Provisional Values Provisionella värden

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Provisional Values

Provisionella värden

— Jakob Sjölander

Department of historical, philosophical, and religious studies Master thesis, spring 2021

Version: 1.1. (14-06-2021).

Magister- och masteruppsats i filosofi Supervisor: Sofia Jeppsson

Examiner: Per Algander

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““If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know,” he went on, spreading out the verse on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; “I seem to see some meaning in

them, after all.””

-Alice in Wonderland, Chapter XII.

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Abstract

This paper concerns the issue of ignorance about values, and how to best deal with it.

I try to find out what we ought to do when we are ignorant of what it is valuable to promote. The proposed solution is an indirect system of “provisional values”, built around three goals that are likely to increase our chances of achieving real value, should such a thing be possible.

These three provisional goals the system gives us are as follows: knowledge, optionality, and diversity.

Knowledge is the traditional way of trying to relieve our ignorance and has been the focus of most philosophizing about value.

Optionality means having options, or the power to act differently. This is likely to become important should we ever discover what it is actually valuable to do.

Finally, diversity is simply the idea that, not knowing what truly is valuable, we should do as much as possible of everything in the hope that some of it may be valuable.

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Abstract

Denna uppsats handlar om problemet med vår brist på kunskap om värde och hur man bäst hanterar det. Jag försöker ta reda på vad vi borde göra i situationer där vi är okunniga om vilka mål som är värdefulla att uppnå. Den lösning som föreslås är ett indirekt system av ”provisoriskt värde”. Detta system är uppbyggt kring tre mål som sannolikt kommer att öka våra chanser att uppnå direkta eller verkliga värden, om en sådan sak skulle vara möjlig. Dessa tre provisoriska mål som systemet ger oss är följande: kunskap, optionalitet och mångfald.

Kunskap är det traditionella sättet att försöka lindra vår okunnighet, och har varit fokus för det mesta filosoferandet om värde.

Optionalitet innebär att ha alternativ eller makten att agera annorlunda. Detta kommer sannolikt att bli viktigt om vi någonsin upptäcker vad det är värdefullt att göra.

Slutligen är mångfald helt enkelt tanken att om vi inte vet vad som verkligen är värdefullt så bör vi göra så mycket som möjligt av allt i hopp om att något av det kan visa sig värdefullt.

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1.0 Introduction

This paper will investigate ignorance about value and how to best deal with it. We are ignorant about value when we do not know what is valuable, or even whether it is possible for anything to be valuable. In brief, what things should we promote when we do not know what things we by promoting make the world a better place?

The paper is part of the broader field of “axiology”, or value-theory. This means that it is not restricted to what is typically termed “ethical” or “moral” values. Ethical values will here be held as a subspecies of values in general. This is the reason I will focus on the broader term “value” rather than morality or ethics. The provisional system is intended to be applicable to any type of value. What is meant with the word

“value” will be discussed thoroughly in sections 2.1 – 2.1.4. Crucially, it will be understood and assumed to be something that we ought to do, that we ought to promote, the existence of which makes the world a better place.

Even so, much of the literature on value either deals exclusively with ethical values or does not make a distinction between ethical and non-ethical values. This is especially true when discussing scepticism about values. For this reason, most of the examples and the literature on which this paper is based still comes specifically from the ethical side of the debate.

The best way to deal with ignorance about value, I will here argue, is through a

“provisional” system of value. That the system is provisional means that the goals it recommends are not thought to be objectively or intrinsically valuable by themselves, but that we should try to maximize them since they are our best bets for achieving values that actually are objectively or intrinsically valuable. The provisional values are goals that, under ignorance, should be judged more likely to lead to intrinsic values than not, if followed.

The three provisional goals of the system are:

Knowledge. The most direct way of dealing with ignorance is simply to make it go away, to replace it with knowledge. This is how philosophers have mostly approached questions of value throughout history, and quite properly so. The only problem with the scheme is its lack of success. Despite millennia of trying, no entirely satisfactory

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system of value has been identified. Even so, it still makes sense to keep on trying.

Thus, knowledge remains as one of the three provisional values.

Optionality. Optionality means having options and alternatives, the power to carry out ones will and cause change in the world. If we do not know how to best promote value, the capacity to act may seem useless. However, if we should ever discover what is right, it is clearly useful to have the capacity to actually do it. The usefulness of optionality may not come into action until we have acquired at least some knowledge regarding what is valuable.

Diversity. When we do not know what to do, we should do as many different things as possible. This is like trying to increase one’s chances of winning the lottery by buying as many tickets as possible. The more things there are in the world, both when it comes to quantity and qualities, the higher than chance that some of them will be good.

The paper is divided into two major parts, not counting the brief introduction you are reading right now and the yet briefer conclusion at the end. The first of these two parts is a substantial background, sections 2.0 – 2.3. This section is in turn divided into three. The first of these attempts to clarify what I am looking for, namely what is meant with the concept of “value”. Subsections two and three are meant to explain why I believe that there is considerable ignorance when it comes to value, to motivate why we need a system to tackle that ignorance, and to illustrate the epistemic situation in which the system is supposed to function. This is done first through the “regress argument”, and the secondly through the “problem of disagreement”.

In the second main part, sections 3.0 - 3.3.1, I will give a proper presentation of the provisional value system. I will explain the system at length, going deeper into the three main goals and explain why we ought to adopt the system and provide examples of how it might look in action. In sections 3.2 – 3.2.6, I continue to deal with the provisional system, but now through the lens of objections to it. Numerous objections are brought up and hopefully dispatched. Among these objections are the risk of doing harm, the competition from supposedly better theories, the question of whether we really are as ignorant of morality as claimed, etc.

In summary, then:

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Purpose:

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the topic of ignorance about value.

Question:

How should we best handle ignorance about value?

Thesis:

In a condition of ignorance about value, the best way to maximize expected value is by following the “provisional system of values” here presented.

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2.0 Background

The purpose of this background is to give the reader an understanding of why there is a need for a system dealing with ignorance about value. Why is the provisional system worth our time and effort? To justify the whole endeavour, I need to explain two things:

First, there is the question of what I mean with “value”. What is it that we are trying to achieve? Why is it something we should care about? What is “value”, even?

In brief, I will argue that “value” is all things that matter, that are worth something, that makes the world a better (or worse) place by existing. If something does not contribute to either making the world better or worse, it has no value. Value is something we ought to achieve. Often this type of value is termed “intrinsic” or

“objective” value, though exactly what that is needs further explication.

Secondly, I will discuss the reasons we have for doubting the nature and existence of such values. This is the twin challenge of nihilism and scepticism. Nihilism is the belief that there is no such thing as “values”. Scepticism is the belief that we do not know what they are. Such an investigation is necessary to show that there really is significant ignorance about value, enough to motivate a system for dealing with it.

Numerous philosophers have argued that gaining knowledge about value is impossible¹. Often but not always because they hold that there is nothing to gain knowledge about. No matter whether these philosophers are correct, the fact that they doubt is itself an argument for our lack of knowledge. It is this lack of knowledge I am interested in demonstrating. After all, there would be no need for a provisional system if values were already perfectly understood. Though there are many arguments for scepticism about value, and many types of scepticism², I will focus on two arguments:

the regress argument, and the disagreement argument. The regress argument provides conceptual and epistemic reasons for believing that values are not something we can gain knowledge of, even if they exist. The argument from disagreement presented here provides reason to suspect, no matter whether such knowledge is in fact possible, that we do not possess it.

Personally, I accept what Walter Sinnott-Armstrong calls the “Pyrrhonian view of moral [or value] scepticism”. In his words: “Pyrrhonian sceptics about moral knowledge suspend belief about whether or not anyone knows that any substantive

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moral belief is true”³. (Emphasis in the original). This means that I do not know whether anyone knows anything about value. Perhaps someone does. And even if no one does, perhaps someone or something has in the past, or will one day in the future.

I will not be so ambitious as to prove the impossibility of knowledge about value. I will be satisfied to make a good case for ignorance. There is little need for more, since as long as we are not absolutely sure there is no ignorance, there probably is at least some of it.

Note that the provisional system can also be applied to localized ignorance.

Ignorance is quite compatible with knowledge. Or perhaps more precisely, knowledge in some matters is compatible with ignorance in other matters, even in the same field.

We can know some things without knowing other things.

Another important distinction is that between uncertainty and ignorance.

Arguably, ignorance is a subcategory of uncertainty. At least if one understands

“uncertainty” as any absence of total certainty. Indeed, if one should define

“knowledge” as having laxer criterions than certainty, even knowledge could be contrived as a form of uncertainty. “Uncertainty” can under some definitions be a very broad concept. Also, “moral uncertainty” is the name of a separate subfield of ethics, which we will touch upon in section 3.2.6. Furthermore, I want to avoid confusion with the field of decision theory, where both “uncertainty” and “ignorance” have more specific meanings. For these three reasons, I will avoid the term “uncertainty” as best as possible. “Ignorance” will be understood to signify a very bad epistemic situation, where we neither know the probabilities of different outcomes nor what those outcomes may be.

The background will thus cover three goals. First, I will try to make clear what

“value” is. Secondly, I will present the regress argument that claims that knowledge about value is impossible. Thirdly, I will show that in any case there is so much disagreement and so many contradictions in our ideas about value that even if knowledge about value is possible, many of us clearly lack it. Together, these three points will justify the need for the provisional system of value presented in sections 3.0 – 3.3.1.

Let us begin:

2.1 What is value?

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Webster’s dictionary defines value as “the quality or fact of being excellent, useful or desirable”⁴. Stephen Darwall defines it as synonymous with “desirability, worth or dignity”⁵. Something is valuable if it matters. The things that, when existing, make the world either better or worse. It is something we ought to strive for. Technically, “value”

could also be understood to signify things reducing excellence, use or desirability. Not only good things, but also “evil” things, may possess value, though of a different kind.

In this paper I will almost exclusively discuss positive “good” value rather than negative “evil” value.

But what does all this mean? There appears to be no clear definition of “value”.

In his Introduction to Value Theory, Nicholas Rescher cites no fewer than ten different definitions and makes clear he could easily cite more⁶. Mark Schroeder admits that value is “hard to specify in some general way”, but suggests that it includes things like the following⁷:

““pleasure is good/bad”; “it would be good/bad if you did that”; “it is good/bad for him to talk to her”; “too much cholesterol is good/bad

for your health”; “that is a good/bad knife”; “Jack is a good/bad thief”; “he’s a good/bad man”; “it’s good/bad that you came”; “it would be better/worse if you didn’t”; “lettuce is better/worse for you

than Oreos”; “my new can opener is better/worse than my old one”;

“Mack is a better/worse thief than Jack”; “it’s better/worse for it to end now, than for us to get caught later”; “best/worst of all, would be

if they won the World Series and kept all of their players for next year”; “celery is the best/worst thing for your health”; “Mack is the

best/worst thief around”?”⁸

But despite all these examples the concept remains elusive. Even for those who study it, there is a lot of doubt. R. M. Hare allegedly claimed that he knew of no one who knew what “value” was⁹.

It might not even be possible to define “value”. Perhaps it is just inconsistent and does not make sense? Or perhaps “value” is such a simple concept that it cannot be explained? You either know what it is, or you do not. One of those who believed this

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was G. E. Moore. In his Principia Ethica from 1903 he writes of the closely related term “good”:

“My point is that “good” is a simple notion, just as “yellow” is a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to anyone who does not already know it, what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is. Definitions of the kind that I was asking for, definitions which describe the real nature of the object or

notion denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when the object or notion in question is something complex. You can give a definition of a horse, because a horse has many different properties and qualities, all of which you can enumerate. But when you have enumerated them all,

when you have reduced a horse to his simplest terms, you can no longer define those terms. They are simply something which you think of or perceive, and to anyone who cannot think of or perceive them, you can never, by any definition, make their nature known.”¹⁰

If Moore is correct, there is no way I will get any closer to a definition of “value”. It is just too simple to be defined. Even so, an attempt will be made to say at least something about it. An important point to make is to explain what I am not talking about.

2.1.1 Ethics/Morality vs Values

This paper deals with value, while the above quote from Moore dealt with “good”. As stated in the introduction, I will for convenience interpret this as being synonymous with “value”. Moore also argues that anything that in this context applies to “good”

also applies to “bad”¹¹.

But the book from whence the quote came was called “Principia Ethica” rather than “Principia Value”. Are we really talking about the same thing? Moore’s goal is to investigate value, or more specifically, “good”. Though Moore recognizes that a few philosophers have a narrower view of “good”, typically related specifically to human

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conduct, he himself understands “ethics” to signify the broad “general inquiry into what is good”¹². Does this mean that “value”, “good”, “morality” and “ethics” are all synonyms?

Later in his book Moore claims that happiness, knowledge, and beauty are all things that are “good”¹³. But arguably, all three could be reclassified as more specific types of non-ethical values. Knowledge could be an epistemic value, beauty an aesthetic value and happiness perhaps a psychological value. Where does the border between all these different values go?

In this text I will concern myself with “value” in general rather than “ethical” or

“moral” values in particular. The reason is that I understand “value” to be the broader term, that encompasses what is typically considered ethics and morality, but also other things. Ethics and morality are examples of values, but there may be values that are not properly classified as ethical. Beauty and knowledge were mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I will strive to maintain the distinction between values and ethics and avoid the latter since it is sometimes understood as a narrower type of value related to human conduct¹⁴. At times, this will be difficult. The reason is that when it comes to doubts about value, such discussions are typically cast in the language of ethics and morality.

There is a vast discourse on “moral scepticism”, but none on “value scepticism”. Most of the literature relevant to this paper speaks the language of “ethics” rather than

“value”. For this reason, quotes will often speak of morality or goodness, while the parts written by me will speak of value. Mostly, the terms will be treated as synonymous. In the rare cases where this is not possible, I will do my best to straighten things out.

2.1.2 Intrinsic Value

What we are looking for in this paper is typically known as “intrinsic value”.

That is, the kind of property that matters, is meaningful, is worth something, or, makes whatever possesses it matter, be meaningful or worth something. Value is something that we ought to strive for. In the words of Michael J. Zimmerman and Ben Bradley:

“The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,”

or for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.””¹⁵ And: “That which is intrinsically good is nonderivatively good…”¹⁶.

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That at least some of the things labelled “values” are real is beyond dispute. But

“real” in what sense? It is obvious that money has some kind of value, and that a useful tool has another type of value to a craftsman, and that a hill may have some sort of tactical military value. We humans are quite liberal with what we apply the term

“value” to.

But it remains questionable whether these values are intrinsic. In other words, do they matter beyond the fact that we care about them? Is the world truly a better place because there is more money in it? Most of us would be inclined to disagree. At least regarding a necessary connection between more money and the world being a better place. Monetary and similar values appear different from other kinds of hypothetically “real” values, such as beauty or honour. What is this difference? We now arrive at the issue of mind-dependence.

This problem in turn brings us to the first of two important distinctions of our investigation into value. This is the distinction between “values” and “evaluations”.

Evaluations are simply the psychological feelings of value, our opinions on the matter.

That evaluations exists is a psychological fact and nothing controversial. For a discussion about value to go beyond this triviality, value must be something more than this. People have opinions about value. But it still makes sense to ask whether the things we evaluate, whether the things we hold to be valuable, are really valuable. Are our feelings for the things we value related to some actual fact in the world? Or are they just inside our heads? We certainly feel some things to be good, but are they?

Would they be good if we did not think them good? Or even if we despised them?

Often, the idea that values have this mind-independence is labelled as values being “objective”. Objective values are traditionally opposed to values being “relative”.

The most common form of relativism is subjectivism, which argues that values are relative specifically to some group or person’s subjective feelings or opinions.¹⁷ Objective values are supposedly not mere opinions, or relative to them. They have an existence independent of our minds, of what we think and feel of them.

According to Richard Joyce, the key difference between relativism and objectivism about value is that relativism holds that value statements have an

“essential indexical element”¹⁸. That is, the truth or falsehood of a statement can change based on who utters it. Take the statement “I am tall”. It is true if uttered by a tall person but false if uttered by a short person. Value-statements like “justice is valuable” would thus, according to relativism, always require us to know the context

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of the utterance before we can know whether it is true. Objectivism instead holds that such statements at least theoretically may be true in any context.

Now, there are many values that may be mind-related but that might still be considered objective. This is because their value itself is not dependent on us thinking it valuable. Pleasure is probably the best example. Pleasure is clearly related to our minds, at least if understood as a mental state. Thus, pleasure is “mind-relative”. A utilitarian, though, might defend the objective value of pleasure by explaining that while pleasure may exist because our minds are in a certain way, its value is not dependent on us thinking it valuable. Pleasure would still be valuable even if no one thought it valuable, or even if everyone were greatly ashamed of feeling it. There is no contradiction in a subjective state being objectively value, as long as it is not valuable because we subjectively think it so.

The second distinction of our investigation into value is that between

“instrumental” and “intrinsic” values. That is, things that are good because they lead to something good, and things that are good entirely on their own. G.E. Moore illustrates the difference with an “isolation test”. To find out whether something is intrinsically good, one asks whether a world containing it and nothing else would be a good world¹⁹. Is a world of great beauty valuable, even if it contains nothing else? Not even someone to observe the beauty? What about a world of knowledge? Or happiness? If that is the case, Moore argues, that thing whatever it is has intrinsic value. It is this intrinsic value I am looking for in this paper. Something that “just is”

valuable, something that make the world a better place. Something has “instrumental value”, on the other hand, if it contributes to bringing intrinsic values about.

The idea of intrinsic value is not new. It follows from the simple and natural question of what the goal of our actions is. This is the famous “limit-argument” of Aristotle²⁰: Why do we do anything? Either we do something for the sake of something else, or we do it for itself. If we do it for something else, we must ask why we do that thing, leading us back to the original question. Thus, if there are values, they cannot all be good merely as means to something else. That leaves the second option, that (assuming there are any valuable things) some things are valuable for themselves.

“Intrinsic value”, or “final cause” as he calls it, is according to Aristotle:

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“…an end, and that sort of end which is not for the sake of something else, but for whose sake everything else is; so that if there is to be a

last term of this sort, the process will not be infinite; but if there is no such term, there will be no final cause, but those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it (yet no one would try to do anything if he were not going to come to a limit); nor

would there be reason in the world; the reasonable man, at least, always acts for a purpose, and this is a limit; for the end is a limit.”²¹

According to Aristotle, the reasonable man always acts for a purpose, which is a goal, and that goal must in the end be intrinsically valuable. If the goal is not directly intrinsically valuable, the reasonable man will either use it to proceed to something that is intrinsically valuable or will not bother with it at all. Aristotle argues that if there is no such “final cause” or intrinsic value to strive for, then we cannot be “reasonable men”. If all choices are equally good, the reasonable man has no grounds upon which to prefer one choice over another. But would such a lack of intrinsic value be a serious problem? Hopefully, we can answer that question in the next section.

2.1.3 Objective Values vs Subjective Values

When discussing values, I have here emphasized that they are something that

“matters”. They are the things that makes the world either a better or a worse place, they are something we ought to achieve. If there are no intrinsic objective values as discussed in the last section this would seem to remove the goals from our life. At least any mind-independent such ones. Aristotle seems to think so, when he claims that we cannot even consider ourselves reasonable if there are no such intrinsic values to aim at. We may still have evaluations, opinions, and feelings, but none of these would reflect reality. A key characteristic of relativism or non-objectivism is that it provides no rational reason to prefer any alternative over any other²². But is this a problem? Do we need objective values, or can substitutes easily be found? Consider the following quote from John Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong:

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“The denial of objective values can carry with it an extreme emotional reaction, a feeling that nothing matters at all, that life has

lost its purpose. Of course this does not follow; the lack of objective values is not a good reason for abandoning subjective concern or for

ceasing to want anything. But the abandonment of a belief in objective values can cause, at least temporarily, a decay of subjective

concern and sense of purpose. That it does so is evidence that the people in whom this reaction occurs have been tending to objectify

their concerns and purposes, have been giving them a fictitious external authority. A claim to objectivity has been so strongly associated with their subjective concerns and purposes that the collapse of the former seems to undermine the latter as well.”²³

Mackie does not believe that there is such a thing as objective value, and that we are mistaken in thinking and claiming that there are. This is his “error theory” of morality²⁴. Yet there appears to be a significant conflict between what I in this text call

“objective value” and what Mackie appears to be talking about. This difference is that an absence of objective value in at least my sense of the term actually would mean that nothing matters at all, and that life has in fact lost all purpose. While it is perfectly correct that we may in fact retain subjective values even after objective values have been disproven, it cannot be said that we “ought” to retain them.

The “subjective concerns” that Mackie discuss are not really values at all. They are evaluations. Feelings, opinions, or attitudes regarding values. But there is a difference between an opinion regarding something and the thing itself. Feelings about values are not values any more than feelings about elephants are themselves elephants.

Mackie is certainly right that subjective “values” can remain even in the absence of objective values. But that does not allow them, mere opinions, to take the place of the objective, the real.

If there are no objective values then nothing matters, nothing has purpose, since objective values simply are the things that matter and give purpose. As such, objective values are, speaking strictly, the only kind of values there are, or even that there can be. If there are no objective values, it is simply the case that nothing matters.

If there are objective values, it is plausible that some of them are also subjectively valuable. In other words, that we have a positive emotional attitude

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towards them. Hopefully, that is the case for a lot of the things people value. But it is also probable that many of the things that people value subjectively lack objective value. Especially considering that people contradict and disagree with each other regarding what is valuable. There is a difference between there being opinions and feelings about value and there being actual value. They are different things, and nothing prevents the one from existing without the other.

Would the existential despair Mackie criticizes be suitable in a world with no objective values? Certainly, it would. But so would the opposite. If there are no objective values, no course of action is better to any other. Nihilism, here understood as the belief that nothing is or can be valuable, does not condemn or approve any course of action. If you rescue the proverbial boy in the pond from drowning, nihilism does not condemn or approve it. Likewise, once you have rescued him, nihilism would neither condemn nor approve if you tossed him back again.

When objective values are not contrasted with subjective values, they are contrasted with other forms of relativism. But technically, values can even be relative and objective at the same time. It all depends on in what sense you use the word

“relative”. Most people would probably agree that the situation can seriously change what is right or wrong. Socrates’ famous example of this from The Republic is worth repeating: “Suppose that a friend when in his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them when he is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one would say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more than they would say that I ought always to speak the truth to one who is in his condition”²⁵. Thus, the rightness of returning a borrowed weapon is “relative” to the mental health of the owner.

The really crucial distinction between relativism and objectivism is instead that relativism claims that all value statements are relative. This is a categorical statement in that it would not be possible to make any value statements that are not relative. The objectivist need only claim that some value statements can be non-relative.

Either something is valuable, or nothing is valuable. By the laws of logic, that disjunction is always true. Values can only be replaced by things that are not valuable.

The only option to the existence of values is nihilism. If the very concept of value truly is inconsistent, incoherent, and impossible, nihilism is the result. All investigation into value must therefore proceed on the assumption that the concept of values makes sense. The only option is to close everything down and go home. Subjective values

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cannot, as Mackie did suggest, replace objective values any more than illusions can replace the real.

In summary then: by “value” I will mean something that matters, something good, something valuable, something meaningful, something that has worth. If something has the property of being valuable, we should try to get as much of it as possible. “Value” is objective in the sense as being distinct from feelings, opinions, and evaluations. It is “intrinsic” in the sense that it is good as an end, not merely as a mean.

2.1.4 Does it matter if we do not know exactly what “value” is?

A convenient thing with the system of provisional value and its attempt to handle ignorance is that it also helps with doubt regarding what value is. The system works even if we do not quite know what we are looking for. Its very purpose is to help us get around the fact that we do not know what intrinsic value is, or what things instantiate it. Instead, it is meant to allow us to construct a system of entirely provisional, instrumental, or practical values with a minimum of theorizing needed.

This means that even if I have failed to perfectly define what “intrinsic and objective value” is in the above sections, it will not necessarily be fatal or even particularly embarrassing to the system. That we do not know exactly what it is we are looking for is a relatively small problem compared to the fact that it may be unknowable whether it even exists.

The only really non-negotiable part of what we are looking for is that value must be, well, valuable. It must matter, it must make a difference to how good or bad the world is. It must at least at some stage be objective, as in more than a mere opinion. It can certainly involve opinion but still needs something beyond that. The only thing value cannot be is pointless, worthless.

The description of “value” presented here and which we will proceed to follow throughout the paper is perhaps most closely related to what is conventionally known as the idea of “moral realism”. This may seem strange to some people, especially as we are about to investigate the idea of scepticism about value and a “provisional” system of value. Why would a realist need a “provisional system”? Surely, realism and scepticism are at odds? Not necessarily. As Sinnott-Armstrong points out:

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“Moral sceptics can hold substantive moral beliefs just as strongly as non-sceptics. Their substantive moral beliefs can be common and

plausible ones. Moral sceptics can even believe that their moral beliefs are true by virtue of corresponding to an independent moral

reality. All that moral sceptics deny is that their or anyone’s moral beliefs are justified or known (and Pyrrhonian moral sceptics don’t

even deny that). This meta-ethical position about the epistemic status of moral beliefs need not trickle down and infect anyone’s

substantive moral beliefs or actions.”²⁶

This is basically the position that it is unknown whether values exist or not, but if they do, then they are real. Consider, for instance, someone who believes that the Caspian tiger is extinct but who is not entirely sure. But he also believes that if any Caspian tigers are alive, then they are quite real. That person is both a realist and a sceptic regarding the Caspian tiger, at the same time. One can combine being a realist concerning the ontology of value with being a sceptic regarding its epistemology.

There are, however, some definitions of moral realism that makes this impossible. Consider Russ Shafer-Landau’s:

“As I understand it, moral realism is the view that says that most moral judgements are beliefs, some of which are true [emphasis added], and, when true, are so by virtue of correctly representing the existence of truth-markers for their respective contents. Further, and crucially, true moral judgements are made true in some way other than by virtue of attitudes taken towards their content by any actual

or idealized human agent.”²⁷

The problem comes from the brief clause “some of which are true”. If we by “some”

mean “some actually made statements or currently held moral beliefs”, it is doubtful whether it is true. The sceptic is - well - sceptical about this. Here I will compromise and simply claim that the realist need only think that some statements about value are potentially true. In other words, it is possible that some moral judgements can be true, while at the same possible that no one has ever successfully made one.

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2.2 The problems of moral epistemology.

I will now move on to discussing reasons to think we might know little or nothing about what is valuable. I hope to make a case for why this possibility should be taken seriously.

There are two points I want to make here in sections 2.2 – 2.3. First, I want to show that values may very well be something which it is impossible for us to know anything about, even if they actually should exist. This is dealt with in sections 2.2.1 – 2.2.7, concerning the regress argument. Secondly, I want to show, regardless of the answer to the first question, that we in fact often lack knowledge about value. This is the section on disagreement, 2.3.

I would like to emphasise that the conclusions presented in the following sections are quite humble. Though I will attempt to show that value is not something we can have knowledge about and that there is a great deal of ignorance, it is not necessary to go quite so far. I do not claim to prove that we in fact suffer total ignorance about value, only that it is plausible, or even just possible, that we do. Arguments for total ignorance are for the most part easily turned into arguments for partial ignorance.

This is enough to motivate work done on the provisional system of value, since the system can also be applied to partial ignorance. As long as there is some ignorance, a system aimed at dealing with it will be motivated. This is especially true if it is unknown how much is unknown. With this section I want to illustrate what kind of epistemic situation we find ourselves in when it comes to values, to give a solid background to the provisional system.

2.2.1 The Regress Argument.

The regress argument is a classic argument of scepticism, ultimately hailing back to Sextus Empiricus and the ancient sceptics²⁸. To them it was an argument for scepticism in general, but it is not difficult to make some small modifications and turn the argument into an attack on our knowledge of values more specifically. What the regress argument attempts to show is that knowledge about values always ends up in

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an infinite regress, where values must be based on other values. This causes problems if one cannot in turn find a more reliable basis for those “other values”.

There are many formulations of the regress argument. The one I will be investigating here comes from Russ Shafer-Landau and Terence Cuneo’s Foundations of Ethics²⁹. It should be noted that this version specifically concerns moral justification for belief, rather than value in general. This is one of those cases where our general investigation of value must bring in examples of ethical value.

The argument goes as follows:

“1. In order for anyone to be justified in holding a moral belief, that belief must be adequately supported.

2. Such support must be provided by other beliefs that lend credibility to the initial moral belief.

3. These other supporting beliefs must be either moral or nonmoral ones.

4. Such supporting beliefs cannot be moral ones.

5. Such supporting beliefs cannot be nonmoral ones.

6. Therefore no one is justified in holding any moral beliefs.”³⁰

Let us go through the premises one at a time.

2.2.2 In order for anyone to be justified in holding a moral belief, that belief must be adequately supported.

This idea is quite simple. We should have arguments for our beliefs, something to prop them up. We cannot just have our ideas hanging unsupported in a vacuum.

Though one of the least controversial premises, there are those who challenge it. The main attack concerns exactly what is considered “adequately supported”.

Examples could be various form of non-cognitivism, where beliefs about value are not really beliefs at all, but rather things like expressions of emotion or commands and therefore lacking in truth conditions³¹. Expressions of emotions may not require

“adequate support” in the way beliefs do. But then again, non-cognitivists do not hold values to be cognitive things anyway, and therefore not knowledge-apt. This means

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that their ideas of value fall outside the scope of what I am looking for here, the objective and intrinsic values described in sections 2.1 – 2.1.4.

2.2.3 Such support must be provided by other beliefs that lend credibility to the initial moral belief.

Beliefs must be based on other beliefs if we want them to be justified. The first beliefs are used as evidence for the conclusion-beliefs. Or? There does appear to be exceptions. Simple sense perception, through sight and hearing for instance, might give us direct knowledge not based on other beliefs. Something fundamental on which further knowledge can be based. (There are other interesting views on knowledge, chiefly coherentism, that denies this. These views, however, run into other problems, and in the interest of brevity I will not deal with them here).

This premise is where non-value related knowledge tends to escape versions of the regress argument aimed at global scepticism. When it comes to non-value related forms of knowledge, it is often held to start with our senses or some other form of basic intuition. Things we “just know”. This works because most people are quite inclined to trust these immediate impressions. Or at least more inclined to trust them than they are to trust a sceptical argument. The option is less obvious when it comes to value than when it comes to knowledge in general. People rarely have the same trust in their value-intuitions as in what they can see, hear, and touch.

Even so, that we can “just know” things, or that some statements are self- evident as in being evidence for itself, is also a possibility when it comes to values³². Numerous philosophers have argued for this. The position is called “epistemological intuitionism about value”. It should be distinguished from the more general school of intuitionistic ethics. Many philosophers such as Sidgwick, Moore and Ross belonged to this school, and it dominated Anglo-Saxon philosophy during the beginning of the twentieth century³³. Though the intuitionists also accepted the epistemological intuitionist thesis, the acceptance of that thesis does not require one to accept the rest of the intuitionist school of ethics³⁴.

Robert Audi describes the epistemological intuitionist thesis thus:

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“In the […] epistemological conception of intuitionism, the view is roughly the thesis that basic moral judgements and basic moral

principles are justified by the non-inferential deliverances of a rational intuitive faculty, a mental capacity that contrasts with sense perception, clairvoyance, and other possible routes to justification. A

number of writers, particularly critics of intuitionism, conceive intuitionism as implying the stronger thesis that the intuitive faculty

yields indefeasible knowledge of self-evident moral truths.”³⁵

Still, epistemic intuitionism is not an unproblematic view. Two issues stand out.

The first concerns disagreement. It seems hard to explain how people can be mistaken and disagree with each other about values if these are so intuitive things. Other forms of knowledge often defended as intuitive, self-evident, or obvious, such as basic mathematics, are free of disagreement. Or very nearly so. Though intuitionism is far from the only idea regarding value that is plagued with disagreement, the fact that it claims that we have some sort of natural faculty to recognize value makes that disagreement harder to explain. Don’t we all have this “rational intuitive faculty”, this

“mental capacity” Audi writes of? I will return more in depth to the problems of disagreement in section 2.3.

The second problem for intuitionism is that this “rational intuitive faculty” also comes with the burden of explaining what it is and how we humans came to acquire it.

Do we have a kind of sixth sense for value? How come non-intuitionists are not aware of that sense like they are aware of having sight or hearing? Does everyone have the faculty? If so, why are there evil people? Does someone have it to a greater extent than others? Where would it come from? Why would evolution have provided us with this?

And if we did not inherit it through evolution, where would we have gotten it from?

If we accept that all basic and inborn faculties of mankind have developed through evolution, and that our intuitions about value are basic and inborn faculties, it is hard to explain how we humans got a “sixth sense” for value. Evolutionary adaptations are aimed at survival and reproduction. While it is not difficult to see how feelings of value could contribute to survival, it is harder to see why those feelings would necessarily cohere with what is actually valuable³⁶. This is the distinction between feelings of value and intrinsic objective value discussed in section 2.1.2.

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2.2.4 These other supporting beliefs must be either moral or nonmoral ones.

This is an exclusive statement. Every belief is either moral or non-moral. This is true in the same way that “all things that are cats are cats, and all things that are not cats are not cats” is true. Only moral beliefs are moral beliefs. If a belief is not a moral belief, it is a non-moral belief. Thus, the premise is hard to refute. By conventional logic, it is true by necessity.

2.2.5 Such supporting beliefs cannot be moral ones.

To support beliefs about value with other beliefs about value would lead to either circularity or an infinite regression. While there is nothing problematic about some moral beliefs being supported by other moral beliefs, that just moves the question to what those beliefs are based on. It appears that at some point our beliefs about value would have to be based on something that is not a value. Perhaps one can base one’s belief that the death penalty is wrong on the belief that human life is sacred, but if one’s belief in the sacredness of life is not based on another belief about value, it seems that it would have to be based on a belief that is not about value.

This is the premise which gives the regress argument its name. If we cannot find a way to avoid basing our beliefs about value on other beliefs about value, we end up in an infinite regress³⁷. To avoid that, we have to find a belief about value that is not based on another belief about value. The regress argument then proceeds to close that possibility, or at least attempt to:

2.2.6 Such supporting beliefs cannot be nonmoral ones.

This premise is the most controversial of the argument, and it is here that the decisive battle will be fought. The idea that we cannot support our beliefs about value with beliefs that are not themselves about value is most typically defended by appeal to a combination of two famous arguments: G.E. Moore’s open-question argument, and David Hume’s Is/Ought gap³⁸. We will start with the latter.

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David Hume finished the first section of the third book of his Treatise of Human Nature with the following much quoted paragraph:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I

am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not

connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis

necessary it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others,

which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers;

and am persuaded, that this small attention wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice

and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.”³⁹

The paragraph has given rise to a considerable debate on what has come to be known as the “”is/ought”-distinction”, or “Hume’s Law”. The idea is simple: that you cannot have an argument that can reach value conclusions without also containing value premises. You cannot use “is” claims to deduce “ought” claims. That something “is” a certain way does not mean that it “ought” to be a certain way. If this is true, it would be impossible to prove the existence of values without resorting to circularity. We would already have to assume the existence of value in order to reach conclusions about value.

The problem this creates is that it makes it hard to show how we could ever prove that something is valuable. If I want to prove that something is valuable, that will have to be the conclusion. But if Hume’s Law is correct, I will be unable to reach

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that conclusion without any value statements among the premises. But what I am trying to prove is that there is such a thing as value premises. That would mean that the argument becomes circular. I cannot prove that there are values by assuming values among my premises. Not whilst avoiding circularity, at least. The stakes are high: what Hume calls “all the vulgar systems of morality”⁴⁰.

Consider this illustration: I wish to prove that genocide is wrong. I possess a lot of facts about genocide. I know that innocents are killed. I know that irreplaceable culture is destroyed. I know genocide involves immense suffering. But how can I go from these three facts and other facts like them to the conclusion that genocide is

“wrong”? What could I say to a challenger who admits all the facts about the murder of innocents, the destruction of culture and the immensity of suffering, but still questions whether genocide is “wrong”? It appears that all the facts in the world does not allow one to make any certain conclusion about the value of said facts.

The strength of Hume’s Law comes from its simplicity. It does not state anything very controversial. Value statements are in no way unique in that you need at least one premise of the same type as the conclusion in order to make the argument valid. For instance, if I want to reach the conclusion that “Socrates is mortal”, I cannot do that without premises that says something about “Socrates” and “mortality”.

But why then is this gap such a problem for value theory, but not for other fields of knowledge? Well, it is because we have other ways of gaining reliable knowledge about, say, Socrates and mortality. Primarily by using our senses. This does not appear as readily available when it comes to value, though the intuitionist ideas previously discussed may be seen as a version of it.

There does, however, remain one option open. What if “ought facts” are actually the same as “is facts”? If that were the case, one could easily go from an “is” to an

“ought”. Or perhaps more precisely, one would not have to go anywhere. After all, one might already have an “ought” simply by having an “is”, the two being the same. This idea is called “naturalism”, or, that terms such as “value”, “good” and “bad” are identical with things to be found in nature. Exactly what naturalism is, though, remains disputed:

G.E. Moore writes “By “nature,” then, I do mean and have meant that which is the subject-matter of the natural sciences and also of psychology. It may be said to include all that has existed, does exist, or will exist in time”⁴¹. Lars Bergström suggests, perhaps more precisely, that natural things are things that can be empirically

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investigated⁴². Facts, or perhaps “is’s”. Alexander Miller defines naturalism in ethics as ethical properties being causal or detectable by the senses. Natural properties are contrasted with non-natural properties, which are such that do not cause anything and that are not detectable by the senses⁴³.

Unfortunately, the naturalistic escape route leads us to the other of the two famous arguments. This is the “open-question argument”, first and foremost associated with G. E. Moore and Principia Ethica. Moore used the Open Question argument to challenge what he called “the naturalistic fallacy”. That is, what Moore saw as the fallacy of equating value terms with natural properties⁴⁴.

The argument works as follows. First, we make a distinction between “open”

and “closed” questions. A question is closed if “sincerely asking the question implies that you don’t understand some of the meanings or concepts involved in its formulation: in other words, that you are prey to some linguistic or conceptual confusion”⁴⁵. For instance, “I know that Smith is a bachelor, but is he unmarried?”.

The question is closed because “bachelor” simply signifies an unmarried man. To ask such a question shows that one does not understand what a “bachelor” is. Open questions, on the other hand, are all questions that are not closed. These are normal everyday questions that we are all familiar with. For instance: “I know that Smith is a bachelor, but is he strong?”.

Consider someone who argues that “value” simply means the same thing as

“pleasure”, or “desired by me”, or “socially approved of”. These are all examples of naturalistic definitions⁴⁶. If this were the case, one could cross Hume’s is-ought gap since “value” would simply mean “pleasure”. But if “value” means “pleasure”, we can construct a question along the following lines: “I know that music is pleasant, but is it valuable?”. That at least appears to be an open question. But if “pleasant” means the same thing as “value”, it is hard to see how that could be the case. If “pleasant” and

“valuable” are synonymous, that means that it should be possible to interchange them.

But what happens then? “I know that music is pleasant, but is it valuable?” could then be turned into either “I know that music is pleasant, but is it pleasant?” or “I know that music is valuable, but is it valuable?”. But these would be closed questions. This suggests that “pleasant” and “valuable” are in fact not interchangeable.

Philip Stratton-Lake formalizes the open-question argument thus:

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“1. If some property F could be defined in terms of some other property G, then the question “is something which is G, F? would be

closed.

2. For any naturalistic definition of goodness, it would always be an open question whether something that has the relevant natural

property is good.

3. Therefore, goodness cannot be naturalistically defined. “⁴⁷

Note that the problem – that we cannot know whether “pleasure” and “value” are the same - can remain even if “pleasure” actually is “valuable”. That something is (or possibly is) a certain way does not mean that we know it. Moore thought pleasure was valuable, and it was not his point to deny this. Rather, he was merely trying to demonstrate that the two words do not mean the same. “Pleasure” may have the property of being “valuable”, but it is not conceptually identical with that property.

Now, like most things in philosophy, the open-question argument has not gone unchallenged. The most serious objection to it is perhaps that there is a difference between the sense of a word and its referent. The classical example of these terms comes from Gottlob Frege, that “the morning star” is actually not a star at all, but the planet Venus, which is also known as the “evening star”. For a long time, people thought that the evening star and the morning star were different stars, since Venus moves in such a way as to appear on different locations depending on the time. Thus, the words “evening star” and “morning star” actually refers to the same thing, despite the fact that they do not have the same meaning⁴⁸.

This is a powerful objection to the idea that words like “value” cannot refer to natural properties. That “value” does not mean “pleasure” does not prevent them from actually being identical. Here, however, I am using the open-question argument in a slightly different way. I am not trying to disprove that “value” is a natural property. I am trying to disprove that we can know that “value” is a natural property. Against this, the sense/referent objection is less relevant. This is because it still will not be a conceptual truth based on the meaning of the word “value” that it refers to a natural property. Thus, we would have to find some other way to bridge the is/ought gap.

Whether value, if it exists, actually is natural or not is beside the point. The question whose answer we are looking for is whether we can know what instantiates value. Even if value should in fact be natural, that does not mean that we can know that it is.

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Moore believed that values are too simple to be analysed, and that they are therefore incapable of proof. However, he also claimed that, as fundamental principles, they do not need proof. At least not any more than fundamental mathematical facts need proof⁴⁹. Moore himself thus never saw the open-question argument as an argument against knowledge about value. Moore’s point with the open-question argument was merely that the word “value” does not signify a natural phenomenon. However, as is so often the case in philosophy, the argument can be turned on its head.

This turning was done in the 1930s and 1940s by early non-cognitivists such as Charles Stevenson and A. J. Ayer⁵⁰. They accepted Moore’s claim that values were not natural. But then they proceeded to reject Moore’s other claim that they were non- natural. This they did because they considered “non-natural properties” too metaphysically extravagant to be true. They concluded that, since values are neither natural nor non-natural and those are the only options, they do not exist at all⁵¹. At least not in the objective sense I am interested in here.

While there are plenty of philosophers who believe that they can get around both Hume’s Law and the open-question argument, they do remain troublesome. In all of natural reality, it is hard indeed to find anything that seems to compel us as being valuable. Hume’s Law means that we cannot use our observations to reach value conclusions, and Moore’s open-question argument means that we cannot get around the problem by declaring “value” to be synonymous with something else.

2.2.7 Therefore no one is justified in holding any moral beliefs.

This is the conclusion the argument aims to show. No one is justified in holding any moral beliefs. Or by the terminology of this paper, no one is justified in holding any beliefs about value. Assuming that one also holds the standard opinion that knowledge requires justification, that means that no one has any knowledge about value, either.

In its simplified form, the regress argument states the if we are to have knowledge of values, then that knowledge will have to be based on either beliefs about value or beliefs that are not about value. If we base our beliefs about value on other beliefs about value, the result is an infinite regress. If we try to base our knowledge of values on non-value beliefs, we run into Hume’s Law, backed up by Moore’s open- question argument. Therefore, in no case can we have knowledge of values. If the

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argument is accepted, that means that value is simply a thing that we cannot gain knowledge of even if it should happen to exist.

Is the conclusion of the regress argument correct? I do not know. As I have hopefully made clear, several of the key premises remain questionable. Hopefully, someone will one day find a way to deal with it. But the fact that no one has done so yet is still something of an embarrassment to us who believe in the possibility of value.

It is possible that knowledge about value is impossible. But, lest one forget, that still means that it is also possible that knowledge about value is possible.

2.3 Moral Disagreement

The second argument to be presented here in support of our lack of knowledge about values deals with disagreement. The purpose is to demonstrate that even if the regress argument should fail and knowledge about value in fact be possible, many or most of us are still far away from it. That people disagree a lot about values does not mean that knowledge is impossible. However, it does mean that there are a lot of contradictions, and therefore a lot of errors.

Disagreement has long been seen as problematic for the existence of objective values. Consider this extract from John Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, where he calls it “the argument from relativity”:

“The argument from relativity has as its premiss the well-known variation in moral codes from one society to another and from one period to another, and also the differences in moral beliefs between

different groups and classes within a complex community. […]

radical differences between first order moral judgements make it difficult to treat those judgements as apprehensions of objective

truths.”⁵²

Or, as Terence Cuneo and Russ Shafer-Landau puts it:

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“Applied to the moral realm, the skeptical thought is that we are not, in fact, able to disqualify competing moral beliefs – we cannot justify a preference for our own views over those of the people with whom

we disagree. For, on the assumption that people are more or less open-minded and fair, if we were able to produce a better justification for our own beliefs, then others should be coming over to our side in droves. But that isn’t what we see. Instead, we see only a relatively small number of minds changed, and many more cases in

which people end up with just the moral views they started with.”⁵³

At first glance, there does at least appear to be a lot of disagreement about value.

Peoples, nations, cultures, religions, and civilizations all over the world hold different ideas. Indeed, this is largely what separates groups from other groups. If two groups held precisely identical values in all matters, they would arguably not be two groups at all, but one.

Disagreement is sometimes used as an argument for there being no values at all, as for Mackie above⁵⁴. However, disagreement makes for an inconclusive argument if aimed at the existence of values. After all, that people disagree does not show that there is nothing to disagree about. It could at best be circumstantial evidence for the inexistence of value. Typically, disagreement-based arguments are instead directed at moral knowledge, where they work better. Disagreement does if not necessitate then at least suggest a lack of knowledge. After that has been established one could – perhaps – proceed to the inexistence of values by arguing that the best explanation for us having no knowledge about values is that there are no values to have knowledge of.

Katia Vavova formalizes a disagreement-based argument against moral knowledge, or for agnosticism, as follows:

“1. The correct response to peer disagreement is agnosticism.

2. There is a lot of peer disagreement about morality.

3. Therefore, we should be agnostic about a lot of morality.”⁵⁵

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(“Peer disagreement” is disagreement between peers. That is, people with equal levels of knowledge. Effectively, when neither disagreeing party is a greater authority than the other).⁵⁶

Vavova’s argument is quite humble. Even if we should accept the conclusion (which Vavova herself does not), the result is only that we should be agnostic about “a lot” of morality, not all of it. Also, she does not claim that disagreement proves that there is nothing to disagree about. Stated as it is, the argument is logically valid. This means that at least one of the two premises must be rejected if one wants to avoid the conclusion.

As for the first premise it is not universally accepted that peer disagreement should lead us to adopt agnosticism. That was the reason for Vavova to write her paper in the first place, to defend this “conciliationist” thesis. It has been held that conciliationism leads to moral scepticism, which some has interpreted as a reductio of it. Any view that leads to moral scepticism must be false, they claim⁵⁷. Vavova argues that conciliationism does not force us the be sceptics about morality.

As for the second premise, there are two major ways to defeat its claim of moral disagreement. First, one can challenge whether the disagreements about value are not actually disagreements about something else, such as empirical matters. In Vavova’s words:

“… we might disagree about whether the death penalty is justified because we disagree about whether it has deterrent effects. But

whether the death penalty has deterrent effect is an empirical matter. Our disagreement, then, isn’t a moral disagreement.”⁵⁸

A similar example may be the idea that mankind has a few core values that are accepted everywhere. Perhaps there are no societies who deny that one should return favour for favour, or that sadistic cruelty to the innocent is acceptable. Vavova cites avoiding pain and caring for children⁵⁹.

The problem with this type of argument is that people appear quite capable of disagreeing even about the supposedly deeper principles of value. A vast literature stands testament to that. Considering all the pain that has been inflicted throughout

Provisional Values Provisionella värden