but to the powers of consequentialism to represent the concerns people express in them. It provides a rationale for agent-centered restrictions by working, as Stephen Darwall (1986) has suggested, "from the inside out." Expressive theories begin not with the external aims or states of affairs a person is to bring about, but with her internal attitudes toward the ends for the sake of which she acts. Expressive theories tell people to adequately express the ways they appropriately value their ends by following norms of attention and response and by governing themselves by norms of action that express these different modes of valuation. These norms, interpreted in the context of their concrete predicaments, tell people to try to bring about certain states of affairs for certain reasons. Expressive theories distinguish between the meaning of an event brought about by an action and its value as a happening. In bringing about states of affairs for certain reasons, people endow these events with a meaning that they would not have if they were just happenings or if they were brought about for other reasons. A slap in the face has a different

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meaning, depending on whether it is administered out of self-protection, anger, or contempt; or by mistake, reflex, or inadvertence. People care about the meanings of actions beyond the values they have when considered just as happenings. An expressive theory of morality may call for people to deplore a state of affairs as an unfortunate happening, but to refrain from certain acts that would prevent it, because those actsf would express an inappropriate meaning or way of valuing things. People want not only that one another's lives be fortunate, but that they be meaningful. Nothing guarantees that these two aspects of life will coincide. People wanL.their welfare to be achieved in the context of meaningful relationships with others. They care about living in loving, respectful, honorable, tolerant, civil, and solidary relations with one another. To live in such relations is to govern ourselves by principles that express respect, love, tolerance, and so forth. Some of these principles are agentcentered restrictions. Consider the rules of etiquette, which express civility. Etiquette tells people not to be rude to others, even if insults will deter others from delivering more insults themselves. Consequentialists complain that more rude actions are perpetrated under this rule than if rudeness were permitted as an instrument to minimize rudeness. But one does not strike a blow for civility by descending to the level of those who hold it in contempt. To suppose otherwise is to reverse the relation between principles and their consequences. It is to suppose that the point of these principles is to minimize conduct which is bad independent of principle. But rudeness is bad because, in violating rules of etiquette, it expresses incivility toward others. The point of the principles of etiquette is to establish and express relations of civility among people, relations which are constituted by conduct governed by agent-centered restrictions. This expressive rationale for agent-centered restrictions requires a noninstrumental understanding of the function of practical principles. It denies that the value of obeying a principle can be reduced to the independently conceived value of its consequences. If this were the case, then it would always be possible in principle to propose a different, agentneutral rule that would bring about more of these consequences more efficiently. This is what prompts consequentialists to accuse commonsense moralists of irrational "rule worship" (Smart 1973, p. 10). From an expressive point of view, however, the value of the consequences of a principle of conduct is extrinsic and derived from its expressive meaning. A consequentialist might object that the etiquette example peculiarly favors the expressive view, because the values realized in etiquette are purely expressive—-they are just a function of recognized obedience to

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expressive principles. But friendships and family relations typically have consequences that can be evaluated partly independent of the meanings of the principles that bring them about. Parents have obligations to promote the welfare of their children above and beyond promoting the flourishing of the parent-child relationship. Friends act not just for the sake of preserving their friendship, but to promote one another's welfare. And it is true that obedience to agent-centered restrictions carries some welfare costs that would not be borne by obedience to agent-neutral principles. Parfit designed his example of drowning children to highlight the welfare costs of agent-centered restrictions. But Parfit s claim that these costs show commonsense morality to be self-defeating is mistaken. People care about living meaningful lives, even at some cost to their welfare. Such a thought informs the revulsion provoked in most people by the suggestion that it should be all right to betray one's friends, if doing so could prevent others from betraying more of their friends. The meaningfulness of friendship is pardy constituted by a set of loyalties and feelings that are invulnerable to these kinds of contingencies affecting other friendships. Impersonally fair-weather friends, who stick by their friends only provided that such loyalty does not allow other people to betray their own friends, just do not fulfill the expressive requirements most people demand of true friends. Consequentialists do not do a better job of preserving specially valued relations in requiring people to violate agent-centered restrictions to minimize total violations. They fail to preserve part of what is valued in these relations, which is a kind of integrity constituted by life when it is governed by agent-centered restrictions. That people, in their insistence on preserving such restrictions, show themselves willing to accept the cost of more violations does not indicate that they are irrational. It shows only that they care about realizing certain meanings in their lives which they cannot achieve without making themselves vulnerable to these costs. These costs are not catastrophic. Parfit overlooks the means available to commonsense moralists to reallocate responsibilities in ways that better promote the welfare of their loved ones (Kuflik 1986). Parents already partially delegate responsibility for their children's health care and formal education to professionals. A parent who, as a teacher, spends more time formally educating other people s children than he does his own, who are taught by other professional teachers, violates no special duty to his own children. What people may not do, consistent with commonsense morality, is so homogenize their responsibilities to everyone that they compromise their capacity to realize meaningful relations with others,

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expressed through norms that embody special ways of valuing people. This restriction does not prevent people from calling expressive norms into question, when previously unrecognized costs of obeying them are brought to light. The revelation of such costs is evidence that obeying the norms in question may not express appropriate regard for the people who suffer as a result. Such challenges are met by refining our understandings of the demands of love, respect, and other modes of valuation and by more carefully specifying the norms expressing them in ways that suit our greater comprehension of our circumstances. Agent-centered restrictions are rational because in governing our conduct by them, we constitute ourselves as loving, friendly, civil, dignified persons living in specially valued relations. Such lives are neither irrational nor self-defeating. Still, a consequentialist might wonder whether they are the best lives available. Meanings are constituted by conventions, which are subject to change. Wouldn't we all be better off if we could so reform the meanings of respect, benevolence, love, and so forth that agent-neutral principles could adequately express them? Such a reformation would minimize the occasions in which there is a difference between the expressively appropriate action and that which brings about the most fortunate state of affairs. It would minimize the welfare costs of a meaningful life. Peter Railton suggests that respect would be better interpreted as always demanding the deliberate sacrifice of some for the greater welfare of others rather than as prohibiting such tradeoffs (Railton 1984, p. 163n32). In refusing to exploit some for the greater benefit of others, are we not failing to respect these others? An equivalent consequentialist sensibility informs the thought that it is too bad morality prevents us from using the fertilizer manufactured by Nazis from the bodies of concentration camp victims. After all, bygones are bygones, there is good fertilizer here, and can't we reform our meanings to suggest that the use of this fertilizer would be making the best of a bad thing, ensuring that the victims had not died wholly in vain? The proposed reformation of meaning is akin to asking us to speak FORTRAN instead of a natural language. The whole system of meanings in terms of which we understand our lives becomes unhinged. Proposals such as the fertilizer case that make a mockery of someone's sacrifice now are supposed to constitute some kind of honor. The expressive theory can explain why meanings cannot be coherently reformed in the convenient consequentialist direction. We need to value people in higher ways than those in which we value lower goods, such as mere use-values. The principles of appropriate treatment for mere use-

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values are the consequentialist principles of instrumentality, aggregation, indifference to substitution, and so on. Toj^cpress.higher modes of valuation, we must govern ourselves by norms that embody a logic which contrasts with consequentialist logic. Norms expressing higher modes of valuation require two features. First, they must be distributive. A higher valuation must be expressed toward each individual object of the kind that is specially valued, not just toward the aggregate of things of that kind. Higher modes of valuation are respecters of the "separateness" of persons. For example, kindness demands that one be kind to each person taken in herself. Kindness opposes utilitarian "benevolence," which demands that one be cruel to some for the greater pleasure of others. Second, norms expressing a higher mode of valuation must tell us to be willing to sacrifice something of ourselves for the sake of upholding the relation between us and what we value. If meanings were reformed to wholly coincide with what maximizes our convenience and good fortune, there would be nothing left to contrast with lower modes of valuation, in which things are valued only for what they can do for our independently defined interests. The second requirement can be illuminated by recent debates about the prerogatives associated with special relationships. Bernard Williams (1973) has popularized the complaint that utilitarianism attacks one's integrity by demanding that one violate special commitments to others, or to life projects, whenever doing so would preserve more of others' like commitments and projects. Utilitarians, characteristically confusing idealism with egoism, object that Williams calls simply for a kind of self-indulgence in the context of impersonally more important demands. Samuel Scheffler (1982) supports this purported self-indulgence by defending "agent-centered prerogatives" that permit but do not require individuals to forgo the pursuit of the best consequences for the sake of those they specially value. But the utilitarian charge of self-indulgence contradicts their usual charge, which is that people living by agent-centered norms lose more than they gain in doing so. The logic of agent-centered restrictions requires that the occasions of sacrifice be greater than those of supposed self-indulgence. Out of respect or reverence for each special relation, each person is prepared to accept certain misfortunes rather than demand that others violate their own special duties. To value something highly is, in part, to despise the gains in good fortune that can be brought about by its betrayal, to be willing to sacrifice this good fortune for the sake of that which is valued highly.1 To treat everything people value in accordance with consequentialist logic is to abolish higher modes of valuation altogether. It is to call for the

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homogenization of our highly differentiated emotions and attitudes, of love, respect, honor, consideration, and hence for the destruction of most of what makes our lives meaningful. But these forms of life are so important, and so deeply entrenched in our self^-understandings, that it is hard to see how any theory that fails to affirm them can be taken seriously. If consequentialism is to be taken seriously, it must concede their importance and offer its own account of them. 4.4 Hybrid Consequentialism The preceding arguments (§§2.4-2.5, §§4.2-4.3) have established that expres&iygL reasoning must be granted a significant place in a rationally endorsable account of human life. Both expressive and consequentialist ^optimizing) logic seem to be indispensable to practical reason. An adeqmteiHeorymust explain how they are related to each other. The expressive^theory claims that expressive reasoning has global autKority in justifying actions, emotions, attitudes, desires, and norms, while consequentialist calculations play various local roles within it. Consequentialist reasoning is everywhere constrained and explained by the expressive theory, which gives consequentialist reasoning its point (§2.2, §3.2). The burden is now placed on consequentialism to show how it could have global validity while providing a local role for expressive considerations, which can no longer be dismissed as irrational. Some pluralist consequentialists recognize the importance of expressive considerations to human life and take the path of accommodation, attempting to reconstruct meaningfulness, respect, friendship, and so forth within a consequentialist framework (Conly 1985; Gibbard 1986; Railton 1988). Expressive theories of rationality recognize three kinds of consideration relevant to the justification of emotions, attitudes, norms, and actions that are not part of a pure consequentialist theory: that an emotion or attitude is appropriate to its object; that a norm adequately expresses an attitude or emotion; and that an action adequately conforms to a valid expressive norm. On a pure consequentialist view, the value of an emotion, say, is equal to its value as an occurrence, taken by itself (perhaps as pleasurable or painful), plus the expected value of its causal consequences. In §2.5 I argued that human beings cannot coherently adopt this view of emotions because the causal consequences of an emotion depend upon people caring about its expressive relations of appropriateness to its object. But accommodationists could propose a hybrid consequentialist theory, which would allow the three types of expressive consideration to count

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toward the intrinsic value of an emotion, attitude, norm, or action. Such "expressive values" would contribute to the total expected value of an action, norm, or emotion (which would still include pure consequential values such as welfare and pleasure), just like icing adds value to a cake. Hybrid consequentialism takes expressive considerations to contribute to the intrinsic values of emotions, attitudes, norms, desires, and actions, whereas the expressive theory takes them to constitute their rationality. I will argue that it is incoherent to represent expressive considerations as considerations of intrinsic value. This criticism should be distinguished from the common criticism that a consequentialist life would be bad, because it would not be able to support people leading meaningful lives in special relations with others (Williams 1973; Stocker 1976; Kapur 1991). Hybrid consequentialists can justify special relations with others on both intrinsic and instrumental grounds (Railton 1984; Conly 1985; Jackson 1991). My complaint is not that consequentialism gives us bad advice, but that it gives us either incoherent or superfluous advice. The fundamental problem with hybrid consequentialism is that it misrepresents the nature of expressive meaning in attempting to fold it under the concept of intrinsic value. The meaning of an action is constituted by the attitudes it expresses and by its place in the narratives of the lives of the agent and those with whom she interacts. The act could express love or contempt. It could represent a triumph over adversity or the last straw. These are relational features of the act, not intrinsic properties of it. What confers expressive significance on an action is its relations to the other alternatives open to and conceived by the agent, to the ends for the sake of which she acts, and to her past and future, as these are mediated by expressive norms. A given act, such as a mother s feeding her hungry child just a cup of milk, could constitute an act of love if that milk is the last food available, neglect if there is enough food around, callous disfavor if she feeds her other children plenty, or an obsession with the past if it reflects the anxieties of a once-deprived childhood. An act expresses an appropriate meaning to the extent that the agent takes account of its consequences in the right way, according to expressive norms for adequately valuing the people, animals, and things for the sake of which she acts. Consider an agent who attempts to use the hybrid theory to determine which action is justified. The facts about meaningfulness reviewed above pose three problems for a hybrid theory that construes appropriate meaning as adding to but not exhausting the value ("to-be-doneness") of an act. First, it requires the agent to undergo an incoherent double-

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counting of the consequences: once, in determining which act would express an appropriate meaning, and again, in determining which act has the greatest overall expected value, counting the 'Value" of meaningfulness along with the consequential values of the act. Because the agent has already accounted for all the relevant consequences of an act by interpreting the norms for expressing the right attitudes toward the people and things she cares about, it doesn't make sense for her to count them again in a consequentialist mode. For example, if her predicament demands kindness to strangers, expressing kindness requires her already to consider their welfare in deciding what to do. This is not a consideration in addition to her interest in expressing kindness. But the hybrid theory suggests that such considerations contribute independent quanta of value to her act. Second, an agent who regarded the meanings of her actions as contributing quanta of value to them, and who then chose the act with maximum expected value, would by this process destroy any meanings she thought she had incorporated into the optimum act. To express love or respect, to act out of friendship or solidarity, is to govern one's deliberations and actions from the internal perspective these attitudes provide, to take account of the consequences of one's actions in accordance with the norms of these modes of valuation. To confer meaning on one's actions is to globally govern oneself from the expressive point of view. To take up the hybrid consequentialist view instead is to take account of the consequences of one s actions in ways external to the norms for expressing one's valuations and, hence, to fail to adequately express one's valuations at all. A rneaningfuljife, cannot be one that views the world from a consequen^jdalist^gerspective, even a hybrid one. Foj^exjumgle, to count respect for persons as just another value of an act that may be traded off against others, ""such as maximizing welfare, is to fail to respect persons at all. One expresses respect for others by governing one's actions and deliberations by certain distributive agent-centered principles, not by maximizing agent-neutral principles (§4.3). Third, the hybrid consequentialist theory provides the agent with "one thought too many" (Williams 1981b, p. 214). It suggests that she should consider respecting or loving a person a good thing; and for that reason, she should respect or love her. But to respect or love someone because it waukLbe a good thing to do is not really to respect or love a person at all. It is to act like a teenager who dates a sweet but dull boy not out of interest in him but out of a pity mistaken for genuine love. Respect and love must be_jmrnediate responses to the person, not the results of cohsFdefatiBiTg d^jjLwQJild be a good thing for them to happen (Stocker 1981).

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A consequentialist might argue that the expressive view does not take account of the consequences of responding to people in various ways. Suppose, for example, that expressing one's love for another would lead to disaster, say, by breaking up a marriage and disrupting children's lives. Not just the intrinsic worth of expressing one's attitudes, but the consequences of doing so must be accounted for in determining the rational act. Only hybrid consequentialism, it is claimed, takes account of both. This argument supposes that the expressive theory counsels people to express their attitudes blindly, regardless of the consequences. But the expressive theory tells an individual that adequately expressing one's attitudes is a matter of taking account of the consequences in particular ways and adjusting ones responses with sensitivity to what they mean for everyone whose interests are at stake in one's actions. Respect for those adversely affected by one's love for another may well demand muting or even abandoning one's expressions of love. Such considerations can be comprehended from within the expressive perspective, which needs no help from consequentialism of any global kind to know what it should be doing. Once we understand what it is to endow one's acts with certain meanings, the consequentialist proposal to treat these meanings as intrinsic values to be added to the consequential values of acts appears incoherent. Meaningfulness is not a property actions have in addition to their consequential values, it is a property they have in virtue of the way the agent has taken their consequential values into account. Consequentialists don't see this, because they suppose that the meaning of an act is contained in its motive. An act is kind, loving, or respectful by virtue of its being caused by the motives of kindness, love, or respect. Consequentialists conceive of intrinsically valuable motives as immediate desires for good consequences. If this were true, then the value of a kind act could be analyzed into two separate components: the good it causes and the desire for good that causes it (its "intrinsic expressive value"). Then it might make sense to wonder whether the former consequences might be worth achieving by other motives, even at the cost of losing out on the intrinsic value of the "nice" motives. Thus, classical utilitarians argue that the general welfare is better achieved by harnessing people's self-interest in the marketplace than by relying on their benevolence. Motives that produce welfare indirectly, as an unintended consequence, have more total value, although less intrinsic expressive value, than motives that aim at directly producing welfare. This view depends on the supposition that desires for states of affairs rather than attitudes toward people and things are the vehicles of expres-

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sive meaning. But there is no state of affairs the desire for which always adequately expresses kindness, or admiration, or friendship, or any other meaning, regardless of the context (§2.3). For a desire to express a meaning_adequa.tely, it must be governed by expressive norms. These give people different final aims in different contexts and direct their attention immediately to the people and things they care about, and only mediately to the states of affairs they are to bring about. desire to be kind and yet fail to adequately express kindness if she does not jgovern her kind impulses by expressive norms that attune her to the goods at jitake in her action. Such blind activity, however well intended, lacks intrinsic value. Expressive theories demand not that particular desires always motivate us, but that whatever rational desires we have should adequately express or conform to the attitudes toward people and things appropriate to them. If attitudes toward people and not desires for states of affairs are the vehicles of expressive meaning, and if our lives are to be meaningful, then we must adopt a perspective informed by the expressive theory as our global mode of deliberating about and justifying our actions, emotions, and attitudes. We cannot regard meaningfulness as adding some quantum of value to otherwise consequentially evaluable lives. To attempt to regard meaningfulness in this way is to engage in incoherent deliberation and to derail the rational attitudes that give life its meaning and point. A consequentialist could grant this point without giving up her theory. She would interpret the above argument as follows: All of the intrinsically good human lives accessible to us must possess this global intrinsically valuable property of meaningfulness. To endow our lives with this property, we must adopt an expressive point of view for purposes of deliberation and interpersonal justification. Consequentialism is thus a self-effacing theory: it tells us to believe a different theory. But a self-effacing theory could still be true (Parfit 1984, p. 43). It tells us to believe an incompatible theory not because the latter theory is true, but because believing it is instrumentally valuable. Hybrid consequentialists are forced to accept self-effacement because once they grant a foothold for expressive considerations, there is no rational way to prevent them from assuming an increasingly global role in human life. They must govern not only emotions, desires, motives, and norms of action, but beliefs as well. One cannot love someone merely because it would be a good thing to do. The tendency of the expressive point of view to assume a global stature reflects the fact that hybrid consequentialists cannot identify a unit of intrinsic value smaller than a

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whole life (Griffin 1986, pp. 34—36), a whole form of life, or even perhaps the whole universe (Slote 1985, p. 103). This fact appears in consequentialist thought as the doctrine of organic values: the claim that the value of a whole may be more or less than the sum of the values of its parts (Moore 1903, p. 28). The doctrine of organic values represents a characteristic consequentialist response to the fact that direct applications of maximizing logic to states of affairs identified as intrinsically valuable lead to unacceptable conclusions. The consequentialist test for intrinsic value is that its bearer has the same normative relevance for choice, regardless of the context in which it appears. When a context can be identified in which bringing about the state of affairs identified as intrinsically valuable would be unacceptable in itself, the consequentialist must assume that the state of affairs must not have been intrinsically valuable after all. It did not carry its value with it, but must have gained its value only in relation to its context. A new intrinsically valuable state of affairs is identified, which consists of the old state of affairs, plus the context that made it appropriate to bring it about. When this more global state of affairs is again seen to be not intrinsically valuable, an even more comprehensive state must be identified as the basic unit of intrinsic value (Korsgaard 1983, pp. 192—193). Consider how this tendency toward organic values works within hybrid consequentialism. Begin with the thought that emotions could be units of intrinsic value. We have seen, however, that we have no way of making sense of emotions except as appropriate or inappropriate responses to their objects (§2.5). The emotion, as well as the context that makes it appropriate, must be the minimum unit of intrinsic expressive value. This represents the first foothold of expressive logic into consequentialist terrain. But it can't be stopped there. For if emotions with their appropriate contexts were intrinsically valuable, then they would be immediately normative for choice or preference. This suggests that it would be instrumentally good to kill people, so that appropriate grief could occur. A consequentialist could respond: surely the actions that bring about appropriate emotions must also be expressively appropriate before we are willing to commend them for bringing about their appropriate emotional responses. But we cannot identify the individual expressive action—an action expressing gratitude or a betrayal—as a basic unit of expressive value or disvalue either. If it were a basic unit of value, then it would make sense to maximize or minimize its occurrence in agent-neutral fashion. But we have seen that acting on agent-neutral principles for the minimization of expressively bad actions does not adequately express meanings

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such as respect and benevolence (§4.3). We also don't determine howmany times I should thank someone for a gift according to some etiquette-independent notion of the declining marginal intrinsic values of successive acts of gratitude. Rather, the norms of etiquette tell us how to express our gratitude. It seems then that the basic unit of expressive intrinsic value cannot be isolated acts, principles of conduct, or their emotional consequences. These are all made appropriate in the context of whole types of relationships constituted by distinctive modes of valuation, such as civility and respect. Are these types of relationships the units of intrinsic value, to be maximized in number, intensity, and duration? It seems not, for how many of each kind of relationship one should foster is constrained by expressive norms internal to these relationships. The meaningfulness of most marriages and certain other kinds of romantic relationships is secured in part through singularity and exclusivity. To divide one's romantic attentions between two or more people is often to betray them all; to commit oneself to more than one marriage at once is to commit oneself to none. Consequentialist, maximizing norms cannot directly regulate the realization of expressive values without disrupting the non-consequentialist norms through which they are realized. It seems as if the basic unit of intrinsic expressive value from a consequentialist point of view can thus be nothing less than a whole form of life, which includes within it a comprehensive non-consequentialist way of evaluating things. "Maximizing" this value simply amounts to living this form of life. There is no fundamental place for the principle of maximizing any intrinsic (context-independent) values of states of affairs within this form of life, because every attempt to supplant expressive norms with consequentialist counterparts ends up garbling the expressive "values" pluralist consequentialists aim to accommodate. The expressive theory explains why consequentialists are driven to this global doctrine of organic values: states of affairs generally lack intrinsic value. Their value is dependent on the expressive context in which they appear. Incorporating the context into a more comprehensive state of affairs is hopeless, for the conditions that make states of affairs Valuable are not other states of affairs, but the people, animals, and things^it makes sense to care directly about. Consequentialists are mistaken from the start in conceiving of expressive meanings as coming in quanta of value, which can then be aggregated or traded off against other values in a calculative, maximizing fashion. Meaningfulness is a global property of social life, realized in living according to expressive norms that have their own, non-

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consequentialist logic. Expressive logic assumes an increasingly global role in any rationally endorsable human life because it is only in terms of this logic that we can coherently make any sense of what to do or feel. Consequentialists mistake a form of practical reasoning that sometimes makes local sense within a context set by expressive norms for a form of reasoning that can make global sense of practical life itself. 4.5 A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason? We have seen that a rationally endorsable conception of human life must use expressive considerations to guide attitudes, emotions, motives, preferences, and actions. Any acceptable form of consequentialism must therefore be a hybrid variety. But we have seen that a hybrid consequentialism can use expressive considerations to guide our conative responses only if they guide our beliefs as well. We can endow our lives with meaning only by comprehensively taking up the expressive point of view, reasoning about and evaluating our responses in its terms. The only acceptable form of consequentialism must therefore be self-effacing. Consequentialists attempt to explain the self-effacing tendencies of their theory in terms of the organic nature of the intrinsic values of states of affairs. But whereas consequentialists must take the principle of organic values as a brute fact, the expressive theory explains it in a way that is damning to consequentialism—as an artifact of the merely extrinsic value of most states of affairs. Nevertheless, there is still room for a consequentialist to insist on the truth of her self-effacing theory. She could complain that I have not shown that a holistic account of the values of states of affairs is truly hopeless. Nevertheless, the resort to a self-effacing theory seems desperate. One would have to have strong reasons for accepting a self-effacing theory rather than the theory it tells us to believe, since the latter theory has the advantages of clarity, simplicity, and straightforward application. In §3.1, 1 identified three types of advantages a theory of practical reason could claim for itself: pragmatic, critical, and explanatory. The theory could guide action more successfully, provide us with better methods of self-criticism, or account for the phenomenology of our practical lives better than its rivals. I propose that a self-effacing theory would have to show at least one of these advantages over the theory it tells us to believe, if it is to lay a claim to superiority over it. Consider the relative pragmatic advantages of consequentialist and expressive theories. We have already seen that the purported pragmatic

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advantages of consequentialism cannot be sustained when we confront choices among incommensurable goods or goods commensurated by the higher-order good strategy and that these pragmatic advantages sometimes come at the cost of more important goods, such as promoting creativity and growth (§§3.2—3.3). The expressive theory enjoys the latter pragmatic advantages, enables us to make choices among incommensurable goods, and places lighter demands on our capacities to commensurate goods than consequentialism does (§3.4). Once consequentialism moves toward a more holistic conception of value, its purported calculative advantages must be forfeited altogether. So consequentialists face a dilemma. The smaller the unit of intrinsic value they can define, the more they can sustain claims to resolve disputes and justify actions by means of objective calculations. But such atomistic accounts of value lead to intuitively objectionable recommendations. Once commonsense intuitions are given an internally coherent expressive rationale, consequentialists must move to accommodate them. Accommodation pushes consequentialists toward more organic accounts of value and more indirect methods of achieving it. The upshot of this trend is to reduce consequentialism to an inarticulate endorsement of a whole expressive way of life, which is not guided by ultimately consequentialist norms. Perhaps consequentialism can claim an advantage in being able to criticize different expressive ways of life by evaluating the consequences of acting on them. However, once consequentialists resort to a strongly organic theory of value, they lose the articulateness of explicit, objective calculation and can confront commonsense intuitions only with purported intuitions into occult quantitative measures of the values of whole ways of life. And once they resort to a self-effacing theory, we have no reason to be confident that consequentialist intuitions report independent evaluations of the values of alternatives, rather than evaluations that parasitically track the expressive judgments consequentialists themselves admit they ought to believe. How do consequentialists distinguish between intuitions they have because of an accurate consequentialist accounting of intrinsic values and intuitions they have because they believe the expressive theory their own theory tells them to believe? Thus, hybrid consequentialists can endorse the claim that some expressive forms of life are valuable, but they are at a loss to exhibit the calculations or justify the intuitions that declare some to be better than others. Why is it best that the different features of such a life—specific modes of valuation, distinctions between higher and lower values, norms of obligation, motives and emotions—are connected in the way they are? How

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might one evaluate the adequacy of a given form of expressive relationship or compare one with the other? The expressive theory provides a rich, articulate account of the relations of the different aspects of expressive modes of life and of what makes them more or less adequate and meaningful. These considerations undermine consequentialist claims to have a critical advantage over expressive theories. Consider, finally, the powers of consequentialism and the expressive theory to explain pervasive and entrenched features of our practical lives—our emotions, attitudes, preferences, internalized and institutionalized norms, values, and so forth. Pure consequentialism appears to have an explanatory edge in accounting for explicitly value-maximizing or optimizing behavior. However, the phenomena to be explained include only cases of local, not global, maximization, and here the pragmatic theory of comparative evaluation can claim advantages of its own. It explains the great variety of commensurating measures and strategies we actually employ in different domains of evaluation. It is not hobbled by the demand inherent in consequentialism to reduce these various measures to a single ultimate measure, a demand difficult to discharge in numerous cases, such as athletic scoring (§3.2). The pluralist-expressive theory explains and justifies a wide variety of other valuational phenomena. It explains the deeply entrenched distinct tions we make between causing and allowing, intending and foreseeing consequences, between higher and lower goods, and appropriate and inappropriate emotions and attitudes (§§2.4—2.5, §4.2). It accounts for judgments of hierarchical incommensurability and judgments involving the concepts of degradation, fetishism, and idolatry. It explains our willingness to trade higher for lower goods in some contexts but not others. It elucidates our practices of social role differentiation, embodying distinct modes of valuation governed by different norms, and liberal practices concerning human rights (§4.2). It accounts for the "silencing" of morally irrelevant considerations in virtuous people, mixed or ambivalent feelings about actions we rightly judge to be justified, and non-action-guiding evaluations of regret. It explains the ways we take the past into account in evaluating future actions and also the persistence and appeal of norms for action and feeling that are intentional, retrospective, distributive, noninstrumental, and agent-centered (§2.4, §4.3). Finally, it explains why and when our capacities to commensurate the values of states of affairs run out and when the phenomena of incommensurability, such as Razian intransitivity, are likely to appear (§3.3). An ingenious and sophisticated consequentialist could explain and

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endorse most of the phenomena mentioned above. The difficulties arise when we consider how consequentialists manage to do this. Often they do so by appealing to remote effects, slippery slopes, and strategies of indirection, such as rule consequentialism. These considerations may generate the intuitively endorsed results, but they fail to explain our confidence in and insistence upon them. Why should we be so confident that remote effects and indirect strategies pan out the way consequentialists need in these cases, when we are so uncertain about consequences and strategies in other cases? In other situations, consequentialists derive the "right" results by appealing to occult calculations or mysterious intuitions of brute facts about organic intrinsic values. These look suspiciously parasitic upon value judgments the expressive theory can articulately justify. Frequently, consequentialists manage to endorse our practices, choices, and feelings only in terms difficult to reflectively endorse, because they force repugnant divisions in the self between justification and motivation, truth and what is to be believed, the best motivations to have and the best ones to act on, the ends we should care about and the consequences we should achieve, the reasons we should appeal to and the reasons that actually justify our actions, attitudes, and feelings. Williams points out that these divisions require "some kind of willed forgetting . . . to keep the committed dispositions from being unnerved by instrumental reflection when they are under pressure" (1985, p. 109). It is difficult to maintain our confidence in our responses while reflecting on the consequentialist considerations that justify them, because they represent these responses as mistaken, delusionary, or dependent on distorted representations of values. Expressive theories, in contrast, explain the phenomenology of valuation in terms that exhibit internal, meaningful unities among our emotions, attitudes, motives, internalized norms, intentions, and actions and thereby reinforce our confidence in them (§2.5). Hybrid consequentialism borrows some of the explanatory power of the expressive theory for emotions and attitudes by adopting some of its premises, but only at the cost of making deliberation in its terms incoherent. This problem can be solved by making the theory self-effacing. Once a theory becomes self-effacing, however, it forfeits any claim to offer a superior account of the phenomenology of valuation. The whole point of a self-effacing theory is to concede phenomenology to the theory it tells us to believe, while retaining the claim to truth for itself. Consequentialism, especially in its self-effacing varieties, thus appears to be pragmatically useless and incapable of providing a sound basis for selfunderstanding—that is, an account that makes sense of what we care

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about in terms we can reflectively endorse. It is a theory of practical reason that cannot be put into practice. But it is unclear what it would be for a theory of practical reason to be true, yet pragmatically and cognitively useless. We do have a relatively clear idea of how to pragmatically justify a theory of practical reason: we test it in action, see if we find living by its lights satisfactory and if it solves puzzles unresolved by other theories, clears up confusions, gives us deeper insight into what we really care about. Assume etiquette is a worthwhile practice. Could a theory of etiquette be true if it offended everyone? The challenge to explain how it could be true puts a burden on consequentialism which need not be shared by expressive theories. The former must give an account of what the truth of a theory of practical reason could consist in that is independent of pragmatic considerations. This would require a hard-core realism about intrinsic values. Even if value realism is true, we have no reason to believe that the world of goods has an essentially consequentialist structure. I have steered clear of ontological disputes in this book. Yet I do think the pluralist-expressive theory has an advantage in not having to rely on such extravagant metaphysical assumptions, for it is consistent with a purely pragmatic account of the validity of theories of value and practical reason. The arguments presented in the last three chapters do not demonstrate that consequentialism is false. With sufficient ingenuity, consequentialists may be able to refine their theory, add a few epicycles, and unleash awesome technical apparatus to repair the disadvantages of their theory, like riveters and welders patching together a rusting, leaky, but still formidable battleship stolidly defending its home waters. But why bother? A lighter, swifter, altogether more seaworthy vessel awaits those bold enough to board it en route to thus far poorly charted territories of the self, which the old battleship can reach only by awkwardly following in its wake.

Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense

5.1 A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity I have characterized the project of determining what is good as a quest for self-understanding. It is an attempt to make sense of our own attitudes and evaluative experiences. If my theory of value is right,thenthe things that are good are the things it makes sense for us to value. The standards of value for things are the standards of rational valuation for us. Ideals are the self-conceptions through which we try to understand ourselves, to make sense of our emotions, attitudes, and concerns. Making sense of ourselves is not a matter of theorizing about an object whose properties we cannot affect. We make ourselves intelligible to ourselves by cultivating attitudes that make sense to us, by determining to act in accord with ideals we accept that have survived critical scrutiny. My account of value thus hinges on its connections to our subjective states and contestable ideals. This raises the concern that there are no objective constraints on what attitudes make sense. A rational attitude theory of value would then have to represent values as merely subjective. Subjectivism is the view that the mere existence of a favorable subjective state taking x as its object (thinking that x is valuable, wanting x, identifying with an ideal that endorses x) makes x valuable to the person in that state.1 If this were so, there would be no room for error or genuine disagreement in value judgments when people know their subjective states. In this chapter I propose a pragmatic account of how we can objectively justify our value judgments, and I defend it against several levels of subjectivist and skeptical criticism. The subjectivist concern could be put like this. I identify the good with the object of a rational "pro-attitude." To have a pro-attitude toward something is to like it. But there are no constraints on what we might

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rationally like. So, what is valuable is whatever we happen to like. A more challenging criticism would claim that there are no objective constraints on the ideals we could adopt that could rationalize taking up any attitude toward any thing. The choice of ideals is all a matter of taste, about which there can be no rational dispute. The first objection rests on a false analogy between liking and other favorable attitudes. There are almost no constraints on what may be sensibly liked. But there are significant constraints on what can be a sensible object of other modes of valuation, such as love, respect, or admiration. It doesn't make sense to admire musical performances for being sloppy, humdrum, or out of tune. It doesn't make sense to respect people for being servile, immature, petty, or sleazy. It doesn't make sense to romantically love heartless people. Asserting an ideal that endorses these valuings is not enough to convince us otherwise. One must be able to tell a story that makes sense of the ideal, that gives it some compelling point, that shows how the evaluative perspective it defines reveals defects, limitations, or insensitivities in the perspectives that reject these valuings. One might reply that since a person could like almost anything, as long as liking something can make it valuable, my theory still places virtually no constraints on what is good. But my theory does not quite allow that liking something makes it valuable. It says that what is valuable is the object of a rational favorable attitude, not the object of just any favorable attitude. If mere likings are not subject to rational criticism, they are not "rational, but arational. Their objects, therefore, lie only at the margins of the good. Because it can make sense to disapprove of or otherwise disvalue what one likes, objects of mere liking don't count as unqualified goods. People may like what they judge to be junky food, insipid music, or kitschy art. This is consistent with the thought that what is liked usually has some value, however marginal. Mere likings or tastes are distinguished from other attitudes in that they are largely exempt from processes of justification. No one demands that another justify her picking blue, or even chartreuse, as her favorite color. "There is no disputing about tastes" applies only to tastes, and it applies there because it makes sense to have a social practice in which people are allotted emotional space for the cultivation and free play of idiosyncratic valuations exempt from demands for public justification. This social practice is governed by the norm against disputation. Tastes are valuings that are constituted by this norm. What identifies a liking as a mere liking is its relatively complete exemption from justificatory demands, its nearly complete subjectivity.

Although rational evaluative attitudes are partly constituted by social norms that determine their appropriate objects, we still disagree about what attitudes to take toward particular things and persons. Should Pete Rose be admired as a great baseball hero, even though he betrayed the game by betting on it? Here, demands for justification come to the fore, where people offer reasons for and against rival proposals. People s attitudes are rational to the degree that they respond properly to these reasons. The norms of appropriate response are objective to the degree that they are determined by objective practices of justification. What would it be for a claim arising from a process ofjustification to be objectively valid? An objective claim requires two things: the possibility of error or deficiency (the mere fact that one accepts a claim does not make it true or valid) and a basis for free agreement by different people on the same claims. I propose that a process of justification is objective if its participants can reach significant agreement or progress on the matters under discussion when they adhere to norms like the following:2 All participants acknowledge the permanent possibility of a gap between their actual attitudes and judgments and what would be the most rational attitudes and judgments for them to hold. They acknowledge the equal authority of others to offer criticisms and proposals, giving them weight in discussion. For example, they may not dismiss others' criticisms out of hand or bully or belittle the people making them; they must instead offer reasons for rejecting others' proposals and accepting their own. (A group counts a consideration as a reason if its members commonly acknowledge it as counting for or against proposals.) No one capable of participating in justification is excluded from it. Participants must be consistent: they must be willing to apply reasons in the same way to their own and others' proposals. They are committed to making themselves mutually intelligible. This means that they aim for agreement or a common point of view f. and agree to work from common ground (mutually accepted reasons) toward resolution of their disagreements. Finally, the practice contains methods for introducing novel considerations as reasons and for criticizing what participants currently take to be reasons. The practice of justification has been described as a process by which different travelers arrive at a common point of view in the "space of reasons" (Sellars 1963, p. 169). Justification is called for when people endorse different attitudes and judgments and when they have some interest or need to come to agreement. It is possible when people share some common territory in the space of reasons (the considerations each party accepts as counting for or against attitudes and judgments overlap) or

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when they have the capacity to find such common territory. Reasons function like traffic signs in this space, directing people away from defective paths of reasoning toward a point of view all can endorse. The parties to a dispute try to reach a common destination by pointing to those signs that indicate defects in one another's points of view. They try to show that the perspective of those who disagree embodies defects such as inconsistency, ignorance, partiality, confusion, double standards, insensitivity, or pragmatic self-defeat. These are features that the others cannot rationally endorse and thus have reason to eliminate from their perspective. People provisionally call their attitudes and judgments rationally justified and objective when they are reflectively endorsable from a common point of view achieved in such normative discussion. Objectivity can vary by degrees, with respect to both the scope of the justifying community and how well that community lives up to the norms of objectivity. Existing practices ofjustification fall short of this ideal. The norms against bullying and ad hominem attacks and in favor of universal, equal participation have arrived very late in human history and even now are weakly enforced. It is an open question to what degree human communities are capable of achieving objectivity in judgments or whether an objective agreement reached by a local community can be extended to the entire human community, or to all rational beings. The importance of achieving objectivity in judgments about a given subject is also an open question. Liberal theory tends to sharply divide the morally right from the good, reserving objectivity in the strictly universal sense to the former and relegating the good to individual, subjective desires or tastes. Although morality demands objectivity of a wider scope and with more urgency than other values because disagreements here more often lead to violent conflict, it is a mistake to assimilate the good to pure subjectivity. The difference between the right and the good in respect of objectivity is a difference in degrees, not in kind. The good is grounded in communities of valuing, not just in individualistic liking (Walzer 1983). These communities usually should not cover all of humanity. Pluralism implies that different individuals and communities properly aspire to different ideals which need not be ranked in relative worth. The space of reasons is wide enough to accommodate diverse ideals. Why does it make sense to engage in practices ofjustification that have a potential for objectivity? The project of figuring out what is valuable is a project of self-understanding, of making sense of one s own valuings. This cannot be a purely individual project, for the attitudes one has that tran-

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scend mere liking are partly constituted by social norms of appropriateness that inhabit the public space of reasons. One can make sense of one s own attitudes only by taking up a point of view from which others can also make sense of them. To refuse to criticize and justify ones attitudes is to \ withdraw from this space and, consequently, to deprive oneself of the capacity to have and express coherently any attitudes beyond mere liking. Because we do have attitudes that transcend mere liking, we can make sense of ourselves only by participating in practices ofjustification. These practices have the potential for objectivity, since emotional communication, like all meaningful expression, requires a commitment to mutual intelligibility and must make room for the possibility of error and of common agreement. But why do people have reason to engage in normative discussion with others on terms of equality? For most of human history, mutual intelligibility has been achieved mainly by some people's forcing others to accept their attitudes as their own. I am skeptical of proposals that trace the norm of equal and universal participation to the internal logic of communication (Habermas 1975, pt. 3) or to its advantages for reproductive fitness (Gibbard 1990, pp. 76-80). Because this norm is of extremely recent origin (as Habermas 1989 showed), I suggest that its rational appeal be traced to historically contingent practices that make egalitarian social relations for the first time both conceivable and attractive. This account of objectivity raises the possibility of a more sophisticated subjectivism than the one about mere liking. On this view, the subjectivity of value follows from the fact that ideals are essentially contestahle: they inherently invite disagreement (Gallie 1955—1956). They invite disagreement, not just a parting of ways, in that the parties dispute with one another, seeking and so presupposing the possibility of agreement based on the exchange of reasons. But they inherently invite disagreement, suggesting that no rational discussion can settle the issue. If all ideals are essentially contestable, then one might think that no objectivity in value judgments is possible. Consider the prospects for objectively criticizing and justifying the "reverential" and "populist" aesthetic ideals for classical music that were discussed in §1.4. I shall argue that (1) criticizing an ideal requires interpreting its associated attitudes; (2) interpretations can be supported by empirical evidence; and (3) interpretations of attitudes undermine or support their endorsement. A populist might interpret the reverential attitude as an example of the emperors new clothes phenomenon—in truth, those who attend high-class symphonies and operas are bored and stifled, but, fearing

f;i|

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ridicule from their peers and social superiors, they feign appreciation. This can be empirically tested: would one feel relief and seek other musical enjoyments' if those whom one regarded as one's social peers or superiors confessed their own boredom at concerts? This interpretation, if true, is clearly damning. But the highbrow music lover replies that he feels uplifted at concerts, not stifled. The populist attributes this feeling not to intrinsic appreciation of musical merits, but to snobbery—the feeling of superiority one gleans from appropriating aesthetic objects to create social distance between oneself and purported inferiors (Bourdieu 1984). This can also be empirically tested: does the highbrow aesthete abandon his reverence for particular pieces as soon as they become popular among the masses (consider Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata")? This interpretation is also clearly damning, if true. The highbrow aesthete may reply that his abandonment is due not to popularity but to excessive repetition and exposure, which makes any piece tedious. But then why do he and his peers so insist that the New York Metropolitan Opera stick to the same old repertory that it hasn't staged a new opera for decades? He replies: the musical geniuses of the past are peerless, and we are simply upholding the grand tradition of classical music in the same way those artists whom we revere would have upheld it. The populist interprets this tradition as betrayed by the very reverence thought to uphold it. Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were revolutionaries, eagerly embracing new techniques, exploiting the richness of folk music and other popular genres through shameless quotation and outright plagiarism, breaking old conventions and making new ones, composing for instruments of the future. In revering the tradition by fixing it in an imaginary exalted past, highbrow aesthetes merely embalm a tradition whose vitality they have destroyed. Populists hold out the prospect that the dynamism and creativity of the classical tradition could be restored by breaking down the sharp line between highbrow and lowbrow music so carefully cultivated by their rivals. This dialectic illustrates the ineluctable intertwining of interpretation and evaluation inherent in the quest for self-understanding. It can lay a legitimate claim to progress or improvement. For the challenges posed by adherents of the rival ideal, if supported by empirical evidence, cannot be honestly ignored by adherents of the ideal being criticized. They demand a response, which may consist in a change of attitude on the part of those challenged: they recognize features of their attitudes that they cannot reflectively endorse, and they alter these attitudes so they make sense in the context of an enlarged self-understanding. This explanation of valuational change supports the claim that the change constitutes a genuine

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improvement, because it represents the change as clearing up confusions in self-understanding, as achieving greater consistency, as enabling one to carry on one's commitments more fruitfully than before (Taylor 1985b, 1985d). But even if the response involves sticking to one's guns, improvement can be registered in the form of extending one's understanding of what one is committed to in doing so and acting accordingly. Such extensions will affect one's attitudes and practices, just as judicial interpretations of legitimate statutes, in clarifying their implications, tend to make behavior more consistent with the law. Where the best explanation of change of attitudes represents it as progressive, there is a legitimate claim to objectivity. This claim does not require a proof that there exists some end point of agreement, not yet discovered through rational discussion, that will settle all disputes. There is no way to know this independent of participating in the discussion of disputants. Their assumption of potential agreement is supported by every progressive change of attitudes in response to reasons offered by the other side. The continual eruption of yet new disagreements inherent in essentially contestable ideals need not undermine this assumption, as long as each side can register improvements in its own progressively shifting terms along the way. Actual disagreements rarely exhibit the idealized rationality illustrated in the example above. Many vices and psychological obstacles, such as stubbornness, glibness, smugness, stultification, defense mechanisms, and repression, stand in the way of rational self-understanding and change. Debates are often suppressed or distorted through the exploitation of power relations between disputants, which rationalize the trivialization, ignorance, dismissal, or misrepresentation of challenges from the less powerful. Finally, disputants often speak at cross-purposes, appealing to considerations in a part of the space of reasons not within the horizon of those challenged, while at a loss to find ways to move them to a point where they can be recognized as reasons. Eventually, disputants may simply part ways and cease to discuss their differences or to care about them. One could then say that their practices embodied values that were simply different—as opposed to common values whose interpretation is contested—for which there can be better and worse answers objectively valid for both parties. 5.2 The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons To justify an evaluative claim is to appeal to reasons that make sense of particular attitudes toward the evaluated object. To interpret an attitude is

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to represent it as endorsable or not from an adequate evaluative perspective informed by such reasons. Therefore, a great deal hangs on the conceptual structure of the space of reasons. Pluralism maintains that the evaluative concepts by which we express our reasons for valuation and action are fundamentally diverse. They are mostly what Bernard Williams (1985, p. 140) has called "thick" evaluative concepts. The concept "snob" is one such thick concept, employed in a reason for rejecting the reverential ideal of music. Thick concepts apply to particular domains of action and guide particular feelings. They contrast with the "thin" evaluative concepts— "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," and "ought." The thin evaluative concepts are the most general evaluative concepts we have and are applicable to all domains of action and feeling. According to pluralism, the application of the thin concepts is largely determined by evaluative standards expressed in terms of thick concepts. Monists hold that we should bypass the thick concepts and try to directly access what is good, bad, right, and wrong. They think we should do so largely because they are skeptical about the fundamental reason-giving authority of claims expressed in terms of thick concepts. Before examining these skeptical challenges, consider how pluralism accounts for the reason-giving authority of such claims. The distinctive feature of authentic thick evaluative concepts seems to be that they are simultaneously "world-guided" (particular facts must obtain for them to be applied) and "attitude-guiding" (they offer reasons for valuing and acting). In contrast, thin concepts are said to be only action- and attitude-guiding. This contrast may not hold up. For example, "good" is conceptually tied to such concepts as benefit or advantage, which are world-guided (Foot 1978a, 1978b). A significant distinction between thick and thin evaluative concepts can still be drawn if, as I contend, the thin concepts derive their world-guidedness only through their conceptual ties to thick concepts. Some thick concepts describe objects as meeting standards defined in terms of the attitudes they merit: as humiliating, ridiculous, wonderful, deplorable, titillating, fascinating, and so forth. Others describe objects as meeting standards defined without direct reference to attitudes. These include concepts of virtues and vices, such as sincerity, integrity, brutality, and stinginess, and non-moral evaluative concepts of qualities of character, such as being cool, cheeky, macho, independent, witty, and vivacious. That people meet standards defined by such concepts gives us reason to adopt various attitudes toward them, depending on their relation to us: pride, shame, respect, contempt, admiration, ridicule, approval, or disapproval. Concepts of human flourishing

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and diminishment, such as autonomy, dignity, loneliness, and neurosis, guide the expression of various kinds of self- and other-concern, such as pity and respect. Aesthetic evaluative concepts, such as of the beautiful, the goofy, and the quaint, guide such responses as admiring contemplation, disparaging amusement, and nostalgia. Other evaluative concepts refer to institutionalized norms or rules that guide particular attitudes: the rude is that which warrants feelings of offense and indignation; the unjust warrants resentment; the immoral warrants guilt, shame, and outrage. We need a plurality of thick concepts to make sense of the variety of evaluative attitudes we have toward persons and things. Most commentators have focused on the logic of thick concepts to support claims about the cognitive status of value judgments or about the ontology of values (Hare 1952; Foot 1978a; McDowell 1979; Williams 1985; Wiggins 1987a). I set aside these issues and draw attention instead to their reason-giving functions in practices ofjustification. Three features of thick concepts (besides their essential contestability) are important for understanding their role in making sense of our valuations. First, their applications are determined by interpretive processes that employ evaluative reasoning (McDowell 1979; Williams 1985, pp. 141-142). Second, their coherence depends on the social practices and contexts that make their proper attitudes intelligible (Maclntyre 1981, ch. 1). Third, they tend to evolve in reciprocal interaction with their proper attitudes (Wiggins 1987a). The first feature of thick concepts defeats attempts to fix their applications in neutral factual terms that could be determined without employing value judgments. To apply them to new factual circumstances, we must be able to interpret their evaluative point. This demands that we engage in distinctively evaluative reasoning—reasoning which engages judgments about what standards rationally govern our attitudes. Consider how the rules of etiquette apply in the context of changing gender roles (Martin 1989, pp. 304—305). Traditional rules of etiquette encourage men to give women personal compliments. They discourage women from calling attention to their achievements or openly objecting to others' opinions. They also tell businesspeople to avoid personal compliments in a business context, while permitting them to seek credit for their achievements and to frankly express their disagreements with others about business projects. So, if a man compliments a woman on her clothing at the office, is he being gallant or rude? Can a woman succeed in business without being rude? Does women's liberation demand that we disregard etiquette? If etiquette were just a matter of descriptively fixed rules, it

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would be in trouble here. In fact, the application of such rules in novel or apparently conflicting cases is open, pending an interpretation of their underlying evaluative point. Judith Martin argues that the apparent conflict between rules of etiquette is generated by the fact that different rules apply to business and private sociable relations, combined with the sexist and obsolete assumption that women exist only in the latter sphere. In the sphere of private sociability, etiquette permits persons of either gender to compliment others on their clothing and generally to recognize their gender. This suits a function of sociable conversation—to facilitate the development of personal relationships. Social manners also discourage both men and women from aggressively asserting their opinions or calling attention to their achievements in polite conversation, for social occasions are supposed to add to the charm of life, not facilitate competition. In a business context, etiquette teUs people to identify others according to their job, not their gender, and permits them to act competitively. These rules suit the functions of business, where performance is what matters, where gender doesn't matter to the performance of most jobs, and where competitiveness improves performance. On that account, when a man compliments a woman on her clothing in a business context or takes offense at her competitive office behavior, he is mistakenly applying private social manners to her. To do so is to imply that "when ladies are around, serious business is suspended" (Martin 1989, p. 305). This is an insult to women and disrupts their careers and the effective performance of the business as a whole. Etiquette therefore demands that men and women alike be treated by the rules of business etiquette in the business world and by the rules of social etiquette in social life. (This leaves open the possibility that many gendered rules of social etiquette can be internally criticized as demeaning to women.) Martin's interpretation of the demands of etiquette (the extension of the thick concepts "polite" and "rude") constitutes a justification of the norms she recommends because it makes sense of our attitudes. We make sense of our attitudes when we meet various pragmatic demands: when, by means of our self-understandings, we articulate, cultivate, and refine our attitudes in satisfactory ways, when we overcome confusion and contradiction, orient ourselves consistently and successfully to our world, and do so in a way that withstands a reflective understanding of how we manage it. The activity of making sense of our attitudes by articulating the reasons for them or the underlying evaluative points toward which they are oriented guides our attitudes in ways more coherent and focused than before. Having accepted Martin's arguments, we are in a position to

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engage in sociable and business interactions with persons of both genders with greater confidence and success and less ambivalence and confusion about what we are doing and how we should feel about it. The refinement of attitudes that comes from reflection on thick concepts in justification sets the stage for further extensions of these concepts, often in radically new directions. Thick concepts and attitudes evolve in reciprocal interaction through history, in such a way that an extension of a thick concept that did not make sense at one point in time may make sense at another. This interaction is mediated by social practices that provide the background conditions for the coherence of the attitudes expressed in them. Thus, the application of the thick concepts "rude" and "polite" was once regarded as inescapably gendered in all social contexts. Even today, women who assert their opinions or claims on men—that is, women who act as equals with men—are judged more harshly by conventions of etiquette than men who behave the same way. But modern sensibilities about etiquette are evolving under the pressure not only of the moral norm of equal respect for all, but of concrete social practices that enable women to participate as juridical equals in marriage, politics, and the workplace. The gendered thick concept of social order that demands female submissiveness to male authority is being supplanted by more egalitarian conceptions of social order which make sense only against the background of the social practices that embody them. Such practices enable people to experience their social world as successfully ordered through more egalitarian norms and to cultivate sensibilities which help justify the norms that make sense of them. In the absence of such practices, people who rejected gendered norms of etiquette would be left with a sense of vertigo; they would be at a loss as to how to conduct themselves. Rejection in such a context would not make sense of people's attitudes or successfully guide their conduct. The properties singled out by an egalitarian etiquette as calling for offense or indignation depend on the cultivation of a certain egalitarian sensibility. There is no way to identify the trajectory of an egalitarian sensibility for etiquette without assuming its own perspective, for this sensibility is responsive to culturally specific meanings internal to the particular social practices embodying it. Attitudes and their associated thick concepts evolve in reciprocal interaction and, when they inform a practice with vitality, tend toward ever-greater articulation, differentiation, and refinement. Thick concepts, because of their open-endedness and essential contestability, have a dynamic and generative character which enables us to envision new possibilities for living.

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These features of thick concepts reflect the need to preserve their attitude-guiding functions. In interpreting the underlying evaluative point of such concepts, people seek to make sense of the valuations at stake in their disputes by characterizing their appropriate objects. The descriptive content of thick concepts cannot, therefore, be determined independent of a process of justification that engages our understandings o( our attitudes. Judgments expressed in terms of thick concepts give us reasons for valuing and action to the degree that their scope is guided by a reflectively endorsable understanding of our concerns. Because our concerns and attitudes often make sense only against a background of socially contingent and historically evolving social practices and conditions, our evaluative concepts evolve in concert with changing social circumstances and offer opportunities for divergent interpretations in the face of social conflict. Some theorists claim that thick concepts are inherently incapable of providing the terms in which authentic reasons and intrinsic value judgments can be framed. Authentic reasons and value judgments must motivate anyone who sincerely avows them. But people can accept claims expressed in terms of thick evaluative concepts without being motivated to follow them. This reasoning motivates the demand to bypass thick concepts and directly access the thin evaluative concepts (such as "good" and "right"). Only claims expressed in terms of the thin concepts are thought to have the inherent link to motivation that qualifies them as authentic. R. M. Hare (1981, pp. 72-75, 21-22) uses this argument to justify a monistic theory of value, according to which non-moral intrinsic value judgments are simply expressions of personal preference. Hare's motivational requirement is unreasonable. For something to count as an authentic value judgment or reason, it must be reflectively endorsable. But actual motivational states are not always reflectively endorsable. One of the functions of value judgments is to note when one's motivational states are deficient because they fail to track what one judges to be good. Boredom, weariness, apathy, self-contempt, despair, and other motivational states can make a person fail to desire what she judges to be good or desire what she judges to be bad (Stocker 1979). This prevents the identification of value judgments with expressions of actual desires and preferences, as Hare insists. The rational attitude theory of value says that to judge that something is good is to judge that it makes sense for someone to value it. This makes intrinsic value judgments at least six times removed from actual first-order desires for the apparent good. First, they are immediately

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normative for attitudes, not desires. Second, they usually take persons and things, not states of affairs, as their objects. A person's judgment that a historic coal mine rescue was an excellent deed may inspire her awe for the rescuers, but what must it make her want to do? Third, they say only what a person's attitudes ought to be, not what they actually are. A depressed person could judge that her accomplishments merit pride, but be incapable of rousing herself to feeling it. Fourth, even when they inspire the right attitude, that attitude's motivational effects may depart from its rational demands. Appropriate guilt may induce paralysis rather than desires to make amends for any wrongdoing. Fifth, they may express impersonal judgments of value, not personal judgments of importance. A person could think it would be a very good thing if the couple next door kissed and made up, but she could also think it is none of her business to do anything about it. Finally, even intrinsic value judgments of high personal importance can still rationally leave a person wide latitude to indulge in caprice, impulsiveness, and sheer bad taste. A poet may judge that her dedication to writing fine poems is good and important. But this needn't prevent her from whimsically trying her hand at Hallmark greeting card doggerel. Nor does her choice commit her to the judgment that these mawkish ditties are any good or that it is good to write them. Thus, no evaluative considerations necessarily motivate choice, for there can always be a gap between what one judges to be valuable and what one finds oneself actually caring about at a given time. Engaging in objective discussion with others is one of the ways we try to get our attitudes in line with what makes sense. Value and importance judgments framed in terms of thick concepts give people reasons for valuation because they provide the sensibility conditions for different ways of caring about things. Take away norms expressed in terms of thick concepts, permit only reasoning in terms of a homogeneous "good," and one wouldn't know whether it made sense to admire, honor, love, or merely like the object in question. Emotions, feelings, and cares would be reduced to a uniform, inarticulate blur if we were deprived of the thick concepts by which we delineate different kinds of goods. The application of thin evaluative concepts to the world therefore depends upon the outcome of discussions by which people try to make sense of their attitudes through the exchange of reasons. There is no hope of identifying what is good (right, wrong, and so on) or of defining a comprehensive, empirically determinate standard of goodness in terms that completely avoid thick concepts (Hurley 1989).

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5.3 How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical My pragmatic account of justification takes as its starting point the commonsense evaluative intuitions that constitute the space of reasons for a community at any given time. An intuition is an opinion endorsed under conditions favorable to sound judgment—when one is reflective, calm, coherent, informed, and responsive to others' perspectives. Most commonsense intuitions are expressed in terms of thick concepts such as "kindness" "friendship," and "dignity." But philosophers have often attacked the use of intuitions and thick concepts to justify evaluative claims. Many worry that reliance on intuitions traps people into following judgments informed by superstition, prejudice, cultural bias, and obsolete practices. The intuitions of a racist are untrustworthy but supposedly impervious to criticism from an intuitive point of view. Intuitive thinking, incapable of critical self-reflection and tied to the status quo of received opinion, secures the smug in their prejudices, the hidebound in their habits, and the oppressed in their lowly positions (Singer 1974, p. 516; Brandt 1979, p. 21; Hare 1981, p. 76). Only a non-intuitive form of critical reasoning can rescue peopte from these failures, by giving them a standpoint independent of their social practices. Such critical thinking would bypass the culturally contingent thick concepts embodied in intuitions and would reason directly about the good and the rightjusing-onfe logic and value-neutral scientific facts (Hare 1981, ch. 1; Brandt 1979, pp. 22, 1990). This argument is the basis for consequential claims of having a critical advantage over pluralist theories such as mine that are grounded in social practices (§3.1). I contend that all the genuine critical practices that make sense can be included, in intuitive reasoning. Commonsense critical practices can objectively endorse the intuitions they employ because they already contain methods for criticizing what people take to be reasons and for introducing novel reasons in normative discussions. These practices, or ordinary extensions of them, provide all the reasons we have to reject or refine old intuitions and create new ones. They can meet all the demands for objective justification that it makes sense to care about. Lets recall some of the conditions for objective justification (§5.1). Justification is a responseJo criticism, complaint^an^ ariseTlrrine context of conversation among people who aim to reach some common point of view, and it is addressed to those who disagree. It is pointless to engage in justification when the parties have no interest in reaching agreement, when there is no concrete complaint, or when there

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is no common ground from which to begin a dialogue. Common ground could consist in shared intuitions or in curiosity, trust, and a willingness to try alien practices. Common ground determines the starting point of justification. We try to reason or explore from it to a new position that Resolves the disagreement (Kawls 1971, pp. 580-582). Consider three_j^ay^ in which one person might criticize another's evaluative claim. She_cauld challenge the importance of the__other\ reasonsi injayorofhisjudgment; she co apply to. the case; or she could challenge the authenticity of these reasons. To support a disagreement of the first type, a person must offer an overriding reason for judging differently. For example, in opposing the construction of a new intensive care unit, a hospital administrator may argue that it is more important to devote the resources the new unit would require to the prenatal care clinic. Reasons like this appeal to comparative value judgments of the kind discussed in §3.2 and §3.4. To support a disagreement of the second type, a person must offer inter^retimr^som for thinking that the facts don't support the first party's claims. Against Sharon's complaint that Mark owes her payment for a loan, Mark could offer evidence that both of them understood her transfer to be a gift when it took place. People invoke interpretive reasons when they try to extend the application of a thick concept by interpreting its evaluative point (§5.2). To support a disagreement of the third type, a person must offer undermining reasons^^ against the authenticity of the first person's, values. That is, she must show that they don't make sense^that they don't reflect or support anything worth caring about.3 The point of view from which they seem to make sense is shown, from a more objective point of view, to be confused, limited, or founded on error. This section will vindicate the use of intuitions and thick concepts in critical thinking by showing how they can generate undermining reasons. When we inquire into the authenticity of values, what we wonder, generally, is whether it makes sense to value them for the reasons they purport to offer. No plausible account of making sense comes close to offering its sufficient conditions. But no such account is needed. We should ask no more of ethics than of science. Science provides no test that guarantees the veracity of its starting points. It is enough that it provides means for detecting and correcting errors and for introducing superior theories, concepts, and methods. Commonsense evaluative practices provide similar means. They offer a catalogue of critical strategies that generate undermining reasons and enable expansions of the space of reasons. More critical strategies exist than are listed here, and more could be

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invented. It is reasonable for a person to think that a value is.authentic when it seems to make sense to her and when it surviyes^he^gamuLof critical strategies that can be launched against it in discussions-gavexnediy the norms of objectivity (§5.1). Critical strategies can be roughly divided into three classes. Internal or "ethnocentric" strategies rely only on commonsense shared intuitions, armchair reflection, and ordinary observation. Scientific strategies draw upon empirical knowledge obtained through scientific investigations. Experiential and persuasive strategies enable people to grasp novel intuitions. Most worries about the conservatism of theories that appeal to intuitions result from the mistaken view that such theories can accept only strategies of the first type. Some intuitive theorists such as Walzer (1987) and Rorty (1989) accept the ethnocentric constraint. Their position, though needlessly narrow, has the merit of demonstrating how rich are the internal intuitive resources for criticism. Consider three such resources: internal coherence testing, narrow reflective equilibrium, and idealistic self-criticism. Thick concepts can be tested for internal coherence and found to be irresolvably unclear. Or analysis could reveal that a purported thick concept cannot simultaneously perform its reason-giving and descriptive functions. John Stuart Mill (1977) used this strategy to undermine the use of nature as an evaluative standard. He showed that the concept of nature was deeply equivocal. Any interpretation of "nature" that had descriptive content had no normative force (for example, the natural as the usual). And any interpretation of "nature" that seemed to have normative force reduced to some other value (for example, the natural as the functional). In the method of narrow reflective equilibrium people attempt to organize their intuitions into a coherent, consistent, systematic whole (Daniels 1979, p. 258). Critical development of their views works through exploiting the tensions and contradictions they find between the general evaluative principles they accept and their intuitions about particular cases. This strategy is driven by a desire for consistency and a sharper, more effectively action-guiding articulation of principles. Narrow reflective equilibrium can provide reasons that undermine intuitions about principles. One such reason could be that we can't find any particular cases in which they offer more sensible guidance than rival, simpler principles. Narrow reflective equilibrium can also provide reasons that undermine intuitions about particular cases. An example could be that we can't discover any evaluative point expressible in a principle that endorses the particular intuition. Reflective equilibrium does not merely offer a

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strategy for constructing a consistent input-output decision-making mechanism: as the etiquette case illustrated in §5.2, reflective equilibrium accepts and rejects intuitions according to their capacity to express or promote some intelligible evaluative point. Walzer's (1983, 1987) strategy of idealistic self-criticism moves beyond armchair reflection to a study of social practices. Its materials for criticism are the gaps between the actual practices of a community and the ideals by which a community justifies them. Ideals always stand at some distance from their supposed embodiments. This allows us to criticize the practices, institutions, or persons attempting to realize them by articulating their demands more adequately. Although the ideal of democracy in the United States is partly constituted by a conception of such social institutions as elections and representative assemblies, it is not exhausted by their present forms. It provides reasons for thinking that democracy would be better realized through reforms. For example, public financing of elections would reinforce the democratic principle that popular support, as opposed to the support of well-financed special interests, be the effective determinant of who gets elected. An interest in integrity motivates this critical method. It is not simply a matter of adjusting practices to fixed principles. Meanings can be implicit in practices which people haven't articulated at the level of principles. If they can articulate new ideals or principles which better account for practices they find fulfilling, then the practices offer grounds for accepting the principles. By accepting them, people can engage in their practices more self-consciously and effectively than before. In other cases, accepting some principles that purport to account for our practices might make them go less well than before. This would provide powerful evidence that there is something wrong with our practices, our principles, or both (Taylor 1985d). Criticism does not stop at interpreting the demands of intuitions and practices. It can also undermine the factual beliefs underlying them by drawing upon scientific knowledge. This is how people discover that their intuitions are founded upon prejudice, superstition, cultural bias, and other cognitive distortions. There are at least six ways science can be used to undermine intuitions. First, science can show that a factual concept used for normative purposes is radically at odds with causal knowledge. This was shown for the teleological conception of nature needed to sustain Aristotle's theory of the good and for the concept of race as a biological category which is needed to justify certain racist practices. This kind of criticism is especially important for undermining claims about instrumental goods and bads, for example, the notion of witchcraft as an

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* Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense

instrumental evil. Second, science can provide evidence that an ideal cannot come close to being realized, and so is merely Utopian. This need not undermine the ideal's authenticity, since the options open to human beings just might be miserable. But it does undermine attempts to generate action-guiding norms from the value, because such norms would be futile. Defenders of capitalism employ Utopian criticism against democratic socialism when they argue that there is no "third way" between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism (Hayek 1944). Third, science can show that there are viable alternatives to practices that are justified on grounds of necessity or are thought to reflect an inevitable framework of thought. Anthropologists have exposed alternatives to social practices based on a bi-modal concept of gender; and radically different conceptions of masculinity and femininity than those structuring Western gender roles (Ortner and Whitehead 1981). Fourth, historical reflection can undermine an intuitively accepted norm by showing that it has lost its function or point. Early-rising was a virtue when nearly everyone was a farmer and the productive use of daylight hours was a condition of responsible farm management. It is obsolete for people in urban settings, who can fulfill their responsibilities at other times. Fifth, social theory can show that the background social conditions needed to make sense of a thick concept do not exist. Social practices may not support the application of normative distinctions that once made sense. Surviving legal documents from early medieval Europe invoke the rich vocabulary of Roman law. But historians discovered that early medieval institutions of property and contract were too primitive to support full-blooded applications of Roman thick legal concepts. The words survived their meaningful uses and functioned as little more than magical phrases conferring legal authority to contracts actually enforcing simpler obligations than the words in their Roman context would suggest (Cheyette 1978). Finally, genealogical criticism can expose the incoherence of a value by showing that vicious or self-deceptive motivations are required for its genesis, evolution, and endorsement. The purported reasons for supporting the suspect value are masks for attitudes their own adherents cannot reflectively endorse. Nietzsche (1969) used genealogical criticism to attack Christian morality. While Christians and moralists claim to support morality as an expression of universal love, it in fact expresses ressentiment against noble, powerful, vital people. Morality involves a pragmatic contradiction, for the only motive that can move people to embrace it is one that morality must condemn. Genealogical criticism of different

forms also underlies the critical methods of psychoanalysis and consciousness-raismg (Ricoeur 1970; Fay 1987; MacKinnon 1989). A final class of critical strategies appeals to experiences whose most illuminating or compelling descriptions invoke alien intuitions. Some philosophers have suggested that a person's evaluative experiences are mere creatures of the intuitions she already accepts (Harman 1977, ch. 1). If an individual has the intuition that persons of color are inferior and thus need not be respected, then she will experience disrespect toward them without outrage, horror, remorse, or other emotions that embody a contrary intuition. This empirical claim is false. People often experience events in evaluative terms that are at odds with their intuitions.4 Such experiences, if not accounted for in terms that enable a person to discount their putative claim on herself, pose a challenge to her evaluative perspective. They can cause crises whose rational resolutions require the creation of a new evaluative perspective that does justice to the experience. Crises can be brought about by factors other than anomalous experiences. Practices may fall into crisis, as new circumstances and experiences render them incapable of performing their functions or make their participants lose confidence in their evaluative point. They may cease to provide a useful map of the practical landscape. Moral and political theories that relied on the idea of a hierarchical order of beings, with God and the King at the top, nobles and clerics next, and different ranks of commoners at the bottom, each inferior subject to the face-to-face authority of some superior, had to break down once classes of people arose who were "masterless"—such as vagabonds, who, wandering the roads, had no immediate superior. These people couldn't be fit into the old political map, which could find no norms to govern them. Liberalism provided a new account of legitimate political order, appealing to the thick concept "consent," which was designed to accommodate "masterless men" (Herzog 1989, ch. 2). In testing political regimes against the consent of the governed rather than against conceptions of the cosmic order, liberalism introduced new intuitions and thick concepts into political debates and undermined old ones. This innovation can be justified by the fact that it provided a perspective which explained why the older system fell into crisis, and that it enabled people to resolve or dissolve the crisis, while successfully performing the practical tasks demanded of it.5 A justified change to a new normative perspective need not be motivated only by crisis. Sometimes persuasion is sufficient. One person or culture can present a new perspective in an especially appealing way, opening up possibilities never before imagined. People commonly

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change their aesthetic intuitions in this way. They are invited by others to see if they can experience and appreciate a work of art in the terms proposed by them. Rational persuasion need not operate by direct appeal to the thick ethical concepts endorsed by an agent. Typically, the persuading agent must establish her authority with those she wishes to persuade. She may do so by joining the community she wishes to persuade. Having gained the members' trust, she may convince them to try the norms she endorses, but they don't. Or a stranger may manifest extraordinary qualities of courage, mercy, or charisma recognized by others who do not share her intuitions. Her possession of these exemplary qualities may give them reason to credit her perspective with authority, for they may view her admirable qualities as signs of the worthiness of her perspective. John Stuart Mill's defense of equality in marriage uses a persuasive strategy (1975). While he defended marital equality on grounds of justice and the welfare of women, Mill also sketched an appealing picture of an ideal of marriage as a friendship between equals. This ideal was alien to much of his audience. Yet Mill rightly believed that exposure to such marriages could exert a powerful attractive influence. Unequal marriages in which wives are treated merely as servants are notorious for their emotional sterility. Wouldn't men who reflected upon the contrast between their own lives and the richer, more fulfilling lives of self-confident men living in more equal marriages feel a tinge of envy toward them and perhaps even of self-contempt in recognizing that their own sense of self-esteem is staked upon bullying domination? If persuasion did not work for men set in their ways, it held promise for their sons, who knew their fathers' failures all too well and had the flexibility and ambition to seek something better. This catalogue of critical strategies is not exhaustive. But it is sufficient to put to rest the objection that intuitive thinking is incapable of critical self-reflection. None of these critical strategies requires wholesale rejection of appeals to intuitions. They all work through people's common sense, intuitions, and experiences. Even the scientific strategies rely on second-order intuitions about the reasonableness of intuitions. This is true of all the critical strategies thus far put to use outside arcane philosophical contexts. The indeterminacies and tensions in intuitive thinking, combined with changing social circumstances, personal experience, and scientific knowledge, provide people with ample reasons and materials for selfcriticism. They have reason to find a new perspective superior to their old one if it articulates the concerns they were inarticulate about, resolves

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their contradictions, clears up their confusions, enables them to determinately apply them to their old predicaments (or to new ones they confront), allows them to settle practical conflicts that were unresolvable under the old perspective, or simply permits them to lead their lives in terms they find more compelling (Taylor 1985b). The critical strategies outlined above enable people to find such superior perspectives, without resort to heroic attempts to transcend ordinary modes of reasoning. If an intuition is defective because of cultural bias or other factors, people can discover this fact through ordinary means of investigation. My view of criticism might suggest that I accept the coherentist, antifoundationalist account ofjustification known as "wide^eflective equilibrium." According to this view, a judgment is justified to a person if it is part of a coherent, reflectively stable system of beliefs she holds, including (a)~ intuitions about.particular cases; (b) intuitions about general principles; and (c) various background scientific and ideal theories, including theories of the person, of moral development and human motivation, of social order, rational choice, and so forth (Daniels 1979). I resist identifying my position with theories of wide reflective equilibrium. Wide reflective equilibrium demands that justified evaluative judgments form part of a theoretical system, but it isn't evident that our evaluative intuitions can or ought to be systematized into theories in the way supposed (Baier 1989; Noble 1989). More important, theories of wide reflective equilibrium usually fail to think through the implications of the social character of justification. Justification is concerned with making sense of our concerns and attitudes. But rational attitudes are essentially constituted by social norms the authority of which can be established only in dialogue with others. A person may be in personal wide reflective equilibrium but know that his attitudes are poorly developed as a result of inexperience, defective character, neuroses, or other problems. These facts give him reason to distrust the deliverances of his own attitudes and judgment and to trust the intuitions of more experienced, wise, reflective, and virtuous people. Every person has reason to take seriously the judgments of others just from the fact that any individual's own point of view, no matter how reflective and informed, is still limited by his personal biography and particularity. In emphasizing the availability of methods for learning from and persuading others, I avoid the charges leveled against coherence accounts that they are merely subjective or give us no way to adjudicate disputes between incompatible but internally coherent systems (Singer 1974, p. 494; Hare 1976, p. 82; Brandt 1979, p. 22; Copp 1984, p. 161). Discussion, persua-

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sion, and interaction can provide new conceptual resources for mutual understanding and adjudication of disputes. 5.4 Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense The conception of justification in which thick concepts and commonsense intuitions function does not satisfy certain skeptical doubts. On the view I defend, justification involves meeting specific intelligible complaints and criticisms by means of arguments that begin from some common starting point. There is no need to justify the entire framework of justification or to justify the starting point in the absence of evidence that the point in question involves some specific ethical or cognitive error. Although any particular intuition or thick concept can be intelligibly criticized, it makes no sense to criticize the whole lot at once, for the only way we can frame an intelligible criticism is in terms of some intuitions and thick concepts whose authenticity must provisionally be presupposed. Skeptical critics of intuitions reject intuitive claims in the absence of independent reasons to accept their authenticity. Some moral theorists used to believe that intuitions report observations about an independently existing, nonnatural realm of values. But few can accept the extravagant platonic metaphysics needed to sustain this foundationalist account of justification. Alternatively, one could take a coherentist approach to justification and argue that intuitions are among the beliefs with which any satisfactory evaluative system must cohere. But for this to be the case, we must have a reason for granting them some initial credibility. Lacking an account of the authority or credibility of intuitions, they have no probative value at all (Brandt 1979, pp. 20-22; Hare 1981, p. 76). This criticism of intuitions is sometimes expressed in the claim that the point of justification is to answer the skeptic. To justify intuitions to a skeptic, an account of justification must explain how intuitions could be justified in themselves. But the best a coherentist account ofjustification can do is explain how intuitions can be justified relative to a person's beliefs and concerns, which themselves may be faulty. No appeal to intuitions can justify evaluative claims in themselves without begging the question against the skeptic (Copp 1984, pp. 142-143, 147-149). Critics of thick concepts draw two normative inferences from these arguments. First, lacking some answer to the skeptic, we must prefer skepticism to the use of intuitions in evaluative argument (Brandt 1979, p. 3). Second, we should search for some way to reason about the good and the right which

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bypasses intuitions and thick concepts. Only by finding a direct route to the right and the good that is independent of evaluative intuitions can we justify value judgments in themselves (Brandt 1979; Hare 1981). The need to respond to the skeptic motivates a reductive, thin account of values. I will argue that it doesn't make sense to care about meeting skeptical standards ofjustification. This response is unlikely to disarm philosophers driven by skeptical doubt. So I also offer a diagnosis of the motivations that lead philosophers to entertain skeptical doubts. I argue that such doubts are incoherently expressed in skepticism toward evaluative intuitions. These motivations are tied to misleading disanalogies between science and ethics, as well as to intuitions about the normative authority of science which are inconsistent with its official skepticism toward all intuitions. We have no reason to take skeptical challenges seriously, because their practical implications are absurd. Brandt claims that if no independent grounding can be given to our intuitions, then we should prefer skepticism. Like most critics of intuitions, Brandt confines his skepticism to moral intuitions—intuitions about moral right and wrong and perhaps also about a persons good. But none of the skeptical arguments against intuitions hangs on any supposed peculiarity of moral intuitions. If they work against moral intuitions, then they work against all evaluative intuitions, including intuitions about rationality, good grammar, good arguments, and good scientific experiments.6 Should we cease to speak grammatically, or to correct one another's grammar, because we have no account, independent of our intuitions about grammar, of what it is to be grammatically correct? This is absurd. We have no way of making sense to one another apart from following the rules of grammar. It might be suggested that the concept of making sense allows us to draw a. distinction between intuitions about grammatical and epistemic values and intuitions about other kinds of value, for the latter are not needed to make sense of anything. This is a grave error. j\s^rgue.d.abov^ W£ji£ecWalue judgments to make sense of many of our basic emotions, cares^con£erns, and practices. The moral skeptic is in a position to argue that we would be better off without guilt. Perhaps morality is bad for us. But moral skepticism makes sense only against a background of intuitions about other goods, such as human flourishing, health, or perfection. The skeptical arguments employed by the critics of intuitions cannot stop at morality. If they work, they work against all evaluative intuitions. They amount to the recommendation that, in the absence of some transcendent justification, we should cease to care about things in any of the ways that

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involve intuitive value judgments. We must cease to admire or aspire to be anything and cease all the practices that embody value judgments. This kind of life is conceivable. Fish and birds lead such lives. But it is absurd to claim that humans must live like birds and fish if they can't "justify" living like humans. In any event, the skeptic has nowhere to stand in deriving normative implications from his skeptical claims. To assert that skepticism is to be preferred to any value judgments is itself to rely on a normative intuition that somehow escapes the skeptical demand for justification. To this, the skeptic might reply that he is merely making a theoretical point, that no account is forthcoming of how intuitions can justify evaluative claims in themselves, apart from any relation they may have to any person's beliefs and concerns. This retreat from practice to theory in discussions of justification is incoherent. Justification is an inherently normative concept directed to what claims we ought to accept. If it doesn't make sense to adjust one's beliefs according to their relation to some standard, the standard doesn't count as a criterion of justification at all. The skeptic might respond: but surely it makes sense to care about whether one's values are right or wrong in themselves! After all, being justified relative to some set of beliefs and concerns isn't satisfactory if the beliefs and concerns are mistaken. This claim is not strictly true. Some mistakes are harmless or inconsequential. More important, the skeptic must come up with a notion of what it would be to be mistaken, or to fail to make sense, which is not discoverable by means of any of the critical strategies outlined above or by any analogous strategy that makes use of evaluative intuitions. On the pragmatic view of justification defended here, all our evidence for the soundness of value judgments expressed in intuitions is contained in the following kinds of facts: that such judgments express what we actually find to be valuable; that they successfully orient our lives, actions, and feelings, providing them with points we can reflectively endorse; and that they survive the kinds of criticisms sketched above. If our intuitions enable us to overcome frustration, confusion, irresolvable conflict, irresolution, and similar pragmatic defects, why should we purge them from our lives? The skeptical demand seems to be for some ontological underwriting of our intuitions, some demonstration of how they can track a realm of objective normative facts or "values in themselves" that can be characterized independent of our concerns. It is difficult to see how the success or failure of intuitions to track some realm of facts characterized independent of our interests and concerns could or should matter to us. Being valuable

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is just a matter of meeting standards that it makes sense to care about; making sense, in turn, is just a matter of achieving a perspicuous selfunderstanding justified in pragmatic terms. The skeptic, then, has no argument that we should care about meeting his standards and, hence, no argument that his standards constitute authentic demands of justification. But skeptical arguments against intuitions are so popular that some diagnosis of their appeal should be made. All the above-mentioned skeptics of evaluative intuitions believe that science provides a model of how to justify claims in themselves. Their skepticism about the justificatory power of evaluative intuitions is derived from a supposed contrast with the justificatory power and authority of science. Specifically, they are struck by a presumed disanalogy between observation statements in science and particular intuitions in ethics. We appear to have an account of how observation statements can provide evidence for theoretical claims about a world that exists and operates independent of our concerns. But particular ethical intuitions cannot provide an analogous kind of evidence for evaluative claims without presupposing an extravagant platonic metaphysics. So the kind of justification available to science is not available to ethics (Harman 1977, ch. 1). Skepticism about evaluative intuitions is a way of expressing reverence for science in conjunction with a normative intuition that any practices that command comparable reverence must exhibit the same structure of transcendent justification supposedly available to science. This line of thought undermines itself in at least two ways. First, the relevant analogy to evaluative intuitions in ethics is not observation statements in science, but its evaluative standards of evidence, method, and argument. What evidence do we have that our norms of evidentiary relations and scientific method are authentic? We know only that they successfully guide the construction of theories that realize various epistemic values which make sense to us, such as predictive power, simplicity, fruitfulness, and coherence. We have no account either of how these epistemic values track values-in-themselves or of how the realization of these values enables us to track truth-in-itself. The interpretation of these epistemic values is also as essentially contestable as those in any other domain (Kuhn 1977). Justification in science depends upon evaluative intuitions that are on a par with the evaluative intuitions we follow in any other practice. Second, the skeptical attitude that reflects a reverence for science depends upon an intuition about norms for reverence that stands in need of the same justifications as any other. In fact, the reasons for our rever-

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ence for science—its satisfaction of aspirations toward mastery over nature, autonomy, and mature, objective understanding, unsullied by childish superstition, wishful thinking, and slavish obedience to authority—are themselves dependent upon acceptance of the normative authority of claims expressed in thick concepts (Taylor 1985a, pp. 235, 244). The skeptical demand is incoherent, because it makes the warrant for holding science in awe dependent upon the very norms it calls into question.

6 • Monistic Theories of Value

6.1 Monism Mojriists contend that the good is fundamentally unitary. Because goods can be understood in two ways—as meeting various evaluative standards or as the proper objects of various favorable attitudes—monism can be of two types. Monists could hold that the apparently diverse evaluative standards we use can be explained in terms of their relation to a single, unitary, good-constituting property. Or they could hold that all goods are the proper objects of a single favorable attitude (§1.1). I have argued that the fundanaental plurality-of authentic evaluative standards is grounded in our need to differentiate the plurality of evaluative attitudes we have toward things. This suggests that attempts to reduce the normative authority of plural standards to a single good-constituting property ultimately depend on the assumption that just one attitude or response lies behind all evaluative claims. This suggestion is confirmed by hedonism and rational desire theory, the two most important naturalistic versions of monism. Hedonists claim that the good is what is pleasant. An evaluative standard is authentic if and only if it tracks our pleasurable responses to things. Rational desire theorists claim that the good is what is rationally desired. An evaluative standard is authentic if and only if it tracks what we would rationally desire. These theories make pleasure, or desire, the sole value-signifying response. (I say that a response signifies value if its appropriate object is valuable.) Monism also comes in nonnaturalistic versions, such as Moore's theory. Moore (1903) held that the good is whatever bears a simple, nonnatural property, "good." The apparent diversity of intrinsic values—beauty, friendship, knowledge—is unified by the fact that they all share this common good-constituting property. I will argue in §6.2 that nonnatural-

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istic monism ultimately relies on the assumption that admiring contemplation is the only value-signifying attitude. • Monism represents an attempt to bypass the complex, socially grounded, essentially contestable evaluative standards defined by thick concepts so as to reason directly in terms of the thin, general concepts "good" and "right." The single good-constituting property is supposed to be characterized and knowable independent of thickly described, plural evaluative standards. The single value-signifying attitude is supposed to be something individuals can take up independent of relating to others in particular social contexts. Thus, the "rationality" of a person's desires in rational desire theory may depend only on conditions, such as being calm and fully informed, that are supposedly specifiable independent of thickly described social contexts. (It does not depend on their being endorsable in dialogue with others who relate to one another as equals.) Pluralists deny that it makes sense to reason about the good and the right independent of thick evaluative concepts. When monists try to do so, they either abolish discursive reasoning about values altogether, or confine it to an arbitrarily narrow set of considerations. This has disastrous implications. In adopting a theory of value, we adopt a way of understanding and appreciating what is worthwhile in life and of exploring new possibilities for living. Monism drastically impoverishes these possibilities. It disables us from appreciating many authentic values. It suppresses the parallel evolution of evaluative distinctions and sensibilities that make us capable of caring about a rich variety of things in different ways (§5.2). It cuts off fruitful avenues of exploration and criticism available on a pluralistic self-understanding. Adopting a theory of value can have these effects, because our capacities to experience and realize values partly depend on our understandings of why and how things are valuable. If we do not distinguish between liking and loving someone, then we will be incapable of a fully adequate love, which requires some self-reflective awareness of its distinctive demands. Evaluative experience also requires an appropriate social context. If we lack shared beliefs in the distinctive values of certain goods, we will not be able to sustain the social practices needed to make sense of different ways of valuing them. Certain ways of appreciating music would be unavailable if our only exposure to music were in stores and elevators. Music could then be valued as a stimulant to spending or as a vaguely pleasant "atmosphere," but not as something intrinsically worthy of appreciation and study. We have two ways of testing monistic theories against pluralist theories

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in experience. First, we can see whether all and only the things the theory identifies as good by its criteria are things we can value on reflection. A theory of value must describe a point of view, partly characterized by a set of circumstances one could occupy, from which one is favorably disposed toward all and only the things the theory identifies as good. We must be able to reflectively endorse this point of view as authoritative, as one we rationally adopt in determining what is fundamentally good. Call this the reflective self-endorsement test. It would be difficult to accept a theory of value that refused to submit to this test. If one were favorably disposed toward something only under circumstances in which one distrusted one's attitudes, this would surely ground doubts about whether it would make sense to value it. And if one could find no reason to distrust the perspective from which one values something, one would have no reason to think it not authentically valuable. The second way we can test theories in experience is to see whether they can account for the full range and variety of our evaluative experiences and practices. For example, a theory should make sense of our practices of discursive reasoning about values. Alternatively, certain practices may no longer make sense to us on reflection. A theory of value, therefore, must either make intelligible and endorsable the full range of our evaluative experiences and practices or persuade us that it would make sense to do without those it cannot make sense of. Call this the test of practical

understanding.

I will argue that monism fails both tests of experience. There are three main versions of monism: Moore's nonnaturalism; hedonism; and rational desire theory. Whatever version it assumes, monism excludes things we reflectively find good, includes things we reflectively find bad, or fails to account for distinctive features of our evaluative experiences and of the practices that make sense of them. 6.2 Moore's Aesthetic Monism According to G. E. Moore, "good" refers to a simple, undefmable, nonnatural property. Everything that is good has this property. Moore's view has been attacked for relying on a mysterious and extravagant metaphysics (Mackie 1977, pp. 38—42). What could a nonnatural property be, and how can anyone detect it? I prefer to leave aside these metaphysical concerns and instead consider whether Moore's theory can explain deeply entrenched features of our actual practices and experiences. Consider the reflective self-endorsement test. Moore believed that only

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personal relations, beauty, and knowledge are great intrinsic goods. He excluded meaningful work, athletic achievement, justice, and freedom from the list of intrinsic goods. These exclusions do not agree with many peoples reflective judgments. Moore's neglect of the goods of activity and of impersonal social relations reflects the limitations of his test of intrinsic value. According to Moore, something is intrinsically valuable if and only if one judges that a world in which it exists in isolation is good (1903, p. 187). To make such judgments, Moore and his followers removed themselves from active engagements in the larger world, withdrew to private spaces in the company of intimate friends, and introspectively contemplated the isolated objects of their imaginations. It is not surprising that many goods were not salient to people in such a privileged, exclusive aristocratic setting, insulated from experiences of work and practical activity with strangers. The demand that intrinsic goods be valued in isolation from their social context, through undisturbed contemplation, mirrors the norms of appreciation for objects in a museum. Thus, Moore's test eflfectively restricted intrinsic goods to the states and proper objects of an aesthetic attitude of admiring, passionate contemplation and private communion (Keynes 1949, p. 83, 96). John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist and onetime member of Moore's circle, articulated a devastating pluralistic critique of Moore's monistic aestheticism: The ways in which states of mind can be valuable, and the objects of them, are more various, and also much richer, than we allowed for. I fancy we used in old days to get round the rich variety of experience by expanding illegitimately the field of aesthetic appreciation . . . classifying as aesthetic experience what is really human experience and somehow sterilizing it by this mis-classification. (1949, p. 103) The same sterility accompanies any theory of value that identifies the good with just erne state of mind or its objects. Moore's monism is additionally handicapped by the fact that his valuesignifying aesthetic attitude was insulated from rational criticism. Moore resisted the demands of justification because he supported a radical individualism, maintaining that an individuals value judgments are accountable to no one else (Regan 1986, pp. xii, 129). This view fails the test of practical understanding. It fails to explain our practices of resolving evaluative disagreements by offering reasons for our judgments. People do not merely assert that something is good; they point to features it has and to standards it meets that support the claim that it is good. If "good" were a

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simple, immediately accessible property, discerned through an ineffable aesthetic attitude, there would be no room for argument and appeal to evidence and facts to resolve disagreements. Either one would "see" that something is good, or one wouldn't. Value-blindness, like color-blindness, cannot be cured through discursive reasoning. Moore's circle of friends, the Bloomsbury group, adopted his theory of value. Notoriously, they did not offer reasons for their value judgments. Keynes brilliantly described evaluative discourse in Moore's company: Victory was with those who could speak with the greatest appearance of clear, undoubting conviction and could best use the accents of infallibility. Moore . . . was a great master of this method—greeting one's remarks with a gasp of incredulity—Do you really think that, an expression of face as if to hear such a thing said reduced him to a state of wonder verging on imbecility, with his mouth wide open and wagging his head in the negative so violently that his hair shook. "Oh!" he would say, goggling at you as if either you or he must be mad; and no reply was possible. Strachey s methods were different; grim silence as if such a dreadful observation was beyond comment and the less said about it the better . . . [Woolf] was better at producing the effect that it was useless to argue with him than at crushing you . . . In practice it was a kind of combat in which strength of character was really much more valuable than subtlety of mind. (Keynes 1949, pp. 85, 88) Alasdair Maclntyre (1981, ch. 3) has argued that the social practice of Moorean value realism is indistinguishable from the social practice of crude emotivism, in which value judgments are identified with raw assertions of personal preference and influence others through browbeating and emotional manipulation. Keynes s account shows that Moore sustained consensus on his value judgments through the sheer force of his personality. The social practices upheld by Moorean monism, incapable of grounding a publicly accessible distinction between impersonal value judgments and idiosyncratic preferences, cannot sustain significant practices of reason-giving. They therefore cannot sustain any attitudes beyond mere liking (§5.1). Moore's theory effectively identifies the good with the objects of a peculiar aesthetic liking. Moore's theory would not fail the test of practical understanding if he could show that practices of reason-giving don't make sense and should be abandoned. Moore's aestheticism might have supported his distrust of discursive reasoning about the good. Call a good aesthetic if its worth depends primarily on what it is like to experience it. Then no third party description of it can conclusively support a claim to its value. One must actually experience it for oneself to tell whether it is really good. This

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shows the insufficiency of reasoning uninformed by direct experience of what a good is like. It does not show that ineffable experiences are the only basis for aesthetic judgment. If this were the case, we could not write art, music, and movie reviews. Moore might also have thought that his principle of organic value undermined our ability to reach correct value judgments through discursive reasoning. The principle states that the value of a whole is not equal to the sum of values of its parts. A whole consisting of two bads (crime and punishment) may be better than a whole consisting of one of these bads and a good (crime and enjoyment of its fruits). It might be thought to follow that the discursive citation of the good and bad elements of a whole could never provide conclusive grounds for an evaluation of the whole. There is no such thing as a deductive proof of an organic value judgment. But this is just to say that there is no monological method for demonstrating value judgments that can replace or track the dialectic of public justification. Discursive reasoning retains an indispensable role in organic value judgments. One must articulate a reason for thinking that two bads are better than one of the bads and a good: perhaps the latter whole is worse because the good is undeserved. A modification of Moore's view might support discursive reasoning about values. Perhaps Moore goes wrong not in advocating monism, but in thinking that "good" is a property immediately accessible to discerning people. Perhaps it is better to construe "good" as a theoretical property that supervenes upon empirical properties of things. Every difference in value is grounded in a difference in natural properties, and our only access to value differences is mediated by knowledge of natural differences (Falk 1986). Practices of reason-giving could then be viewed as akin to scientific practices of offering observational evidence for unobservable, theoretical entities such as electrons. This analogy is invalid. We are entitled to infer that electrons are flowing through a circuit when we observe the lamp light up because electrons flowing through lamp filaments cause them to glow. But the nonnatural property "good" does not cause the gymnast to execute an exceptionally graceful and daring back-flip on the balance beam. We are not entitled to infer from the grace and daring of the back-flip that there is some single nonnatural property "good" which it has. Offering a reason for judging something good is not the same as inferring its cause. In any event, it seems that no other properties need exist to support the claim that the back-flip is good, other than its grace and daring, and the relation these properties have to our evaluative sensibilities and norms for making

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sense. The nonnatural property "good" is dispensable in accounting for how we know things are valuable. Certain features of aesthetic discourse might offer another way to salvage Moorean monism. Perhaps "good" is a property directly accessible to observation, as beauty is thought to be, but one's evaluative attention must be turned in the right direction to notice where "good" occurs. Reasongiving could be understood as a way of pointing out good-bearing features of a thing that passed unnoticed by those who disagree. Just as people must be trained to listen to music, to notice complex rhythms and echoes of earlier themes, before they can fully appreciate a musical composition, so in evaluative matters people s attention must generally be drawn to the natural properties of things that bear the nonnatural property of goodness. This story might account for appeals to overriding reasons in evaluative discourse, but not to undermining reasons. On Moore's account, if one judges something good one supposedly thinks that one detects a simple, nonnatural property it has. An undermining reason would have to be seen as a consideration which shows that this apparent detection of the property "good" was either an illusion or a detection of a different property that resembled "good" but was not identical with it. It is difficult to fit the catalogue of undermining reasons discussed in §5.3 under either account. It is difficult to make sense of the thought that there are properties (simple? nonnatural?) that resemble "good" but are not identical with it, and it is difficult to make sense of value illusion without an account of what veridical evaluative perception comes to. Aristotle argued that human practices do not make use of Plato's transcendent Form of the Good and that we have no idea how they could be improved by knowledge of it (Aristotle 1985, 1097a4-14). The case is no different today with respect to Moore's simple, nonnatural "good." Worse, people who adopted a Moorean self-understanding would not be able to sustain intelligible, non-manipulative practices of discursive reasoning about the good. The deterioration of these practices would stunt the processes of articulation, interpretation, and discrimination among thick concepts essential to the development of our capacities of discernment and valuation, which in turn enrich our lives. Given the failure of nonnaturalistic monism, monists had better pin their hopes on naturalism. 6.3 Hedonism Consider hedonism, the doctrine that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good.1 Hedonism is appealing because it appears to satisfy several seemingly

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compelling philosophical demands. One is that the theory of value support a determinate rational decision procedure in ethics. Hedonism is the almost inevitable product of this quest once it is interpreted as the search for a dominant end (Rawls 1971, pp. 552-557). A second reason for the appeal of hedonism is its seemingly easy reconciliation of ethics to a scientific worldview. Values appear to be mysterious, but if they can be reduced to pleasure, and pleasure reduced to some physiological or behavioral phenomena, such as neuron firings, endorphin concentrations, or persistent motivations, then ethics can be scientifically grounded. Finally, hedonism represents one interpretation of the compelling thought that intrinsic values are intimately connected with favorable consciousness. Let s consider this last thought in more detail. I have argued that something is valuable only if it makes sense for someone to value it, to take_up a favorable attitude toward it. A favorable attitude toward something includes the disposition to be favorably aroused by it. So my theory also acknowledges an intimate connection between value and favorable consciousness. Hedonism departs from pluralism in three crucial respects: (1) in ascribing intrinsic value only to favorable consciousness and not to its object; (2) in supposing that all pleasures exist independent of the realization of non-hedonic intrinsic goods; and (3) in allowing only one kind of favorable response toward objects—being pleased—to signify the presence of intrinsic value. Classical hedonists identify the intrinsically good with favorable consciousness. Pluralists identify it with the object of favorable consciousness. On the classical hedonist view, external objects and objective relations are good only instrumentally, to the degree that they produce pleasurable states of consciousness in us. Three accounts of pleasure are consistent with the classical view. First, pleasure could refer to intrinsically liked physical sensations that do not refer to anything beyond themselves, such as the pleasures of an orgasm or of a full stomach. It is universally agreed that we find many things to be valuable which do not cause, except incidentally, such physical sensations—such as life in relations of equality with others, meaningful work, and outstanding athletic accomplishment (which is often physically painful). Second, pleasure could refer to psychic feelings with no particular object, such as being in a good mood. A person could be in high spirits without feeling good about anything in particular. This view of pleasure is as impoverished as the first. It suggests that the ideal life would be that of a drug addict on a perpetual high, permanently absorbed in his own states of consciousness. To any self-respecting person,

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and to anyone who cares about other people, this solipsistic view of the good is too degraded, passive, and meaningless to take seriously. Most hedonists take a third view, broadening the intrinsically good states of consciousness to include pleasurable emotions, feelings that refer to something beyond themselves, such as being pleased with boating, friends, and conversation. What is really valuable here, the objects of favorable response—boating, friends, conversation—or just the favorable response itself? Classical hedonists support the latter view. They do not deny that people rationally desire objective states other than pleasurable consciousness. People rationally desire such things as real knowledge of truths, real accomplishments, and genuinely faithful friends, as opposed to the corresponding false beliefs and illusory experiences of having these things. But such desires are rational only because they are instrumentally valuable for maximizing pleasure. One-cannat -obtain the-pleasuTes of real accomglishment without aiming at accomplishment.....for its own sake. Sidgwick, a sophisticated hedonist, appealed to the reflective self-endorsement test in his support: To me at least it seems clear after reflection that these objective relations of the conscious subject, when distinguished from the consciousness accompanying and resulting from them, are not ultimately and intrinsically desirable . . . [when] we "sit down in a cool hour," we can only justify to ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by considering its conduciveness, in one way or another, to the happiness of sentient beings. (1981, pp. 400-401)2 Today the philosophical consensus has turned against Sidgwick. Some have appealed to exotic thought experiments to refute him: Would you willingly step into an "experience machine" that would induce in you fictional but incorrigible experiences of everything you like (Nozick 1974, pp. 42-45)? Would you be indifferent between the existence of a beautiful and an ugly world, even if no one would ever experience either (Moore 1903, pp. 83—84)? I think the error of hedonism can be discovered in ordinary life, without resort to such esoteric reflections. People reflectively endorse many ideals, even when commitment to them causes little favorable consciousness, or even grief. Environmentalists endure long hours of often boring, poorly compensated work to save remote ecosystems, such as Antarctica, that few people will ever see and enjoy. The Enlightenment ideal of rational autonomy, of facing up to hard facts no matter how disenchanting or disappointing, reflectively values truth over favorable but illusory feelings. If feelings were all that intrinsically mat-

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tered, then people should indulge in fantasies, denial, and drugs to suppress the displeasing ones and arouse the pleasing ones. But such a life is either contemptible, if authentic joys are available to the person who leads it, or pathetic, if they are not. And the reason it is "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved" is not that a lost love on balance delivers more kicks than a loveless life. It often does not. People reflectively value life in loving relations with others even when this results in grave misfortune and grief, in part because love invests life with a meaningfulness and depth that a "happy" but loveless life lacks. So it seems that the object of value is the object of a rational, favorable response and not the favorable response itself (Gaus 1990, p. 108). (Of course, favorable responses may also be rationally valued, if they are the object of a favorable rational attitude.) A fourth conception of pleasure accommodates this thought.3 It understands "pleasure" in the sense in which we say that swimming or music or drinking are pleasures. These are the activities and experiences that we enjoy or that please us, which we pursue just because we like them. A hedonist of this fourth sense of pleasure claims that the sole ground of value is that it please someone. This sense of pleasure does not come close to comprehending all the activities and experiences people reflectively value. It includes only activities that are pursued as pleasures or for the sake of pleasure, the leisure-time activities of the vacationer, the weekender, and the idle rich (Bond 1983, pp. 113-114). But many activities, while enjoyable, aim at excellence rather than pleasure. Professional practitioners of the arts, sciences, and athletics value their work for the level of excellence it achieves, and they subordinate their efforts to standards of excellence defined independent of pleasure. Although they often take pleasure in their pursuits, it is absurd to suppose that the standards of excellence they strive to meet are merely instrumental means to pleasure. It is much easier to enjoy oneself without so much hard work, frustration, and discipline. "It would be absurd if . . . our lifelong efforts and sufferings aimed at amusing ourselves . . . Serious work and toil aimed [only] at amusement appears stupid and excessively childish" (Aristotle 1985, 1176b28-33). A closer examination of the kind of pleasure people take in excellent achievements shows that pleasure is not the sole ground of value. For people could not be pleased by these achievements if they did not recognize them as meeting standards of value defined independent of pleasure. The baseball pitcher who perfects his curveball takes pleasure in his superior athletic achievement, in a good he recognizes to be distinct from pleasure. The phenomenon of taking pleasure in excellence, in the

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meeting of non-hedonic standards of merit, would thus seem to show that other grounds of value besides pleasure are authentic. The phenomenon of taking pleasure in excellence also puts to rest a common hedonist argument. Some believe that we desire an end only if it pleases us. If this is so, then pleasure is the only thing that fundamentally drives our valuations and hence constitutes the sole standard of intrinsic value (Railton 1990, pp. 167-170). The inference is mistaken. People might take pleasure in an end because it meets independent standards of excellence. The experience of pleasure would then be driven by other evaluative considerations. This is consistent with the claim that awareness of the realization of every desired non-hedonic value always pleases. It seems clear from experience that pleasures often depend upon nonhedonic evaluations. A mathematician may be thrilled by what she thinks to be an ingenious discovery, but will be disappointed if she finds out that it has been proved much more cleverly. A hedonist could claim that the only fundamental favorable response one can have to something is to be pleased by it. All other positive feelings are supposedly reducible to pleasure conjoined with various beliefs.4 But many feelings which cannot plausibly be reduced to the state of being pleased signify awareness of value. We can be awed by something, such as a volcanic eruption, which is too overwhelming at close quarters to be pleasant. Such experiences elicit a certain reverence for nature that informs much of the spirit of environmentalism. If nature were ectSj we would not care about preserving its harsher, awesome jasj>ectsJdangerous predators, desolate climes) or constrain our recreational and economic uses of it as we currently do for many nature preserves. Thus, awe can ground values independent of pleasure. Similar arguments cafTBelnade for other non-hedonic feelings associated with higher modes of valuation, such as respect and admiration, both of which are compatible and sometimes mingled with the unpleasant feeling of fear. Hedonists also are mistaken in reducing the bad to whatever is painful. Many unfavorable responses to things—annoyance, boredom, embarrassment, contempt, dismay, shock—need not be painful, yet they are clearly responses to what we find bad. It would be more plausible to reduce the bad to whatever arouses displeasure. But this does not explain contempt of others, which is often inextricably tied to a pleasing judgment of one's own superiority. Contempt signifies that its object is bad, but as a state of consciousness considered in itself, it may be quite satisfying. I conclude that an object s power to please someone does not constitute a necessary condition for its being considered good. Hedonism also errs in

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claiming that arousing pleasure is a sufficient condition of goodness. We are appropriately ashamed, shocked, dismayed, or offended at many pleasures. One needn't have a puritanical or even a moralistic sensibility to be ashamed of childish or dishonorable pleasures. Children acquire a sense of shame in juvenile pleasures as part of growing up and learning to appreciate adult pursuits. This is a matter not of a pleasure's being intrinsically good, but instrumentally bad. In striving after independence, a maturing child recognizes her pleasure in childish dependency as something to be despised. It is not just an accidental obstacle to development, but unworthy in itself, since it reflects an attachment to an inferior way of behaving, appropriate only for "babies." Hedonists have a familiar response to this line of criticism. Confronted with the manifest pragmatic failure of their theory to make sense of the full variety of our attitudes and concerns, and with the absurdity of advocating a life without them, hedonists retreat to a self-effacing theoretical posture. What is good (pleasing) is that we lead lives filled with such richly differentiated ways of valuing things. Hedonism thus recommends that we pretend that there are authentic values besides pleasure, indeed, that we fool ourselves into really believing such falsehoods. If this is how we get our kicks, relieve our boredom, soothe our consciences, then let us live an illusion whose falsehood can be grasped only from a hedonistic perspective. This response is inadequate. Hedonists have not discharged the burden of exhibiting the defect in the perspectives from which we intrinsically value other things besides pleasure or its objects. And on what does the hedonist base his confidence that lives filled with respect and contempt, appreciation and derision, dignity and dishonor, pride and shame enjoy more net pleasure than lives insensitive to these distinctions? No one has offered empirical evidence for this claim or even figured out a plausible way to test it. It seems that what really grounds one's confidence in the greater worth of a life which embodies non-hedonic evaluative distinctions is not the empirical evidence on pleasures, but one's sense of dignity (Mill 1979, p. 9). It is an undignified, lesser way of life to fail to respond to distinctions between the honorable and the dishonorable, the admirable and the despicable, the moral and the immoral. But the sense of dignity cannot be reduced to a certain way of being pleased without begging the empirical questions at stake. If the sense of dignity is just another kind of susceptibility to certain species of pleasure, why cultivate it at the expense of our capacities to wallow in more abundant and easily obtainable base pleasures?

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One way to answer this question is to point out that people rationally prefer a life with dignified pleasures to a life without them. This suggests a move from pleasure to rational preference or desire as the standard of value. Perhaps rational desire theory is the best option for monistic value theory. 6.4 Rational Desire Theory The most prominent naturalistic theories of the good identify it with the object of rational desire. What is good (for a person) is what she would desire if she were fully rational. One thing is better (for a person) than another if and only if she would rationally prefer it. The theory is naturalistic if it describes in nonevaluative terms the conditions of rational desire.5 Welfare economics identifies rational preferences with actual preferences. This is a crude approximation of an acceptable standard of value. Ignorance and violent emotions make people want things they find bad once they get them. Philosophical versions of rational desire theory try to refine the conditions of ideally rational desire to satisfy the reflective selfendorsement test. Widely, proposed conditions ..include that one be calm, reflective, and competent in calculating probabilities and consequences, as well as fully and repeatedly informed of all relevant facts (Rawls 1971, p. 408; Brandt 1979, p. 10; Sidgwick 1981, pp. 111-112; Darwall 1983, pp. 103-105; Griffin 1986, pp. 12-15; Railton 1986, pp. 173-174). A desire js_ saidjta_he rational if and only if a person would have it in these conditions.

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My pluralist theory and rational desire theory agree in identifying the good with the object of a favorable attitude, not with the favorable attitude itself They also agree that a value-signifying attitude can fail to meet various rationality conditions: one can therefore objectively criticize a person s valuations. Pluralist and rational desire theories part ways on two issues. First, they disagree about which favorable attitudes signify values. Pluralist theories deny that desires or preferences directly signify value, insisting instead that other rational attitudes, mostly non-propositional, perform this role. Second, they disagree about how to specify the conditions that make a value-signifying attitude rational. Naturalistic rational desire theories claim that these conditions can be specified in nonevaluative terms. Pluralism claims that these conditions must refer to thick evaluative concepts. Consider the first point of disagreement. I have three objections to identifying the good with the object of rational desire. First, we find many

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things to be valuable besides the possible objects of rational desire. Second, desires don't have the right structure to signify values in the way rational desire theory demands. Third, not all desires can signify values, because certain sources of motivation, such as appetites, whims, habits, and compulsions, often incline us to seek things we find to be bad. The desires which do seem to be reliable guides to value are all merely derivative of the rational attitudes that the pluralist-expressive theory identifies as value-signifying. To the extent that rational desire theory tracks reliable judgments of value, it is parasitic on the pluralist-expressive theory. Rational desire theory has no hope of offering a comprehensive theory of value. If desire is understood to be an actual motivational state that disposes a person to try to bring about its object, then its only coherent objects are states of affairs that a person can reasonably think she can bring about. People find many things to be valuable which are not coherent objects of desire. They value many things besides states of affairs. Rational desire theory cannot account for the intrinsic values of animals and persons. It accounts at best for the values of aims, not for the intrinsic values of the ends (persons, communities, animals) for the sake of which people act. Some states of affairs that people find valuable cannot be coherent objects of desire, because they can't be changed or because one cannot bring them about. One may judge certain laws of nature to be inconvenient or dangerous, such as those that make one sick from too much radiation, and others to be fortunate, such as those that make life on earth possible. These value judgments are not tied to any desires humans could coherently have to change or preserve the laws of nature. People may judge events in the past and events of a cosmic order to be fortunate or beautiful, although they can do nothing to help or hinder their occurrence, and hence cannot frame rational desires with respect to them. A romantic lover may be thrilled at the thought that his beloved might spontaneously fall in love with him without any prompting on his part. Such an event can be valuable, it can be coherently hoped or wished for, but it cannot be coherently desired in any motivational sense of desire. To try to bring this event about would be self-defeating, because the event is valued as one that the valuer has no active part in bringing about. Many goods are not objects of actual desire, since they come by surprise, and are valuable in part because they came that way (Bond 1983, p. 46). My theory, which ties value to valuings rather than desires, suffers from none of these limitations. Some attitudes, such as aesthetic appreciation, take things other than states of affairs as their object and need not imply that the agent has desires for its object.

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Most rational desire theorists concede the incompleteness of their theory of value. They may take it narrowly to account only for human welfare or the good for a person (Railton 1986). The identification of a person's good with what she rationally desires seems both too wide and too narrow. People rationally care about many things besides their own welfare. And they sometimes fail to care about themselves, or suffer from impoverished desires, because of a lack of self-respect or self-esteem, depression, self-abnegating ideals of altruism, and adaptation to oppressive circumstances. There is no reason to think that full information, calmness, calculative competence, or any other naturalistically described conditions need make people care about themselves or arouse their desires. The first problem can perhaps be addressed by identifying a person's welfare only with the rational desires she has for herself. This risks confusing well-being with self-interest in the selfish, atomistic sense. Desires one has for communities of which one is a member can be for objects that contribute to one's well-being. Alternatively, the good for a person could consist in the satisfaction of those rational preferences she has that logically entail her existence (Overvold 1982). But the guilty or self-loathing desire that I be the one to be punished for a crime does not signify that I would be better off if I were punished. The second problem is also hard to resolve. One cannot simply add selfvaluation to the conditions of rational desire. Valuing oneself too much, or inappropriately, can also lead one to desire things that are not good for oneself. Vanity and egotism tend to pose obstacles to the appreciation of friendship and other relations that are constitutive of personal well-being. It is hard to imagine how to specify the "right" kinds of self-concern without using thick evaluative concepts. Uncertainty also remains about how to account for serendipitous and other goods for a person that cannot be brought about or prevented through her own efforts. One way to deal with this problem is to define a person's welfare in terms of the desires she would have if she could choose whole life histories that include events beyond her control in real life (Harsanyi 1982). This retreat from the desires people actually have to the desires they would have if their causal powers were wildly inflated, and if they could somehow step outside their lives and choose at once how their whole life would go, suggests trouble for rational desire theory. Why have any confidence in our ability to frame rational desires or make good decisions in such inhuman circumstances? We will return to these concerns. The second objection to desire accounts is that desires don't have the

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structure required to generate coherent value judgments. Rational desire theories assume that value can be maximized. If rational desires are to serve as the sole ground of value, then they must be representable in a single, complete, transitive preference ordering. If rational motivations could be represented only in multiple, conflicting preference orderings, then some grounds other than rational desire would be needed to determine which preferences, if any, signified value. If preferences were incomplete, then some goods would be incommensurable and value could not be maximized. If preferences were intransitive, they could not ground coherent judgments of superior value. That is, because the relation "is better than" must be transitive, the relation "is preferred to" must also be transitive if it is to serve as the sole ground for asserting the first relation. Rational desire theories of value simply assume that a person's motivations can be represented in a structure that mirrors the logical structure of quantitative value judgments. But preferences are not always complete (§3.3). And appetites and whims can without contradiction express themselves in intransitive preference orderings. One may hunger for corn when faced with the choice between corn and peas, for peas when peas and asparagus are available, and for asparagus when it and corn are present. Such intransitive motivations are not incoherent but cannot signify relative values. Human motivations come from such diverse sources, and conflict so pervasively, that they cannot fit into a single preference ordering. They conflict because they arise from multiple sources influenced in different ways by different factors. Some desires spring from sources (rational attitudes) that are influenced by judgments concerning what we value, whereas others come from sources that are unaffected by such judgments. Given the pervasive conflicts among desires even when we are rational, we must appeal to standards external to desire to judge the authority of conflicting desires. Motivations vary according to the degree and ways they are affected by judgments concerning what a person values. Some desires lack the twofold structure of ends characteristic of the expressive self. Although aiming at the realization of some state of affairs, they are not done for the sake of anyone or anything else (§2.1). Such motives resist being changed in direction or intensity by judgments about their consequences or expressive significance for who we care about. These include desires prompted by instincts, drives, and appetites. People often submit to the cravings of hunger and thirst without regard for their health. Motives prompted by impulses and whims often incline people to do things harmful to people

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they care about, as is notoriously the case with impulsive gambling and sexual behavior. Actions prompted by habits tend to persist after the original rationale for acquiring them has disappeared or been forgotten. Addictions, compulsions, and obsessions often overcome a persons best efforts to govern himself by reflective judgments. Finally, some emotions can be "blind": even though people acting on them act for the sake of some end, the action prompted by the emotion may not be responsive to reflections about what concerns the end. Anger can prompt one to actions, such as lashing out at those one loves, which one knows are contrary to one's interests and values. These motivations contrast with desires that express rational emotions or valuings. These desires display the twofold structure of ends and are influenced by reflection on what one rationally values. Call these desires evaluative. If a person's desire is evaluative, it will tend to diminish upon j h e discovery that it does not adequately express the way he values ie. Ben's enthusiasm for throwing his friend a surprise birthday party will flag if he finds out that his friend will only be embarrassed by it. An evaluative desire to do something for someone will also diminish upon the discovery that the person for whom one wants to act does not deserve the kind of valuation the act expresses. Ben will no longer want to throw his friend a party when he finds out that his "friend" has just defrauded him in an insurance scheme. Most motivations fall between perfectly rational evaluative desires and "blind" passions, appetites, and habits. Different attitudes are subject t a different degrees of influence by rational reflection on the merits of their objects. All attitudes can be ingrained in habit, and if inculcated at an early age, they can be especially resistant to rational reflection. So the disgust people feel for certain foods is hard to overcome even when prudence demands it. Once disgust becomes real nausea, it is hardly subject to normative control. Some motives such as fear can be "blind," but are usually sublimated or redirected by cultural norms and brought under the influence of evaluative reflections. Men in societies governed by an honor-revenge ethic sublimate their "instinctive" self-concern so that they fear dishonor more than death or physical injury. The difference between these two classes of motivations is reflected in the different means people use to control, suppress, arouse, and direct them. People use cognitive means to control rational evaluative desires. They judge how well the objects of their underlying attitudes meet relevant standards and how well their desires express their underlying attitudes. They undergo psychotherapy to get a better interpretive grasp of

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what their attitudes are really directed toward and why Faced with motivational mechanisms insensitive to cognitive changes of this sort, people turn to noncognitive means of control, such as behavioral conditioning, drugs, habituation, sheer exertion of willpower, and manipulation of the external conditions under which the desire mechanism is triggered. Sometimes people rig the conditions so they cannot act or so some stronger countervailing desire is triggered at the same time. The famous case of Ulysses, who had himself tied to the mast of his ship so he could hear the Sirens sing without being driven to steer his ship into the rocks, illustrates this mode of self-control (Elster 1979). Other times people rig the conditions so that the acts prompted by arational desires and passions end up having consequences desired for other reasons. Football coaches rouse the aggressive passions of their teams so they can win games. Here instrumental reason makes use of arational action-mechanisms for its own purposes. That people try to control, suppress, and redirect their desires suggests that they do not exist in the pre-established harmony required by the rational desire account. The different sources of motivation push and pull people in conflicting directions. Impulses conflict with habits, appetites with evaluative desires, blind emotions with rational attitudes. These conflicts are not merely due to the fact that people can't get everything they want, so that in satisfying one desire, a person frustrates others. A single preference ranking can represent the conflicts resulting from such contingencies, where a person wants A, wants B, can't have both, and articulates a preference for A over B. But the conflicts arising from different sources of motivation are often noncontingent: they occur when a person wants both A and not-A, when part of her prefers A to B and another part prefers B to A. A smoker may have a craving that makes her prefer smoking to abstinence—she may also have a concern for her health, or for an ideal of cleanliness, that makes her prefer abstinence to smoking. She may simultaneously take pleasure in smoking and despise it. Here conflicting attitudes give rise to essentially conflicting preferences. Preferences that directly or noncontingently conflict cannot be represented in a single preference ordering. If human beings are conflicted, their desires must be represented by multiple, conflicting preference rankings. But then which preference ranking constitutes the authoritative standard of value, according to rational desire theorists? It might be replied that motivational conflict will disappear once a person assumes the ideally rational standpoint of calm, calculatively competent, fully informed repose.

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I have two reasons for doubting that this is a realistic expectation for human beings. One is rooted in human biology. Some of our motivational dispositions, notably appetites, drives, and instincts, are impervious to rational reflection. Even after people are fully informed of the dangers of drinking saltwater, their thirst for it does not go away when they are adrift in the ocean with no other water available. A little speculation about human evolution suggests why we are inherently conflicted beings. Because humans evolved from non-rational animals, we inherited many of their motivational capacities, which of course were not sensitive to rational reflection on the implications of acting on them. As human ancestors developed new motivational capacities subject to more sophisticated controls—for example, foresight and planning, commitment, and social attitudes such as shame and honor, governed by social norms—these were simply overlain on more primitive capacities without completely supplanting them or subsuming them under the new controls. The noncognitive control mechanisms for these primitive motivational capacities are also not completely effective in reigning them in. A second reason for thinking that motivational conflict is inevitable is rooted in society. Many of the most important interests, desires, and attitudes people have are attributable to their social roles and responsibilities. But there is no pre-established harmony among the different social roles and responsibilities a given individual might assume, or among the social norms governing the attitudes appropriate to each role. Even if, in some idyllic primitive society, there was once some such functional harmony of roles and attitudes, historical change would have guaranteed its disruption. Social roles often lose their point, whereas the attitudes informing them persist and get reinterpreted and redirected. Individuals assume new social roles, or they combine roles in unanticipated ways. The demands of wage labor and professional life, originally tailored to suit the life cycles of men with minimal dependent care responsibilities, conflict with the demands of family life once women enter the workplace and the gendered division of domestic labor is called into question. Because social norms are informed by essentially contestable concepts, there is no way to put a close to the conflicts generated by reinterpreting them, or any way to finally reconcile the attitudes informed by them. Because individuals cannot tailor their social role-given aims and attitudes to suit themselves, they will always find themselves conflicted. They can of course join with others to produce social changes to eliminate contradictions that have become intolerable. But history gives us every reason to believe that such change will produce new contradictions elsewhere. (This is not a conser-

,r ;

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vative argument against social change. Some contradictions are manifestly better to live with than others, particularly in respect of the opportunities they afford for people to develop new capacities in meeting the challenges they pose.) Given that human beings' motivations must be represented by conflicting, multiple preference rankings even when they are ideally rational, which ranking is supposed to represent the order of value according to rational desire theory? One might propose that the strongest preference one has under these circumstances is the authoritative one for us. Preference strength can be measured either by felt intensity or by motivational effectiveness. Neither interpretation satisfies the reflective self-endorsement test. Desires differ in their phenomenological feel—some are visceral cravings, like hunger and thirst; others are emotional, like the desires expressing passionate love and hate; others are urgent, like the need for information about a disaster involving loved ones; still others are virtually without affect, as are most habits, such as the desire to get dressed in the morning. But the authority of desire has little to do with its felt intensity—if it did, I should let my cravings always override my habits. Yet if I get up late for work, I may judge it more important to get dressed fast than to eat breakfast, although my hunger is intense. The need to work may be urgendy felt without its being an object of craving or felt attraction. And how are we to compare the intensity of a craving with the intensity of felt urgency? The authority of desire does not correspond with its motivational effectiveness. If it did, people would never suffer from weakness of will, because they would always endorse whatever desire actually moved them to action. Perhaps second-order desires indicate which first-order desires are authoritative for a person. The preference that sets the standard of value is the preference that one wants to have. So, in the smoker's case, it is not only that part of her wants to smoke and part of her wants to abstain but she also wants to not want to smoke. And this would seem to tilt the judgment in favor of the desire for abstinence. But this can't be right. There is no guarantee that second-order desires are characterized by any less conflict than first-order desires. And why should one accord more authority to a desire, just because its object is a desire rather than some other state of affairs? One can be afflicted by second-order desires which persist from early childhood indoctrination, but which one no longer endorses. Can the type of desire indicate its authority for a person? Clearly habits, instincts, appetites, impulses, whims, and other nonevaluative desires have

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no automatic authority for us. We all know occasions when we would not endorse our acting on these motivations, even when they are felt most strongly. Perhaps, then, the authoritative preferences are those that represent our evaluative desires, the desires that express our rational attitudes or valuings, such as respect, admiration, love, and contempt. But the mere fact that a desire expresses admiration as opposed to some non-rational response such as nausea or hunger does not, as such, give it special authority. One may well have better reasons for acting on a desire prompted by nausea than on one prompted by admiration. A person may feel charmed by someone, such as a charismatic religious leader, who she thinks is a charlatan. In such a case, her feeling of charm is not wholly responsive to her judgments of merit, and she withholds endorsement from her feeling and from desires that express it. I conclude that neither the strength, nor the order, nor the type of a desire can determine its authority for us. When rational preferences conflict, we cannot turn to any of these intrinsic attributes of desire to determine which sets the standard of value. Any proposal that constructs the ground of value just by the kind, strength, or order of a desire one has in naturalistically described "rational" circumstances fails the reflective self-endorsement test. One might say that the authoritative, value-signifying preference is the preference one endorses, all things considered. But if this formula is to transcend the limitations of the second-order preference criterion, it must include among the things considered standards external to rational desire itself, to determine which preferences signify action-guiding values. My pluralistic-expressive theory provides such standards. It claims that if a person has an appropriate attitude toward an object, and if she has a desire that adequately expresses that attitude, then that desire is valuesignifying—its object is valuable. The value-signifying character of rational evaluative desires is parasitic upon the value-signifying character of rational emotions or valuations. Only because some desires express underlying rational attitudes do they indicate what is valuable to us. Being the object of a rational desire is neither necessary nor sufficient for being good. It is not necessary because some things can be the object of favorable rational attitudes that do not generate desires. It is not sufficient because some desires that persist when one is fully informed, calm, and so forth fail the reflective self-endorsement test. The fundamental value-signifying attitudes are emotion-laden, mostly non-propositional valuings, not desires or preferences. This resolves the first conflict between pluralism and rational desire theory. The two theo-

$8 * Monistic Theories of Value

ries agree that the good is the object of a favorable rational attitude, while disagreeing on which attitudes set the standards for goodness. The second disagreement concerns the standards for determining when an attitude is rational. Rational desire theory specifies these standards in naturalistic or nonevaluative terms, pluralism in thick evaluative terms. I do not think that any set of standards specified in strictly nonevaluative terms captures all the ways in which attitudes can be rationally criticized. There is no set of naturalistically described circumstances such that one is bound to endorse whatever attitude one has in those circumstances. Consider the naturalistic conditions for rationality widely proposed in the literature: that one be in the "cool hour" of reflection, fully and repeatedly informed of all relevant information, and competent in processing information and calculating probabilities. There are many ways one could criticize the value-signifying purport of even the attitudes one has under these conditions. First, consider the concept of "relevant" information and "competent" processing. Is it relevant information that a certain object meets a particular thick standard of evaluation—that a deed was courageous or mean, that a sentiment is smarmy or sincere, that an excuse is lame or compelling? If this information is excluded, then we are at a loss to formulate any attitudes toward the objects in question beyond such primitive ones of like and dislike. Some attitudes like respect, appreciation, admiration, and moral approval are essentially constituted by norms for response that discriminate between thickly described objects. It is absurd to confine value-signifying attitudes to those that are not governed by thickly described norms. But if thick evaluative information is included, then it would seem that the conditions for rationality are no longer naturalistic. One response to this is to refuse to discriminate between authentic and unauthentic thick descriptions in the definition of "full information." Let "full information" include all characterizations of the objects in question from all evaluative perspectives, and let people respond however they may to this barrage. This refusal to evaluate the evaluations presented could restore the naturalistic character of the definition of full information. I suspect that a characteristic human response to such presentation would be confusion, ambivalence, and conflict. Surely one need not endorse whatever attitudes one has under information overload. The naturalist may respond by identifying the good not in terms of the actual responses one would have under full information, but with the responses one would have if one s cognitive capacities were enormously inflated to accommodate such information (Railton 1986). Must I

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endorse the attitudes my cognitively enhanced self would have? The answer partly depends on an evaluation of my own character. Suppose I have a tendency toward arrogance and superciliousness which would expand proportionately with an increase in cognitive capacity. My cognitively enhanced self might regard my actual self with patronizing contempt. But surely this does not give me a reason to so regard myself or for me to adopt the groveling attitudes my cognitively enhanced self may think are appropriate for a being of my limited capacities. Enhanced information and cognitive capacities can corrupt character and judgment as surely as they can improve it. Even if we could postulate away the confusions created by full information, we could still raise questions about how a computationally competent person will process it. Naturalists hope that this information can be processed in "value-free reflection" (Brandt 1979, p. 113). It just wafts over ones consciousness, and desires emerge without one having consciously reflected on the merits of one's responses to that information. If sophisticated emotions such as love and respect are involved in the generation of desire, this hope is absurd. One can try to suppress reflection on the merits of one's emotional responses to facts. But one's emotions would still be unconsciously reacting more or less according to norms for feeling that distinguish between objects described in thick evaluative terms. Evaluation would still be going on, but without conscious monitoring. This kind of unreflectiveness obviously cannot be reflectively endorsed. It amounts to the recommendation that we act on the immediate promptings of emotion, without considering whether our emotions are appropriate or whether the desires prompted by them adequately express such emotions. Alternatively, the demand for "value-free reflection" could amount to the demand for information processing from which one's sophisticated (norm-governed) emotions have been disengaged. This is not unimaginable. Lobotomy patients are known to have extremely dulled and detached emotions. Perhaps, then, naturalistic rational desire theorists should persuade us that our good consists in what we would want if we were lobotomized but could still do math. Naturalists try to substitute for the question: do these facts merit this attitude? the question: do these facts cause this attitude? I believe that no matter how the facts are presented to a person however naturalistically constituted, she always has room to ask whether her resulting attitudes are rational or merited or endorsable. She has no reason to give up evaluative reasoning. Naturalistic rational desire theorists have tried to persuade people to give it up by attacking the intuitions on which it is based. We

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have seen in the last chapter how unconvincing these attacks are. It is true, as naturalists insist, that our intuitions may always be prone to errors such as prejudice and superstition. One could guarantee that one would never make such errors by giving up these intuitions. But to do so would be to give up the entire panoply of emotions that make our lives meaningful, to reduce our lives to a wormlike existence. Worms, indeed, do not make evaluative errors. But this hardly means that their "way of life" is appropriate for us. Some rational desire theorists, such as James GrifFm, agree that the conditions of rationality cannot be fixed in nonevaluative terms. Full information must include an understanding of thoughts expressed in terms of adequately evolved thick concepts (1986, pp. 12—13). Welfaretracking desires must be cultivated under conditions of justice and appropriate self-regard, so that they do not merely reflect adaptation to oppressive circumstances. In rejecting naturalism, such a theory approaches the evaluations of pluralist-expressive theory. Because the good for a person includes states of affairs that she cannot influence, rational desire theory must interpret "desire" to include more than motivational states—for example, wishes, hopes, and likings. Once the theory has gone this far, why resist the idea that all rational favorable attitudes are value-signifying? At this point, the distinctive function of desire disappears and is replaced by other favorable attitudes. This would be the superior solution, since it avoids the trap of endorsing all nonevaluative desires that resist rational reflection.

7 • The Ethical Limitations of the Market

7.1 Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics Political theorists have often justified liberal practices by appealing to pluralism. My theory of value is pluralistic in two ways that are relevant to political theory: it acknowledges a plurality of authentic but conflicting ideals and conceptions of the good, andjt_xlajjns jh^,.di]£exexilLJdnxis_of goojds^are^ajioj^ally^^ Liberals appeal to the pluralism of ideals to justify individual rights to liberty against state interference in their personal choices. Thj^grounds^ the liberal jiivisian public andprivate spheres. The_second kind ojjjlumHsmj^ robiistjystern of social spherejiifferentiation that jrequ^sjhar^^liir^te jDih th£J>£or2e_jQi^ theory has not yet come to grips with the full implications for human freedom and flourishing of this most expansionary institution of the modern world. In the next three chapters of this book I will focus on the limits of the market. I will show that an adequate grasp of liberal commitments to freedom, autonomy, and welfare supports more stringent limits on markets than most liberal theories have supposed. The need to limit markets is based on a pluralistic theory of the social conditions for freedom and autonomy. Call a person free if she has access tg a wide range of significant options through which she can express her diverse valuations. Individuals require social settings, governed by distinct | social norms recognized and endorsed by others, to develop and express; their different valuations (§1.4). Because people y^h^e^diShj^nX^QQ^in difiercn-t.ways^rthjeit freedom requires the availability of a variety of social sgheres that embody these different modes of valuation. Freedom thus requiresIjnultigle[sphere differentiation—•boundaries^ not just between the staJ^jmdjjbLe^mar^ self-expression, such as family, friendship,.,xlub^ art, science,

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religion, and charitable and ideal-based associations (compare 1989, pp. 173-174). Call a person autonomous if she confidently governs herself by principles and valuations she reflectively endorses. Autonomy can be undermined internally by addictions, compulsions, phobias, and other neuroses, which motivate a person in ways she cannot reflectively endorse. It can be undermined externally by social stigmatization and relations of domination. Stigmajization under mines the self-jesp^ct^j^^on^ngeds to take ho]iyaluatiojris.senQusly. Relations of domination give others^h tell one what~xa.dQ or to force., one tp_dp_sojm^hing^wjthaujLliayirig_to J c^nisaltxu:xespQnd..to.Qnes own judgmen&^Autonomy can be realized on a collective scale through democratic institutions. Collective autonomy consists in collective self-governance by principles and valuations that everyone, or the majority, reflectively endorses. It can be undermined by any non-democratic institution that controls political outcomes. Autonomy, like freedom, requires social conditions for its realization that demand significant constraints on the scope of the market and private property rights. The discriminatory use of business property stigmatizes members of excluded groups and diminishes the range of significant options open to them. Liberals propose a differentiation within the private sphere between the personal sphere and civil society to solve this problem. While individuals are free not to befriend or marry members of groups they hate, they may not close their businesses to customers or job-seekers who belong to such groups. Protection of autonomy may sometimes regujre.^rohibiting the commodification of some things. Prohibiting the sale of addictive drugs can help preserve autonomy for individuals suscer>tible to drugjbuse. Prohibiting the sale of votes helps preserve collective^ autonomy_by blocking one way the wealthy may try to control political outcomes. ^ M o s t important to the preservation of autonomy^are goods embodied in the person, such as frejejbm^ojfj£tion and the powers of productive d reproductive labor. To selljihese goods to another ith retaining rights to^consultation^ self-judgment, and control over^the conditions in which one acts is to redu£e^one^s autonomy by_subjecting ojiesejfjto another s domination. TLihej^Ddlf o™1** recognize this as a reason \ for prohibiting thesale of persons into slavery, but they often fail to think through its imrjEcations for employment contracts,,and for contract involving a person's sexuaj_and regroductive powers.1 Autonomy requires that many fights ip oursejve^r^^ali^ab^) ^TKe seco'nH kind ot pluralism affirms the liberal commitment to •

• > * . ? / • /

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freedom and autonomy buj^_dej^pen^ -^ under which they are realized. These conditions provide two grounds for constraining the scope of markets. Constraints may be needed to secure the robust sphere differentiation required to create a significant range of options through which people can express a wide range of valuations. And they may be needed to protect individual or collective autonomy. Lfbx^ to secure .freedom ion" can-be practiced to promote other Hbej^aims, such as, equality,-justice (Walzer 4983, 19R4)r,iricliyiduality, sndLB.ejjtr^lity (Herzpg 1989). These aims may require further constraints on the market. My theory of sphere differentiation resembles Michael Walzer s (1983). But Walz^r_^ontends that the properJbojandajies,,bej^ejen jodaX.sgheres can be dexiyj^^^ isg^Qf-^^-Sd^which are taken...as,&Q^ This view encounters familiar difficulties: shared understandings, if they exist at all, are often riddled with contradictions and confusions, are^stel^hedjn relations of domination that sikna^ t h e ^ e x ^ society, and fail to meet the pragmatic demancls,. sja^h as_ the £^ oLsoeial order, that people ask of them (Dworkin 1984; Daniels 1985; Cohen 1986; Herzog 1989, pp. 162-171). Walzer is right in maintaining that shared understandings are the proper starting point of political argument. But justification need not be confined to such understandings. It allows for conceptual innovation in the space of reasons (§5.3). Justification also requires equality of the participants, so as to avoid a false consensus achieved by force or domination. With these qualifications in mind, let us consider in detail the ethical limitations of the market. 7.2 The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market Pluralism says that goods differ in kind if they are properly valued in different ways that are expressed by norms governing different social relations. Economic goods are goods that are properly valued as commodities and properly produced and exchanged in accordance with market norms. The proper Hmits xdC the market are partly defined by answering the following questionsCjFirst/do market norms do a better job of embodying thejwaysj^ve properly value^ a particuIaFgood than nonSFof other spKeres? If not, then^we^n^SdnT*'treat: th^nTas commocUties but rather locate them in non-majr^e££pheres. Second, do market norms, when they govern the circulation of a particular good, undermine importantTcfeals

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144 • The Ethical Limitations of the Market

such as freedom^^autonomy, and equality, or important interests lggitimately protected by the state? If so, the state may act to remove the good from control by market norms. We can understand the nature of economic goods by investigating the ways we value commodities; the social relations within which we produce, distribute, and enjoy them, and the ideals these relations are supposed to embody. I call the mode of valuation appropriate to pure commodities "I-KP"^Hsp^L^J^gggrC^ exclusive mode of valuation. It is contrastedjwjtfa higher rriode£ of valuation, such as respect. / To merely use something i§ to subordinate if tn onf's.._QwnT_^mi^jWTfhnnt regard for its.,intrinsic value. When owners of David Smith sculptures stripped the sculptures' paint to enhance their market value, they treated UrV\ •A* them as mere use-values, disregarding their intrinsic aesthetic worth in favor of their usefulness for independently defined ends.v^The^imriexsQnality of use is contrasted with valuing something for its, p£XSQjnaLaJ£a.chments to oneself, as when O ne cherishes an heirloom. Mere usg-Yalues^re d w iit h commodity at some f u n g i b l e a n d are tracLed n i , equanimity e i q u a m i m . i ^ j for v i . i Sany M f ,other v «***•.=•_=. _. . i d i p l a c e a b l e It price. But a cherished item is valued as unique and irreplaceable. is often sold only under duress, and its loss is felt personally (Simmel 1978, pp. 123, 404, 407; Radin 1982, 1987).2 The exclusivity of use-values is contrasted with shared goods. Commodity values can be enjoyed in use by oneself or by private groups, excluding those with whom one exchanges the good. But the value to oneself of shared goods is dependent upon other people in civil society, or the people with whom one exchanges the good, also enjoying the same items according to shared understandings of what it means. For example, the site of a historical event may be valued as part of the national heritage, or the layout of a neighborhood valued as the locus of a community. The most important ideal the modernjnarketai&empts to embody is^an iije^onoi^ Economic freedom)consists in having ^both a large menu of choices in the mai^etplzc^Snaexclusive power to use what one buys there at will. ItjeavelTone free fromTthe constraints on use required to realize goods as hjgherv personal, or shared: it permits one to disregard or destroy the intrinsic value of what one owns; it gives one access to goods independent of one's personal characteristics or relations n^ s to others: and it leaves one free from uncontracted obligations to others, | free to disregard their desires and value judgments, and free to exclude ern from xcre<^ yp what onejjwns^ The norms structuring market relations that govern the production, circulation, and valuation of economic goods have five features that

express the attitudes s nding use and embody th^ econornic ideal of freedom: they are ^ ^^goisticj)(exclusive^ ^ ^ant-regarding^ and oriented to "exit" rather than ^oiceT iceT^Norms with these features, though not goveTfim^pdi-T3^ are characteristic of the market. h They express a shared understanding of the point and meaning of market relations recognized by every experienced participant. Consider these features in more detail. The norms governing market relations are impersonal/suitable for reg- f) ulating the interactions of strangers. Each ^rty^tora market transaction views his relation tqTEFonieF£sTnerely a means to the satisfaction of ends defined independent of the relationship and of tne otKer party's ends. The parties have no pre^c^nTraHu^ToEGgSioliFto provlcle each"other with the goods they exchange. They deal with each other on an explicit, quid pro quo basis that serves to guarantee mobility. Because market transactions can be completed so as to leave no unpaid debts on either side, they leave the parties free to switch trading partners at any time. The impersonality of market relations thus defines a sphere of freedomjxom_personal ties and A£t obligations. Impersonal freedom also implies that one need not exhibit F&fe specific personal characteristics or invoke special relationships to gain access to the goods traded on the market. Money income, not one's social status, characteristics, or relationships, determines one's access to commodities. The impersonality of the market has been evolving for centuries, and, in some cases, notably regarding discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, itstijl has; a longway to go.3 The market lejyesJts_r^tic^ajnLts free without comideririg.^^ers^ injterests. Each party to a market transaction is expected to take_care_of Jierself JEver^ extenslo^i^of the^naxket thus represents an extension of the domain of e^oismpN^vhereL ea£h party defines and satisfies her interests inderxe^^^ But individuals' interests are independently definable and satisfiable only with respecjLto-gQods that are exclusive and are rivals in consumption. A good i§ exclusive if access to its benefits is limited to the purchaser. If there is n£ means of excluding people from enjoying a good, one cannpj;.chargeajnarke4price Tor it. A good is a rival in consumption if the amount that one person consumes reduces the total amount of it available to others (Fisher 1981, p. 175). The use-value of commodities is rival, since it is tied to the distinct ends of the person who appropriates and uses it. One cannot give the value of a rival good to another without losing it oneself. Shared goods, by contrast, are not rival. I do not lose, but rather enhance, my knowledge or my pleasure in a joke by conveying these goods to others.

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The market is a want-regarding institution, jt^ responds to "effective demand"—desires backed by the ability to p a y f o x ^ arc^excHaiiged without regard for the reasons ^9S^J^£^3I.J^^^i^ trremTTThe" marEet^does not draw any distinction between urgent needs trremTTThe marEetdoes not draw any distinc g i d i h i h n be backed by and intense desires or between reflective desires, which can reasons, and mere tastes. Since it offers no means for discriminating among the reasons people have for wanting or providing things, it cannot function as a forum for the justification of principles about the things traded on it. Tl^jhe^market provides individual. freedojrijrom the value judgments of others. It does, not regard any one individu.al!s^xefki£iicexas ttl^ than anyone e^e's^_But it provides irjlrjuasjcjjly. less .worcay ..ui . i a u ^^v ww+x ..vw.«m. ^* / . v -...^ ..^_. f h ^ e ^ ^ pTO o i n ^ o f \ this freedom at the cost of reducing preferenceSi from the rnarketj____ / view, to jnere,^matters of taste^ about which it is pointiess^to dispute (Sheffrin 1978). '""~ Individuals influence the provision and exchange of commodities mainly through "exit)' not "voice" (Hirschman 1970). The counterpart to the custoniei^lfreedom to exit a;„.tradings relationship is the^owner's freedom to say "take it or leave it." The customer has no voice, no right to djrecj^^afflapate in the design of the product or to determine how it is marketed._Where the good being sold is embodied in the person, voice may be alienated to the buyer. Emgloyinent contracts in capitalist firms that are unmediated by union njpg^ajH rm^nj^r^frQQI r>n a 1 qtan H prHS 4 > ] ^ th£ worker u worker in in ^esjjnej^ojcjek^ the sjmej^oicele^ position positiQi> a§fa a^ the customer. I shall say that a thing is a pure economic good if its production, distribution, and enjoyment are properly governed by the five norms above and its value can be fully realized through use. This defines what may be called the ideal type of an economic good, tied to an ideal typical account of market norms. Ideal type analysis has limitations. Any particular social institution or practice may diverge from its ideal type in many ways and include mixtures of norms from other social spheres.^rhejxorms that govern our actual practices at present often inadequately express the ideals these practices are supposed to embody. My arguments focus on concerns that find little place in the standard models of welfare economics and justice. The standard models highlight other important concerns, such as efficiency. Any move from an evaluation of ideal types to an evaluation of actual practices must be informed by a detailed empirical investigation of the actual norms they embody, how well these norms express the ideals in terms of which they are justified, and how well the practices fare by other criteria such as justice and efficiency. Because I cannot provide such details here, the cases I discuss in this chapter should

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be taken as illustrations of the kinds of arguments I wish to endorse, and not as comprehensive evaluations of the practices in question. In the next three sections I will consider limitations of the market with respect to partially commodified goods of civil society, goods of personal life, and goods of the political sphere. 7.3 Civil Society and the Market Civil society defines a sphere of interaction that ideally is open to all its members on the same terms, independent of their personal relations to others, their social status, or their occupation of government office. Civil society includes markets, profit-making firms, nonprofit institutions such as hospitals and schools, professional associations and labor unions, political parties and action groups, and philanthropic and ideal-based organizations. Although the state may regulate and even fund these institutions, individuals pursue their own purposes in them, which are defined by internal institutional ideals and functions rather than by state fiat. And though individuals may engage in market transactions in their non-market institutional- or role-given capacities, their activities are not and should not be comprehensively governed by market norms. The scope of the market is limited by other roles and institutions in civil society. The proper relationship of these other institutions to the market raises delicate questions of boundary setting. Consider the status of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, academics, athletes, and artists who sell their services. Excellent performance in professional roles is judged by the standards of goods internal to the practice rather than by external instrumental criteria such as profitability. Academics pursue understanding, athletes win games, artists produce aesthetic value, and so forth. Adherence to their defining ideals and goals often involves forgoing opportunities for making money. When professionals sell their services, they enter into market relations that impose norms on their activities which potentially conflict with the norms of excellence internal to their professional roles. The goods internal to these professions become partially commodified. Pluralism does not repudiate such mixed practices. Sphere differentiation should not be confused with complete sphere segregation. The freedom of professionals to sell their services promotes equality of opportunity and autonomy. Achieving excellence in the professions is a fulltime activity. If professionals could not be paid for their work, only independently wealthy people would be able to pursue it. Professionals can make a living at what they do by selling their services on the market,

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seeking private patrons, or obtaining state funding. The market offers some advantages over the other two sources of support. When professional artists and doctors depended on private patrons, their fates were closely tied to the whims and fortunes of one or a few individuals, and they often lost voice over their activities. Reliance on the state can also be dangerous, since one must be careful not to offend the political interests of those in power. The option of marketing one s products or services to the general public can enhance autonomy by restoring voice to self-employed professionals who set their own terms of sale before making contact with their customers. But the market is no panacea, either. If professionals are employees of profit-making firms, their autonomy can be compromised by the firm's demand to make a profit. Greed can also corrupt self-employed professionals. Artists may pander to public taste rather than challenging it. Lawyers may act merely as hired guns for their clients, harassing those against whom their clients have no genuine legal case. Doctors may perform profitable but medically unwarranted services on ignorant or demanding patients. Some of these dangers can be alleviated through employment by nonprofit organizations, such as museums, hospitals, and universities, whose defining aims are the promotion of goods internal to professional practice. Professional autonomy and integrity are enhanced by differentiation within civil society between profit and nonprofit institutions. This differentiation can be sustained only if market norms do not wholly govern exchanges of money for professional products or services. Yet some regard market norms as providing the only normatively valid framework for such transactions. This thought lies behind the case for government censorship of the art that it funds. This argument accepts as ethically axiomatic that whoever pays for a good may refuse to pay for any goods that fail to meet her specifications.4 Hence the National Endowment of the Arts acts within its rights when it refuses to fund art it regards as obscene or politically offensive. The argument views the state as a customer with absolute rights to exit, while it regards state-sponsored art as a mere commodity, the production of which should be purely wantregarding. The same argument would uphold the former policy of the exSoviet Union of funding only Lysenkoist genetic theory and of firing scientists who opposed this fraudulent and politically corrupt research program. In general, the state would have the right to fund only public universities and academics whose research and teaching slavishly parroted the party line of state officials, or perhaps the political opinions of the majority of citizens.

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If the state should promote citizens' freedom and autonomy, it may not regard itself as a customer with respect to all the projects it funds. Its proper aim in funding projects is not to serve the political interests of the state, the self-interest of its officials, or even the tastes of the majority, but to expand the range of significant opportunities open to its citizens by supporting institutions that enable them to govern themselves by the norms internal to the modes of valuation appropriate to different kinds of goods. Art and science constitute significant domains of human pursuit, each requiring institutions enabling people to regulate their activities in accordance with standards of excellence internal to them. Firms that produce art or science for profit do not fully meet these enabling conditions because they subordinate truth-seeking and aesthetic production to external commercial standards of profitability. Profit and nonprofit art and science institutions that need to charge high prices for access to their products in order to survive exclude all but the wealthy from the opportunities they provide and also mistakenly treat nonrival goods as if they were rivals in consumption. Private philanthropy often undersupplies opportunities to the general public and distorts supply in the interests of snobbery and elitism. State funding of artistic and scientific projects, in which the assignment of grants is determined by peer review rather than by political criteria, can therefore play an irreplaceable role in enhancing the freedom and autonomy of citizens (compare Dworkin 1985, pp. 227—233). Such funding will often result in artistic production that is offensive to public tastes, and scientific theories, such as evolution, that are offensive to popular beliefs. But autonomy is enhanced by providing opportunities for people to learn and grow, even when these opportunities offend, by challenging, their present beliefs and desires. Neither freedom nor autonomy is correctly defined in terms of the satisfaction of given desires or conformity to given beliefs. Both scientific valuation and modern aesthetic appreciation engage a potentiality for self-transcendence, which can be actualized only by permitting experiments that may also fail. The state therefore should recognize the boundary between itself and civil society by not regarding itself as a customer for all the projects it funds. One might object that state control always accompanies state funding; consequently, the hope that the state can enhance autonomy is illusory. Whatever its source, external funding tends to influence the content of what is funded. Because professionals must rely on some outside funding, this is an argument that their autonomy is best preserved by a diversity of funding sources, public and private.5 The autonomy-compromising effects of reliance on outside funding can often be more severe in the market or

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the private domain than in state funding. Many fields of research in the humanities and the basic sciences would receive very little if they had to be commercially profitable or interest a private philanthropist. Liberal institutions have managed to secure high degrees of autonomy for many professionals whose activities are funded by the state. State universities have not done a notably worse job than private universities in protecting academic freedom, and in both cases, despite serious lapses, their performances have been remarkably good. The choice of institutional sponsorship of professional acjdvity^sJLess impoxtaut than the norms governing its sponsorship. The state compromises autonomy and hinders the pursuit of the non-economic goods internal to professional practices when it adopts market norms for allocating funds. Profit-making firms can promote non-economic goods internal to professions if they regulate their activities by non-market norms. The commissioner of baseball and the draft system introduce nonmarket norms into professional baseball which help preserve goods internal to the sport that are undermined by pure competitive markets in players and complete private property rights in teams. tDiiaxkel norms pose a constant threat to the autonomy of professions jind the integrity of goods internal to them, they may be to some degree Jndispensable, because the professions require external sources of funding. Since funds are limited, efficiency considerations should influence allocative decisions. Physicians would have no difficulty spending the entire GNP on health care if they were guided solely by the aims internal to their practice. Incentive systems structured by market norms might play a useful role in preventing waste. Unfortunately, no incentive system simple enough to save more than the costs of monitoring its implementation reliably tracks the standards of good care internal to medical practice. Compromise is required here. The goods of professional practice are, perhaps inevitably, partially commodified, and they require hybrid institutiojas- in civil society that combine market with non-market norms for their proper provision. 7.4 Personal Relations and the Market The modern Western opposition of personal and with market relationships is the product of historical processes that separated economic production from the household (Nelson 1969; Lasch 1977; Zaretsky 1986). In this section I will focus on two of the many ideals distinctive to the sphere of personal relations: intimacy and commitment. Living on inti-

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mate terms with another person involves sharing private concerns and cherished emotions attuned to the others personal characteristics. This is the romantic side of personal relations, involving passion, affection, and trust, but not necessarily devotion, as the romantic relationship may end as soon as the passions that animate it subside. The deepest ideal of commitment involves dedicating oneself to permanently living a shared life with another person. The goodness of such a life for each partner is shared. It partially consists in the fact that the other partner also enjoys this life, that each partner realizes this, and that she knows that the other knows. One committed and loving partner cannot unequivocally rejoice in his life with his partner if he knows that the other finds the relationship oppressive in some way. Commitment to a shared life, such as a marriage, requires redefining one's interests as part of a couple. A person's committed interest in the aims of the marriage can be neither defined nor satisfied independent of her being joined with, her partner in marriage. These ideals inform the ways we value the people with whom we have personal relationships and the goods we exchange with them. The goods exchanged and jointly realized in friendship are not merely used but cherished and appreciated, for they are expressions of shared understandings, affections, and commitments. The jjoods proper to the personal sphere can be fully realized only through!gifl^excnang?] They cannot be procured by paying others to produce them, because the worth of these goods depends upon the motives people have in providing them. Among these goods are trust, loyalty, sympathy, affection, and companionship. The norms of gift exchange differ from the norms of market exchange in several respects (Mauss 1967; Titmuss 1971; Sahlins 1972; Hyde 1983). Gift exchange affirms and perpetuates the ties that bind the donor and the recipient. To refuse an appropriate gift is to insult a friend by failing to acknowledge or sustain a friendship. Gift exchange aims to realize a shared good in the relationship itself, whereas market exchange aims to realize distinct goods for each party. Although both forms of exchange involve reciprocity, the form and timing of the return of goods differ in the two cases. In market exchange, an uncontracted delay in reciprocation is cause for legal action. But the exchange of gifts among friends usually incorporates an informal understanding of reciprocity only in the long term. To be anxious to "settle accounts" of small sums, as when one person insists upon splitting a restaurant tab exactly in half, calculating sums to the penny, is to reject the logic of friendship. The delay in reciprocation expresses an intrinsic valuation of the recipient: gifts are given for the

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friend's sake, not merely for the sake of obtaining some good for oneself in return. The accounting mentality reflects an unwillingness to be in the debt of another and, hence, an unwillingness to enter into the longer term commitments such debts entail. The debts friends owe to one another are not of a kind that they can be repaid so as to leave nothing between them. (Debts involving large sums are another matter, since they threaten the relative financial self-sufficiency that is presupposed by modern friendship in market-based economies between equals who are not kin.) Friendly gift: exchange is responsive to the personal characteristics of friends and to the particular qualities of their relationship. We seek to give gifts to our friends that have more than a merely generic meaning. For gifts express friends' mutual understanding of how their relationship stands (or how the giver wishes it to be) and not merely a good of impersonal use-value to the receiver. This is evident not only in cases of such material gifts as engagement rings, but also in the exchange of compliments, affections, and jokes. This is why cash is usually an inappropriate gift between friends: because it can be used by anyone to acquire any commodity, it expresses nothing of the giver s personality, of any particular thought the giver had for the receiver, or of the receiver's interests.6 These differences between personal and market norms can help us explore how personal goods are undermined when market norms_govern their circulation. The thought that authentic personal goodsj*re jmdernunedjwhen this happens has been challenged by femimsjjhe^ 1 n,f 3fp
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intimacy is taken to mean that a husband can force his wife to have sexual intercourse while immune from a charge of rape, and where commitment is enforced by women's economic dependency on their husbands, gravely J compromising their powers of exit, there is much room to question how | much women's sexual, emotional, and reproductive "gifts" to men are freely given, how much they express women's own valuations rather than men's valuations of them, and how much the gifts they receive in return reinforce their subordination. Where men's dignity and functioning in civil society is staked in their power to neglect the concerns of women's reproductive and household labor, the unexplicit basis of gift exchange in marriage leaves women performing labor indispensable to men's economic productivity, yet invisible or undervalued in the scheme of heterosexual reciprocity. This in turn puts women in a perpetual debt of asymmetrical gratitude for male "favors," which is discharged by submission to their wishes (Pateman 1988; Okin 1989; Papanek 1990; Sen 1990). These feminist criticisms of present embodiments of heterosexual intimacy and commitment are accessible within the standpoints of these ^ ideals. They reinforce Mill's argument that true friendship in marriage can be fully realized only when the partners are related as equals (1975). Intimacy requires honesty and sensitivity to each other's needs. These are undermined by gendered power relations that impose penalties on women for revealing their dissatisfactions to their partners and that legitimate male contempt for housework and childcare. Commitment to a shared life requires dialogue on terms of mutual respect. These are undermined byl gendered norms of conversation that represent women's conversational ? claims as less credible or less worthy of respect than men's, that permit men to decide that a woman's "no" means "yes," and that represent conversations directed toward sharing feelings as a threat to the autonomy! and independence constitutive of masculinity (Tannen 1990). j Far from presenting a sentimentalized representation of the goods proper to the personal sphere, the ideals of intimacy and cornrnitment provide a perspective from which to radically criticize what currently goes on there. This provides grounds for warinej^jboju^pro^^als to freei women from subordination in the personal sphere by using market norms j to regulate the exchange of women's sexual and reproductive powers. These proposals draw their strength from an individualist view that regards all moves from "status" to "contract," from obligations determined internally to a socially defined form of relationship to obligations freely shaped by the will of the parties, as triumphs for freedom and equality. Consider

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two such proposals: the legalization of prostitution and the detailed marriage contract proposed by Ms magazine. In le^lizing prostitution^ the state would accord women property rights in their bocEes that they lack at present. This would enable them to legitimately utilize their sexuality for economic gain without being tied to a particular man w h o provides them with subsistence. This is thought to represent an advance in women's economic freedom over the present situation, which legally permits women only to give away their sexuality, and which enables them to gain subsistence in return only by exclusively committing themselves to one husband or lover at a time. From a pluralist standpoint, prostitution is the classic example of j i p w CQjxTymiOiJj^ and its giyer.fl'fie specifically human good of sexual acSjIxchanged as gifts is founded upon a mutual recognition of the partners as sexually attracted to each other and as affirming an intimate relationship in their mutual offering of themselves to each other. This is a shared good. The couple rejoices in their union, which can be realized only when each partner reciprocates the other's gift in kind, offering her own sexuality in the same spirit in which she received the others—as a genuine offering of the self. T h e commodification of sexual "services" destroys the kind of reciprocity required to realize human sexuality as a shared good. Each party values the other only instrumentally, not intrinsically. But the nature of the good exchanged implies a particular degradation of the prostitute, The customer's cash payment is impersonal and fully alienable, jin paying the;_,p^ojt^te Jxej^lds^jio power over his personjojber. The prostitute seUs her own sexuality, Jwhich is necessarily

embodiedin her persoriufln appropriating her sexuality for his own use, the customer expresses a (de)valuation of women as rightfully male sexual ,U*Avt ( property, as objects to be used for men's own sexual purposes, whicjijieed () not respond to the woman's, own personal needs. i' This argument shows that commodified sex is degraded and degrading | to the prostitute. It does not show that the sale of sexual services should be 1 prohibited. Why shouldn't people have the freedom to enjoy inferior goods? And why shouldn't women have the freedom to get something of I economic value from their sexuality? I have argued that the state has a case for prohibiting or restricting commodification of a good if doing so increases freedom—significant opportunities for people to value different kindsjpf goods in^jjjffexeat.wa.Ys—or if it increases autonomy; that is, the power of people to value goods in ways they reflectively endorse. o^ {J^ V ^ m a y appear that commodification promotes pluralistic freedom. Lib{ v \ 4 " erals traditionally address plural and conflicting ideals by giving their

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adherents private spaces to pursue them, protected from state-sponsored interference by adherents of rival ideals. LejL^o^je_v£ho_yjlue jexuajityas a higfaejLJaQQjLiH^ who value it as a commodity exchange it on the market. Feminist theoryy\ ^ calls m^_£U.estipn jfij^^jviaKEg of this proposal. Although popular idex fology represents present modes of non-commodified sexuality in the ~^!/^7 sphere of personal relations as independent of and sharply contrasted with its commodified forms, thexe_are_ jdeep_.x£)Jiiie^ ^ wpmenxsejraality_^^ masculine^ identityis^partly defined in terms of thej^owerjtoJiave sex with a^^mrmi^jgrostituti for s^xj^^mtercourse generated internally inthe: perspnal sphere; they also provide techniques and models for sexual gratification that men import ba^k-intaAe sphere of personal xelaliQn^^nd make normative for their iotimaJte.female partners there (MacKinnon 1989). The same "private" masculine gender identity creates a demand for virgins, lovers, wives, and prostitutes alike. Women's sexuality is still valued as male property in both W spheres; the only question is how many men have rights to it (Rubin/ 1975). I do not claim that women are treated only as sexual property in the personal sphere. I claim that an_asp-ecto£ims_(^ an] . agprppriatiye, unshared dimension onJieterosexual injtejcgurse there that] ? contradicts the valuational aspirations of both intimacy and c^mmitoient. J The same power to appropriate a woman's sexuality that is partly definitive of manhood, the same masculine sexual desire, is gratified in personal and commodified sexual relations. If the statejtoj3kMJ£^ \ tive and recognized women's sexuality as just another kind ofprop^rty^ no j ,,/ jj£social space would be left to affirm women's experiences of rape as a worse I ^ ' crime, a deeperl/iolation of the sel£jtha.|i.robbery. Economic analyses of J the law, which represenTaUgoods as econ^mi^^oods^efend p^ g ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ j e n d ^ h the e moral • and legal equivalence of the^ty^^crirnes (Posner 1985, p. 1199). If women's sexuality is legally valued as a commodity anywhere in society, it would be even more difficult than it already is to establish insulated social spheres where it can be exclusively and fully valued as a genuinely shared and personal good, where women themselves can be sexually valued in ways fully consonant with their own dignity. The full realization of significant opportunities to value heterosexual relationships as shared and per- W sonal goods may therefore require that women's sexuality not be commodified. PluraJi5j:i£^fe therefore be e n h m c ^ d J ^ J ^ r i ^

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»stitutioja gn^^^grounds of autonomy is clearer. Tl*e_ prostitute, in selling her sexuality to a man, alienates a good necessarily her person to him and thereby subjects herselfjx)his comu^^eTcoiiffacFexpress notTKer own valuations but the of her customer. Her actions between sales express not her own valuations but the will of her pirnp. Prostitution does nqt_enhance wornen^autonomy over their sexuality—it simply constitutes another mode by"which men can appropriate it for their ownjoses. Tlxej^alization oTwomens autonomy requires that some goods embodied in their peri. / sons, including their own sexuality, remain market-inalienable(RaHin 1987, p. 1916). ~~~ " ' These arguments establish the legitimacy of a state interest in prohibiting prostitution, but not a conclusive case for prohibition. Given the paucity of economic opportunities available to many women, they may have no alternative to selling their sexual services for money. If the prohibition of prostitution is to serve women's interests in freedom and autonomy, it should not function so as to drive them to starvation (Radin 1987, pp. 1921—1925). It can serve these interests only where expanded economic opportunities eliminate women's need to resort to prostitution. (These interests already support the prohibition of pimping.) My arguments also do not show that the sale of sexual services cannot have a legitimate place in a just civil society. One could imagine a worthwhile practice of professional sex therapy aimed at helping people liberate themselves from perverse, patriarchal forms of sexuality (Schwarzenbach 19901991). Suchjy^a,cjtice would not be governed by ofprojsiitutiQn .objectionable. Professionals do not alienate control over their actions in selling them, but govern their activity M*\ jby reflectively endorsed norms internal to the non-market ideals of their rofessions. The profession envisioned might help men eliminate the ways commodified conceptions of women s sexuality inform their valuations of women in the personal sphere. This possibility illustrates again that what ] confers commodity status on a good is not that people pay for it, but that exclusively market norms govern its production, exchange, and enjoyment. Another proposal to improve the status of women by remaking the ^personal sphere on a market model is the detailed marriage contract * l advocated by Ms magazine.7 To avoid the exploitative tendencies of traditional marriages, in which the wife performs most of the drudgery involved in maintaining a household and raising children, Ms proposed to place the marriage relationship on an explicit basis of exchange. The I J'

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marriage contract would lay out in detail the duties of husband and wife with respect to the household, children, and sexuaJ interactions. This proposal traces the patriarchal character of marriage to the fact that it is a status-based relationship, in which the terms of interaction are fixed independent of the will of the parties and to the disadvantage of women (Ketchum 1977; Barker 1978; Weitzman 1981). If marriage were moved to a contractual status, in which the terms of interaction were explicit and fixed by the consent of the parties, women's freedom and equality would be enhanced. Given the relatively poor economic opportunities available to women, one may doubt whether most women have the bargaining power to get better terms in marriage than they currently have. More significant, the attempt to realize women's freedom and equality by remaking marriage on the terms of a business partnership threatens to undermine the goods of commitment and intimacy proper to marriage. For the realization of these goods depends upon each partner's carrying out the projects constitutive of his shared life in a spirit of trust and love rather than of the piecemeal calculation of individual advantage. Giving and receiving in a spirit of trust is itself one of the goods of marriage. Th^r^n^j^fmarriage in reajizjn^hared goods is obscured by tending to the terrns of an explicit marriage^contract, which, evaluates the marriage in terms of the distinct advantages, .accruing to each party. And fixing the terms of exchange in advance undermines the responsiveness of the marriage to the changed needs of the partners, as well as the promise it holds out for deepening their commitment in the light of a more articulate understanding of their shared project, which may require a new division of activities between them. Being open to the possibility of renegotiating the contract in the light of changed wants is not the same thing as committing oneself to love and care for one's spouse "for better or for worse" (Hirsch 1976, pp. 87— 88, 99-101). Still, one can imagine a legitimate role for explicit, mutually designed contracts in a marriage, provided that the spirit of a market transaction, in which the parties compete over dividing the advantages of cooperation, does not dominate their interactions. Couples committed to remaking the marriage relationship on terms of equality and justice may recognize that habits of dominance and submission would inform their interactions if they were not expressly corrected. If the terms of their contract were informed by a shared ideal ofjustice, it could serve to train them in habits of equality both by reminding them of the particular ways in which they tend to lapse from their own ideals and by making use of the additional

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normative authority of promise-making to strengthen their determination \ to do better.8 Just as not every sale constitutes a good as a commodity, not •every contract puts its parties in a market relationship (Anderson 1990b). 7.5 Political Goods and the Market In the preceding section I emphasized two qualitative distinctions among goods to which the market is insensitive: those between gift values and impersonal exchange values and those between shared goods and divisible goods. The goods of the personal sphere, which are shared gift values, cannot be adequately realized by market norms. In this section I will consider two further qualitative distinctions among goods which the market does not acknowledge: those between the objects of principled desire and mere tastes and those between the objects of need and of desire. These distinctions support the application of democratic political norms to the production, distribution, and enjoyment of many goods that could also be provided by the market. The significance of these norms must be understood in the light of the ideals they embody. This section focuses on two ideals of social democracy: fraternity and democratic freedom. Citizens have fraternal relations when they agree to refrain from making claims to certain goods at the expense of those less well-off than themselves and when they view the achievement of such relations with their fellow citizens as contributing to their own good (see Rawls 1971, pp. 105—108, 520—529). People express relations of fraternity with one another partly by providing certain goods in common. Whereas distributing goods through bilateral transactions expresses either the separateness of persons (in the market) or some special relationship between the two traders (in personal gift relationships), providing goods out of pooled resources obliterates any connection of specific donors with specific recipients. It expresses the idea that the goods are provided by the community as a whole to its members (Sahlins 1972, pp. 188—191). Where the goods in question are not public but distributed, distribution takes place in accordance with a conception of members' needs. Fraternal relations are need-regarding, not want-regarding. Fraternal activities express a valuation of participants as equals engaged in a common cooperative project. In the democratic tradition this project is collective self-rule. The political freedom of a citizen is the freedom to participate equally with fellow citizens in deciding the laws and policies that govern them all. This freedom demands that citizens have the goods they need, such as education, to participate effectively in self-government.

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Citizens express their fraternity in part by ensuring that these needs are met through community guarantees or direct provision. The interpretations of fraternity and citizens' needs are subjects for democratic deliberation. Citizens cannot interact with one another fraternally without a shared understanding of this ideal forged through participation in democratic institutions. These ideals of fraternity and democratic freedom are embodied in three norms that conflict with market norms. First, citizens exercise their freedom inj^democracy through voice, not just exit. Their freedom is the power to take the initiative in shaping the background conditions of their interactions and the content of the goods they provide in common. It is a freedom to participate in democratic activities, not just to leave the country if they disagree with the government. Second, an ideal democracy d4stributes_goods in accordance with public principles, not in accordance with un^xamned^wants. Decisions must be justified in publicly acceptable terms. Third, the goods provided by the public are provided on a nonexclusive basis. Everyone, not just those who pay, has access to them. The distinction between democratic and market norms of decision-making is reflected in the different expressions of respect applied in each sphere. To respect a customer is to respect her privacy by not probing more deeply into her reasons for wanting a commodity than is required to satisfy her want. The seller does not question her tastes. But to^respecjLajHIow citizen is X^ fak^ her reasons for aHvoraring q j>grHm1ar;..pnsiHon^rj.nmly It is to consult her judgment about political matters, to respond to it inajrublic forum, and to accept it it one rinds her judgment superior to others'. Some goods can_ bejsecured only through a form of democratic provision that is nonexclusive, principle- and need-regarding, and regulated primarily through voice. To attempt to provide these goods through marjEet mechanisms is to undermine our capacity to value and realize ^ourselves as fraternal democratic citizens. Goods of this kind I shall call ^pQUticaLgpods." This conception of political goods can shed light on two kinds of proposals for subjecting goods to market control. The first is the proposal for "dividing the commons." Many goods, such as streets, parks, and schools, are at present provided on a public, nonexclusive basis. Some libertarians argue that freedom would be enhanced if such goods were completely divided into privately owned parcels. The second is the proposal for converting the public provision of goods in kind to the provision of their cash equivalents. I shall argue that both kinds of proposals fail to recognize the goods realized through democratic provision and also embody a flawed conception of freedom.

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Consider first the libertarian proposals to "divide the commons." These proposals suppose that freedom is enhanced when people have the power of exit from common control of a good. I shall argue that often the freedom of exit is no substitute for the loss of voice and of nonexclusive access to the goods in question. Some forms of freedom can be secured only through institutions of voice established over goods to which public access is guaranteed. This is the case with pubHc streets and parks. Some libertarians claim that a system of private toll-charging roads would be superior to a public system, since these would be funded through voluntary user fees rather than a coercive tax system, which charges people whether or not they want to use the roads (Rothbard 1978, ch. 11). The idea that such a system would enhance individual freedom is bizarre. No one need ask anyone else's permission to travel on a public road. If all roads are privately owned, one must ask the permission of each owner to visit people in areas accessible only by such roads, subjecting oneself to whatever terms he demands for using these roads. Everyone would be vulnerable to arbitrary restraints on her freedom of association by others.9 Next to this loss, the loss entailed by taxation to maintain public roads is trivial. It is not a loss of freedom, but a necessary cost of preserving it. Libertarians make a key mistake in holding that individual freedom is always increased when the common is divided into exclusively controlled parcels. While this regime enables each person to be a despot in the territory she owns, she would be a mere subject to others everywhere else. But some freedoms can be exercised only in public spaces p£fcee. association among equals, where no individual has more control than others, iibertarianism fails to secure this freedom becauseaL does. Jiot support adequate sphere differentiation. It fails to distinguish, within the private sphere, between civil society and the household. Freedom with respect to many goods of public spaces requires the right of participation in their enjoyment and control, not just the right of exit. Consider the goods provided by a successful city park. One good lies in its being open to anyone without charge. That all citizens gain access to the park freely and in the same way prevents invidious distinctions from arising among them, enabling all to meet one another on terms of equality, in contrast with an exclusive country club. By providing the park as a common good, citizens express fraternal relations with one another. A second good lies in its being a locus for spontaneous interaction and political activity The users of the park, who may each have separate reasons for being there, together create a lively scene of diverse people and purposes, with many occasions for spontaneous interactions that can build

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a spirit of trust and civility among the users. Joggers meet on the same trail; two dogs take an interest in each other, leading their owners to stop and chat; an old man catches a stray frisbee and tosses it back to the players; business people eat lunch on the benches to watch the passing show. In virtue of its diverse and open uses, this kind of public space then provides the occasion for political action. Outside of the media, it is only in lively public spaces that people can rapidly and effectively generate concern and support among strangers on matters of public interest. Here rallies can attract curious bystanders, and petitioners can gather signatures from those who would feel intruded upon by a door-to-door canvasser Jacobs 1961, ch. 5).10 When commercial malls lead to the decline of a downtown shopping district, the spaces of public interaction are enclosed under a roof and subjected to private control. May the owners of a mall suppress any speech or political activity in it which they find offensive or opposed to their interests? If they are granted this right, the value of this space deteriorates from one in which people can meet as equal citizens to one in which they can meet only as private consumers. There may be no alternative space that can serve the same public functions that downtown once did. The spirit of a lively public place, and its value as a locus for political action, can be generated only as the unintended by-product of individuals' other purposes. Public space is good for political action precisely because diverse people would go there anyway, for their own reasons. People use public spaces mainly to go to work or to shop. When these reasons turn them away from downtown and to the mall, and when their interaction in the mall is then managed by commercial interests, citizens lose this unintended good and cannot recover it through artifice. Their space is depoliticized, and their public life correspondingly impoverished. Then the exercise of a private right to control what people do on one's property becomes in reality an exercise of political power. This undermines the freedom and autonomy of citizens and provides grounds for the state's exercising a right of eminent domain in these spaces, to reconstitute them for public purposes. Similar arguments can be made for requiring public affairs programming and pubHc access hours as a condition for granting broadcast licenses for radio and television stations (Stewart 1983, pp. 1576-1590; Sunstein 1991, pp. 28-31). Consider next proposals to move from the public provision of goods in kind to the public provision of their cash equivalents. Voucher systems for financing primary and secondary education provide an example. While they accept the need for compulsory education and for providing parents

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with the means to educate their children, advocates of vouchers object to direct public administration of schools. Instead, the voucher system would provide each parent with a fixed sum of money to be spent on any school of the parent s choice. Schools would be run commercially, competing for students by offering a variety of educational options to parents. Voucher advocates argue that this would increase schools' efficiency through competition. And it would enhance the freedom of parents by enabling each to obtain the education she wants for her child, rather than having to go along with the majority decision, as is the case with public schools. More of parents' wants could be satisfied under a voucher system than under a system of publicly administered schools (Friedman 1962, ch. 6). As a market-based system, a voucher system would replace institutions of voice with those of exit.11 Instead of discussing with other parents the proper goals and practices of education to arrive at common principles, parents would exercise their power of exit to remove their children from schools that do not suit their tastes. This system would undermine the good of education as a reflection of reasoned ideals. The argument for the voucher system assumes that the educational system should satisfy the given, unexamined wants of parents. But the preference for an education of a particular sort is not, like the preference for chocolate over vanilla ice cream, merely a matter of given, primitive tastes for which no reasons can be offered. Such a preference is formulated in the light of particular ideals. Democratic ideals strongly inform our conception of elementary and secondary education. A principal purpose of education at this level is to prepare children for responsible citizenship, exercised in a spirit of fraternity with others of diverse class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. The good of elementary and secondary education requires that its reasoned ties with such ideals be preserved. People cannot see that their preferences for certain kinds of education are supported by publicly valid reasons unless they have a forum in which these reasons can be publicly evaluated. These facts argue in favor of determining the shape of education through political institutions, which provide a public forum for the discussion and evaluation of reasoned ideals. Market-jnechanismst^of exit^^^jtatLiespond to reasoned ide2ik^T)^.j^Sextnd^:_&om_ unreflective wants. When people's ^choicesfare removed from the political forum and made in the market, they are reduced to isolated, publicly unarticulated decisions (Shefrrin 1978). Some defenders of voucher systems contend that though this argument soundly attacks a narrowly economistic defense of vouchers, it fails to recognize how responsive markets can actually be to a wide range of

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reasoned religious and political ideals of private individuals (Michelson 1989). If parents demand a governing voice in the private schools to which they send their children, then these schools will provide them. There are two difficulties with this response. First, to the extent that the content of education is informed by democratic ideals and the need to train children to be citizens of a democracy, it should be determined in forums to which all citizens have access, not just parents or customers of particular schools. All citizens have a proper interest in the kinds of citizens the next generation will become. Second, the voucher system, in relying on a consumer sovereignty model of freedom, effaces the distinction between the freedom of parents and the autonomy of children. Many parents fear that training in argument, reasoning, and imagination, in conjunction with the transmission of certain kinds of knowledge (for example, about human sexuality and evolution), will enable their children to defy parental authority and challenge their parents' religious and moral ideals. Aj^oudb^ii^ystem would enable parents to satisfy their ideal-based ^iresjoj^^c^^^tc^e^c^dien rather than educate them to exercise their ownjudgjnen^. The state, however, takes a proper interest in providing the conditions of autonomy for children. Parental rights to freedom of educational choice do not extend to holding their children in perpetual subjection to their own ideals (Gutmann 1987, ch. 4). This argument against a voucher system does not represent a defense of the status quo, in which decisions about public education are often made undemocratically or in conflict with children's needs for the enabling conditions of autonomy. Active public regulation of education is necessary but not sufficient for good schools. Mechanisms of voice also need not impose a bland uniformity on educational options provided by the public sector. Many public school systems already offer alternative and specialized elementary and secondary programs, adjusted to the varied needs and interests of the students. Market norms of consumer sovereignty, which deny distinctions among wants and needs and reasoned ideals, and which substitute exit for voice, are inappropriate to education. This does not rule out the legitimacy of educational experiments with hybrid institutions that combine public norms of voice and fraternity with provisions for individual choice. ___. 7.6 The Limitations of Market Ideologies In this chapter I have explored several ways in which liberal commitments to freedom and human flourishing require stronger limitations on the

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market than most standard liberal theories recognize. Liberal theories of justice tend to criticize the way the market distributes income, while mostly ignoring its impact on the other goods it distributes. Libertarianism and welfare economics represent most expansions of the domain of market norms as gains for freedom and welfare. This is partly due to the fact that they represent freedom and welfare in the same limited terms to which the market is responsive. They take up the perspective of market relations on these goods and hence are blind to the ways markets fail to realize more adequate conceptions of them. This blindness can be traced to three fundamental errorsjnjjie theory of v^lu^Fjrsi^ preference ojjen-tation: Libertarians and welfare economists tie freedom" and welfare to the expression or satisfactjonjaf given desires, rather than to the T rational attitudes. ^concUindividualism: ^ b l ^ t t j self-sufficient in tne!f*?apacities to exercise freedom.and to farmland express their values, independent"oTBierr rdadonsjo others. ^Trur^j, commodity fetishislnrtriey tend to conceive of freedom or welfare in teTms of the possession and use ot" exclusive goods, ignoring the expressive dimension ofactioirii^^ t}iat we ejtajpji^ norms. Consider first freedom. Libertarians conceive of freedom as economic freedom. A person is free if she is free to express her preferences in using and exchanging her private property without having to respond to the values and preferencgsjji others (Hayek I960; Friedman 1962; Nozick 1974). Preferences are seen as subjective "tastes" that an individual can have and rationally express independent of other people s preferences. Markets and contracts are seen as all-purpose mechanisms for satisfying preferences. They let individuals value commodities as much as they want, independent of others' preferences. Therefore, market relations seem to be generically appropriate relations through which to exercise freedom, Because they appear to a^aSrn^ without passing judgnejitjpjxiiieio—. The attraction of the preference view of freedom is due to the thought that freedom is a matter of expressing one's valuations, plus the reduction of valuations to bare preferences or tastes. Pluralism accepts the first thought but rejects the second. Our valuations are expressed not just through preferences but through the whole range of rational attitudes. We can value goods in ways beyond use and bare liking only by participating in social practices governed by shared understandings of their value. Higher, shared, and personal ways of valuing goods require social constraints on use. We can exgresj^l^sj^^^

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governed by non-market_norms. So the market does not provide a sufficient domain for the expression of all our valuations7 but mustjeave room for other social spheres to operate on non-market principles.JTliej^xd&m to value a good as much as one wishes is not the freedom to value it inany way one wishes. The indiy^uajfct^^ also masks the ways in whicK"
1

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relationships we are free to reveal ourselves to others, without having our self-disclosure become the object of another's manipulations in egoistic market-oriented bargaining. In democratic societies we are free to participate in collective decisions that affect everyone. This is the freedom to be induded, rather than to exclude others. When exit is irnpossiBleTwHen decisions concern shared goods, or when freedom can be effectively exercised by all only in public spaces of free and equal association, democratic freedom supersedes market freedom. Commodity fetishism also pervades the conception of human good embraced by welfare economics. It defines a person's welfare as the satisfaction of her given preferences, which it conceives as automatically expressed in her choices and as taking exclusively appropriated goods as their basic object. This conception of welfare is tailored to present markets in their best light, since markets deal only in exclusive goods and respond to given preferences. Hence^wejikre_£^ represents markets as generically efficient providers of non-public goods. But the market can claim superior efficiency only when goods are unchanged by alternate means of provision. Gift; values are undermined when they are produced and exchanged out of market motives, for their significance consists in part in their expression of non-market attitudes. Shared values can be realized only through nonexclusive distribution responsive to shared understandings of principles and needs arrived at through voice. In treating human relations as indifferently substitutable means for acquiring goods, welfare economics blinds itself to the ways markets undermine certain expressive relations with others. The realization of son16 forms of freedom^ autonomy,ajid jwejfare demands that certain goodsbe^^od^^ of market relations or in accordance with non-market norms. This conclusion does not mean that market institutions should not play a prominent role in a liberal society. Policy questions should focus more onthe norms governing the production and circulation of goods than on the formal status of the institation, w h e t h S r ^ a private 1 2 ^ t . Governments can often act like markets, and private organizations like public bodies. The prospect of developing hybrid social practices that combine features of different spheres of life may help break through currently sterile debates which suppose that there is no "third way" between laissez-faire capitalism and comprehensive state planning of the economy. Some of these practices already exist, in the form of nonprofit and professional institutions of civil society. l h argue that the market has limits is to acknowledge that it alsohas its p

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^ife. A wide range of goods are properly_regard©dL-a&4>ure commodities. Among tEese are the conyemencej^ get^raiijdTefvrceFfBund iri most stores. The ni^dejnjnmr^ej^^oajuLcesancL distrfblifes'Trlese gobcls with unsurpas.secl^efficiency and in unsurpassed abundance. Jt is beneficialno^tjonlyJo^h^^th£se^go^ds, but to be aEIe~to procure them freely through the anonymous, unencumbSSTl^rXaT^ mirleT^ro^^ advantages of trie market while keeping its activities confined to the goods proper to it. • —-•——«—

Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

8 • Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

8.1 The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood In the past few years the practice of contract pregnancy, or commercial surrogate motherhood, has gained notoriety as a method for acquiring children. A commercial surrogate mother is a woman who is paid money to bear a child for other people and to terminate her parental rights, so that the others may raise the child as their own. The growth of contract pregnancy has raised with new urgency a wide class of concerns regarding the proper scope of the market. The practice offers a rich field for testing the power of my theory of the ethical limitations of the market. Many critics have argued that contract pregnancy improperly treats children or women's reproductive labor as commodities (Corea 1985, pp. 216, 219; Holder 1985; Radin 1987, pp. 1849-1937; Anderson 1990a; MoodyAdams 1991; Satz 1992). In this chapter, I will argue that contract pregnancy commodifies both women's labor and children in ways that undermine the autonomy and dignity of women and the love parents owe to children. Because the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the autonomy and dignity of women and the integrity of parental love for children, it is justified in prohibiting contract pregnancy. The pregnancy contract involves three parties: the father, the broker, and the surrogate mother. The father agrees to pay a broker to find a suitable surrogate mother, to make the medical and legal arrangements for the conception and birth of the child, and to arrange for the transfer of legal custody to himself. (State laws against selling babies prevent the fathers wife, if he has one, from being a party to the contract.) The surrogate mother agrees to become impregnated with the father s sperm, to carry the resulting child to term, and to relinquish her parental rights, transferring custody to the father in return for a fee and medical expenses.

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Both she and her husband (if she has one) agree not to form a parent-child bond with the infant and to do everything necessary to transfer the child to the intended father. In the 1980s, the lawyer arranging the contract could expect to gross $15,000 from the transaction, while the surrogate mother could expect a $10,000 fee (Brophy 1981-1982, pp. 263-291; Keane 1983, pp. 45-53). Contract pregnancy has been defended on six main grounds. First, given the shortage of children available for adoption and the difficulty of qualifying as adoptive parents, it may represent the only hope some people have of raising a family. This is particularly true for gay couples and other nontraditional families, whose freedom to acquire children is at present constrained by adoption laws and other illiberal state practices (Kymlicka 1991, pp. 87-88; Arneson 1992, p. 145). Contract pregnancy should be accepted as an effective means for realizing this highly significant good. Second, two fundamental human rights support contract pregnancy: the right to procreate and freedom of contract. Fully informed autonomous adults should have the right to make whatever arrangements they wish for the use of their bodies and the reproduction of children, so long as the children are not harmed (Robertson 1983; Harris 1985; Singer and Wells 1985; Kymlicka 1991). Third, the labor of the surrogate mother is said to be a labor of love. Her altruistic acts should be permitted and encouraged (Warnock 1985, p. 45). Fourth, it is argued that contract pregnancy is no different in its ethical implications from many already accepted practices that separate genetic, gestational, and social parenting, such as artificial insemination by donor, adoption, wet-nursing, and day care._l£js_also_no... te different from manyy alre^dyj*££££ d practices that partially commodify ^yj y people's bodies, sucrTaTSdete j j ^d ^ ^^ tency demands that society also accept contract pregnancy (Robertson 1983; Harris 1985). Fifth, in allowing women to freely alienate their reproductive capacities for pay, contract pregnancy promises to liberate women from oppressive stereotypes which assume that women's psychologies are governed by maternal instincts or naturally rooted in the domestic sphere in ways that make them incompetent to participate as equals in civil society (Shalev 1989, p. 17). Finally, even if contract pregnancy is objectionable from the standpoint of one or another moral ideal, the state must remain neutral between such competing ideals of life. Neutrality demands that the state permit contract pregnancy (Kymlicka 1991, pp. 95-96). I shall argue that contract pregnancy raises new ethical issues because it represents an invasion by the market of a new sphere of conduct, that

i

170 • Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

of specifically women's labor, the labor of gestating children. I will argue that conini^rcialsurrogate contracts^estabHsh^relations of domination over surrogate mothers that are inconsistent withL their autonomy and wtJ^^treating women with respect and consideration. The potential emotional conlEcH^nTieTentincor^ transactions over children, the_&££sent circumstancejnpfwomen's in£qiaality1and the state's historic role interests against the interests of role inn enf^cin£jmc^^ ^ £ j ^ ^ g f poor women make proposed reforms and regulations of contract pregst te ^ n gXilBlikgtLl9 • c ??^5l! : ! iese .PyoM^^.s• ? frerefore yyould^best express respect and consideration for women, and best preserve women's autonomy, by prohibiting^ tb.eiejL^^ nancy contracts engage comrnercjjJnorms forj^aluing children which uhdermine^normsjof^parental love that should goverrTouf'TeJateeirrto them,"lHereby degradingchildren to the status of commodities. The state best protects the interests of children by prohibiting contract pregnancy. 8.2 Children as Commodities The most fundamental obligation of parents to their children is to love them. Children are not to be used or manipulated by their parents for personal advantage. Parental love can be understood as a passionate, unconditional commitment to nurture one's child by providing her with the care, affection, and guidance she needs to develop her capacities to maturity. This understanding of the way parents should value their children informs our interpretation of parental rights over children. Parents' rights over their children are trusts, which they must exercise for the sake of the children. Of course, parents may also pursue interests of their own that may not include their children and that may even entail some sacrifice to their welfare. But they may do so only provided that such pursuits do not contradict the demands of love for their children. The norms of parental love make demands on the ways other people should treat the relationship between parents and their children. If children are to be loved by their parents, then others should not attempt to compromise the integrity of parental love, or work to suppress the emotions supporting the bond between parents and their children. If rights to children should be understood as trusts, then when those rights are lost or relinquished the duty of those in charge of transferring custody to others is to consult the interests of the child. The state takes a proper interest in promoting and protecting parents' love for their children. This may

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include prohibiting practices that depend for their success on undermining parental love. ~s^ for some of thenorms of parental love. Most important, it requires us to change our understanding of parental rights from trusts to things"'more "like" property' rights—rightTcif use and disposal over the thingsovviiedTTn this^prl^iEic^Trle^TrroiJier deliberately conceives a child with the intention of giving it up for material advantage. Her renunciation of parental responsibilities is done not for the child's sake, but for her own (and if altruism is a motive, for the sake of the intended parents). She and the couple who pays her to give up her parental rights treat her rights as a partial property right. They thereby treat the child as a partial commodity, which may be properly bought and sold. Contract pregnancy insinuates the norms of commerce into the parental relationship in other ways. Since no industry assigns agents to look after the "interests" of its commodities, no one represents the child's interests in the surrogate industry. The broker promotes the contracting parents' interests, not the child's interests, where matters of custody are concerned. As the agent of the intended parents, the broker has the task of policing the gestational mother's relationship to her child, using persuasion, money, and the threat of a lawsuit to destroy whatever parental love she may develop for her child. Some proponents of contract pregnancy deny that the surrogate industry engages in the sale of children. For it is impossible to sell to someone what is already his own, and the child is already the father's genetic offspring. The payment to the surrogate mother is not payment for her child, but compensation for her services in carrying it to term (In Re Baby M, 217 NJ. Super 313). But it is irrelevant that the natural father also has some rights over the child. What he pays for is exclusive rights to it. He would not pay the mother for the "service" of carrying the child to term, if she refused to relinquish her parental rights to it. That the mother regards only her labor and not her child as requiring compensation is also irrelevant. No one would argue that the baker does not treat his bread as property, just because he sees the income from its sale as compensation for his labor and expenses and not payment for the bread itself, which he doesn't want to keep, Some argue that children are not really bought and sold in a pregnancy contract, because parents do not obtain indiscriminate rights of use and disposal over children so obtained (Arneson 1992, pp. 148-149). This shows that children transferred by pregnancy .contracts are not completely cornmodified, as slaves are. But they are still partially

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172 * Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

commodified, in that the contract permits parents to transfer rights to custody in their children for profit. Some welfare consequentialists argue that because the child is most likely to enter a loving home, she is not harmed in being treated as property in this narrow way. So the purchase and sale of infants is unobjectionable from the point of view of children's interests (Landes and Posner 1978; Posner 1987). One can question whether the sale of children is as harmless as proponents contend. Would it be any wonder if a child born of a surrogacy arrangement feared resale by parents who treated the ties between a mother and her children as properly loosened by a monetary incentive? The unsold children of surrogate mothers are also harmed by contract pregnancy. The children of some surrogate mothers have reported their fears that they may be sold like their half-brother or halfsister, and they express a sense of loss at being deprived of a sibling (Longcope 1987b, pp. 18-19; Peterson 1987, pp. Bl, B4). The widespread acceptance of contract pregnancy could psychologically threaten all children. For it would change the way people (parents and brokers) value children generally—from being worthy of love by their parents and respect by others, to being sometimes the alienated objects of commercial profit-making (Krimmel 1983, pp. 35-37). Many critics dismiss these concerns as merely "speculative" (Kymlicka 1991, p. 91; Arneson 1992, p. 144; Satz 1992, pp. 122-123). A better word might be "anecdotal," since specific cases of harm to children arising from the ways contract pregnancy commodifies children have been documented (Kane 1988; Overvold 1988). But the focus on narrow welfare consequences to children of contract pregnancy obscures the larger expressive significance of selling infants. In selling children, the parties to the pregnancy contract express attitudes toward children that contradict the norms of parental love. They accept the legitimacy of paying mothers to undermine their love for their children. They accept the legitimacy of parents' disposing of their children for personal profit. These actions constitute a degrading treatment of children, a devaluation of them to useobjects that is inconsistent with parental love. The same expressive considerations that motivate the prohibition of compensation for ordinary adoptions apply to contract pregnancy as well. Parental love is so precious that it should not be violated by commercial motives. This valuation of the parent-child relationship is expressed by categorically prohibiting all alienations of parental rights for profit. One may argue that the state steps beyond the bounds of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good in upholding this ideal of

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parental love. Furthermore, the state faces a dilemma in interpreting the demands of parental trust. Any conception of these demands strong enough to prohibit the supposedly minor harms to children arising from contract pregnancy require the state, if it is consistent, to mandate the licensing of all parents to ensure that they won't inflict comparable harms. Any conception of these demands weak enough to permit the risks biological parents are now permitted to take with their children requires the state, if it is consistent, to uphold complete freedom of contract with respect to the disposal of infants, since the risks of commodification are no worse than the former risks. Neutrality and respect for privacy argue for the libertarian alternative (Kymlicka 1991, pp. 90-92). These arguments commit the Hbejrtajria.n^rriistake ofjfailing to distinguish~"between civil jociety and private domestic relations (§§7.3, 7.5). Individuals call upon the state to enforce contracts made m civil society. But they cannot call upon the state to enforce purely intimate agreements between friends to go to the movies together or between married partners to raise children in a particular manner (say, as Catholics). The commercial transactions of contract pregnancy place this practice within the realm of civil society and thereby implicate the state in the valuations of children expressed there. In upholding pregnancy contracts and regulating the surrogate industry, the state does not remain neutral between ideals that reject and uphold the commodification of children, but actively supports the latter. The state cannot remain neutral between these ideals, but must take a stand. The state properly takes a firmer stand in defense of children's interests when they are the subjects of commercial transactions than when they are the subjects of intimate noncommercial relations. Hence the state properly prohibits some and sharply regulates other child labor in commercial

contexts wM

ass\5imentew'oF"Trou7eE*did

chores to children, even when those chores are more dangerous than those they would undertake as paid laborers. The motives of those making a profit from commerce in goods embodied in children are more suspect than the motives of parents who are expected to love their children. The profit motive constitutes an interest less entitled to strong privacy protections than the deep and complex interests wrapped up in decisions about how to raise (as opposed to alienate) children. Granted, the line between civil society and intimate private relations is blurred by such institutions as the family business. But neither the broker nor the gestational mother qualifies in the relevant sense as engaged in a family business, since their

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business is not to engage children as members of an ongoing household/ subsistence enterprise, but to alienate them as commodities.1 Defenders of contract pregnancy claim that it does not differ much from other already accepted parental practices. In adoption and artificial insemination by donor (AID), it is claimed, we already grant parents the right to dispose of their children (Robertson 1983, p. 32; Harris 1985, pp. 144145). But these practices differ in significant respects from contract pregnancy. The purpose of adoption is to place children in families when their parents cannot or will not discharge their parental responsibilities. It is not a sphere for the exercise of a supposed parental right to dispose of one's children for profit. And AID does not sanction the sale of fully formed human beings. The semen donor sells only a product of his body, not his child, and does not initiate the act of conception. Two developments may seem to undermine the claim that contract pregnancy constitutes a degrading commerce in children. The first is technological: the prospect of transplanting a human embryo into the womb of a genetically unrelated woman. If contract pregnancy used women only as gestational mothers, not as genetic mothers, and if only genetic and not gestational parents could properly claim a child as "theirs," then the child born of a surrogate mother would not be hers to sell in the first place. The second is a legal development: the establishment of the proposed "consent-intent" definition of parenthood (Shalev 1989, pp. 82-85; Parker 1982). This would declare the legal parents of a child to be whoever consented to a procedure that leads to its birth, with the intent of assuming parental responsibilities for it. This rule would define away the problem of commerce in children by depriving the surrogate mother of any legal claim to her child, even if it was hers both genetically and gestationally. We should not undermine the place of genetic and gestational ties in these ways. Consider first the place of genetic ties. By upholding a system of involuntary, genetic ties of obligation among people, even when the adults among them prefer to divide their rights and obligations in other ways, we help to secure children's interests in having an assured place in the world, which is more stable and broad than that provided by the will of their parents. Unlike the consent-intent rule, the principle of respecting genetic ties does not make the obligation to care for those one has created (intentionally or not) contingent upon the arbitrary desire to do so. It thus provides children with a set of pre-existing social sanctions that gives them a more secure place in the world. The genetic principle also places children in a wider network of associations and obligations than the consent-

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intent rule sanctions. It supports the roles of grandparents and other relatives in nurturing children and provides children with a possible focus of stability and an additional source of claims to care if their parents cannot sustain a well-functioning household. In the next section I will defend the claims of gestational ties to children. To deny these claims, as contract pregnancy does, is to deny the autonomy of women in determining the significance of their reproductive labor and to thereby dehumanize and degrade pregnant women to the status of mere housing for fetuses. Contract pregnancy would be a corrupt practice even if it did not involve commerce in children. 8.3 Women's Labor as a Commodity Contract pregnancy transforms what is specifically women's labor—the work of bringing forth children into the world—into a commodity. It does so by replacing the parental norms that properly govern the practice of gestating children with the market norms that govern ordinary production processes. The application of commercial norms to yeomen's reproductiyekrpor reduces surrogate mothers from persons worthy of respect and consideration mjiornina^ *"" Respect and consideration are two distinct modes of valuation whose norms are violated by the surrogate industry. Tojresgect a person is to treat her in accordajn^e^y^^ ^ rational interests^^To treat a person with consideration is to respond withje^itiyjtv^^h^rjLncrto her gniotional relatjonrto^others, refraini^^ tlje^£--iiir^on£^ovviim Given the understanding of respect as a dispassionate, impersonal regard for people's interests, a different ethical concept—consideration—is needed to capture the engaged and sensitive regard we should have for people s emotional relationships. The failure of consideration on the part of the other parties to the pregnancy contract explains the judgment that the contract is not simply disrespectful of the surrogate mother, but callous as well. These degrading failures of respect and consideration on the part of the surrogate industry are of concern to the state, because they are embodied in relations of domination that deny surrogate mothers their autonomy. These relations are also exploitative to the point of fraud, because of the emotional considerations motivating most surrogate mothers. The pregnancy contract denies mothers autonomy over their bodies and their feelings. Their bodies and their health are subordinated to the

176 * Is Women's Labor a Commodity?

independent interests of the contracting parents, who, through the threat of lawsuits, exercise potentially unlimited control over the gestating mother's activities. The surrogate mother is contractually required to obey all doctors orders made in the interests of the child's health (Brophy 1981— 1982; Keane 1983; Ince 1984). These orders could include forcing her to give up her job, travel plans, and recreational activities. The doctor could confine her to bed, regulate her diet rigidly, and order her to submit to surgery and to take drugs. Of course, current practices of medicine and law limit pregnant women's control over their bodies even when they plan to keep their babies. But apart from serious harms such as taking illegal drugs, most behavior by pregnant women is left to their own discretion. The law allows them extremely wide latitude in following doctor's orders and in trading off marginal risks to the fetus against activities of interest to themselves. The pregnancy contract empowers private third parties to exercise far more extensive control of women's bodies. One can hardly exercise an autonomous choice over one's health and actions if one could be held in breach of contract and liable for damages for making a decision contrary to doctors orders. One may object that the control over mothers' bodies alienated in the pregnancy contract is no more extensive than that alienated in other contracts where individuals "rent" their bodies to others, as in professional athletics and the volunteer army But no interests short of the survival of human life, freedom, and social order itself can justify the extraordinary control the state exercises over soldiers' bodies. The strictly private interests satisfied by the pregnancy contract cannot justify comparable control. Athletes retain extensive control over their activities when off the field and cannot be sued for refusing to follow doctor's orders. And the interests of team owners do not reach to the last detail of athlete's activities. But nearly any activity of a pregnant woman entails some marginal risk to the fetus. Given the unlimited anxiety the intended parents can have over potential risks to the fetus, hardly any activity of the mother is beyond the reach of their concern and power to sue. Richard Arneson (1992, pp. 161-162) argues that the pregnancy contract could be regulated so that constraints only on those actions "reasonably required" to attain the goal of a healthy baby would be permitted. Such a regulated pregnancy contract would prevent contracting parents from exercising arbitrary control over the mother's body. Arneson is unduly confident in the ability of a sexist society to determine what is "reasonable" in terms that pay respect and consideration to a woman's interest in being more than a container for a growing fetus. Since the

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surrogate industry regards the birth mother only in that light, and since it would lobby lawmakers drafting legislation defining what counts as "reasonable," while potential surrogate mothers have no organized representation on their behalf, any codified regulation of the industry would likely reflect the interests of its clients against its employees'. Such demeaning codes drafted in the interests of third parties may even become normative for pregnant women generally. Arneson supposes that the law can constrain the power of contracting parents to threaten and bully surrogate mothers into following their wishes. But this power is inalienable. No third parties can give away the child's right to sue for harms conceivably caused by its mother, and the intended parents can claim to be acting on the fetus's behalf. The surrogate industry dominates the birth mother's feelings in ways that deny her autonomy in interpreting her own perspective on her evolving relationship with her child. The industry's need to deny women autonomy follows from the contradictions between the social norms for non-commodified pregnancy and the requirements of a putting-out industry. Many social expectations and norms surround women's noncommodified gestational labor, marking it as an occasion for the parents to prepare themselves to welcome a new life into their family. For example, obstetricians use ultrasound not simply for diagnostic purposes but to encourage maternal bonding with the fetus. It is good, although by no means inevitable, for loving bonds to be established between the mother and her child during this period. In contrast, the surrogate industry follows the putting-out system of manufacturing. It provides some of the raw materials of production (sperm) to the surrogate mother, who then engages in production of the child. Although her labor is subject to supervision by her doctors and by the surrogate agency, they do not have physical control over the product of her labor as firms using the factory system do. Hence, as in all putting-out systems, the surrogate industry faces the problem of extracting the final product from the mother. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the social norms surrounding pregnancy encourage parental love for the child. The surrogate industry addresses this problem by requiring the mother to engage in a form of "emotional labor" (Hochschild 1983)—to express or repress certain emotions for pay. In the surrogate contract, she agrees not to form or to attempt to form a parent-child relationship with her offspring (Keane and Breo 1981, p. 291; Brophy 1981-1982, p. 267).2 This clause alienates the mother's autonomy to the surrogate industry. One may argue that the surrogate mother has decided in advance that she

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is not interested in viewing her relationship to her child as parental. Regardless of her initial state of mind, she is not free, once she enters the contract, to develop an autonomous perspective on her relationship with her child. She is contractually bound to manipulate her emotions to agree with the interests of the adoptive parents. Few things reach deeper into the self than a parents evolving relationship with her own child. Laying claim to the course of this relationship in virtue of a cash payment constitutes a severe violation of the mother's personhood and a denial of her autonomy. The surrogate industry enforces its domination of the mother's evaluative perspective by denying her dignity and undermining her social bases of self-respect. The surrogate mother, like all persons, has an independent evaluative perspective on her activities and relationships. Her dignity and autonomy demand that the other parties to the contract acknowledge rather than evade the claims that her independent perspective makes upon them. But the surrogate industry suppresses, manipulates, and trivializes her perspective, for there is an ever-present danger that she will see her involvement in her pregnancy from the perspective of a parent rather than from that of a contract laborer. So its agents commonly describe the surrogate mothers as inanimate objects: mere "hatcheries," "plumbing," "rented property," or "a surrogate uterus"—things without emotions and rights that could make claims on others (Corea 1985, p. 222; MoodyAdams 1991, p. 178). They also refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the consequences of the mother's emotional labor. Should she suffer psychologically from being forced to give up her child, the father is not liable to pay for therapy after her pregnancy, although he is liable for all other medical expenses following from her pregnancy (Keane and Breo 1981, p. 292). The treatment and interpretation of surrogate mothers' grief raise the deepest problems of degrading manipulation destructive of autonomy. Most surrogate mothers experience grief upon giving up their children; in 10 percent of cases, seriously enough to require therapy (Robertson 1983, p. 30, 34n8; Goleman 1987, p. C l ; Longcope 1987a, p. 83). Their grief is not compensated by the fee they receive. Grief is not an intelligible response to a successful deal, but rather a reflection of the subject's judgment that she has suffered a grave and personal loss. Because not all cases of grief resolve into regret, some surrogate mothers may not regard their grief as reflecting an authentic judgment. But in the circumstances of emotional manipulation that pervade the surrogate industry, it is hard to tell which interpretation of her grief truly reflects the mother's perspective. By insinuating a trivializing interpretation of her emotional responses

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to the prospect of losing her child, the surrogate agency may be able to manipulate her into accepting her fate without too much fuss, and it may even succeed in substituting its interpretation of her emotions for her own. Since she has already signed a contract to perform emotional labor— to express or repress emotions that are dictated by the interests of the surrogate industry—this might not be a difficult task. A considerate and respectful treatment of the mothers' grief would take the evaluative basis of their grief seriously. Some defenders of contract pregnancy demand that the provision for terminating the birth mother's parental rights in her child be legally enforceable, so that peace of mind for the adoptive parents can be secured (Keane and Breo 1981, pp. 236—237). But the surrogate industry makes no corresponding provision for securing the peace of mind of the surrogate. She is expected to assume the risk of a transformation of her ethical and emotional perspective on herself and her child with the same impersonal detachment with which a futures trader assumes the risk of a fluctuation in the price of pork bellies. By applying the market norms of enforcing contracts to the surrogate mother's case, contract pregnancy improperly treats a moral transformation as if it were merely an economic change.3 Such treatment is inconsistent with treating the mother with the respect and consideration to which she is entitled. Some defenders of contract pregnancy suggest that the parenting contract could adequately express respect and consideration for the surrogate mother by granting her the option to reserve her parental rights after birth (Cohen 1984, p. 282; Singer and Wells 1985, pp. 106-107, 111). But such an option would not significantly improve the conditions of her labor. It would pressure the agency to demean the mother's self-regard more than ever. Because it could not rely on the law to enforce the intended parents' wishes, regardless of the surrogate's feelings, it would have to make sure that the birth mother assumed the perspective which it and its clients have of her: as "rented plumbing." Nor could state regulation alleviate this problem. The most significant encounters between the mothers and the surrogate agencies take place behind closed doors. It is impossible to regulate the multifarious ways in which brokers can subtly manipulate mothers' emotions to their own advantage. Advocates of contract pregnancy claim that their failure rate is extremely low, since only five out of the first five hundred cases were legally contested by surrogate mothers. But we do not know how many surrogate mothers were browbeaten into relinquishing their children, feel violated by their treatment, or would feel violated had their perspectives not been manipulated by the other parties

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to the contract. The domination of women in contract pregnancy is too great to ignore and too deep to effectively regulate. The manipulation of the surrogate mother s emotions inherent in the pregnancy contract also leaves women open to forms of exploitation that involve or border on fraud. Akind of exploitation_occurs wjien_one party to a transaction is oriented toward the exchange of gift values, while the other party operates in accordance with market norms of commodity exchange, gift values, which include^ love, gratitude, and appreciation^ others, cannot be bought or obtained through piecemeal calcu|atic)nsjof individual advantage. Their exchange requires a repudiation of a selfinterested attitude, a willingness to give gifts to others without demanding some quid pro quo (§7.4). Surrogate m^herj^oftejxibllow gift norms, while the surro^te^agencyifoUows market norms. The agency tries to get the best deal for its clients and itself, while leaving the surrogate mother to look after her own interests. This situation enables the surrogate agencies to manipulate the surrogate mothers' emotions to gain favorable terms for themselves. For example, agencies screen prospective surrogate mothers for submissiveness, and they emphasize to them the importance of the motives of generosity and love. When applicants question some of the terms of the contract, the broker intimidates them by questioning their character and morality: if they were really generous and loving they would not be so solicitous about their own interests (Ince 1984, p. 110). Many surrogate mothers are motivated by emotional needs and vulnerabilities that lead them to view their labor as a form of gift and not purely commercial exchange. Only 1 percent of applicants to surrogate agencies would become surrogate mothers for money alone. The others have emotional as well as financial reasons for applying. One psychiatrist believes that most of the 35 percent of applicants who had had a previous abortion or had given up a child for adoption wanted to become surrogate mothers either to resolve their guilty feelings or to deal with their unresolved loss by going through the process of losing a child again (Parker 1983, pp. 117-118). Women who feel that giving up another child is an effective way to punish themselves for past abortions, or a form of therapy for their emotional problems, are not likely to resist manipulation by surrogate brokers. Many surrogate mothers see pregnancy as a way to feel "adequate" "appreciated," or "special"; in other words, these women feel inadequate, unappreciated, and unadmired when they are not pregnant.4 Lacking the power to achieve some worthwhile status in their own right, they must subordinate themselves to others' definitions of their proper value—as a baby factory—to get from them the appreciation they need to

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attain a sense of self-worth. But the sense of self-worth one can attain under such circumstances is a precarious and ultimately self-defeating one. Those who seek gratitude on the part of the adoptive parents and some opportunity to share the joys of seeing their children grow usually discover that the adoptive parents want nothing to do with them.5 For while the surrogate mother sees in the arrangement a basis for establishing the personal ties she needs to sustain her emotionally, the adoptive couple sees it as an impersonal commercial contract, one of whose advantages is that all ties between them and the birth mother are ended once the terms of the contract are fulfilled (Peterson 1987, p. B4). To them, her presence is a threat to marital unity and a competing object of affections from the child. In appealing to and ostensibly valuing the surrogate mother's altruistic motivations, the surrogate industry and its paying clients implicitly represent themselves as willing to engage with her in accordance with reciprocal norms of gift relationships. But this representation is exploitative and fraudulent. The clients generally have no intention of welcoming their "surrogate wombs" into their families, much less treating them with the consideration and respect they legitimately require were they to have second thoughts about relinquishing their babies. It is hard to imagine any way of removing the exploitation and fraud implicated in contract pregnancy without undermining the motivations that create the supply of willing surrogate mothers. The surrogate industry and its clients in fact have no respect or consideration for the mother or her altruistic motivations except as they serve their self-interest. If they removed the fraud by openly showing the contempt for the mother implicit in their plans for her, and if the contract explained that they had no regard for her perspective, how many surrogates, except those who really do want to punish themselves, would accept the deal? If they screened applicants for purely financial motivations, the pool of available women would be vanishingly small and also unsuitable to the task. Many surrogate agencies screen out applicants motivated by money or frivolous interests alone, as they are not trusted to follow through on the pregnancy or to pay enough attention to the fetus's health if they get bored (Ince 1984, p. 102). If the agencies were simply required to set high fees, the problem of emotional exploitation would not be removed.6 Surrogate mothers are exploited because their emotional needs and vulnerabilities are treated not as characteristics that call for consideration, but as factors to be fraudulently manipulated to make them sacrifice themselves to the broker's and adoptive couples advantage. The primary distortions that arise from treating women's labor as a

''i

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commodity—the surrogate mother's subordination in mind and body to her employers, her loss of autonomy, her fraudulent exploitation—stem from a common source: the failure to acknowledge and treat appropriately the surrogate mother's emotional engagement with her labor. The realization of her autonomy, the removal of domination, fraud, and exploitation, require respect and consideration for her feelings and her perspective. But to secure an adequate supply of sufficiently docile women, and to reliably extract the product from them, requires callousness and contempt for them. These considerations provide strong grounds for sustaining the claims of birth mothers to parental rights in their children. The attempt to redefine parenthood so as to strip women of parental claims to the children they bear does violence to their autonomous emotional engagement with the project of bringing children into the world.7 8.4 Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women Critics of contract pregnancy argue that it reinforces negative stejeotypes of women that prevent them from gaining equality with men. It reinforces the gendered division of labor that keeps women^subordinate to men by o^nlmlr^ It also supports the sexist view of women as primarily valuable for providing shelter tojthe_gejietic_offs^pH 6rmenTC^re^l985,'^^22i;"Satz 1992, p. 127). When courtThave recognized the parental rights of mothers in contested surrogacy contracts, they have done so only through her genetic, not her gestational, relationship to the child. This ignores women's distinctive contribution to parenthood, recognizing their activities only as they perform the same function as men's (Satz 1992, pp. 127—128). Finally, the surrogate industry promulgates a destructive patriarchal model of altruism to women. This form of altruism involves a lack of self-confidence, a feeling that one can be truly worthy only through radical self-effacement, alienation from those one benefits, and the submergence of one's body, health, and emotional life to the independendy defined interests of others. This model of altruism, far from affirming the freedom and dignity of women, seems all too conveniently designed to keep their sense of self-worth hostage to the interests of a more privileged class-(Corea 1985, pp. 227-233; Overall 1987, pp. 122128). True altruism involves not subordination, but rather the autonomous and self-confident exercise of skill, talent, and judgment for the sake of others. Despite these drawbacks, some feminists have applauded contract pregnancy for its potential to liberate women from demeaning sexist stereo-

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types. Carmel Shalev (1989, pp. 14—19) argues that contract pregnancy will release women from subjection to their biology by defining parenthood by the consent-intent standard rather than by a genetic or gestational standard. This "social" definition of parenthood will eliminate men's obsession with genetic links to their children and hence eliminate their interest in controlling women's sexual activity to ensure paternity. It will also undermine the view that women, in virtue of their biological function in reproduction, must be confined to domestic and child-rearing roles. Now women can perform genetic and gestational functions of reproduction while leaving its social functions to others. Shalev's optimistic predictions misconstrue the purposes served by pregnancy contracts. Most men seek a surrogacy arrangement in preference to adoption precisely because they want a child genetically related to them. Contract pregnancy does not undermine this motivation, but rather provides a new way for men to control women's sexuality so as to satisfy their need for a blood related child. (Overall 1987, ch. 6; Ehrenreich 1991). The social definition of parenthood reinforces men's biological claims to children while undercutting women's claims on either genetic or gestational grounds. Under it, a woman's claims to motherhood are dependent on her relationship to the father. Whether her role as ovum donor or gestator of the child entitles her to parental rights depends on whether she is married to the father. The consent-intent definition of parenthood thus replaces the biological definition "with an alternative that reduces women to their marital status: whether a woman is a mother becomes a function of whom she is married to" (Ehrenreich 1991, p. 72). This hardly represents an advance in the status of women. One might worry that the grounds for refusing to enforce pregnancy contracts may express even more demeaning attitudes toward women. My emphasis on the importance of respecting the gestational mother's love for her child may seem to support the sexist assumption that women are governed by a maternal instinct that justifies their confinement to reproductive and household labor (Shalev 1989). And currently accepted norms for parental love condone practices oppressive to women. They condemn as selfish women who don't bond with their children but have abortions, and poor women who wish to keep their children (Satz 1992, pp. 117—118). That norms of the personal sphere have traditionally been used to justify the oppression of women moves some feminists to reject all appeals to ideals of the personal sphere as insufficiently critical of what goes on there. A clear understanding of the social prerequisites and demands of par-

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ental love for an egalitarian society can help us see how accepted sexist norms for the personal sphere fail to adequately express these demands. While present norms concerning the mother-child relationship involve oppression and prejudice, a core conception of parental love will remain in any just society evolving from our own. This core will affirm that loving relations between parents and children are to be cherished and protected. So a good and just society will have norms that encourage this love to grow between a mother and any child she voluntarily conceives. Among these norms will be those that protect mothers* inalienable right to cultivate this love, without countervailing pressure or manipulation, and that condemn third parties who attempt to undermine it. Because the autonomous development and flourishing of parental love depends on a complex set of social relations and norms that express proper respect and consideration for women, this view affirms that maternal love is social, not instinctive. Hence it is absurd to blame women or call them selfish for not loving their fetuses when they are not ready for the demands of parenthood or when these demands, in conjunction with severely limited economic and developmental opportunities available to mothers, are oppressive to them. If parental love is to be supported, opportunities must be created that do not oppress women who love their children. This requires also that the demands of fatherhood be revised so that men can forge more loving relations with their children without oppressing the children's mothers. It is equally absurd to blame poor women for loving their children, misrepresenting it as selfishness, because proper respect and consideration for her and her children is expressed by providing poor women with the social and economic opportunities they need to adequately express their love. Supporters of contract pregnancy complain that the case against it expresses paternalistic attitudes toward women that reinforce sexist stereotypes (Shalev 1989, pp. 123, 141). To prohibit these contracts or refuse to enforce them is to imply that women are incompetent to enter into and discharge the obligations of commercial contracts. To justify prohibition by appealing to women's emotional ties to their children is to suggest that women as a group are too emotional to subject themselves to the dispassionate discipline of the market, as if women s actions are controlled by an inexorable maternal instinct. This criticism depends upon the flawed individualist, preferencebased view of autonomy criticized in §7.1. It supposes that the only justification for restricting freedom of contract in the interests of one of the parties must rely on a presumption that that party is incompetent. But the case against surrogacy rests not on the claim that women are

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incompetent, but only on the claim that women are not self-sufficient bearers of autonomy. Like men, women require certain social conditions to exercise their autonomy. Among these conditions are freedom from domination, which is secured by retaining inalienable rights in ones person. Contract pregnancy is objectionable because it undermines the social conditions for women's autonomy. It uses the norms of commerce in a manipulative way and commands surrogate mothers to conform their emotions to the interests of the other parties to the contract. It fails to acknowledge surrogate mothers as possessing an independent perspective worthy of consideration. And it reinforces motivations, such as self-effacing "altruism," that women have formed under social conditions inconsistent with autonomy and that reproduce these social conditions. To express respect for a woman's love for her children by refusing to enforce a pregnancy contract is not to express the view that her loving feelings are governed by inexorable instinct. It is to affirm her right to develop a perspective on her children autonomous from the interests of middle-class people who want to appropriate her reproductive powers. Few policies concerning women have an unambiguous impact on their welfare. To prohibit pregnancy contracts is to deny some women an opportunity to earn income. The financial interests of surrogate mothers are not sufficient, however, to render a favorable judgment on the impact of contract pregnancy on the status of women. At best, contract pregnancy provides a few women with supplements to their household income. Women do not depend on this income for survival, if only because surrogate agencies do not view women in such precarious circumstances as suitable surrogate mothers. While contract pregnancy brings financial rewards to a few women, it reinforces gendered relations of inequality and stereotypes that undermine the status of women in general. These financial rewards are not of a magnitude to significantly redress the income inequalities that keep women in subjection to their domestic male partners. Overall, contract pregnancy reinforces the very gender inequalities its proponents hope to overcome. 8.5 Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law In view of the ethical objections to contract pregnancy raised in this chapter, what position should the law take on it? At the very least, pregnancy contracts should not be enforceable. Mothers should not be forced to relinquish children with whom they have formed emotional bonds.

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The content of the pregnancy contract is unconscionable and contrary to the state s legitimate interests in protecting parental love for children. The demand to deliberately alienate oneself from one's love for one s own child cannot be reasonably and decently made of anyone. Unless we were to remake pregnancy into a form of drudgery which is endured only for a wage, we have every reason to expect that many women who do sign a pregnancy contract will, despite this fact, form a loving attachment to the child they bear. This is what the social practices surrounding pregnancy encourage. Treating women's labor as just another commercial production process violates the precious emotional ties the mother may rightly and properly establish with her "product," the child, and thereby violates her claims to respect and consideration.8 The ethical objections raised against contract pregnancy even support the stronger conclusion that commercial surrogate contracts should be illegal and that surrogate agencies who arrange such contracts should be subject to criminal penalties (Warnock 1985, pp. 43-44, 46-47). 9 Contract pregnancy constitutes a degrading traffic in children, violates the autonomy of women, subjects them to exploitation and fraud, ancTreinibrceTgender ine^uahtyTThe state has a legitimate interest in avoiding all of these evils. Defenders of contract pregnancy have suggested three reforms intended to eliminate these problems: 1) giving the surrogate mother the option of keeping her child after birth; 2) imposing regulations on private surrogate agencies; and 3) replacing private surrogate agencies with a state-run monopoly on surrogate arrangements. Consider each of these options in turn. I have argued that if surrogate mothers had the right to keep their children after birth, the surrogate industry would intensify its manipulation and domination of them. This manipulation cannot be effectively regulated, because it takes place behind closed doors. Nor can the pregnancy contract be written to effectively constrain the power of the surrogate industry to control women's bodies, for it acts in the name of the child's inalienable-right to sue the mother for harm she potentially inflicts on it. Some have suggested that exploitation of women could be avoided by such measures as properly screening surrogates, setting low fixed fees (to avoid tempting women in financial duress), and requiring independent counsel for the surrogate mother (Harris 1985, pp. 143-144, 156). But the significant forms of exploitation involved in contract pregnancy are emotional, not financial. It would be difficult to recruit suitable candidates for surrogate motherhood without engaging in fraudulent exploitation. And no one knows how to predict who will suffer grave psychological

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damage from surrogacy or who is vulnerable to the emotional manipulations of the surrogate industry. Could a state-run monopoly in pregnancy contracts eliminate the risk of degrading and exploiting surrogate mothers? A nonprofit state agency would arguably have no incentive to financially exploit surrogates, and it would screen the adoptive parents for the sake of the best interests of the child (Singer and Wells 1985, pp. 110-111; Warnock 1985, pp. 87-89). But the history of state regulation of poor and working-class women, who are the dominant candidates for surrogate motherhood, reveals a consistent pattern of controlling their reproductive choices in the interests of the middle class (Piven and Cloward 1972). A state-run surrogate agency would be even more likely to adopt a patriarchal middle-class perspective toward its employees, since it would tend to adopt the perspective of its clients, who are middle class. Furthermore, as long as the surrogate mother is paid money to bear a child and to terminate her parental rights, the commercial norms underwriting her subordination still apply. For these norms are constitutive of our understanding of what the pregnancy contract is for. Once such an arrangement becomes socially legitimized, these norms will inform the understandings of participants and of society at large. And what judgment do these norms make of a mother who, out of love for her child, decides that she cannot relinquish it? She is blamed for commercial irresponsibility and flighty emotions. Her transformation of moral and emotional perspective, which she experiences as real but painful growth, looks like a capricious and selfish exercise of will from the standpoint of the market, which does not distinguish the deep commitments of love from arbitrary matters of taste. The fundamental problem with contract pregnancy is that commercial norms are inherently manipulative when they are applied to the sphere of parental love. Manipulation occurs when norms are deployed to psychologically coerce others into a position where they cannot defend their own interests or articulate their own perspective without being charged with irresponsibility or immorality. A pregnancy contract is inherently manipulative because the form of the contract invokes commercial norms which, whether upheld by the law or by social custom only, imply that the mother should feel guilty and selfish for loving her own child. Two final objections stand in the way of criminalizing contract pregnancy. Prohibiting the practice might be thought to infringe upon the right of procreation and freedom of contract. Judge Sorkow, in upholding the legality and enforceability of pregnancy contracts, based much of his argument on an interpretation of procreative freedom. He argued that

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protecting this right requires protecting non-coital means of procreation, including contract pregnancy. The interests upheld by the creation of the family are the same, regardless of the means used to bring the family into existence (In Re Baby M, p. 2022; see also Robertson 1983, p. 32). Sorkow asserts a blanket right to procreate, without examining the specific human interests protected by such a right. The interest protected by the right to procreate is that of being able to create and sustain a family life with some integrity. But the enforcement of surrogate contracts against the will of the mother destroys one family just as surely as it creates another. The same interest that generates the right to procreate also generates an obligation to uphold the integrity of family life which constrains the exercise of this right. Recognizing the legality of pregnancy contracts would undermine the integrity of families by giving public sanction to a practice that expresses contempt for the moral and emotional ties that bind a mother to her children, legitimates the view that these ties are properly loosened by the offering of a monetary incentive, and fails to respect the claims of genetic and gestational ties to children that provide them with a more secure place in the world than commerce can supply. Freedom of contract provides weaker grounds for supporting contract pregnancy. This freedom is already constrained, notably in preventing the purchase and sale of human beings. Freedom of contract is usually defended in the name of autonomy. But the surrogate industry undermines the external and internal conditions required for women's autonomy. The same interests that often speak in favor of freedom of contract in this case speak against it. The prohibition of pregnancy contracts need be no cause for infertile couples to lose hope of raising a family. The option of adoption is still available, and every attempt should be made to open up opportunities for adoption to couples who do not meet standard requirements, for example, because of age or sexual orientation. Although there is a shortage of healthy white infants available for adoption, there is no shortage of children of other races, mixed-race children, older, and handicapped children who desperately need to be adopted. Leaders of the surrogate industry have proclaimed that contract pregnancy may replace adoption as the method of choice for infertile couples hoping to raise families. We should be wary of the racist and eugenic motivations that make some people rally to the surrogate industry at the expense of children who already exist and need homes. The case of contract pregnancy raises deep questions about the proper scope of the market in modern industrial societies. I have argued that

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there are principled grounds for rejecting the substitution of market norms for parental norms to govern the ways women bring children into the world. When market norms are applied to the ways we allocate and understand parental rights and responsibilities over children, children are reduced from subjects of love to objects of use. When market norms are applied to the ways we treat and understand women's reproductive labor, women are reduced from subjects of respect and consideration to objects of use. If we are to retain the capacity to value children and women in ways consistent with their rightful claims to respect and consideration, we must resist the encroachment of the market into the sphere of reproductive labor. Liberals are entitled to use state power to discourage and prohibit these treatments of children and women, because these actions can be defended in the name of liberal interests in autonomy, gender equality, and expressing equal respect and consideration for all. Women's labor is not a commodity.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality

9.1 Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification A good does not have to be traded on the market or privately owned to be treated as a commodity. Goyexnnients can treat public goods as commodities by regulating their protection according to market norms. Costbenefit analysis, a technique for evaluating public policies which is widely promoted by economists, is one main way governments can do this. In this chapter I examine the application of cost-benefit analysis to public policies concerning the protection of human life and environmental quality. I will argue that these goods are not properly regarded as mere commodities. By regarding them only as commodity values, cost-benefit analysis fails to consider the proper roles they occupy in public life. Cost-benefit analysis rests on two, basic jioxmativeclak^ that_public__policies ought to maximize efficiency. A state of affairs is Pareto efficient if and only if all opportunities for improving the welfare of any person without harming another have been exhausted. A policy makes a Pareto improvement if and only if it makes at least one person better off without making anyone worse off. A policy makes a potential Pareto improvement if and only if it produces gains that could be redistributed to make an actual Pareto improvement. Potential Pareto improvements make some people so much better off that they could fully compensate those made worse off and still come out ahead. Cost-benefit analysis recommends public policies that maximize potential Pareto improvements. This recommendation raises three questions. Why maximize efficiency rather than welfare? Economists answer that they have not yet found a satisfactory criterion for interpersonal welfare comparisons. The only unambiguous welfare improvements are captured by the efficiency criteria. Why maximize potential rather than actual Pareto

improvements? Every public policy inevitably makes at least one individual worse off than she was before, so the actual Pareto improvement criterion fails to discriminate among better and worse policies. But potential Pareto improvements still arguably increase net welfare, because they generate more wealth than would be needed to fully compensate the losers. Why ignore the distribution of gains from public policies? The potential Pareto improvement criterion is indifferent to distributional questions, for it neither considers the distributional effects of alternatives nor demands that compensation of losers actually take place. If distribution matters, the government can still use the potential Pareto improvement criterion and make lump-sum transfers to disadvantaged individuals from general revenues (Mishan 1971a). The secondjbasic normative claim of cost-benejit: analysis is:jtjhat_wdbfare be measured by an individual's "compensating variation." The compensating variation of an individual for a project is defined as the maximum sum of money she will pay to bring about the project, if she wants it to take place, or the minimum sum of money she will accept to put up with the project, if she does not want it to take place.11 will call this measure of value the "willingness-to-pay" scale. Cost-benefit analysis claims that the best policy maximizes the sum of compensating variations of all affected individuals. Such a policy would maximize potential Pareto improvements if people are willing to accept that everything they value which is affected by the policy has a monetary equivalent. Consider the implications of using cost-benefit analysis to choose policies regarding public health, safety, and environmental quality. The ideology of cost-benefit analysis regards these goods as commodity values at three levels of analysis. First, it claims that public policies for these goods are justified only because competitive markets for them cannot be established. Second, it claims that public policy should aim to mimic the outcomes competitive markets in these goods would achieve, were such markets possible. Public policies recommended by cost-benefit analysis are justified on grounds analogous to those that justify markets. Third, it measures the values of goods by inferring individuals' compensating variations in market interactions. By taking individuals' private market choices as normative for public policy, and by imputing a consumerist interpretation on how individuals view their choices, cost-benefit analysis accepts marketjiorms for enjoying, distributing^ and choosing goods as normative for public policy. The theory of market failure provides the economic rationale for involving the state in protecting public safety and environmental quality.

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Markets do not produce efficient outcomes when market transactions impose welfare changes or "externalities" on third parties. They also fail to produce or protect sufficient quantities of public goods—goods which can be provided to one person only on condition that others have access to them as well. No one in the affected area can be excluded from enjoying a reduction in air pollution or improved safety resulting from flood-control dams. Because access to these benefits cannot be restricted to those who pay for them, it will be unprofitable for individuals to try to provide them on a private market basis. And since no one has private property in the air, rivers, and oceans, individuals treat these goods as free resources, using them as dumping grounds for wastes and imposing negative externalities on the public. In the absence of government intervention, polluters will not be forced to pay the costs they impose on third parties and, consequently, will produce more than an "optimal" amount of pollution (Baumol and Oates 1979, p. 71-79). T)te theory of market failure is a theory not of what is wrong with markets, but of what goes wrong when markets are not available: jit is a theory of what goes wrong when goods are not commodified. If cheaply enforceable private property rights and competitive markets with low transaction costs in public goods could be created, the theory recommends that this be done. It assumes that the optimal magnitudes and distributions of safety and environmental quality are those that would be produced by competitive markets, if markets in these goods were feasible. Because they aren't, governments should use cost-benefit analysis to generate the outcomes markets would produce if risks to life and environmental damage were private bads. Cost-benefit analysis is the state s way of mimicking the consequences of market transactions. Economists argue that the outcomes produced by competitive markets are desirable for three reasons. First, such markets are Pareto efficient. Second, they are produced by voluntary exchanges. There is a strong moral presumption in favor of permitting outcomes to which the affected parties have consented. Third, the fact that these outcomes are voluntarily accepted is thought to show that the parties think they have received fair compensation for them. The state s use of cost-benefit analysis to mimic market outcomes has analogous virtues. The outcomes recommended by cost-benefit analysis are potentially Pareto efficient. Because these outcomes are efficient, they are thought to enjoy the hypothetical consent of everyone. Before knowing how the distribution of costs and benefits will affect individuals, everyone would consent to a scheme of costs and benefits that yields more net benefits than the alternatives. Finally, the consent

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of each person to such a scheme is thought to imply that she regards herself as compensated ex ante for the risks it imposes on herself (Posner 1980; Leonard and Zeckhauser 1985). Cost-benefit analysis imitates the market by measuring the values of goods by individuals' willingness to pay for them. These figures are usually derived from studies of market transactions in which individuals trade off commodified versions of these goods against money. For example, the amount of money people pay for access to private parks, or the additional housing costs they pay for a scenic view from their windows, is used to measure the cash value of national parks and public vistas. The supposedly higher wages people accept for working at hazardous jobs are used to measure the cash value people are thought to implicitly place on their own lives. Cost-benefit analysis takes such market-determined prices for exclusively appropriated environmental goods and workplace safety and applies them to cases where the environmental goods in question are public or where the risks imposed on people are involuntarily imposed externalities. Use of the same prices in public and private contexts is justified on the grounds that people should exhibit consistent tradeofls in all domains. IvJai&^jCLhoices-are made normative for public choices because individuals' market choices are^ thought to_ reveal_thei^ "Better than the valuations they express in questionnaires or public debate. TTiu^T^o^EenefTt analysis treats health, safety, and environmental quality as commodities in its procedures of justification and evaluation. This point can be better understood by recalling the account of commodity values defended in §7.2. A good is treated as a commodity if it is valued as an exclusively appropriated object of use and if market norms and relations govern its production, exchange, and distribution. Costbenefit analysis assumes that people value safety and the environment as commodities in three ways. It measures peoples valuations of these goods in market transactions and hence, only as they are valued as privately appropriated, exclusively enjoyed goods. This assumes that the public nature of some instances of these goods is merely a technical fact about them and not itself a valued quality. Xheppssibility that BatiQB^ paikiand public safety might be valued as shared goods /does not enter into its "Evaluations. By accounting for the values of environmental quality and safety only through their cash "equivalents," cost-benefit analysis also assumes that these goods are substitutable with any alternative commodity Jiiin3lesJthat can be purchased for the same price. This ignores the possibility that goods such as endangered species may be specially valued as unique and irreplaceable higher goods. The distinction between higher

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and lower goods, which supports norms that prohibit certain tradeoffs between them, plays no part in the analysis. Finally, cost-benefit analysis assumes that the preferences people express in private consumer choice^ sjiould be normative for public choice, as if the valuations people make_as_ consumers exhaust their concerns. Market failure can be analyzed as a failure to have markets only if all goods are mere commodities and different institutional mechanisms for producing and distributing these goods serve the same function of indiscriminate want-satisfaction that the market is supposed to serve. This assumes that people adequately express their valuations of goods only through satisfying their unexamined preferences. By taking market prices and outcomes as the standard for public deliberation about safety and environmental quality, cost-benefit analysis allows market norms to govern decisions concerning safety and the environment. Markets are responsive only to given wants, without evaluating thereasons people have for wanting the goods in question, which, may-he.based j}n_ ideals or principles. By using market valuations to guide public policies, cost-benefit analysis assumes that ideals, needs, and principles have no distinctive role to play with regard to safety and the environment.2 Markets respond to wants in proportion to individuals' willingness to pay for their satisfaction. By accepting market willingness-to-pay as a measure of value, cost-benefit analysis assumes that the influence of one's valuations should be determined by the money one is willing to pay to promote them, rather than by how well they stand up in public debate. This measure of value also weights the preferences of those withjarger incomes more heavily than the preferencesu>fthx>silwkE smaler iacomes. Because the power of an individual to promote her interests is a function of her financial resources and competitive position, cost-benefit analysis implicitly assumes that the state should reproduce in its public decisions the consequences of letting people with vastly unequal powers of self-protection fend for themselves. Markets generate prices for goods on the supposition that the parties to a market exchange have no pre-contractual obligations to provide them. By taking market-determined valuations as normative for public choice, cost-benefit analysis accepts this supposition. Finally, the market provides individuals with an avenue for expressing their valuations primarily through exit, not voice. Cost-benefit analysis ignores information about individuals' valuations discoverable only through voice and provides no integrated mechanism for enabling people to express valuations of goods that essentially require voice. I reject all of the above assumptions that cost-benefit analysis makes

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about the modes of valuation and norms properly applicable to public safety and the environment. Critics of cost-benefit analysis have challenged these assumptions (Gibson 1983; Baier 1986; Campen 1986; MacLean 1986; Sagoff 1988). I will show how such challenges can be persuasively grounded and integrated into a pluralist theory of value and rational choice that rejects universal cornmodification and poses substantial limits to the scope of markets. The arguments made here do not imply that cost-benefit analysis is an inappropriate tool for all public decisions. I object to the use of cost-benefit analysis in choices involving human lives and environmental q u ^ J ^ ^ e c a u s ^ ^commodities. But this tool may be appropriate for decisions involving goods that are properly regarded as mere commodities. 9.2 Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life Cost-benefit analysts claim to adequately represent the value of human life for public policy purposes by means of a cash equivalent. They argue that if we are to behave rationally, we must assign a cash value to risks to life. This argument is based on the assumption criticized in §3.4, that the need to choose between two goods demands that we find some common measure of their values. Money offers the most practical common measure of the value of life in relation to other benefits. Of course no monetary value can be placed on the certain loss of one's life. Few people would accept any amount of money in return for certain death the next day. Rather, the willingness-to-pay criterion claims to measure the value of avoiding a determinate statistical probability of losing one's life. An individual's willingness to pay for a marginal change in her risk of death may be discovered by her verbal responses or by inference from her market choices. Most economists and cost-benefit analysts distrust individuals' responses to questionnaires because people often either can't say what they would do when offered an abstract option of trading a small chance of death for money or give inconsistent answers (Thaler 1982, pp. 177-179). This problem is attributed to the fact that people generally can't handle very large or very small numbers (Mishan 1971b, p. 695). They may also have strategic reasons for misrepresenting the value they place on their lives. For example, if they suspect that their answers will be used to force a chemical firm to compensate its neighbors for the health risks it imposes through air pollution emissions, they might be tempted to overstate their compensating variations. Economists prefer to infer individuals' willingness to pay for marginal

I: ••III

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risks to their lives from the tradeoffs between safety and money they actually make in their market choices (Viscusi 1983, p. 97). These figures are usually derived from an analysis of wage differentials between more and less hazardous jobs.3 Cost-benefit analysis assumes that people implicitly place a cash value on their lives when they trade off risks to them for money in choosing among jobs. If they did not believe their wages compensated them for their workplace risks, they could quit and find a less risky job. The pressure of exit from hazardous jobs forces firms to raise wages to attract enough workers. In competitive equilibrium with labor mobility and full information, wage differentials measure people's "revealed preferences" for safety and income—what they are willing to pay in reduced wages for avoiding job related hazards. Cost-benefit analysis takes such market-determined prices of safety and applies them to contexts in which risks are not voluntarily accepted, on the presumption that one should pay the same amount to avoid a given risk wherever it occurs (Viscusi 1983). Attempts to estimate the monetary value individuals purportedly place on their lives have run into empirical difficulties. Different studies have produced inconsistent estimates of the value of life, ranging from a low of $15,000 to a high of $10,000,000 (Viscusi 1983, pp. 98-106; Mishan 1985, pp. 160—161). Economists have tried to explain these discrepancies by arguing that different industries attract individuals with different tastes for risk (Viscusi 1983, p. 102). Furthermore, an individual's willingness to pay for a given quantum of risk reduction increases with the total magnitude of risk, but increases less than proportionally to the magnitude of the reduction. Individuals will pay much more to reduce the risk of death from 3/10 to 2/10 than from 2/10 to 1/10, but they will also pay for a risk reduction of 1/10,000 much more than one-tenth the amount they will pay to reduce a risk by 1/1,000 (Mishan 1985). As we shall see, these variables do not explain the most important differences in individuals' evaluations of risk reduction, which depend on the social context in which the risks are encountered. Even if empirical studies yielded a consistent "value of life," the normative significance of this figure would remain in doubt. Such studies can at best tell us what workers actually pay in wage reductions for incremental reductions in workplace risks. But statistics about how much money people ("reveal" they are "willing" to) pay for safety have the normative significance claimed for them only if they reflect peoples free, informed, autonomous consent to market-generated outcomes, based on the judgments that they have been fairly compensated for the costs

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imposed upon them and that the same risk/money tradeoff has the same value or acceptability, regardless of the social context in which it occurs. Willingness-to-pay statistics can support this interpretation only if the following assumptions are true. First, workers must be free to choose without duress. This requires that workers are mobile and see themselves as having a significant range of worthwhile alternatives to the choice they actually make. Second, workers' choices must reflect deliberation upon full information about the risks they encounter. This requires not only that information be available to workers, but that they fulfill the internal conditions of autonomy necessary for them to make good use of this information. Third, workers' choices must express their own valuations, not the valuations others make of their lives. This requires that workers enjoy the external conditions for autonomy. Fourth, they must choose egoistically, with concern only for their own welfare, when they make wage/risk tradeoffs. This requires that workers' job choices not be motivated by any sense of moral obligation, personal responsibility, or benevolence, which moves them to sacrifice their own welfare for the sake of others. (If they are so motivated, then their wage premiums cannot be interpreted as fully compensating them for their personal sacrifices, and so will underestimate their welfare losses resulting from the risks they encounter.) Fifth, workers must care only about the relative magnitudes of risk/money tradeoffs in evaluating the acceptability of risks. This requires that they find the same risk/money tradeoffs in different social contexts equally acceptable. Researchers Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Brown (1984) have provided evidence regarding workers' views of their own risk-taking behavior that casts doubt on all these assumptions. Consider first labor mobility, a condition of free choice among jobs. Many workers in hazardous jobs do not regard themselves as fully mobile in the way cost-benefit analysis assumes. They learn about most hazards involved in their work on the job, not before beginning employment. Many of these hazards, such as loss of fertility and increased risk of cancer, are discovered only after years on the job. By then the costs of exit are high. When workers quit after several years invested in a job, they lose seniority, their pension, extra benefits, pay, and vacation time. Their skills are often not easily transferable to less risky jobs. Many people in such circumstances do not see themselves as having acceptable alternatives to staying on the job (pp. 59, 90—92, 180— 181). If people make choices under circumstances they view as putting them in duress or as having no decent alternative, one cannot infer that they find the costs encountered on the job they choose to be acceptable.

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They may see even their most preferred alternative as not fairly compensating them for the risks they take. Workers often lack the internal conditions for fully autonomous choice required for cost-benefit analysis to infer that their risk/wage tradeoffs express reflective valuations of their lives. Workers commonly report that they do not feel free to demand information about workplace risks, to request improvements in safety equipment and procedures, or to call the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, because they fear demotion, harassment, or discharge by their employer. Workers lack not only information, but the background conditions to make sound reflective use of it. When workers are isolated from others in the same predicament, they often tend to think of their physical ailments as purely personal problems, for which they are to blame* and they find thinking about them fearful and embarrassing. When they see that they lack control over the risks they endure, they often acquire an attitude of resignation and fatalism. They avoid considering the dangers they confront, since this would lead only to worrying and not to constructive change, which is beyond their powers (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 24-48, 85-90, 94, 130, 149—150). Such conditions of resignation, avoidance, self-blame, and fear are hardly consistent with the interpretation of workers' behavior as indicating free acceptance of workplace risks. The hierarchical conditions under which most people work also cast doubt on the supposition that workers' choices reflect their own valuations rather than the valuations of their bosses. Workers often report that they are reluctant to refuse specific orders to do especially hazardous tasks, for fear of being fired or harassed. Furthermore, when workers are conditioned to behave under circumstances of subservience to managers, they tend to substitute their bosses' judgments of what risks it is reasonable to take for their own (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 84—87). This suggests that the risks workers take on the job reflect how their bosses value their lives, rather than how they value their own lives. Most workers lack the social conditions of autonomy—freedom from obligations to obey other people s orders—required to support the judgment that their choices on the job reflect their own valuations. The difficulty of separating a person's self-valuations from the valuations of others is compounded by the fact that a persons willingness-to-pay is a function of his wages. But wages, in turn, are a function of how much value others place on a person's labor. Although most people think of their own lives as not substitutable for others* lives, their wage rates are set by people who value them only for their labor, which they usually consider a fungible commodity. Workers

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cannot express any stronger or deeper valuations of their own lives than the valuations others place on them when the sole vehicle for expressing their valuations is how much money they can pay to protect themselves from hazards imposed by others. Cost-benefit analysis imputes to workers an egoistic, commodity fetishist orientation to their choices. But workers with families commonly do not regard their choices about risks to their lives as acts of consumers out to maximize their personal utilities. They see their choices as attempts to discharge their responsibilities to their families. Bound by their responsibilities to others, they do not feel free to risk their lives at will for pay, as they sometimes acknowledge having done in their youth. Nor do they feel free to jeopardize their families' livelihood and future prospects by simply quitting their hazardous jobs and risking long-term unemployment. The opportunity to earn a living is not merely another commodity, like a toaster. It is both a need and a responsibility. To the extent that workers' choices reflect this view, wage differentials do not represent the cash values people place on their lives; rather, they reflect the risks people feel obliged to accept so as to discharge their responsibilities (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 38, 91-92, 180-182). When cost-benefit analysts take such dutiful and benevolent choices to reflect only workers' judgments of their personal welfare, they seriously underestimate the welfare costs of these choices (Sen 1973). Workers commonly find risks more or less acceptable, depending on the social relations in which they are imposed and managed. Workers find the risks they encounter more acceptable the more their managers have established relations of trust with them, the more they exercise causal control over their risks, and the more voice they have in determining the circumstances of risk (the precautions to be taken, the assignment of responsibilities for safety, and so forth) (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 11, 37-39, 5 1 59, 83-84, 150, 163—172). They also find risks more worthwhile when they see the end for which they risk their lives as a worthy one. People such as firemen, research scientists, and artists often do regard themselves as making fully free, self-confident, worthwhile choices to risk their lives. Saving lives, pursuing truth, creating art—these are valued ends that can make risk-taking worthwhile. Lab assistants who clean up after research scientists often find laboratory hazards not so acceptable, for they do not see themselves as engaged in pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. Few workers report that extra pay alone makes them confront their risks with equanimity. Researchers have found that the difference in attitude between workers who see their risk-taking as intrinsically choiceworthy and those

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who do not is made evident when they discuss their hopes for their children. The former express pride in the thought that their children would take up the hazardous occupations they chose; the latter hope that their children would not have to do so (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 97— 99, 179—180). Because peoples attitudes toward risk vary with the social context, cost-benefit analysts are not entitled to assume that the risk/ money tradeoffs people make at work or in other market choices express how people think these tradeoffs should be made when they are involuntarily subjected to risks by the state or third parties, or when they are subjected to risks for the sake of achieving purposes they do not value. The market norms that inform cost-benefit analysis contradict at every point the norms that inform workers' perspectives on risks to life and health. Whereas cost-benefit analysis conceives of choices about risks to life and health as simple consumer choices, where only wants and not ethical concerns matter, workers view these choices as bound up with matters of responsibility, need, and aspirations to engage in activities they deem worthy. Whereas cost-benefit analysis is indifferent to the circumstances under which people are forced to choose among risks, workers view these circumstances—especially the social relations within which risks are imposed and managed—as crucially affecting the acceptability of the risks they encounter. Finally, whereas cost-benefit analysis assumes that preferences should be expressed and measured through mechanisms of exit, workers express a strong desire to have an active voice in shaping, evaluating, and choosing among alternative projects of risk management. They view active participation as itself an intrinsically worthy activity, a way of discharging their duties to others and of realizing the ideals of selfreliance, democracy, and helping future generations (Nelkin and Brown 1984, pp. 101-107, 163-172). Cost-benefit analysis is properly committed to the view that people should be able to decide for themselves the values of different risks and to express their values in their choices. But it is mistaken in thinking that people can adequately and autonomously express all their valuations through market relations. It is mistaken in thinking that a person s valuations always express the orientation of an egoistic consumer. If these thoughts are mistaken, then willingness-to-pay statistics cannot support the normative weight that cost-benefit analysis asks them to bear. Let us consider how welfare economists might reply to these charges. Their replies expose the deeply erroneous assumptions about individual values and their expression that lie at the root of their discipline. Some economists argue that predictive power is the sole test of an

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empirical theory. According to this view, it is irrelevant whether the subjects of study view themselves as having the beliefs and desires the theory attributes to them. A theory is regarded as empirically adequate as long as people behave as if they had these beliefs and desires (Friedman 1953). So if compensating wage differentials are found when economists look for them, then economists are entitled to assume that workers' choices reveal their preferences for life over money, which in turn are supposed to reflect the monetary valuations they place on their own lives. Even as a claim about the empirical adequacy of economists' assumptions, this argument is mistaken. Economists' assumptions systematically fail to predict workers' verbal expressions of their values, which constitute an important class of evidence about their values. This evidence cannot be dismissed on the grounds that people are bad at thinking about very small risks or very large amounts of money. There is no reason to think that people are better at dealing with very small and very large numbers implicitly, in their behavior, than explicitly, in their verbal responses. Nor are verbal responses in principle any more subject to strategic manipulation than market choices (Sen 1973). But even if economists' valuational assumptions were adequate for predicting workers' market choices, this would not show that they are adequate for the normative uses to which cost-benefit analysis puts them. Willingness-to-pay statistics can make claims only about what people actually choose, not about how they view their choices. When public policies rely on claims about how agents understand their actions, they cannot be guided or justified solely through hypotheses with high predictive power over market choices alone, since this method ignores agents' own perspectives on their choices. Advocates of the economic view may reply that the act of choosing an option, as long as it is informed and not enforced by threats issued from the person offering the option, implies that the agent prefers and accepts it. And to accept a choice is to find its consequences acceptable, which is equivalent to consenting to those consequences (Posner 1980, p. 492). This inference trades upon an equivocation between two different notions of acceptance. When people accept a job, knowing its attendant risks, they do "accept" these risks in one sense. But this does not imply that they find these risks acceptable, fair, legitimate, or worthwhile. When I choose to walk home at night, knowing that I may be mugged or raped, I do not thereby find it acceptable, fair, or legitimate that these risks are involved in walking home, nor do I consent to being mugged or raped. This is true even if I could have called a taxi and even if someone pays me to walk home at night (Thomson 1985, pp. 138—140). To consent to an option is

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neither to consent to all of its foreseeable consequences nor to judge that it is all right that those consequences attend one's choice. How then, do we tell whether people find the outcomes of their choices to be acceptable, fair, or legitimate? The only adequate evidence is found in their attitudes, not their "revealed" preferences or choices. Individuals have positive or negative attitudes toward their choices which reveal how well their choices reflect the valuations they have of themselves and others. If they make a deliberate, informed choice with equanimity, this shows that they have no regrets or misgivings, which in turn suggests that they view its consequences as acceptable for everyone they care about whose interests are at stake in the choice. Even this judgment does not imply that they view its consequences as good for the people whose interests are at stake, since it is consistent with their not caring for anyone, including themselves. It also does not imply that they view the choice itself as fair or legitimate, since it is consistent with cynicism and resignation. If they make a choice with misgivings or mixed feelings, this suggests that they do not find its consequences acceptable for everyone they care about, or perhaps that they think the choice morally wrong, or unfair. Again, njQ^traightforward welfare or legitimacy judgment can be . derived^ frqm_the^fact_of choice or preference". A person need not endorse all t^cansjaquencesand meanings of even Ker'most preferred "choice* (§2.4). Economists make a fundamental mistake in inferririg people s values directly from their choices or preferences. A person s attitudes embody conceptions of the significance *** of her preferences and choices that the economists bare consequentialist representations of her preferences cannot capture. Cost-benefit analysts argue that their inferences from workers' choices to workers' values could be made valid by improving the mechanisms of exit. They would insist that workers be provided with full information about risks, and they may even advocate relocation aid and pension compensation for workers who discover, too late, that the risks of their jobs are more than they bargained for. Under these conditions, it would be more plausible to claim that workers were fully mobile and that those who remained in risky occupations did so voluntarily. But even if exit mechanisms were perfectly fair, informed, and voluntary, they would still suffer from two inherent defects. First, the internal and external obstacles to autonomous choice noted above are due primarily to isolation from fellow workers, lack of causal control over the risks in the work environment, and unequal relations of power between workers and managers. These conditions are not removed by providing workers with complete information about risks and low exit costs.

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The second defect of relying on exit mechanisms to enable people to express their preferences is that these mechanisms are inherently inarticulate. Cost-benefit analysis leaves the task of interpreting people's reasons for exiting up to the analysts. But this is a political task, not just a scientific one. When analysts assume that people's choices about risks to life and health are motivated just by the size of risk and the income lost or gained by avoiding or assuming these risks, they set the stage for narrowing the political agenda to the sole question of how much money to spend per unit of risk reduction. Other concerns, such as how the social relations within which these risks are imposed and controlled should be changed, are left out of account. T^js^e^^ccts th^xjowmodity fetishism^^fj®:elfare economics^ the assumption that people intrinsically care only about exclusively appropriated goods, and that they care about their relations with others only for their instrumental value in maximizing private consumption. By incorporating a commodity fetishist bias into its interpretations of workers' valuations, cost-benefit analysis functions to legitimize a depoliticized agenda which takes the status quo for granted (Campen 1986, chaps. 7, 8). Economists' exclusive reliance on predictive power over market choices to test their hypotheses makes this possible, by facilitating the confusion between variables which can "account" for people's choices with the variables people care about. It is always possible to tell a story about agents' motives which "accounts" for their behavior without calling established relations of power into question, as long as one avoids consulting the agents themselves. Market norms and social relations do not supply an adequate context for people to autonomously express how they value their lives. Costbenefit analysis therefore does not supply an adequate framework for evaluating public policies that involve risks to human life. This conclusion depends in part on the importance of securing the conditions for autonomy, which are often lacking in the context of workplace risktaking. Can the case against cost-benefit analysis be expanded to cover goods where the autonomy of individuals' market choices over them is not as much in question? The next section provides distinct grounds for opposing the application of cost-benefit analysis to environmental goods. 9.3 Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment The case for using cost-benefit analysis to deal with environmental goods appears stronger than the case for using it to deal with matters of life and health. Whereas we neither have a market in human lives nor regard

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human beings primarily as economic resources, we do have markets in land, water, animals, and natural resources. Our dominant relations to these things are economic. The choices people make as consumers of environmental goods are arguably more autonomous than the choices people make as sellers of their labor power. Nevertheless, cost-benefit analysis does not adequately represent the ways people value environmental goods. It also fails to provide a suitable framework for deliberating about the conflicting ideals concerning our relationship to nature that inform the political and moral debates about preservation and development. As it does with the value of life, cost^ben^lk-analysis measures the value of environmental goods in terms of the amount of money individuals are willing to pay for them. Some goods of the environment, such as forests"""" and mines, are economic goods with explicit market values. But so-called amenity values, such as scenic views, clear skies, national parks, endangered species, and diverse, stable ecosystems have no explicit market value because they are public goods. Economists claim that individuals' market "choices give an indirect indication of the value they place on environmental amenities. The amenity may be a perfect substitute for a privately marketed good. The demand for the privately marketed good can then serve as a monetary measure of the value individuals place on the public good. For instance, opportunities for swimming, hiking, and camping are both publicly and privately available. A monetary measure of a decline in the quality of a public recreational area as a result of air, land, or water pollution can be inferred from the decline in demand for private recreational areas suffering from equivalent deterioration (Maler and Wyzga 1976, pp. 87). Since environmental quality varies by region, the value individuals place on opportunities to consume clean air, the solitude afforded by surrounding wilderness, natural beauty, and so forth are also reflected in residential land prices and in the wages people are willing to sacrifice for living in areas with more attractive environments but fewer economic opportunities (Power 1980). The crucial assumption behind this economic analysis of environmental goods is that the ways people value the environment when acting in their roles as consumers ancl^jr^ducers^ exhaust the ways they care aBouTTtr Only iF this is true is it proper to make their valuations of the environment in their market choices normative for public choice. If people have concerns about the environment that cannot be adequately expressed through market norms and commodity consumption, willingness-to-pay statistics will not capture them. Cost-benefit analysts make three assumptions

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about how consumers value commodities which they apply to their evaluation of environmental amenities. First, consumers seek to advance their personal welfare in purchasing commodities. Therefore, if environmental goods are just like commodities, their value is instrumental and consists in their uses for promoting human welfare. Second, commodities advance an individual's welfare best when she can privately appropriate them for her personal use. This follows from the fact that their value is a kind of usevalue, realized in subordinating it to an individual's purposes, which are assumed to be definable and satisfiable independent of others' purposes. When access to a good is not limited, individuals tend to use it at crosspurposes. The market price of a good reflects how much people value it for exclusive use. If environmental goods are just commodities, then inferred market prices for them will effectively capture how much individuals value them. Third, as mere use-values, commodities are indifferently substitutable for any other bundle of goods with the same market price. If environmental goods are mere commodities, they should be comprehensively subject to tradeoffs against other commodities. This norm contrasts with norms for valuing higher goods, which prohibit some tradeoffs between higher and lower goods (§4.2). Cost-benefit analysts also make a crucial assumption about the regard public policy should have for individuals' values. Respect for an individual's values in the market sphere is expressed by satisfying her wants in proportion to the amount of money she is willing to put behind them, without questioning her reasons for having those wants. If people value the environment just as they value pure commodities, then this is also thought to be the way public bodies should express respect for individual concerns about the environment. Each of these assumptions about the ways people value the environment, and about how we should treat people's values in public policy formation, are subject to challenge. Consider the claim that people value environmental goods only extrinsically, for their contribution to human welfare. Certainly, these goods contribute enormously to human welfare. But people value environmental goods in ways other than use: we admire many wild animals, feel wonder and awe at spectacular storms and volcanic eruptions, demand consideration for delicate ecosystems, appreciate mountains and seascapes for their beauty. These attitudes are intrinsic evaluative attitudes. It makes sense for us to take up these attitudes toward wild animals, ecosystems, natural wonders, and so forth independent of our caring about any other particular things or people. Many people dedicate themselves to preserving and protecting these goods for their own sakes, even at significant

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cost to their own welfare. And they care about preserving the pristine character of parts of the biosphere, such as the Antarctic, which few people will visit or use. The_ways they care about these goods are independent of their concern for human welfare.It^foflow^^frgmjhejefinition of intrinsic goods (§1.1, §2.3), that many environmental goods are intrinsically valuable. Some people strongly resist this conclusion. Most of the resistance is due to confusion in the theory of value. Some people hold that only things that care about other things are intrinsically valuable. The things they care about which don't care about other things are merely instrumentally valuable (Rollin 1988). This argument poses a false dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumental goods (criticized in §2.3). One could choose to define intrinsic goods as the things that, in caring about other non-caring things, provide the conditions for the latter s being extrinsically valuable. This definition would make inanimate nature extrinsically good. But it would not follow that it is merely of instrumental value, since it can still make sense to care about it for its own sake. The condition of its being valuable, on this definition, is just that people sensibly care about it. People needn't care about it for the ways it serves human interests. We care about some things that are incapable of valuing anything independent of whether they serve our interests or purposes. Other theorists worry that to regard the environment as intrinsically valuable is to imply that human rights may be violated to protect it (McCloskey 1983, p. 52). Some environmentalists, in their rush to protect goods such as forests and seals, have failed to take seriously the welfare and autonomy of indigenous peoples who depend on using these goods for their own survival. But valuing environmental goods intrinsically does not demand that we fail to respect human beings. Consider the difficulties encountered in attempting to force all our valuations of environmental goods into the instrumental mold. People appreciate many environmental goods for their beauty. Appreciation is a mode of intrinsic valuation. It is immediately directed toward the object of beauty, not toward ourselves. But some economists deny that any tenable distinction can be drawn between economic (useful) and aesthetic values. This forces them to maintain that things of beauty are only of instrumental value for the enjoyment humans derive from beholding them. This view commits the, crude hedonistic error exposed in §6.3: taking the object of intrinsic value to be a favorable response rather than the object of a favorable response. The hedonistic account of the value of beautiful natural objects mistakenly assimilates its value to the mere use-

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values of amusement park rides, or consciousness altering drugs. In the latter case the experience alone matters. Any alteration of these things that produces the same or better experiences improves them. But when we contemplate a beautiful natural scene, and are struck by its grandeur or peacefiilness, we experience it as worthy of our appreciation, not just as good for kicks. In appreciating a thing of natural beauty, we acknowledge that it possesses an integrity not to be violated, a unity of characteristics not to be modified merely for our pleasure or for ends not tied to its preservation in a flourishing natural state. This is why people who intrinsically care about the environment object to practices that use natural wonders for mere spectacle-seeking, as when chemicals are poured into geysers to stimulate eruptions, or magnificent caves decked out in lurid colored lights. Appreciation, as a higher mode of valuation than use, demands constraints on the ways we may use its objects. ^^con^miSts object that the existence of markets in works of art and nature resorts shows that the value of aesthetic goods is no different from the value of pure commodities (Power 1980, pp. 81—83). The prices these goods command indicate how much people value them, just as with any other commodity. "The resources of the physical and social environment . . . and the services they provide contribute to human well-being in exactly the same way as marketable natural or human-made resources" (Power 1980, p. iii). But the fact that there are markets in aesthetic goods does not show that market prices comprehensively measure their values. Market prices measure only how much people value goods for exclusive appropriation and consumption. Many people care about protecting some environmental goods, such as the remote rain forests of Borneo or the California condor, even if they will never own or personally experience them. Many people care about having some environmental goods, such as national parks, open to the public and valued as shared parts of the national heritage, rather than privately developed as exclusive vacation resorts.4 To claim that environmental goods have intrinsic worth is not to claim that they don't contribute to human welfare. Their preservation can contribute to human development in part because they have an intrinsic value which we acknowledge as independent of human self-interest. The natural environment inspires many evaluative responses in us: wonder, awe, delight, admiration, reverence, appreciation. So it provides us with a realm in which we can develop and maintain the capacity to respond in these ways to the natural world, to escape from the often tiresome burden of exercising our will over objects in the ceaseless cycle of production and

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consumption. To say this is to deny that all environmental goods "contribute to human well-being in exactly the same way as marketable natural or human-made resources." Some goods contribute to human well-being precisely in not being objects of private appropriation and use, as marketed goods are. Because we value some environmental goods in higher ways than we value pure commodities, they are not indifferently substitutable for the latter. One point of protecting natural goods of special aesthetic or ecological significance is to open up opportunities for us to engage with nature on harmonious, non-exploitative terms. To fully express the higher modes of valuation implicated in such engagement, we must set aside some natural enclaves that are fully protected from encroachment by exploitative attitudes. We must not hold their preservation hostage to the latest cost-benefit analysis that could represent the profits from their commercial development as exceeding the supposed monetized value of leaving them alone. This means that, contrary to the market norm upheld by costbenefit analysis, we should not be indifferent between preserving higher environmental goods and acquiring any bundle of commodities with the "same" cash value. This is one of the implications of regarding higher goods as not having a price: to express the higher ways we value them, some tradeoffs between these goods and mere use-values must be prohibited (§4.2). Under normal conditions, economic opportunities that could be exploited in the national parks should simply have no weight at all in deliberation. Economists object that such an attitude irrationally neglects the opportunity costs of not exploiting the national parks. According to this economic logic, it is equally irrational for pet owners to disregard the opportunity costs of not eating their pets or not selling them for laboratory experiments. But the attitude we assume toward our pets just wouldn't be affection if we were always prepared to weigh the value of their companionship and happiness against these "opportunities." The full expression of our affection requires that these considerations be silenced, that they have no weight in our deliberations (§2.4). This represents not an irrational neglect of opportunities for gain, but a contempt, even a revulsion, for the gains that could be achieved by betraying our pets. Similarly, those who support the integrity of our national parks despise the economic gains that could be achieved by damming the Grand Canyon or razing the California redwoods. According to this expressive, non-consequentialist logic, the same economic gains do not have the same value, regardless of how they were achieved. The way they are achieved is not an

Cost-Benefit Analysis • 209

independently accountable cost to be subtracted from the economic benefits of the enterprise to estimate its net worth. Rather, the way gains are achieved—what attitudes toward the environment are expressed by them—figure in the construction of a decision frame that informs our estimation of the worth of the gains themselves; that is, what attitudes we should take up toward those gains. Ill-gotten gains are not valued the way a financially equivalent sum of legitimately acquired goods are. Because economic gains have only extrinsic value, their worth is conditional upon the expressive significance of bringing them about in one way or another (§2.2, §3.4). Those who advocate an environmental ethic based on recognizing the intrinsic values of environmental goods have stood out among theorists for clearly and explicitly grasping the expressive logic this recognition involves (Sagoff 1988, Taylor 1986). This logic is also implicitly understood by the many ordinary citizens who persist in frustrating economists' attempts to discover their "willingness-to-pay" for environmental amenities through questionnaires. When the economists Robert Rowe and Lauraine Chestnut asked people how much money they would demand in compensation for power plant pollution that would damage the visibility of the scenic Southwest, more than half the respondents rejected the terms of the question outright or demanded infinite compensation. They interpreted the question as an inquiry into their response to a hypothetical bribe, not as an inquiry into their values, which they denied could be represented by a cash equivalent (Rowe and Chestnut 1982, p. 10). They repudiated the ill-gotten gains from environmental depredation. Other attempts to measure individuals' willingness to pay for environmental amenities have encountered similar responses (Rowe and Chestnut 1982, pp. 80-81). So, most U.S. citizens_believe_ that to treat the value of some environmental goods as reducible to a cash equivalent is itself to express ^an ^Jnapprogriate attitude toward the environment...They do not view the choices at stake in the terms in which cost-benefit analysis frames them. In holding that environmental goods are worthy of consideration and appreciation, they reject the view that the satisfaction, of human wants or the jromotionjof^ human welfare is the only ^proper ^T^j^g^^cjg^c^ Because market prices and willingness-to-pay statistics generally reflect individuals' valuations of things only as satisfying their private wants and interests, they do not capture all the ways people value environmental goods. The preferences people express in their roles as consumers therefore do not capture all the concerns they have. So people in their roles as

210 • Cost-Benefit Analysis

citizens debating public policy do not and should not take the preferences they express in their market choices as normative for, public purposes (Sagoff 1988, pp. 51-57). Advocates of cost-benefit analysis justify its methods as the best way public policy can be responsive to citizens* values. Taking their cue from market norms of "consumers' sovereignty," they hold that responsiveness to people s values is best achieved by treating them as uncriticized wants and interests, which public policy should satisfy in proportion to people's willingness to pay in the market domain. This view fails to capture the ways people value goods putside of market contexts, which in principle cannot be measured by a cash value. It also fails to be responsive to the ways citizens think their values should be reflected in public policy. Citizens do not regard their valuations of the environment as matters of mere self-interest or consumer demand. Since they value many environmental goods in higher ways than they value commodities, their valuations involve public ideals and principles. The respectful response to peoples' conflicting public ideals and principles is to take seriously the reasons offered in support of them in public deliberation (Sagoff 1988, pp. 92—97). The norms of consumers' sovereignty amount to a tyranny over citizens when applied to the domain of public policy. Theyimpose a narrow selof cpnsumerist values on citizens and deprive them of vehicles Jor articulating and expressing their concerns, which in principle cannot be represented by market-based measures of bare preference intensity. Since costbenefit analysis is justified as a way to enable public policy to respond to citizens' values, to the extent that its methods cannot capture these values or respond properly to them, it stands condemned by its own standards of justification. Cost-benefit analysis fails as a framework for deliberation about public policy toward environmental goods. 9.4 Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis Advocates of cost-benefit analysis see its function as enabling political institutions to be more responsive to citizens' values. But it fails to serve this function with respect to non-commodity values. When matters of public health and environmental quality are at stake, this function would be better served by making our political institutions more democratic than by making them more like the market. For the goods in question are political goods. They can be adequately secured only through democratic institutions of voice, in which all citizens are entitled to participate on terms of equality. Such institutions are deliberative bodies that aim to

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reach decisions on the basis of principles, reasoning, and arguments that articulate the concerns of citizens in terms they reflectively endorse. The influence one's position should have in a democratic, deliberative institution is determined by the strength of one's reasons in favor of it, not by how much money one is willing to pay to make it prevail. Democratic respect for citizens' values is expressed by taking their reasons and principles seriously, not by blindly satisfying their unexamined wants, as these are interpreted by economistic technocrats. Democratic institutions are necessary to respond to citizens' concerns about safety and the environment for two closely connected reasons. First, they provide the social conditions of autonomy people need to articulate, change, and promote their own values in ways they can reflectively endorse. In contrast, the hierarchical relations of the workplace deprive workers of the internal and external conditions of autonomy they need to effectively express their concerns. Cost-benefit analysis reproduces this heteronomy, by confusing employers' valuations of workers' lives for workers' self-evaluations. More generally, it tends to interpret citizens' values through an ideology of commodity fetishism, which supposes that people care only about privately appropriated goods and not about the social relations in which they are realized or the ideals and principles informing them. Institutions of voice allow people to articulate their concerns directly and thereby empower them to put new items on the agenda without depending on "experts" to speak for them. If they are fully democratic, they enable people to come to terms with their disagreements in relations of equality, where no one can claim authority over others or exercise disproportionate influence over outcomes in virtue of their command over wealth and property. Since relations of equality are necessary for objective dialogue, democratic institutions enable people to rationally deliberate about their ends (§5.1). Politics is a domain for criticizing and changing desires through reasoned debate, not merely for aggregating given desires. This activity is partly constitutive of autonomy. Secon^^democratic institutions aje nej&ded»t° ena.He Pec?p]e. J?S.J^PF£§£_ certain kinds of valuations that can be expressed only in non-market social relations. Some of the concerns people have as citizens cannot in principle be expressed in their roles as consumers, but must be expressed through their political relations with other citizens. Consumers act individually, _taking the background social relations of their interactions for granted and generally assuming an instrumental attitude toward these relations. In their roksas^ consumers, they have little power over the social relations and norms governing their interactions, and hence little scope for expressing

212 • Cost-Benefit Analysis

intrinsic concerns about their relations in market interactions. Citizens act collectively, taking their social relations ^ ^ of concernJBexause these relations are constituted by shared legal, ethical, and social norms^eojle can reform them only through collective action. People care about the meanings embodied in the social relations in whichr risks are imposed and controlled, not just about the raw magnitudes and financial benefits of these risks. They also care about the character of their social life expressed by the ways they relate to the natural environment. For example, many U.S. citizens value the national parks as shared goods, whose nonexclusive provision to all citizens, explicitly based on shared ideals informing the national heritage, is constitutive of what makes them valuable. The ways we choose to protect them enable us to realize ourselves as trustees for the natural goods with which the country is endowed. To realize such goods as nationally shared, and ourselves as trustees for them, a democratic forum is needed to articulate their meaning, so that people can enjoy them on terms acknowledged by all, and enjoy them in part because they are shared. These examples offer just two kinds of concerns people express in the political sphere that they cannot effectively express as consumers. Since people rationally express different valuations in different social contexts, cost-benefit analysis deprives them of opportunities to express distinctively non-economic concerns in taking consumer preferences as normative for democratic politics. This view of the function of the state contrasts with the view advanced by welfare economics. On that view, the state and the market fulfill the same function of generic want-satisfaction and are evaluated by the same criteria of efficiency. The state fills in where markets fail to secure efficient outcomes, and it functions to mimic the results that competitive markets would achieve, if they could be constructed. This conception supposes that the state and the market are merely alternative me the same sorts of outcomes and realizing the same sorts of goods according to the same (market) norms. Which institution we should use to govern outcomes concerning certain goods is strictly a question of efficiency. On the view defended here, the choice of institutions is conditioned by the kind of good at stake and the kinds of concerns people have with respect to it. Different sorts of institutions satisfy various sorts of concerns and enable people to express different ways of valuing goods. This is a basic implication of pluralism. That we express different valuations irTclifferent spheres is explained by the fact that various social contexts provide frameworks for distinct ways of valuing things (§§1.3-1.4). The arguments presented here do not lead to a formula for institutional

Cost-Benefit Analysis • 213

design. They only point in the direction we should be looking: toward making our political institutions more democratic, rather than more like the market. They call for experiments in expanding citizens' participation in formulating and implementing regulations concerning safety and environmental quality. This can be done either by devolving power from distant regulatory bureaucracies to local, self-managed institutions or citizen action groups, or, less radically, by opening up the regulatory process to more active inputs from ordinary citizens. Consider one model of decentralizing authority, which may be called the worker management model. The worker management model is best applied to issues concerning workplace risks, where the costs of risktaking activity are borne by those who impose it on themselves. In a democratically controlled worker-managed firm, workers collectively decide what risks they will assume, without having to obey orders from people who do not have their interests in mind. Because democratically run firms meet the internal and external conditions for workers' autonomy, the case for state regulation of workplace risks in such organizations is weakened. It would arise only if competing worker-managed firms faced collective action problems, in which case it would be in everyone's interest for all to stop a risky productive process, but none could do it individually without facing bankruptcy. Then the state might enter to facilitate collective self-restraint agreements among competing firms. Even judging from the welfare economists' narrow criteria of efficiency rather than from an autonomy perspective, worker self-management provides a superior solution to the problem of workplace risks than bureaucratic regulation, because it eliminates the agency problem (ensuring that regulators act in workers' interests) and is at least as efficient as capitalist-managed firms as long as the firm pays interest on workers' capital investments (Vanek 1970). Since workers' cooperatives tend to attract workers motivated by progressive democratic ideals, they also present a more favorable record on environmental protection. The case of forest workers' cooperatives in the Pacific Northwest, which have pioneered forest conservation techniques and perform 25 percent of the reforestation work on public timberlands, is exemplary (Gunn 1984, pp. 71, 67-85). Environmental protection tends to harmonize more with the interests as well as the ideals of workermanaged firms than with the interests of capitalist firms, since their capital assets, held mainly by workers, are not as mobile. Workers, unlike capitalist owners, have to live in the communities where they work and so must live with whatever pollution they create. This by no means elimi-

214 • Cost-Benefit Analysis

nates the need for national environmental policies, but it does improve the prospects for cooperative rather than adversarial relations between business and environmental groups. The worker-management model is unlikely to be fully generalizable in the United States in the near future. Nevertheless, democratic modifications of the management structure of traditional capitalist firms could begin to acknowledge the principle that people who are placed at risk should have the power to propose, debate, and vote on alternative health and safety projects, as well as to participate in the implementation of these projects. For example, people put at risk by a local power company could elect representatives to a committee, joined by elected representatives of workers and stockholders in the firm, which would be invested with the power to make health and safety decisions regarding the plant. The inclusion of representatives from all the interested groups in the decisionmaking process would provide reasonable assurance that the full range of costs and benefits would be articulated by the affected parties themselves, and there would be some likelihood that new perspectives, never noticed or anticipated by cost-benefit analysts, would emerge through dialogue.5 Arnold (1990, pp. 636-637) objects that such a proposal might incoherently divide management rights over firms between contending groups in an unsustainable manner. But divided sovereignty over firms is already more the rule than the exception in advanced capitalist economies, since local zoning boards exercise control over firm locations and the federal government already enforces regulatory rules on management that require it to invest in pollution-reducing technology, buildings accessible to the handicapped, and so forth. Other countries, such as Germany, have successfully institutionalized divided sovereignty on a comprehensive scale, with representatives from labor unions and major political parties routinely sitting on corporate boards of directors. The suggestion made here is well within the range of successful experiments that have already proven their feasibility. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that workers' productive efficiency increases when they gain real management power, even in firms still structured by a division between labor and management. Power enables workers to identify with the firm's goals and reduces the incentive to take an adversarial stance toward management, for it raises the likelihood that workers will share in the benefits of increased labor productivity (Gunn 1984, pp. 138-143). Theoretical work on labor management indicates that these improvements should not be surprising (Bowles and Gintis 1987, ch. 3). Democracy is, of course, no panacea. Its participatory form has notable

Cost-Benefit Analysis * 215

drawbacks. It doesn't work effectively for large groups. Many environmental problems, such as ozone depletion, are global problems that require international solutions. Participation can become burdensome and time-consuming. This means that decision-making power tends to concentrate in the hands of committed activists, who may not share the interests and ideals of less active members. Representative democracy helps to correct these defects but introduces agency problems of its own. Nevertheless, democratic forms of organization constitute the best models we have for the exercise of collective autonomy and rationality and provide indispensable vehicles for expressing certain kinds of concerns and realizing certain types of ideals of our relations to one another. There are certain aspirations that the market cannot fulfill at all. Many advocates of cost-benefit analysis agree on the desirability of involving citizens more directly in the evaluative process (Leonard and Zeckhauser 1985, p. 43). They argue that "process" values have a symbolic importance that is additional to the net benefits to be expected from policies that maximize efficiency. But they still insist that cost-benefit analysis provides the fundamental terms in which rival policies should be analyzed. After all, any rational evaluation of policies must take account of their costs and benefits. My argument does not deny this last point.6 Participants in the policy formation process will, of course, need to cons J ^ L d E h facts about potential n e g a t i y S S ^ Q s E ^ i o S e r . policy proposals. But these facts are best presented^ intexins deemed relevant by the participants. The willingness=ta-rpay measure; ofvalue^must be rejected. In fact, no context-independent, global consequentialist formula for identifying and aggregating costs and benefits is generally valid (§2.3). So facts about costs and benefits must be provided in disaggregated form. Because it depends on consequentialist and market norms, the form of cost-benefit analysis criticized here describes and takes account of the costs and benefits of health and safety projects in ways many people reject. Democratic participation in the decision-making process is needed to enable people to describe and take costs and benefits into account in their own ways. One could conceive of a system of cost-benefit analysis that rejects the willingness-to-pay criterion and its attendant market norms. According to Allan Gibbard (1986), the normative appeal of cost-benefit analysis is based on its consequentialism, not on the ways its practitioners currently measure values. Cost-benefit analysis is valuable because it embodies a superior standard of rationality: the principle of maximizing expected intrinsic value. Only by regimenting our deliberations about risk to this

216 • Cost-Benefit Analysis

"technocratic" standard can we avoid supposedly blatant irrationalities which infect ordinary opinions about acceptable risks. In light of the pluralist, expressive theory of value and rational choice defended in this book, we should be wary of consequentialist claims that ordinary people employing commonsense reasoning are irrational. Some of these claims presuppose the prior rationality of intrinsic value-maximization and count as irrational any preference structure that does not conform to this standard. I have argued that it is rational to reject this standard and that people's preferences in general do not conform to it, because they are structured by substantive non-consequentialist norms with their own expressive justification (§§2.4-2.5, 4.2-4.3). Some of these claims depend on observations of individuals' difficulty in dealing with the mathematics of probability (Kahneman and Tversky 1979). But these observations are of individuals in socially impoverished environments, where they cannot engage in dialogue with others. There is no reason to think ordinary people are any less capable of correcting their mathematical errors after dialogue with others than are technocrats. If, after dialogue with others, ordinary people's judgments do not conform to consequentialist standards of rationality, this is evidence not that ordinary people are irrational but that consequentialism itself fails to do justice to the diversity of people s values. Our task is not to refine a technocratic standard of rationality alien to people s concerns, but to empower people to speak and act for themselves.

Conclusion

It is characteristic of the low state of our philosophy that the merits of capitalism have been argued by both individualists and socialists exclusively from the point of view of the production and distribution of goods. To the profounder question as to what goods are ultimately worthwhile producing from the point of view of the social effects on the producers and consumers almost no attention is paid. —Morris Cohen

The dominant theories of value, rational choice, and politics do not help us answer Cohen's question very well. The main liberal theories critical of the market tend to focus mainly on how markets distribute income and not on what it means to let markets govern the production of particular goods or on what we make of ourselves when we do so. The main consequentialist theories, utilitarianism and welfare economics, lack the conceptual resources even to ask questions about the expressive significance of producing certain goods as commodities. I have traced these defects to the theories' insufficiently pluralistic and social conceptions of freedom, autonomy, value, and rational choice. When freedom is represented sjmply in termsof preference satisfaction, we think only of jwhethgrjtnarkets leave people free to pursue things as much as they want, ^oTwhetherthey enable people to value such things mwd^^S^ToS&cJiy^ly^ejodorse. When autonomy is represented as an individual given rather than a social achievement, we rarely ask whether a social order undermines autonomy if it permits some to claim property rights in goods embodied in other people. When value is represented as the object ofjust one generic response, such as desire or pleasure, we don't bother to

218 * Conclusion

consider whether the ways we produce and exchange goods adequately express the other ways we properly value them or one another. When rational choice is represented in terms of the maximization of value or preference satisfaction, and when intrinsic value and rational preferences are defined independent of expressive norms and contexts, we are tempted to think that the optimizing behavior of consumers in the marketplace sets the standards of rationality for all social life. Philosophical theories of value and rationality have done a lot to exacerbate these problems. Numerous philosophical prejudices lie behind this tendency. One is contempt for commonsense ways of thinking about ethical problems. Commonsense ethical thinking is deeply pluralistic, contentious, embedded in social practices conceived in "thick" terms, and expressed through non-consequentialist norms. It lacks the unity, selfevidence, universality, and tidiness many philosophers demand of theoretically respectable claims. But the very features of commonsense ethical thinking thought to constitute philosophical vices are indispensable for self-understanding. We need to think of values as plural to make sense of the variety of ways we have of valuing things. We need to contest their meanings to explore and cultivate our evaluative sensibilities. We need to think of valuations as embedded in social practices to make sense of their meaningfulness to others and their susceptibility to criticism and justification in dialogue with others. We need to embrace non-consequentialist norms to make sense of the higher ways we have of valuing things and of the ways we make our lives meaningful over time. The other philosophical justifications for monistic, reductionist, and consequentialist theories of value and rationality are not compelling. Many philosophers have rejected common sense in favor of such theories because they believe that critical reflection requires that we bypass reasoning in terms of socially embedded thick concepts and think directly in terms of value-neutral facts, plus the good and the right alone. I have shown how all the forms of critical thinking worth caring about are accessible to commonsense ethical thought. If we dismiss commonsense ethical thinking, we disable the most important methods of self-criticism. Many philosophers have supported monistic and reductionist theories because they believe that practical reason demands that our choices be representable as maximizing intrinsic value and, hence, that we be able to reduce the values of all goods to a common measure. My expressive theory of rational choice shows that we can act rationally without maximizing value or reducing all values to a common scale. The dominant monistic and consequentialist theories of value and

Conclusion • 219

rational choice are not reflectively endorsable, because we can't make serjie_of ourselves in the terms they provide. Yet they have some grip even on ordinary sensibilities that are not concerned with the arcane demands of philosophical justification. I suspect that this is due to the special salience markets have in our lives, as well as to the ideologies that promote their nearly unlimited expansion. People in their capacities as consumers and managers of businesses do tend to take a consequentialist orientation in their market interactions with others. Business managers maximize profits, consumers maximize commodity consumption, mostly without regard to the impact their choices have on unrelated third parties, to the meanings expressed in imposing these consequences on others, or to the meanings expressed in producing and circulating goods according to market norms in the first place. Consumers value most commodities as mere use-values and so do not govern their attitudes toward them by nonconsequentialist norms expressing higher modes of valuation. The market takes consumer preferences as uncriticized givens, thereby promoting the individualist illusion that individuals are self-sufficient in their capacities to autonomously frame and express their valuations. Even advertising represents itself as uncovering what consumers wanted all along, rather than as telling them what they ought to want. There is an important and legitimate role for these attitudes and orientations in our lives, as long as they are confined to their proper objects. Freedom is partly realized in enjoying a sphere of life in which we can indulge in our whims and likings, without having to justify our choices to others. Markets can provide this and sometimes more significant kinds of freedom that require independence from others. But market ideologies, such as libertarianism, public choice theory, welfare economics, and most other versions of consequentialism, go further than this. They suppose that people in their market roles express all or the most important motivations and attitudes they have, and perhaps even express the fundamental truth about human nature. They suppose that market norms_.areappropriatejfor afisocial contexts. This amounts to consequentialism with a commodity fetishist twist: it supposes that there is only one decision frame, which is provided by the limited terms in which markets permit us to choose among options. But markets keep a crucial evaluative question outside their decision frame: whether it makes sense to govern our conduct with respect to a particular good by market norms at all. To answer this question, we need to look beyond the goods themselves to the social relations within which we produce, distribute, and enjoy them. We need to evaluate the attitudes

220 * Conclusion

we express toward one another in governing the production, distribution, and enjoyment of goods by market norms. This requires that we under-, stand our actions as full of expressive meanings. It requires that we acknowledge the plurality of goods and come to some understanding of the varied social contexts we need to realize a plurality of different kinds of goods in our lives. I have tried to provide a theoretical rationale for these modes of self-understanding in the first part of this book. I have also proposed provisional answers to questions about the proper scope of markets in the second part of this book. But to answer such questions definitively, we need to engage in democratic dialogue with one another. No book can provide the social conditions for this dialogue to take place. Political action alone can do this.

Notes References Index

Notes

1. A Pluralist Theory of Value 1. Is this what "x is F" means? Following Wiggins (1987a, pp. 188—189), I prefer to call the glosses^ I make of value, merit, and appropriateness judgments elucidations rather than analyses of meaning. 2. After I wrote the bulk of this book, I encountered Gaus's Value andJustification (1990), which defends a rational emotion theory of value similar to mine. I regret not having had the time to learn more from his book or to discuss our disagreements. 3. This echoes Taylor's (1985a) distinction between weak and strong evaluation. Taylor grounds his distinction in the nature of the evaluative standards themselves. I ground mine in how people value things meeting different standards and how this valuation reflects on self-evaluation. Many evaluative standards could ground either weak or strong valuations. For example, stylishness usually grounds weak valuations, but for models, it can lie at the core of selfevaluation. Other evaluative standards are thought to command everyone's valuation. People who value goods they think meet such standards value them strongly and impersonally. 4. It also makes me irrational, if rationality is defined broadly as responsiveness to reasons, and if it doesn't make sense for me to give up my strongly valued ends (§1.1). However, people commonly reserve the condemnation "irrational" for purely cognitive defects such as fallacious reasoning. We use other terms of condemnation, such as "boorish" and "vile," for the failures of responsiveness resulting from insensitivity or bad attitudes. This usage need not imply that cognitive defects are not also implicated in the latter failures. 5. My interest here is to reveal the variety of ways of valuing things implicit in commonsense ideals in the United States, not to fully endorse these ideals as they now stand. Prevailing ideals sharply distinguish among pets, zoo, show, wild, farm, and laboratory animals and regard the last two types as mere use-

Notes to Pages 51-91 • 225

224 • Notes to Pages 10-51 objects, unworthy of consideration. These distinctions are laden with contradictions which can be exploited to reconstruct the variety of ideals we should have toward different kinds of animals. I discuss how to criticize ideals in §5.3. 2. An Expressive Theory of Rational Action 1. Korsgaard (1983), following Kant, identifies the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goods with the distinction between unconditional and conditional goods. I depart from Korsgaard in calling "extrinsically good" only those things whose value depends on a particular kind of condition: that it make sense for us to value something else. In my usage, something can be conditionally but intrinsically valuable to someone in a particular way. It makes sense for Joe to value Sarah in a brotherly way only on condition that he is her brother, or like a brother, to her. But in valuing Sarah in a brotherly way, Joe rationally values her intrinsically. He values her in herself, apart from valuing anything else in particular, and its making sense for him to value her in this way is not dependent upon its making sense for him to value anyone or anything else. 3. Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods 1. It could be that all options are commensurable even though not all goods are commensurable, if we never have to choose between incommensurable goods. I set aside this possibility because no major theory depends on it. 2. On the concept of a good internal to a practice, see Maclntyre (1981, ch. 14). 3. Some theorists would deny that the decathlon scoring scheme, and goodnessof-a-kind judgments more generally, express intrinsic value judgments, for people can accept these judgments without being motivated by them. On their view, intrinsic value judgments necessarily motivate those who sincerely accept them. I argue in §5.2 that this dodge fails, for no value judgments have such a necessary connection with motivation. 4. Pragmatists can even give up transitivity, if the action-guiding function of a rational choice procedure need not be interpreted as reflecting a comparative judgment of overall value. Richard Pildes and I argue (1990) that democratic processes aim not to maximize value (collective preference satisfaction), but to generate legitimate outcomes. Hence, Arrow's proof that democratic processes cannot guarantee the transitivity needed to sustain a value-maximizing interpretation does not undermine their normative authority. 5. This serves several reasonable functions: it prevents a skater from winning just because the judges who favor her tend to spread their cardinal scores more widely than the others, and it prevents a skater from losing just because she skated best in the event where she was the first skater. (Because the highest score they can award is a 6.0, judges score the first skater in an event cau-

tiously, to leave room for better scores later. If the first skater is the best in an event, the whole range of scores will be arbitrarily depressed relative to the range of scores in the other event.) 6. Stocker (1990, ch. 6) employs the similar notion of a "higher-level synthesizing category" to explain how we can make comparisons of multi-valued goods. 7. Chang argues that the comparative value judgment warranted in these situations is not that the options are equal in value, but that they are "on a par" (1992, pp. 17-19). They are not, therefore, incomparable in overall value. It seems to me that the practical import of the judgment that two options are "on a par" is that their relative values do not rule out choosing either one. Either could be reasonably chosen. If reason seeks some decisive ground for choosing one over the other, it must be on some other basis than their relative values. Although Chang frames her argument as a challenge to Razian incommensurability, I do not think that Raz need disagree with this. 8. See Richardson (1990) for an excellent critique of theories of "balancing" and "applying" rules, as well as defense of an alternative theory of "specifying" rules compatible with the view of norms I defend. 4. Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints 1. The charge of self-indulgence supposes that impartiality demands that we give everyone's interests the same weight in justifying action. Even defenders of personal relationships seem to accept this view when they represent individual prerogatives to care specially for friends and relatives as permissions to weight their interests several times more heavily than they are "really" worth, from an impartial perspective (Scheffler 1982, p. 20; Sen 1982; Nagel 1986, pp. 171-175). Personal modes of valuation thus seem to invoke a distorted representation of values. But weighting principles do not come close to capturing the demands of personal valuations (§4.2). The expressive theory avoids these confusions. Intrinsic value is not a magnitude. It directs us not to give it a weight in an aggregation but to adopt the appropriate attitudes toward its bearer. Persons, not their interests, bear intrinsic value. Their characteristics and relations to others make them appropriate objects of love, friendship, and other special modes of valuation, expressed through agent-centered restrictions. These facts about persons are accessible from an impartial point of view and do not require a distorted representation of values or a partial perspective to be appreciated. 5. Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense 1. Rational attitude theories do make value subjective in another sense. A thing's value depends upon its being the possible object of a favorable response. Johnston (1989) discusses this "response-dependent" notion of value.

226 • Notes to Pages 93-129 2. This account of objectivity is not complete. See Habermas (1975, pt. 3; 1990) and Gibbard (1990, pt. 3) for further discussion and variable accounts of the norms that underwrite claims to objectivity. 3. Taylor (1985c) distinguishes overriding from undermining reasons. 4. Robert Coles (1986) provides numerous examples of how ethical experiences have changed peoples values. 5. Maclntyre (1977) and Taylor (1985b) defend this critical standard. 6. Hare (1981, pp. 11—12) claims that there is a fundamental disanalogy between linguistic and moral intuitions, for the authority of a community of native speakers of a language is sufficient to secure the normative validity of their linguistic intuitions, but the authority of a moral community is not sufficient to secure the correctness of its moral intuitions. The disanalogy is mistaken. It is possible for a whole community to be confused about the nature of certain linguistic distinctions it makes. Biblical fundamentalists tend to be confused about the distinction between "literal" and nonliteral interpretation. Most members of Western societies are confused about the nature of "genderneutral" language. 6. Monistic Theories of Value 1. Recent advocates of hedonism include Narveson 1967, Brandt 1979 (obliquely, pp. 132-138), and Katz 1986. 2. Sidgwick's test mistakenly supposes that the non-hedonist must affirm the value of things out of all relation to consciousness. In fact, one need only affirm that objective relations can be valuable apart from their instrumental relations to pleasurable consciousness. Some goods, such as friendship, are partly constituted by reflective awareness of themselves and so cannot be conceived apart from all relation to consciousness. It does not follow that the only part of friendship that is good are the pleasing thoughts and feelings flowing from it. 3. A fifth conception of pleasure defines it in terms of desire. According to Richard Brandt, an experience is pleasant if and only if having it causes one to want to continue having it (1979, p. 40). I think this definition of pleasure is a nonstarter for normative purposes, because obviously undesirable states such as stupefaction satisfy its conditions. The experience of watching TV sometimes induces in me a desire (propensity) to continue watching it, even when I find it boring. I attribute this to TV's tendency to induce stupefaction, which both discourages ideas of how one might exercise initiative in turning it off and getting on with life and perpetuates the inertia of continued viewing. 4. Hume (1969) and Hobbes (1968) proposed hedonistic reductionist psychologies of the emotions. 5. "The notion of'Good' thus attained has an ideal element . . . but the ideal

Notes to Pages 129-160 • 227 element is entirely interpretable in terms of fact . . . and does not introduce any judgment of value" (Sidgwick 1981, p. 112). 7. The Ethical Limitations of the Market 1. Walzer (1983, pp. 291-303) is a notable exception. 2. A good such as a house or a ring could start off as a commodity but become a personal good (a home, a wedding ring) in which one has invested part of oneself. Such goods have a proper "biography" according to which they properly pass from one sphere to another, but they may not switch back with equanimity until the relations keeping them in the latter sphere are ended (see Appadurai 1986, p. 13). 3. My account of the market ethic and its development is indebted to the discussions in Polanyi 1944; Weber 1968; Nelson 1969; Hirschman 1977; Horwitz 1977; Simmel 1978; and Atiyah 1979. 4. Buchanan (1979, ch. 14) defends this view with respect to government rights to control the academic research it funds. He avoids the reductio to Lysenkoism only by retreating from his official subjectivist account of value as uncritical want-satisfaction to a more substantive conception of the public interest. 5. Conservatives argue that state funding merely crowds out private philanthropy and that nonprofit institutions would have more autonomy, and citizens higher civic virtue, if the former relied solely on private initiative for funds (Nisbet 1962, p. 109). But private philanthropy has not replaced cuts in public funding to nonprofit institutions made during the 1980 s in the United States (Salamon 1990, pp. 220-221). And citizens can use the state to express such civic virtues as fraternity (§7.5). Citizens acting in their private roles cannot express all the valuations it makes sense for them to have. 6. Alan Wertheimer (1989) objects that cash is often an appropriate gift from parents to children. But parents do not value their children as they value their friends. Parental love and respect for children in modern societies requires that parents enable their children to establish their autonomy and independence. Cash gifts help develop the autonomy and independence of children that is presupposed in adult friendships among equals. 7. "To Love, Honor, and . . . Share: a Marriage Contract for the Seventies," Ms, June 1973, pp. 62-64, 102-103. 8. I thank Ann Cudd for this argument. 9. If the toll-charger discriminated among travelers, this would violate the norm of market impersonality. But libertarians reject this norm and in any event could not object to road owners barring passage to all travelers. Nozick (1974) accepts a proviso on property acquisition that prevents people from trapping others in a small territory. But his proviso doesn't prevent private interference with others' freedom of movement less drastic than complete entrapment (pp. 55, 178-182).

228 • Notes to Pages 161-180 10. Increasing crime and disorder in public streets and parks has led many people to prefer the security of private substitutes. Advocates of privatization view the darker side of public spaces as indicative of their inherent inferiority to private spaces. But the bads of public spaces are often caused by excessive privatization. When society relies almost exclusively on the private sector of the economy and private philanthropy to generate economic opportunity for all citizens and to take care of the mentally ill, it can count on finding "surplus" people who make their living on the streets through crime and panhandling. The crime and disorder of public spaces is a negative externality of a social order too extensively governed by market norms. And gang domination of public streets constitutes a private appropriation of the commons, a failure to keep it public enough. 11. Some proposals for voucher systems envision not a world of purely profitoriented educational providers, but rather a world in which the power of exit is used to strengthen institutions of voice, perhaps through the maintenance of a mixture of private and public schools, with private schools also open to influence by institutions of voice. Here I examine only an ideal type of fully commodified education. I leave open the question to what extent mixed voucher systems would fall under the same criticisms. 12. Donahue (1989) defends this point in a highly insightful efficiency analysis of privatization proposals. 8. Is Women's Labor a Commodity? 1. This answers Robert Nozick s charge, made in private conversation, that my conception of parental love must condemn Third World parents for regarding their children as economic goods, because they rely on children to provide for the family subsistence. In promoting the livelihood of their families, children need not be treated as commodities. Such children usually remain members of their families, and hence parents can still love them in a parental capacity. But when children are treated according to the norms of modern capitalist markets singled out for examination in this chapter, it is deplorable wherever it takes place. 2. The surrogate s husband is also required to agree to this clause of the contract. Arneson (1992, p. 158) denies that surrogate mothers are required to engage in emotional labor, perhaps because he has never read parenting contracts or thought through the requirements of the putting-out system of production. 3. For one account of how a surrogate mother who came to regret her decision viewed her own moral transformation, see Kane (1988). 4. The surrogate broker Noel Keane is remarkably open about reporting the desperate emotional insecurities that shape the lives of so many surrogate mothers, while displaying little sensitivity to the implications of his taking

Notes to Pages 181-194

• 229

advantage of these motivations to make his business a financial success (see especially Keane and Breo 1981, pp. 247-253). 5. See, for example, the story of the surrogate mother Nancy Barrass in Fleming (1987, p. 38). 6. Some critics of my previous work on contract parenting have thought that my concern with exploitation relates to mothers' financial compensation (Arneson 1992, pp. 154-155; Satz 1992, p. 121). It would be strange if I thought mothers were financially exploited in the parenting contract, since I hold that no one is entitled to profit financially from selling their children. Their exploitation is emotional and consists in the fact that the surrogate industry and its clients often raise emotional expectations they plan to frustrate once they have ceased to be useful. 7. My argument against comrnodifying women's labor is thus not, as some critics have thought, that women's labor is "noble labor" and that selling it inherendy expresses disrespect for it (Kymlicka 1991, p. 95; Arneson 1992, p. 153; Satz 1992, pp. 112, 115). The sale of labor does not inherently express disrespect for the labor or the laborer, if the laborer retains control over the process and conditions of labor and autonomy over her perspective on it. The surrogate industry expresses disrespect for mothers and their labor through relations of domination and fraud that undermine such control and autonomy. 8. One may ask why this argument does not extend to all cases in which one might form an emotional attachment to an object one has contracted to sell. If I sign a contract with you to sell you my car, can I back out if I decide I am too emotionally attached to it? My argument is based upon the distinctive characteristics of parental love, a mode of valuation that should not be confused with less profound modes of valuation that generate sentimental attachments to things. The degree to which other modes of valuation generate claims to consideration that tell against market norms remains an open question. 9. Because the surrogate mother is one of the victims of contract pregnancy, she should not be prosecuted for entering into the contract. My arguments are directed only against surrogacy as a commercial enterprise, not as a pure gift relationship. 9. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality 1. These two quantities diverge in practice, since people usually demand more to acquiesce in a project they don't endorse than they are willing to pay to bring about a project they do endorse. The latter sum is constrained by one s income, while the former is not. And people may reject any sum for acquiescing in a project if they think the project violates their rights or important ideals (§9.3). 2. Some cost-benefit analysts acknowledge that moral and political principles may override the conclusions of a cost-benefit study (see Leonard and

230 • Notes to Pages 194-215

Zeckhauser 1986, pp. 41-43). Yet, in defending the application of costbenefit analysis to cases such as public safety, they argue that the issue is a matter of consumer preferences, not of moral or political principle (see, for example, Schelling 1968, p. 128). 3. There are many possible sources of willingness-to-pay information (Blomquist 1982). I focus on the use of wage differentials as sources of willingnessto-pay information because this case raises most clearly the ethical concerns that cost-benefit analysis tends to overlook. 4. Many economists now recognize that "existence value," the value people place on the existence of something, is distinct from the use-value of a thing. They acknowledge that the evaluation of environmental goods should include existence value (see, for example, Kopp 1992). This implies that the value of environmental goods cannot be imputed from market prices, but must be determined by other means, such as questionnaires. However, when people are asked to place a monetary value on the existence of environmental goods, most reject the terms of the question (Rowe and Chestnut 1982). I argue that economists' questions cannot capture the expressive significance of the ways people value the existence of environmental goods. 5. Campen (1986) discusses a participatory alternative to cost-benefit analysis. He refers to many experiments in community and workers' self-determination. The institutional details of a participatory alternative to cost-benefit analysis have yet to be worked out by anyone, but Campen shows that there is already a rich field of experiences to draw from. 6. Discerning readers will note that my defense of policies that prohibit consideration of some tradeoffs between particular higher environmental goods and particular economic gains (§9.3) does not constitute a defense of the view that rational policies tell us to pursue certain aims in all contexts, regardless of any costs. See §2.2 for an account of how expressive rationality takes account of costs and benefits.

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Index

admiration, 4, 41, 92 agent-centered restrictions, 73-79 altruism, 182. See also benevolence animals, 9, 24, 208, 223n5 appreciation, 10, 130, 206-207 Aristotle, 30, 107, 123, 126 Arneson, R., 169, 171, 172, 176, 177, 228n2, 229nn6,7 Arnold, N., 214 Arrow, K., 46, 51, 224n4 attitudes, 2, 3, 5, 14, 18, 39, 101, 202; expression of, 2, 11, 17-18, 77-78, 208-209; plurality of, 5, 14, 15, 63, 72-73, 92, 98-99, 164, 205, 207; nonpropositional, 20, 29, 30; dual-ended logic of, 27-29, 78, 83. See also valuation authenticity, 4, 48, 50, 102, 105-106 autonomy, 142, 149, 156, 163, 165, 211, 217; of surrogate mothers, 175-179, 185; of workers, 198-199, 213 awe. See reverence Baier, A., I l l , 195 benevolence, 18, 22-23, 28-29, 41, 61-62, 78, 81

Bond, E.J., 126, 130 Bowles, S., 214 Brandt, R., 15, 111, 112, 113, 129, 139, 226nnl,3 Brentano, F., 5 Buchanan, J., 227n4

Campen, J., 195, 203, 230n5 caring. See valuation Chang, R , 225n7 Chestnut, L., 209, 230n4 civility, 18, 75, 85, 90, 99-101 civil society, 147, 173 Cohen, J., 143 Cohen, M., 217 commensurable goods, 45-46, 47, 61, 195, 224nl commodification: of votes, 142; of goods embodied in the person, 142, 156, 165; of professional work, 147-150, 156; of sex, 154-156; of marriage, 156-158; of public spaces, 160-161, 228nlO; of education, 161-163, 228nll; of pregnancy, 169, 175-189, 229n7; of children, 170-175; of workers' safety, 195-203; of environment, 203-210 commodities. See goods, economic commodity fetishism, 71, 164, 165-166, 199, 203, 211, 219 common sense, 1, 15, 33-34, 43, 63, 65-66, 68, 69, 73, 76, 104-107, 218. See also consequentialism, and conflicts with common sense compensating variation. See willingness to pay consequentialism, 22, 30-33, 73-74, 215, 217, 219; and conflicts with common sense, 27-29, 33-34, 40-43, 65-66, 68-69, 73, 76, 87; comparisons with expressive theory of rational action, 31, 32-39, 44-45, 47,

Index • 243

242 • Index consequentialism (continued) 56-61, 69-73, 77-90; hybrid, 32, 60, 79-86, 89; self-effacing character of, 37, 41, 43, 66, 83, 86, 89-90; homogenization of attitudes in, 72-73, 76, 78-79 consideration, 10, 175, 179, 181 contempt, 5, 7, 127 contract pregnancy, 168—189, 228n2, 229n9 conventionalism, 18 Copp, D., I l l , 112 Corea, G., 168, 178, 182 cost-benefit analysis, 190-216 criticism, 104-111, 218 Cudd, A., 227n8 Daniels, N., 106, 111, 143 Darwall, S., 74, 129 decision frames, 23-25, 37, 38, 47, 209, 219 degradation, 7, 71, 154, 175, 178 deliberation, 5, 9, 22-24, 55, 80-82; "silencing" of considerations in, 37, 42, 208 democracy, 107, 142, 158-159, 161-163, 165, 166, 210-215, 224n4 desire, 4, 8, 130-132, 136; evaluative, 133. See also motives; preferences Donahue, J., 228nl2 Dworkin, R., 67, 143, 149 economic theory of rational choice, 31, 32, 39-40, 208 efficiency, 150, 166, 190-192, 212, 214 ElsterJ., 22, 134 emotional labor, 177, 179, 228n2 emotions, 1, 5, 7, 11, 39, 84, 133, 226n4; expressive logic of, 34, 35-37, 40-41, 79, 86, 178 ends of action: two kinds of, 19—20, 22, 33, 71, 83, 130, 133 environment. See nature etiquette. See civility evaluation. See value judgments exploitation, 180-181, 186, 187, 229n6 expressive meaning of action, 18, 33—37, 38, 39, 51, 60, 62, 63, 70, 74-77, 79, 80-81, 151-152, 164, 201-202, 212, 220 expressive theory of rational action, 17-19, 21, 22-24, 32-38, 39, 44-45, 59-63, 70, 72, 74-75, 82, 218 extrinsic value, 3, 19, 38, 47, 224nl; of states of affairs, 20, 23, 24, 26-27, 30, 38, 45, 75, 85, 208-209

feminist theory, 152-155, 182-184 Foot, P., 98, 99 Frankfurt, H., 7 fraternity, 158, 227n5 freedom, 141, 144, 146, 154-155, 158-159, 160, 164-166, 188, 197, 217 Friedman, M., 162, 164, 201 friendship, 40-41, 61, 62, 76, 151-152, 153, 226n2 Gaus, G., 4, 126, 223n2 Gibbard, A., 79, 95, 215, 226n2 gift exchange, 151-152, 153, 154, 157, 166, 180-181 Gintis, H., 214 goods: two conceptions of, 4, 117; differing in kind, 8, 10-12, 14-15; internal to practices, 49; higher-order, 53-55, 225n6; higher, 66, 70; aesthetic, 121-122; economic, 143-146, 193, 207-208; shared, 144, 145, 151, 166, 212; personal, 150-153, 227n2; political, 158-163, 210. See also commensurable goods; incommensurable goods, extrinsic value; intrinsic value Griffin, J., 46, 58, 68, 84, 129, 140 Gunn, C , 213, 214 Gutmann, A., 163 Habermas, J., 95, 226n2 Hare, R., 15, 61, 99, 102, 111, 112, 113, 226n6 Harman, G., 109, 115 Harris, J., 169, 174, 186 Harsanyi, J., 131 Hayek, F., 108, 164 hedonism, 46, 50-51, 59, 117, 123-128, 206-207, 226nl, 226n4; paradox of, 33, 40; self-effacing character of, 128 Herzog, D , 58, 109, 142, 143 Hirsch, F., 157 Hirschman, A., 146, 227n3 Hochschild, A., 177 honor, 6, 12, 41, 53, 57, 133 Hospers, J., 165 Hurley, S., 103 ideals, 5-8, 11, 24, 60, 107, 108; plurality of, 7, 14, 57; contestability of, 14, 95-97 importance, 7, 14-15, 23, 48-49, 60, 63, 103 incommensurable goods, 55-59, 60, 63, 225n7; hierarchical, 66-71 individualism, 11-12, 18, 94-95, 111, 118,

120-121, 164-165, 184-185, 200, 217, 219; defined, 18, 164 intrinsic value, 2-3, 8, 17, 19, 20, 32, 40, 51, 80, 82, 206, 224nl, 225nl; unit of, 83-85, 87; of nature, 205-207 intuitions, 104, 109, 110, 112-115, 226n6. See also common sense Jacobs, J., 161 Johnston, M., 2, 225nl justification, 3, 15, 39, 42, 44, 79, 89, 92-97, 100, 104-105, 111-115, 120-123, 143 Kahneman, D., 23, 216 Kant, I., 8-10, 19-20, 29, 46, 224nl Keynes,J. M., 120, 121 kindness. See benevolence Korsgaard, C , 20, 84, 224nl Kymlicka, W., 169, 172, 173, 229n7 Leonard, H., 193, 215, 229n2 liberalism, 67, 70-71, 94, 109, 141-143, 154-155, 164, 217 libertarianism, 160, 164, 165, 173, 227n9 life: value of, 68, 72, 195-197 liking, 91-92, 121, 162, 164 love, 5, 7, 26, 71-72, 81, 82, 85, 92, 118, 126, 151; parental, 2, 4, 11, 170-171, 172, 183-184, 227n9, 229n8; egalitarian, 18-19, 110, 153, 157-158 Maclntyre, A., 24, 99, 121, 224n2, 226n5 Mackie,J., 1, 4, 119 MacKinnon, C , 109, 155 MacLean, D., 195 making sense. See rationality markets, 141, 142, 143-147, 158, 164-167, 191-192, 219 marriage, 151, 152-154, 156-158 Martin, J. (Miss Manners), 99, 100 maximization of value, 22, 32, 33, 35, 45-47, 55, 88, 215-216, 218; incoherence of global, 38, 45, 56, 58, 61, 63, 81, 84, 85 McDowell, J., 37, 99 Mill, J. $., 61, 67, 106, 110, 128, 153 Mishan, E. J., 191, 195, 196 monism, 4-5, 15-16, 59, 98, 117-140, 217, 218; and homogenization of attitudes, 5, 15, 103, 140; motivations for, 15, 45-46 Moody-Adams, M., 168, 178 Moore, G. E., 15, 26, 32, 84, 117, 119-123, 125

motives, 102-103, 132-136; arational, 21, 63, 132-133, 135; value of, 82-83; conflicts of, 132, 134—136. See also desire; preferences music, 12-14, 95-96, 118, 123 Nagel, X, 31, 225nl naturalism, 138-140 nature, 106; value of, 10, 127, 204-210, 230n4 Nelkin, D., 197, 198, 199, 200 neutrality, 169, 172-173 Nietzsche, F., 108 norms, 3, 5, 12, 18, 22-24, 74; critique and revision of, 18, 25, 77; gender, 18, 25, 99-101, 153; distributive, 28, 35-36, 78, 81; intentional, 33—34, 70; backward-looking, 34—35; non-instrumental (expressive), 37, 61-62, 74-75, 83, 85-86; prohibiting tradeoffs between goods, 67—71, 205, 208-209, 230n6; agent-centered, 73-79, 81; market, 143-147, 177, 194, 210; democratic, 158-159, 211, 212; of pregnancy, 177, 186; of risk-taking, 198-200, 213-214 Nozick, R., 67, 125, 164, 165, 227n9 Nussbaum, M., 73 objectivity, 21, 93-97, 226n2 Okin, S., 152, 153 Parfit, D., 27, 29, 74, 76, 83 Pateman, C , 153 Plato, 15, 46, 123 pleasure, 4, 67-68, 124-128, 226n3 pluralism, 1, 4-5, 9, 11, 14-16, 24, 46, 51, 56, 59, 62, 70, 72, 88, 94, 98, 117-119, 124, 147, 164-165, 212, 218; different kinds of, 11, 14, 141-143 population paradoxes, 27—29, 35, 71 Posner, R., 155, 172, 193, 201 Power, X, 204, 207 practical reason. See consequentialism; expressive theory of rational action; rationality pragmatism: of theory of comparative value judgments, 47-48, 50, 51, 52-53, 56; of theory of practical reason, 89—90; of theory of objective justification, 93-94, 97, 100-101, 104-105, 109, 110-111, 114-115, 119 preferences, 39—40, 132, 134, 164; as measure or standard of value, 4, 40, 46, 50, 58-59,

244 • Index preferences (continued) 67-68, 129-140; relation to modes of valuation, 71-72, 137, 194, 202, 209. See also desire; motives prostitution, 154-156 Radin, M , 144, 156, 168 Railton, P., 15, 77, 79, 80, 127, 129, 131, 138 rational attitude theory of value, 1-5, 17, 20-21, 30, 38, 47, 70-72, 88, 90, 91, 102-103, 137-138, 225nl rational desire theory of value, 117, 129—140 rationality, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 17-18, 21, 22, 29, 38-39, 44-45, 65-66, 79, 86, 90, 93-97, 223n4; of emotion, 39, 40, 79-80; of desire, 129, 131, 138-140; of action, see consequentialism; expressive theory of rational action Rawls, J., 67, 105, 124, 129, 158 Raz, J., 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 70, 225n7 reasons, 3, 31, 41-42, 59-60, 63, 89, 93-94, 102, 105, 122-123 reductionism, 15, 46, 47, 49, 50-51, 54, 56, 88, 113 reflective equilibrium, 106-107, 111 respect, 5, 6, 8, 9, 61-62, 71-72, 81, 92, 159, 175, 205, 210 reverence, 12-14, 95-96, 115-116, 127 Richardson, H., 225n8 rights, 67, 141, 142, 170-171, 187-188 Robertson, J., 169, 174, 178, 188 Rorty, R., 106 Rowe, R., 209 Sagoff, M., 195, 209, 210 Sahlins, M., 151, 158 Satz, D., 168, 172, 182, 184, 229nn6,7 Scheffler, S., 74, 78, 225nl Schwarzenbach, S., 156 self-assessment, 5-7, 13-14, 107 self-effacing theory. See consequentialism, selfeffacing character of; hedonism, self-effacing character of self-understanding, 3, 5, 6, 17, 23, 38, 41, 43, 65-66, 69, 72-73, 79, 86, 89-90, 91, 94-97, 100, 118-119, 218-219 Sen, A., 27, 31, 58, 153, 199, 201, 225nl Shalev, C , 169, 174, 183, 184 Sheffrin, S., 146, 162 Sidgwick, H., 33, 46, 61, 125, 129, 226nn2,5 Simmel, G., 144, 227n3

Index • 245 Singer, P., 104, 111, 169, 179, 187 skepticism, 112—116; and homogenization of attitudes, 113-114 Smiley, M., 165 social roles and relations, 25, 62, 72, 73-74, 76-78, 85, 135, 199, 209-210, 211-212, 219 social spheres, 8, 12, 72, 100, 141-143, 147, 154-155, 160, 164-166, 173, 211-212 "Star Trek," 40-41 state provision of goods, 148—150, 163, 166, 187, 191-192, 212 states of affairs. See extrinsic value Stocker, M., 35, 36, 37, 54, 58, 59, 80, 81, 102, 225n6 Stoics, 73 subjectivism, 91-92, 95, 225nl Sunstein, C , 161 surrogate mothers. See contract pregnancy Taylor, C , 17, 65, 97, 107, 111, 116, 223n3, 226nn3,5 Taylor, P., 209 Thaler, R., 195 thick evaluative concepts, 98-103, 105, 106, 118, 138; essential contestability of, 44 Thomson, J. J., 201 Tversky, A., 23, 216 unity of the self, 38-43, 59, 89 use, 9, 144, 154, 171-172, 205, 206-207 utilitarianism, 27-29, 78, 82 valuation, 2, 5, 11; intrinsic, 2-3, 205; rational, 4, 7, 92-93, 129; modes of, 5, 6, 8-11, 14, 70, 72-73, 211; strong vs. weak, 8, 223n3; social practices of, 12-13, 24, 73; grounds vs. objects of, 19; higher vs. lower modes of, 70-71, 77-78, 144, 205, 208, 210. See also attitudes value: experiences of, 1-2, 109, 118, 120, 121-122, 127, 226n4; standards of, 3, 4, 6, 52—53, 55, 98; agent-neutral vs. agentrelative, 31, 42; organic, 53-54, 84-86, 87, 122; realism, 90, 114-115, 119. See also commensurable goods; incommensurable goods; extrinsic value; intrinsic value value judgments, 2-3, 5, 102-103; aesthetic, 12-14, 52-53, 95-96, 110; athletic, 48-51, 224nn3,5; comparative, 48-55, 105; component-value strategy, 49—50, 51-52;

higher-order good strategy, 53—55; hierarchical, 66, 70. See also reductionism Vanek, J., 213 Viscusi, W., 196 voice, 146, 148, 159, 160, 161-163, 200, 211 Walzer, M., 94, 106, 107, 143, 227nl Warnock, M., 169, 186, 187 Weber, M., 22, 227n3 welfare, 26, 60, 61, 131, 140, 166, 202, 207-208 welfare economics, 166, 190-196, 202, 203, 204-205

Wertheimer, A., 227n6 Wiggins, D., 37, 99, 223nl Williams, B., 27, 35, 42, 78, 80, 81, 89, 98, 99 willingness to pay, 191, 193, 195-197, 200, 201, 204-205, 209, 215, 229nl, 230n3 ' women: status of, 152-158, 169, 180-181, 182-185; valuation of, 154-155, 175, 178, 181 worker management, 213-214 Zeckhauser, R., 193, 215, 229n2