understanding value as knowing how to value, and for what reasons

91UNDERSTANDING VALUE AS KNOWING HOW TO VALUEThe Journal of Value Inquiry 38: 91–104, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Understanding Value as Knowing How to Value, and for WhatReasons

THEO VAN WILLIGENBURGErasmus University, Oude Gracht 291, 3511 PA, Utrecht, The Netherlands;e-mail [email protected]

1. Introduction

Value or disvalue accrues to such diverse items as states of affairs, objects,and persons. Persons may be respectable or despicable; states-of-affairs maybe desirable or undesirable, morally strife-worthy or horrific; and an objectmay be valuable or worthless, beautiful or banal. Usually we make a distinc-tion between things that are intrinsically valuable and things that are not valu-able in themselves but that are valuable only because of their contribution tothe realization of something else that is of value. We will consider things andphenomena that are usually regarded as intrinsically valuable. Friendship,social justice, devotion to our children, scientific accomplishments, and artisticexcellences are all regarded as valuable in themselves. They have intrinsicvalue, next to their possible contribution to the realization of other values.

We will examine an account of the nature of values that has recently be-come prominent in philosophical discussion. On this account, to be valuableis to be an object, person, or state-of-affairs to which it is appropriate to takea particular favorable stance or attitude. The idea is that we can explain whatwe mean when we say that something is valuable in terms of the stance weshould take to the properties of what is valued. Understanding the value ofsomething is not primarily a matter of knowing how valuable it is, but a mat-ter of knowing how to value it, and for what reasons. This idea is perhaps asold as A.C. Ewing’s definition of “goodness” in terms of that to which it isreasonable to take a favorable attitude, but it has now found a powerful newformulation in T.M. Scanlon’s seminal work What We Owe to Each Otherwhere he presents a non-teleological and “buck-passing” account of value.1

2. Knowing How to Value and for What Reasons

Often we think that valuing something, appreciating a certain good, meansthat we have to promote it in some ways. What is valuable has to be cher-ished. We have to create or collect as much of it as possible or see that it is

92 THEO VAN WILLIGENBURG

realized in the most extensive way. The example of the value of friendship orsolidarity illustrates, however, the shortcomings of such a teleological ap-proach. The phenomenology of friendship or solidarity shows that valuingfriendship or solidarity does not, or at least not primarily mean that we wantas much as possible of it realized. Our experience is that valuing solidarityinvolves a whole range of more specific attitudes and actions. It means thatwe see reason to stand together, to be attentive to the interests and needs ofothers, to be less egoistic than usual and, in some case, to share the hardshipsof the least well off. It also involves promoting such attitudes, actions andfeelings in others. But this does not involve having as much solidarity real-ized as possible. It involves the promotion of a whole range of reasons foraction and feeling. Similarly, our experience shows that we do not value friend-ship by having as much as possible of it realized in our life or the lives ofothers, for instance by trying to collect as many friends as possible or doingeverything to keep every friendship one has alive and in shape. Valuing friend-ship primarily means that we take ourselves to have reason to be loyal to someperson who is our friend, to share her joys and sorrows, and to seek her com-pany. We may want to cultivate new friendships and keep the friendships wealready have in shape in order to avoid social isolation and have a more ful-filled life, just as we may think that it is good for other people to have friendsand cultivate new friendships. But these reasons are secondary and auxiliary.The primary reason to value a friendship is the particular person who is yourfriend.2 The person who nourishes the bond with her two best friends, with-out trying to cultivate new friendships, does not value friendship less thanthe man who has more than a dozen dear friends. Valuing friendship has noth-ing to do with trying to collect as much of it as possible. Valuing friendshipprimarily means that we see reason to help a friend because of the particularperson, not because we dearly want the friendship keep going. At least that isnot the primary reason for helping a friend. Friendships in which friends pri-marily act in order to keep the friendship alive are already half-dead.

This argument applies to numerous other values, such as justice, mutualrespect, intellectual, artistic and moral excellences, love, fame and even co-sines. Deeming a work of art or some piece of music to be valuable primarilymeans that we know how to value it and for what reasons. Appreciating Jazzmusic requires a very different attitude than appreciating a Bach Cantata. InRoyal Albert Hall, members of the audience should sit still and concentrate.In a Jazz café different behavior is expected as an expression of a favorableattitude toward the performance. But not only is a person’s attitude crucial,even more important are the reasons someone has for taking a particular atti-tude. Deeming a work of art to be valuable primarily involves taking a par-ticular attitude to it for reasons that are regarded as appropriate. Artistic qualityis usually regarded as an appropriate reason for valuing a work of art. Solv-ability on the market may be regarded as less appropriate, in line with Oscar

93UNDERSTANDING VALUE AS KNOWING HOW TO VALUE

Wilde’s remark that there are people who know the price of everything andthe value of nothing.

3. A Response-Oriented Account

Understanding a value means that we know how we should respond favorablyand what the good reasons are for taking such a response. We may call this aresponse-oriented account. In a response-oriented account, we analyze val-ues in terms of reasons for acting and feeling in a certain way. We reduceevaluative talk to reason talk. That something is valuable means that we havegood reasons to take a certain favorable attitude to it. Denying that somethingis valuable is saying that the reasons that are taken to support a favorable at-titude to it are no good. On a response-oriented account something is valu-able, if and only if there are good reasons to take a favorable attitude or stancetoward it.

Straightforward realism, by contrast, is the position that something is valu-able if it possesses a non-natural value-property, like goodness, beauty, orpleasurableness. The value of an object or phenomenon rests in the posses-sion of a monadic, axiological property that supervenes on or is related in someother appropriate way to the natural properties of that object or phenomenon.The natural properties of an object or phenomenon encompass its propertiesas they are described by the natural and social sciences. Something is valu-able, according to straightforward realism, if and only if it possesses an axi-ological property that stands in a specific relation to all or some of its naturalproperties.

It has been thought that the main problem of a straightforward realist ac-count is that it seems to populate reality with inhabitants of a weird sort. Wemight ask what the nature is of the monadic axiological property that makesan object or event valuable. Even so, as Michael Smith has argued, the im-portant questions that a straightforward realist has to answer are not of ametaphysical kind, but are rather epistemological:

Non-naturalists want to enrich our ontology with an extra property overand above those which earn their credentials in a natural or social science,neither constituted by nor analysable in terms of such properties. Thoughthere is no objection to this in principle, those who wish to enrich our on-tology in this way do incur an epistemological debt. They owe us anaccount of how we come by knowledge of the relations the extra proper-ties they posit stand in to natural properties.3

There is in principle nothing wrong with taking certain non-natural proper-ties to exist somehow in reality, supervening on, or being in other ways re-


lated to the natural properties of the objects or phenomena or persons of whichthey are the non-natural properties. We may, for instance, argue that an acthas the property of being benevolent, which is an axiological property, be-cause it is an act of helping other people or sacrificing our own good for thegood of others. A straightforward realist may point out that there are accountsof supervenience of axiological properties on natural properties that take awayany suspicion of weirdness here. But, that does not answer the epistemologi-cal questions that come along with such a position. We may ask what sort ofcognitive access we could have to monadic, axiological properties that some-how exist in reality, supervening or otherwise being properly related to natu-ral properties. Straightforward realists sometimes say that we come to knowthese properties by virtue of intuition or emotion. The question then is whethera straightforward realist can spell out the details of such an intuitionism so asto distinguish between reliable and non-reliable epistemic access. We mightask how it can be secured that our cognition of the presence of an axiologicalproperty is correct.

The advantage of the response-oriented analysis of values is that, on thisaccount, we need not go into such difficult questions and discussions. We maysimply avoid problems by not counting on a particular metaphysical realmencompassing monadic axiological properties. The response-oriented approachis, what Scanlon has called, a “buck passing account of value,” according towhich being valuable “is not a property that itself provides a reason to respondto a thing in a certain way.”4 Something is not valuable or good because it hasthe property of goodness or valuableness. Something is valuable because ofits natural properties. A sculpture is beautiful, because of its form, color ortexture, and the nature of the process of its creation. That does not mean thatbeauty is identified with having such natural properties. Valuableness or good-ness is a non-natural property, but a property of a purely formal kind. It is theproperty of having natural properties that provide reasons to take a certainfavorable attitude or stance. Something is valuable because its natural prop-erties constitute reasons to respond to it in a certain way. Valuableness is notthe ground for the response. The buck is passed from goodness or value tothe natural properties that provide reason to take a favorable stance. Valuable-ness is a purely formal property of having natural properties that provide rea-sons to react in a certain way to the valued item. The main difference betweenrealism and the response-oriented approach is, therefore, that in a realist ac-count natural properties primarily play an ontological role. Natural proper-ties are the supervenience-base or reduction-base for axiological properties,whereas in a response-oriented account natural properties primarily play anepistemological role. They provide for the reasons for taking a particular evalu-ative stance.

The response-oriented approach in this way differs from straightforwardrealism, but it is also to be distinguished from a second position, dis-


positionalism, that may seem to be more close to it. On a dispositionalist ac-count, something is valuable, if and only if it has the disposition to elicit un-der suitable conditions a favorable response in normal respondents. We canread this in a reductive and in a non-reductive way. Read in a reductive way,the idea is that something is valuable if it regularly provokes a certain favorableresponse under statistically regular circumstances in statistically regular re-spondents. Such a reductive account is perhaps applicable in case of somevalues and disvalues that are closely and directly linked to certain affects, likesomething being disgusting, boring or charming. We could argue that some-thing is disgusting, boring or charming, if it regularly provokes disgust, bore-dom or charm in regular respondents under regular circumstances. But such aregularity account is not adequate with regard to most other values and dis-values. Something is not admirable, or desirable, or despicable if it regularlyprovokes admiration, desire or despise in regular respondents under regularcircumstances. Something may regularly provoke admiration or contempt, butthat does not imply that it is admirable or contemptible. Even if pushpin isregularly preferred to poetry by regular respondents in regular circumstances,this does not imply that pushpin is preferable to poetry. Whether it is prefer-able or admirable is an open question, because there is a normative gap be-tween what regularly is deemed valuable and what really is valuable. This isat least how we normally understand value concepts like admirable or prefer-able. A person may be admired by many, without deserving this admiration.Regular respondents in regular circumstances may have strong preferenceswhich they would rather not have, because they believe that the object of theirpreference is not at all preferable.

In defending a response-oriented approach, we acknowledge the gap be-tween what is actually valued by regular respondents in regular circumstancesand what is actually valuable. Also, proponents of a non-reductive version ofthe dispositionalist account will acknowledge such a gap. According to suchnon-reductive forms of dispositionalism, we cannot specify what counts assuitable conditions and normal or typical respondents in a non-normative,statistical way. Whether the conditions are suitable also depends on whetherthey are conductive to provoking the favorable response in cases when sucha response is called for. Suitable conditions are conditions that are conduc-tive to correct evaluation. But such a view implies that we cannot specify whatcounts as suitable conditions and normal respondents, independently of theoutcome of the appraisal. This does not mean that suitable conditions are sim-ply whatever conditions are required to get the right answer, but, still, there issome circularity involved here.

Such a form of non-reductive dispositionalism is close to the response-ori-ented approach. The main difference is that the response-oriented analysis ofwhat it means that something is valuable does not refer to normal conditionsor typical evaluators, but directly refers to the normative reasons that provide


for a justification for taking a favorable attitude. Such a justification may pointout the suitability of the conditions under which we react, or it may refer tothe qualities of the evaluator. However, in most cases of justification for tak-ing a favorable attitude we will cite reasons that give direct support to ourattitude. We will refer to properties of the person, object of phenomenon towhich we take a favorable stance. In most cases, we will not take our desireor admiration as such to be the ground for deeming something as desirable oradmirable, even not if this desire or admiration is widespread in regular re-spondents under regular circumstances. With a response-oriented approachwe, therefore, avoid any suspicion of regularism, which is the view that wecan identify the distinction between an appropriate and an inappropriatefavorable stance toward something with that between regular and irregularstances of appraisal, while we may specify this regularity in purely descrip-tive terms.5 In a response-oriented approach the question whether a favorableor unfavorable attitude is appropriate or inappropriate is always a normativequestion, the answer to which requires justifications in terms of good andconclusive reasons.

Someone might object that such a view makes the response-oriented ap-proach viciously circular. Value-concepts are not analyzed in terms of thefavorable and unfavorable attitudes that people actually take, but in terms ofthe attitudes they should take. Which attitudes we must take is again a nor-mative question. However, there is nothing wrong with this circularity. Witha response-oriented approach we do not reduce the normative to the non-nor-mative. We reduce evaluative talk to reason-talk. We analyze evaluative talkin terms of reasons for taking a certain attitude, doing certain things and hav-ing certain feelings. We pass the buck from the realm of the evaluative to therealm of practical reasons for adopting a particular attitude. We analyze tak-ing something to be valuable in terms of what dispositions, actions and feel-ings are called for. Our claim is that such an analysis explains what is goingon in using evaluative concepts. It helps us to understand what we mean whenwe call a thing, person or state of affairs valuable. Such an analysis has enoughcash-value, even if it stays within the normative realm. With a response-ori-ented analysis we clarify the meaning of numerous value-concepts, by con-tending, for instance, that something is admirable if and only if there are goodreasons to admire it. Similarly, something is preferable, if and only if thereare good reasons to prefer it. Something is despicable, if and only if there aregood reasons to despise it. To be sure, we cannot reduce the good reasons foradmiring something just to the fact that it is admirable. We would be makinga merely formal claim when we say that we have reason to admire the admi-rable. In a response-oriented account we are invited to come up with substan-tial reasons for admiring a person or an object. We have to bring forwardconvincing considerations that count in favor of our admiration. We can doso by referring to the properties of the person or object which make it apt for


us to admire such a person or object. By referring to such properties we willexplain and justify the specific form that our admiration takes. On the response-oriented account to admire, to prefer, or to despise something each may in-volve a host of related dispositions, actions, and feelings that give expressionto our admiration, preference or contempt vis-à-vis a specific object, personor state-of-affairs. It is for such dispositions, actions and feelings that we haveto specify good reasons that justify them.

4. Advantages of the Response-Oriented Account

The response-oriented account has various advantageous. The first advantageis that by taking such an approach we need not presuppose the existence ofmonadic axiological properties. We do not mean to say that the response-ori-ented account is incompatible with some sort of sophisticated realism. But,dependent on our success in passing the buck, we need not rely on a realistaccount of values, which is an advantage as we thereby avoid the epistemo-logical problems that go with such an account.

Secondly, by taking the response-oriented approach we can easily explainwhy acknowledging a value always has some deontic impact. If we valuesomething, we feel that we must do something or take a particular attitude.We have difficulty in understanding a person who acknowledges a value ordisvalue and says “So what?”. Take, for instance, a person who says “Yes, Isee that this small mountain path is very dangerous, but why would I careabout that?” Or take the person who says “Indeed this painting is beautiful,so what?”, or “Yes, he is a great philosopher, but why bother reading him?”or “Yes, the food here is awful, so I really would like to taste it.” Value judg-ments must imply taking a certain pro-attitude or contra-attitude that resultsin particular concordant actions, feelings, volitions, or dispositions. It seemsthat someone who says “Yes that is really bad, so what?,” has not really un-derstood what it means to judge something bad. She does not seem to graspthe idea of badness or goodness. With a response-oriented account, we caneasily explain why value-judgments always involve some concordant norma-tive stance. We understand value judgments as judgments about the good rea-sons there are to do, will, or feel something. Our judgment that there are goodreasons will in normal circumstances result in a motivation to take a particu-lar attitude or stance. We take this stance, because we understand that acknowl-edging a certain value simply involves that we must do so. Acknowledging avalue will always have a deontic impact because we understand what it meansto value something in terms of reasons for action and feeling.

Thirdly, by advancing a response-oriented account we take a pluralist po-sition in two healthy ways. We are pluralist with regard to the nature of thefavorable or unfavorable stance that is involved in judging something of value


or disvalue. Also, we take a pluralist position with regard to the content of thestance. Both kinds of pluralism are important, since it is clear that for differ-ent kinds of value or disvalue different kinds of responses may be required.Pop music may be as great as a Bach Cantata or a Chopin Sonata, but listen-ing to and appreciating a Pop concert requires a very different sort of attitudeand different behavior than enjoying a Bach Cantata or a Chopin Sonata in theAmsterdam Concertgebouw. This argument applies to aesthetic values but cer-tainly also to moral values and prudential values. Pleasure is a prudential value,because it is good to have pleasure in our life as this makes our life go better.However, to say that something is pleasurable and that we enjoy it means verydifferent things in the case of listening to good music, enjoying a wonderfulmeal, playing a soccer-match, or having gorgeous sex. It is not very informa-tive to categorize all these activities simply under the heading of pleasurable-ness, as the pleasures involved seem so different in content and nature. In aresponse-oriented approach we can account for this difference in terms of thedifferent dispositions, actions, and feelings that are involved in finding mu-sic, food, sport, or sex pleasurable.

5. Right Reasons and the Role of Affective Engagement

Still, the adoption of a response-oriented account not only has advantages.We also meet two nagging problems, one about the attitudes and the reasonsfor them that imply and explain the value of a person or an object, and oneabout the buck-passing move itself.

On a response-oriented account, something is valuable if and only if thereare good reasons to take a favorable stance toward it. However, we may havegood reasons to take a favorable stance toward an object, person, event or state-of-affairs that have nothing to do with the value of that object, person, event,or state-of-affairs. It may be that we take a favorable attitude toward some-thing while knowing that the thing is not valuable at all. We may take thefavorable attitude just because of the value of that attitude itself. Think of thegirl who fancies a boy, perhaps a very nasty and unpleasant boy, just becauseit is nice to be in a state of love or it is nice to imitate her friends who all haveboyfriends. Or take the football fan who favors a football team just because itis nice to be a fan of a team. We may favor an object, not because it is favorable,but because the attitude of favoring itself is favorable. The reasons for takinga favorable attitude toward something may have nothing to do with the valueof that thing, but only with the value of the attitude itself. Sometimes we havereasons to love kitsch or to fancy what is in fact worthless or even bad.

The problem is that such favorable attitudes do not imply the value of theirobjects, as, by stipulation, some of those objects are not at all valuable, somemay even be bad. The reasons we have for taking a favorable attitude are sim-


ply not the right reasons, and therefore the fact that we have reasons to ad-mire something does not turn it into a good thing. Value is only effected byattitudes taken for the right reasons. But, of course, the question then is howwe might distinguish the right from the wrong reasons.

The right reasons must be those reasons that we not only invoke in order tojustify a favorable attitude, but that also appear in the content of that attitudeitself.6 The right reasons are given with those properties for which we favorsomething and that are at the same time the object of our favoring. Admiringa person’s courage involves taking a favorable attitude toward his or her cou-rageous deeds because of these courageous deeds. If we were to admire aperson for her courageousness, just because it is nice to feel admiration, thenthe object of our favoring, which is her courageousness, would diverge fromour reasons for taking a favorable attitude, which is that it is nice to feel ad-miration. This is the point were things go astray. In the case of the girl whofancies a boy just because it is nice to be in a state of love, the reasons for thefavorable attitude similarly do not figure in the content of the favorable atti-tude itself. She is in love with the boy because she wants to be in a state oflove, but this state itself is not the object of her love. She feels favorably aboutthe properties of her lover, not about the properties of her state of mind, thoughshe feels favorably about the boy, even if he is a nasty creature, because shedesires a certain state of mind. This divergence between the grounds and thecontent of her attitude explains the lack of intelligibility of her favorable stance.The boy is not loveable at all, and she may know that, which makes it a weirdthing that she goes on feeling favorable toward him. Her feelings are in a nearlyliteral sense hollow. They do not reflect a response to something valuable.Just as the enthusiasm of a fan who favors a lousy football team only becausehe loves his state of fanship is hollow. Something is only admirable if weadmire its properties and at the same time these properties provide us withreason for admiration.

In this way, we may to distinguish real friendship from false friendships,hollow admiration from real admiration, kitsch and glitter from real beauty.Still, we may wonder what to think of a case in which the nasty boy is thatnasty, that he forces the girl to love his nasty character because of his nastycharacter. He threatens to maltreat her until she comes to take a favorableattitude to his maliciousness itself. He is determined to punish her severelyand it is just this malicious disposition that she comes to love. She is like theslave who comes to admire his master’s cruelties or the victim who identifieswith her kidnapper. In this case the favorable attitude is not only taken be-cause of the threat of evil, but also toward the threat of evil itself. Still, wewould not say that such a favorable attitude turns evil into goodness, the uglyinto the beautiful or the despicable into the admirable.7 It seems that the per-son should not take such a favorable attitude, because the reasons for whichshe takes a favorable attitude and which also figure in the content of that at-


titude are not the right reasons. It is not right to admire the despicable or themalicious, and it is certainly not right to admire the malicious because of itsmaliciousness. But the question is what reasons we have for thinking that it isnot right. We cannot answer that question by saying “It is not right, becausemaliciousness is a bad thing, devoid of value.” We intended to analyze valuein terms of the reasons to take a certain favorable attitude, and this means thatthe reason not to take a favorable attitude cannot be that something is notvaluable. We have to explain that something is valuable or not in terms of thereasons we have for taking a favorable attitude or not. On pain of circularity,valuableness or being devoid of value cannot be among those reasons.

We may find a solution to this problem, by considering the sincerity ofattitudes taken and the consistency of the underlying reasons for doing so.Taking a favorable attitude toward something not only involves judging it tobe worthy of such an attitude because of its properties, it also involves beinggenuinely taken with the valued object and its properties. The valued objectshould in some sense positively affect our feelings so as to take us away. Beingcaught by the properties of what is valued may for instance involve whole-heartedly taking joy in what we value. We cannot imagine the seduced girl orthe maltreated victim wholeheartedly being taken with the maliciousness ofthose that treat them so badly. Their favorable attitude involves a certainemotional hollowness or some sort of affective schizophrenia. It is becauseof this alleged hollowness or dividedness that their attitude is partially intel-ligible to us. They are captured, but not by the properties of what they value.They admire their tormentors, but it is admiration with a sour taste. The waythey find the maliciousness of their attackers appealing is phenomenologicallydifferent from the way we find goodness or beauty appealing. Evil may haveits attractiveness, but this appeal and the pleasure involved in it seem lessunivocal and deep than the experience of being taken with the good and theadmirable.

Someone may object that the phenomenological difference as such doesnot imply that the maliciousness of a person’s tormentor cannot be a goodreason for favoring it. That a person’s admiration is hollow does not implythat there is no good reason for that admiration. Still, the just sketchedphenomenological difference in a person’s attitude rests upon a deeper prob-lem concerning the rationality of such an attitude. Responding favorably, forgood reasons, to a malicious character involves a deep inconsistency. We haveseen that valuing something means that we take ourselves to have good rea-sons to react favorably to the valued person, object or state-of-affairs. Takingourselves to have those reasons and acting upon them presupposes that weexemplify what it means to be a giver and taker of reasons. We exemplify thatit is important not to act on whim or as a wanton, but that it is important to actas we deem reasonable. We thereby exemplify our status as a rational beings.But now we take ourselves to have reason to react favorably to a person be-


cause of this person denying us this very status. We see reason to favor a per-son who denies our status as a reason-giver, who degrades the very fact thatit counts that we act upon reason. Such a view involves a deep and awkwardinconsistency, which may partially explain the emotional hollowness of ourfavorable attitude. It is like seeing reason to be happy with a cause that de-prives us of every reason to be happy. Such a view is not simply unreason-able. It is actually impossible to endorse such a reason. Valuing something istaking a favorable attitude toward it, for good reasons. For the attitude of aperson who favors the maliciousness with which she is treated no reason canbe brought forward that rests on the maliciousness itself. We cannot endorseas a good reason for our favorable attitude the fact that we are denied thepossibility to endorse reasons and act upon them.

6. Can We Definitely Pass the Buck?

With his buck-passing account Scanlon presents valuableness as the purelyformal property of having natural properties that provide reasons to react in aparticular way to the valued object, person, state-of-affairs, or phenomenon.Scanlon invites us to analyze axiological concepts in terms of the practicalreasons that we have to act, feel, or be disposed in a particular way. The buckis passed from the realm of the evaluative to the realm of practical reasons.The question remains whether the buck can indeed definitely be passed fromvalue or goodness to reasons for action and feeling. We may wonder whetherevaluative talk may indeed completely be reduced to reason talk.

The problem with such a reduction is that we seem to lose a possible im-portant function of value talk. It seems that by deploying the notions ofgoodness, admirability, beauty, and preferability we can provide for someindispensable structure underlying our normative talk about good reasons foraction and feeling. By using an evaluative notion like preferable we have acommon denominator underlying prudential reasons for favorable responseslike preferring, desiring, wanting, wishing, or longing for. A notion like beautyfunctions as a common denominator underlying reasons for favorable re-sponses in the aesthetical realm. The morally good is a common denominatorthat organizes and delineates properties of persons and states-of-affairs thatgive reasons to react in a morally favorable way. However, if value talk hasthis organizing function, value and goodness surely cannot just be the purelyformal properties that Scanlon wants them to be. If goodness were just a purelyformal higher order property, it would not have any role in distinguishingreasons for having a favorable, instead of an unfavorable attitude. In that case,it is even not clear what makes favorable attitudes favorable. It is not clearwhat binds the attitudes and stances that we call favorable together, and howwe may distinguish them from unfavorable attitudes. The attitudes themselves


have no marks that help us to make the distinction needed. Value-talk pur-ports to give us a story here, but we may ask in what way this story can beindependent of the story about reasons for action and feeling, without suc-cumbing to some sort of naïve value realism.

Scanlon thinks that no substantive characterization of the reasons for tak-ing a favorable or an unfavorable attitude is available. He believes that theidea of reasonableness as such, understood as the idea of reasonable rejec-tion, “may be as good a general guide as we can get.”8 Perhaps Scanlon isright. But if we need more of a guide, we might allow for some mild form ofnaturalism, not in the analysis of value-concepts, but in the explanation ofthe preconditions of having evaluative concepts going in the first place. Wecan provide for a mildly naturalist story about how we have acquired the ex-pertise to distinguish the good from the bad, the beautiful from the ugly, thepreferable from the rejectable, or the admirable from the despicable. In sucha story our capacity of moral, aesthetic, or prudential appraisal is grounded inunderlying psychological structures that we share with other humans, and inunderlying forms of life that we share with others in our tradition.

Take our ability to enjoy music or to appreciate nice architecture. We mayask what it is that attracts people in certain architectural objects that have thestatus of art. Or we may ask why people would rather listen to a Bach TrioSonata or a Lied from Schubert than to some bunch of uncoordinated soundsproduced by randomly hitting a piano that is out of tune. The question even iswhy we think that a piano is out of tune in the first place. On the level of fre-quencies or form of sonic waves, there is no qualitative difference betweenthe sound of music and mere noise. On the level of primary qualities like shapeand extension, there are no differences between bad and good architecture.

The answer may well be that we like the shape of a nice building becauseof the way the architect has played with basic forms and structures that havesome natural attractiveness to us. We are in some way attracted by circles,parallels, duality and symmetry, and sometimes also by the deliberate con-trasts among them. It is not difficult to make a connection between the attrac-tiveness and the duality or symmetry exemplified in the human body or otherphysical or psychological characteristics of ourselves. Similarly, our love fortonal and rhythmic, instead of atonal and arrhythmic, music has something todo with the structure of our auditive sensibilities. Aesthetic value emerges,then, because of a general and fairly robust match between such sensibilitiesand facts in the world. In this way, we may also explain why it is possible tohave some standard of taste, as Hume said, and to develop authority or exper-tise on what is of aesthetic value. Some people may, because of regular ac-quaintance with a diversity of expressions of art, be better equipped to specifyand apply standards of taste that we implicitly follow in our appraisal of forms,colors, movements, noises, or smells which have aesthetic meaning to us,because of the way we are disposed to relate to them.


Similarly, we may be disposed to react to acts, states of affairs, and personsin a prudential, aesthetical and moral way, because of a robust and generalmatch between features of these acts, states of affairs, or people and concernsspringing from our human physical and psychological make up. Because ofthis fairly general and robust match, our way of becoming related normativelyto the world may reveal certain implicit patterns of evaluation that explainwhy certain reactions are denominated as moral, prudential or aesthetical and,more importantly, why some reactions are regarded as favorable and othersas unfavorable. Our grasp of the distinction between favorable and unfavorableattitudes can be understood in terms of the match or mismatch between prop-erties of objects that are valued or disvalued on the one hand and our humansensibilities on the other hand. This explanation of how we acquire the ca-pacity to distinguish between good and bad does not provide for a justifica-tion of the appropriateness of our reactions. There may be good reasons toquestion our reactions or refine the distinctions between favorable andunfavorable that we are used to make. Our ability to apply value-concepts isgrounded in the structure of our interactions with the world, but whether weapply this ability correctly or not is up for scrutiny.

The mildly naturalist explanation of our evaluative practice, therefore, isnot incompatible with the contention that the justification of the appraisals wemake must be grounded on good and conclusive reasons. The promise, how-ever, is that the reasons will show some structure, because the capacity to re-spond favorably or unfavorably is in some sense dependent on psychologicalprocesses or deep structured sensibilities that are at the basis of an evaluativeattitude. The promise is that this will result in our making the distinctions thatwe make in using evaluative language. But this promise can only be redeemedon the first-order normative level. What counts as an appropriate response, willultimately be dependent, not on our natural propensities, but on the deliver-ances of substantial practical reason about the subject matter in question.9

Notes

1. See A.C. Ewing, The Definition of Good (London: MacMillian, 1947). See T.M. Scanlon,What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp.78–100.

2. Scanlon, op. cit., p. 89.3. M. Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994), p. 25.4. Scanlon, op. cit., p. 98.5. See R.B. Brandom, Making it Explicit (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1994), pp. 26 ff.6. See T.M. Scanlon, “Reasons, Responsibility, and Reliance: Replies to Wallace, Dworkin,

and Deigh,” Ethics 112(3), (2002), p. 519.7. See W. Rabinowicz and T. Rønnow-Rasmussen, “The Strike of the Demon: on Fitting

Proattitudes and Value,” Ethics 114/1 (2004).


8. See ibid.9. I would like to thank Jonathan Dancy, Igor Douven, Christiane Seidel and the partici-

pants of two colloquia on moral epistemology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and theFree University Amsterdam for their oral and written comments. I am also grateful forthe comments of an anonymous reviewer of the Journal of Value Inquiry who urged meto clarify my argument at various point.

understanding value as knowing how to value, and for what reasons

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