Buck-passing?
The Buck-passing account of value:
"For X to be valuable is for X to have other properties that give us reasons to respond to X positively."
This definition is a little imprecise, but I think sufficiently precise to ask my question.
"Positively", at the end, is needed to distinguish valuable from disvaluable objects. For example, object X might, in some cases, have properties that give me reason to respond to it, but these reasons might make X disvaluable. My headache gives me reason to take aspirin. The reasons the properties of headaches provide make headaches disvaluable, not valuable. So buck-passers need to distinguish correct "positive" responses, which make an object valuable, from correct "negative" responses, which make an object disvaluable.
But then what do we mean by "positively"? This term seems normative. Yet I do not see how it can be reduced to talk of reasons.
If that is true, then buck-passers can't get by only on reasons: they need reasons and positivity. At best then, it seems that their account is not so parsimonious as they might hope. But at worst: How much does positivity differ from value? If it does not differ, then is the buck-passing account of value a failure?
Positivity
What do we mean by "positively"? This term seems normative. Yet I do not see how it can be reduced to talk of reasons.
One way of doing this would be by elucidating the concept of a (pro tanto) reason by the functional role reasons play in what Broome calls a "weighing explanation" of an ought-statement. Such explanations parallel the structure of mechanical weighing on a scale: just as the weight of the objects on the right- and left-hand pans explains why the scale tips in one direction, so the strength or force of competing reasons for and against your doing something explain why you ought to act as you do. 'Positivity' is here understood as the 'direction' or 'sign' of the reason in question: whether it counts for or against your doing this thing. Broome claims that the distinction between positivity and negativity (or as he and others put it, between 'counting for' and 'counting against') has no ultimate normative significance, since it is analogous to the distinction of 'being on the right-hand plate' and 'being on the left-hand pan'. What matters is that objects in either pan have play a role in explaining the direction in which the scale tips. Analogously, what matters in a weighing explanation of an ought-statement is that reasons counting both for and against are explanatory relevant in accounting for the truth of that statement.
I am not sure Broome is right in saying that the distinction has no ultimate normative significance. But even if he is wrong on this, his model seems to provide a way of accounting for positivity that makes use of no axiological concepts.
(Interestingly, in Weighing Lives Broome writes that one conceptually necessary link between the concepts of good and ought is that "when goodness does make a difference to what one ought to do, it must do so favourably", adding that he "can only express [this idea] vaguely". But this is the same idea that he had explained rigorously in the 'weighing explanation' account of pro tanto reasons. (This account can be found in his paper 'Reasons', published in a Festschrift for Joseph Raz around the same time Weighing Goods came out.)
Pablo,
Edit:I just edited the original post to make the point clearer.
Pablo,
I don't think I can have been sufficiently clear in the original post. "Positively", in my definition of the buck-passing account, doesn't refer to a pro-tanto reason.
Rather, the problem is this. They say that something is valuable iff we have reason to respond to it positively.
But one can have many reasons (pro-tanto or otherwise) for attitudes that do not make an object valuable. A headache gives me reason to respond to it by taking aspirin. Is this response "positive"? Buck-passers need to say that it is not, otherwise they must say that my headache is valuable (i.e. that it is good). But they need some criteria by which they can do this.
Is that clearer?
Alex
The underlying source of the
The underlying source of the difficulty here seems to be that bearers of value and objects of reasons are not entities that belong both to the same ontological category. The kind of thing that I claim to be valuable when I say that pleasure is good differs categorically from the kind of thing that I claim to have reason for when I say that I have a reason to promote my own pleasure. Pleasure is a property whereas promoting pleasure is an act. It is to bridge this gap that I think the notion of positivity is then invoked by buck-passers. The view appears to be that by combining the thing that is said to be valuable with the notion of a positive act suitable related to the thing in question you can transform the bearer of value into the kind of entity that can then be the object of a reason. So you combine pleasure with positivity and you get promoting pleasure.
As you say, the problem you raise is not related to the "counting in favour" aspect of reasons which I focused in my earlier comment. The buck-passer says that something is valuable iff you have (a) reasons that count in favour (b) of acting in some "positive" way towards the thing in question. Positivity kicks in at the (b) level. And the problem you raise is that the notion of positivity is not clear enough to exclude acts which would in fact yield the wrong conclusions. Now I'm not sure the example you use illustrates this point adequately. Say you have a reason for taking aspirin. This can be decomposed into (a) a reason that counts in favour (b) of acting "positively" by taking aspirin. So on the buck-passing view it would follow that taking aspirin is valuable. Is this the objection? Or is it rather that we can't derive the conclusion that headaches are disvaluable? If so, I'm not sure that's true. In order for the buck-passer to claim that headaches are disvaluable it would need to be true that the properties of headaches give me (a) reasons that count in favour (b) of acting negatively towards headaches. This is, I believe, true. The properties of headaches give me reason to try to avoid the characteristic phenomenology of "headachiness" (to use C.D. Broad's coinage). Since 'avoiding' is a "negative" kind of reaction, the conclusion follows.
Now I'm not very familiar with the literature on buck-passing, but it seems to me that proponents of this view simply rely on an intuitive notion of what reacting positively and negatitvely consists in. Perhaps the intuitions they rely on are such that, in some cases, we have reasons for reacting negatively to things which we also believe are valuable, or vice versa. But as I said I don't think your example gives us a reason to believe this is the case.
It is indeed true that they
It is indeed true that they can only derive the conclusion that headaches are disvaluable, rather than valuable, if it's true that they provide reasons to react "negatively" to headaches.
My worry is that our grip on what reactions count as "negative" and which as "positive" is really just a grip on the difference between good and bad. That is, it's not that our intuitive grip of these notions is bad, or gets the wrong results. Rather, it's that it gets the right results, but only because we're implicitly appealing to the distinction that the account is trying to reject.
Alex
pro-attitudes and pro-acts
Alex, do you think the difference between pro- and con-attitudes must be drawn by appealing to the notions of good and bad? If not, what's special about the more inclusive difference between pro- and con-acts, which they buck-passer relies upon?
Good point. I suppose I do
Good point. I suppose I do think that there's an equivalent problem for pro- and con- attitudes, yes. Unless, of course, there's good reason to think that this view is a bad one to hold?
Alex
While on my way to the
While on my way to the philosophy department I kept thinking about what I wrote, and it occurred to me that I might perhaps make myself better understood by restating the main point of my comment from a different angle.
Why do back-passers rely on the notion of reacting positively at all? Why don’t they just say that x is value iff we have reasons for x, and disvaluable iff we have reasons against x? If they did this, then the only problem about “positivity” would be the distinction drawn by Broome between “counting in favour” and “counting against”. That apparent problem could be handled in the way Broome suggested. The reason buck-passers reject this simpler formulation is obviously that the kind of things that are valuable are not the kinds of things that we have reasons for. So instead of relying on the distinction between reasons for and reasons against, they use only the notion of reasons for and conjoin it with the notion of reacting positively, in the case of values, and negatively, in the case of disvalues. And it is here that your concern about positivity enters the picture. This concerns the way of drawing the distinction between, not reasons for and reasons against, but between reacting positively and reacting negatively. What is not clear to me is what exactly your objection is. Is it that the notion is obscure, and can only be clarified by the use of axiological language? Or is it that, by relying on this intuitive notion, buck-passers will sometimes be committed to saying that things that have value do not have value on the buck-passing view, and things that do not have value do have value on such view?