PEA Soup

What does the NEH have against us? (Updated and edited)

2009-07-07T12:14:50-07:00

Once again the NEH has announced the “Enduring Questions” grant competition:

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/EnduringQuestions.html

The announcement raises many troubling questions.

Does the NEH not realize that philosophy departments currently offer courses on exactly these subjects? Surely that is impossible. They are not idiots. Since they do realize it, perhaps they think philosophers are not doing a good enough job teaching their courses, especially their ethics courses. Why would they think that? Surely it is not related to student enrollments, since ethics courses offered by philosophy departments tend to be enormously popular.

According to the announcement, questions such as “is there such a thing as right or wrong?” are “predisciplinary.” I have never seen this “word” outside of this grant announcement. OED turns up no results. They seem to mean that these questions arose before any academic discipline began studying them. Perhaps this is true. Nevertheless, an academic discipline arose to discuss them: philosophy. What is to be gained by pretending that this discipline does not exist?

According to the announcement, no discipline can lay “exclusive claim” to these enduring questions. But one discipline, ethics, has been devoted to answering these questions for centuries. I think this gives us, if not an “exclusive claim” (whatever they mean by this), at least some reason to think that we have special expertise in teaching courses on these subjects. Do they think we lack this expertise? Do they think it is beneficial to have people with less expertise teaching courses on these questions? So beneficial that they should spend money to bring it about?

The NEH is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to help non-philosophers teach courses on philosophical questions. This might be appropriate if there were not sufficient philosophers to do the work. But there are plenty. In fact, as we all know, there are a great many unemployed philosophers who are ready to teach courses on “enduring questions” and do not need a grant to help them learn how to do it. (Maybe they would need a grant to help find a piece of artwork that sheds light on the question of whether there is such a thing as right or wrong.) ~~So this seems like a monumental waste of money~~. [Edit: in light of some of the comments below, especially Mike Austin's, I take this back. The NEH should totally give Mike Austin money to teach philosophy classes!] Why is this happening? Are there any philosophers at the NEH?

(PS. Sorry, Jussi, for posting right over you! Some rants just can't be contained!)

Update: see this reply the NEH gave to Rob Stainton.

Metaethics, Semantics, and Metasemantics

2009-07-07T05:34:22-07:00

One thing I’ve become much more aware of in Leeds is the distinction between semantics and metasemantics. There is a worry that ignoring this distinction is creating some confusion. Metaethicists have traditionally claimed to be doing moral semantics whereas in fact they have mainly been doing metasemantics. Today, there is a new debate in which people also say that they are doing semantics. This time this claim is actually true. However, as a consequence, the new debate is not at the same metasemantic level as the previous debates. I know this is a bit confusing but let me try to elaborate a bit.

Very roughly, semantics investigates what the semantic value of different terms is. Most moral terms (right, wrong, good, evil, kind, cruel...) are used in predicate expressions. On the traditional Fregean views, the semantic value of predicate is a first-level function from objects (in the moral case usually from actions) to truth-values (there are other options too but let me use this simple view as an illustration). So, crudely put, the semantic value of ‘is wrong’ could be the function, F, which gives the value True for murder, the value True for breaking promises, the value False for singing, and so on. Of course, this function would have to be much more specific. It would have to take every possible individual act-token as its argument, and give a value of either True or False for each one of them. In this sense, given the disquotational property of truth, it seems as if moral semantics is closer to normative ethics.

The metasemanticists are, in contrast, interested in the question of in virtue of what does a given term have its semantic value. Thus far, much of the metaethical debates has been about how to answer this question. So, the expressivists might argue that the semantic value of ‘is wrong’ is the previous function F because statements which use this predicate conventionally express certain conative attitudes towards actions. Naturalists, in contrast, might argue that the semantic value of ‘is wrong’ is F because this would best explain our core uses of the predicate or because this best fits the platitudes which relate ‘wrong’ to the network of other moral terms. And, finally, the non-naturalists might claim that the semantic value of ‘is wrong’ is F because there is a class of actions which share the non-natural property of wrongness. The older metaethical debates assumed that these views in metasemantics are fairly neutral about the semantics of ‘wrong’ – i.e., about for which arguments the function gives the value True and for which the value False.

The new debate is between views that could be called invariantism, contextualism, and relativism. As I understand them, these are views about the shape or the structure of the function F. Usually these views are about ‘ought’ but I’ll continue to use ‘wrong’ here instead. According to invariantists, functions like F have a very simple structure like the one described above. All we need to describe this function is a name for each action, and the value True or False (with capitals!) for each one of them.

The contextualists, in contrast, claim that we should add another argument-place to the F for the speakers who are talking about the wrongness of the given actions. This is because whether claims of the form ‘action A is wrong’ is True or False depends not only of the action but also about what information the speaker and/or others in the same context of discourse have. So, the function F* defended by a contextualist, might give the value True for the argument of giving a chocolate bar to a friend if the speaker knows that the bar is poisoned and the value False for the same argument if she lacks any evidence about this being the case. (I should add that there are interesting contextualists debates about who belong to the same context of discourse. Some contextualists also add a third parameter to F to denote the standards that are accepted in the context of the utterance).

Finally, the relativists agree with the invariantists that there is only one argument place in F for the actions that are the arguments of the function. However, they reject the idea that the value of the function for each of its arguments is either True or False. Rather, the relativists believe that the value of the function F** for is for different actions either true-relative-to-the-context-of-assessment or false-relative-to-the-context-of-assessment. And, whether the value of F** is true or false relative to the context of assessment depends on the informational state of those who are assessing the truth of the given utterance. So, if we consider whether Mark’s earlier claim ‘what Ben did was wrong’ is true or false relative to our context of assessment this might depend on whether we know whether the chocolate bar he gave to Ann was poisoned or not. Thus, the very same proposition might get a different truth-value (with small letters) relative to different contexts of assessment.

I hope I got those views at least along the right lines. Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that all these views seem to me to be metasemantically neutral. Whether F, F*, or F** is the real semantic value of ‘is wrong’, it still seems that expressivists, naturalists, and non-naturalists can still have the same disagreement about in virtue of what the predicate ‘is wrong’ has that particular semantic value. This is why I believe that the views in the new debate are metaethically neutral. However, it should be emphasised that these views are not normatively or morally neutral. Whichever function of the type F, F*, or F** is the real semantic value of ‘is wrong’ will determine what it is wrong for me to do in any given situation. So, this means that those who have been working in the moral theory should take an interest on how this debate goes.

Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics, January 2010

2009-07-06T20:46:06-07:00

Mark Timmons has posted the program for the first annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics (first announced in this call for papers). I've put the whole program below the fold; you can also just go to the workshop web site for the program and more information.

Thursday January 7

5:00--6:30 pm KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Holly M. Smith (Rutgers)
The Moral Clout of Reasonable Beliefs
Chair: David Schmidtz (University of Arizona)

Friday January 8

8:30--9:40am Jamie Dreier (Brown)
In Defense of Consequentializing
Chair: Alan Thomas (University of Kent)

9:50--11:00am Andrew Schroeder (Harvard)
You Don’t Have to Do What’s Best!
Chair: David Shoemaker (Tulane)

11:10--12:20pm Sarah McGrath (Princeton)
Normative Ethics and Moral Expertise
Chair: Mark Schroeder (USC)

1:30--2:40pm Paul McNamara (University of New Hampshire)
Action Beyond Morality’s Call versus Supererogation
Chair: TBA

2:50--4:00pm Nick Zangwill (University of Durham)
Against Indirect Consequentialism
Chair: Carla Bagnoli (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

4:10--5:30pm KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Kantian Constructivism as Normative Ethics
Chair: Christian Miller (Wake Forest University)

Saturday January 9

8:30--9:40am Samuel Kerstein (University of Maryland, College Park)
Treating Consenting Adults Merely as Means
Chair: Mark LeBar (Ohio University)

9:50--11:00am Daniel Star (Boston University)
Two Levels of Moral Thinking
Chair: TBA

11:10--12:20pm Ulrike Heuer (University of Leeds)
The Paradox of Deontology, Reconsidered
Chair: TBA

1:30--2:40pm Douglas W. Portmore (Arizona State University)
Consequentialism and Moral Rationalism
Chair: TBA

2:50--4:00pm Robert N. Johnson (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Kantian Contractualism and Self-Improvement
Chair: TBA

4:10--5:30pm KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Peter Railton (University of Michigan)
Title: TBA
Chair: Jussi Suikkanen (University of Leeds)

Replacing the Philosophy Journals Wiki with Something Much Better

2009-07-02T11:41:22-07:00

Some time ago, I started the Philosophy Journal Wiki. But as has been rightly pointed out here, the Philosophy Journal Wiki leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully, Andrew Cullison has taken it upon himself to come up with a better version. I think that what he has in the works is excellent, but before he gets it up and running he's looking for some feedback. Over at his blog, he's created a small model of what he has in mind. Please click on this link http://www.andrewcullison.com/2009/07/best-journal-survey-method-so-far/ and check it out. Leave any useful feedback that you have there, not here.

UPDATE: The murderer at the door: What Kant might have said

2009-06-26T11:08:00-07:00

UPDATE, June 26, 2009: Anyone interested in how I ended up developing this argument should check out the paper just published in PPR.

One of the more difficult issues for Kantian moral theorists is how, if at all, our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing. It seems fairly obvious that what we are morally required to do can change in response to others' immoral conduct. A clear example is promise keeping: If A and B agree to a mutually beneficial promise, but A doesn't fulfill the terms of their promise, B is presumably not obligated to fulfill them either. So A's wrongdoing influences B's moral obligations. Another example is punishment: Since punishment is the infliction of harm, suffering, or deprivation (which is typically wrong), it must be the case that the wrongdoer's wrongdoing justifies inflicting otherwise wrongful harm, suffering, or deprivation on her. This issue is acute for Kantians because Kantianism has long been seen as somehow more "principled" than consequentialism. The challenge for Kantians is to offer an explanation of how our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing that invokes key Kantian values or principles (rational autonomy, the categorical imperative, etc.) without becoming so sensitive to others' wrongdoing that Kantianism becomes indistinguishable from outright consequentialism.

The example that has of course stimulated much of the discussion surrounding this problem is Kant's treatment of 'the murderer at the door' in his essay "On a Supposed Right to Lie." There Kant seems to say that lying to a would-be murderer about the whereabouts of the innocent victim he intends to kill would be morally wrong. Most Kantians (and most reasonable people in general) find this conclusion troubling if not absurd: If ever there were a situation in which lying is not only morally permitted, but even morally required, that would be it!

What follows is my own (admittedly long-ish) attempt to answer the 'murderer at the door' problem in Kantian terms. Whether my attempt is of value in addressing the larger theoretical problem of how our moral obligations should be sensitive to others' wrongdoing, I'm not sure, but here goes:

My argument is actually quite simple:
1. It is morally permissible (from a Kantian perspective) for an innocent person (i.e., a person who does
not deserve to die for some other reason) to lie to a murderer in self-defense.
2. If it is morally permissible (from a Kantian perspective) for an innocent person to lie to a murderer in
self-defense, then it is also morally permissible (from a Kantian perspective) for any person to lie to a
murderer in the defense of another innocent person.
------------------------------------------------
It is morally permissible for any person to lie to a murderer in the defense of another innocent person.

Obviously, my task is to defend the truth of the premises.

P1. One of the great strengths of Kantian moral theory is its powerful account of what's wrong with manipulative or coercive behavior such as torture, promise breaking, and lying. Such acts in effect treat others as mere means to our ends, inasmuch as we manipulate the other person's behavior or expectations in order to advance our own happiness. In the particular case of lying, the manipulation or coercion involved is doxastic, as Sissela Bok has observed: A lie attempts to cause another person to act on a belief that the liar believes to be false so as to benefit the liar.

But I would suggest that in the 'murderer at the door' example, two conditions necessary for lying to be wrongful (in Kantian terms) are not present: First, the lie is not meant to advance the happiness either of the liar or of the potential murder victim, but to thwart the abuse of the victim's autonomy that her murder would represent. Hence, if lying to the murderer is manipulation at all, it is manipulation in the service of the would-be victim's autonomy, a central Kantian value. Second, while Kantian ethics prioritizes the value of autonomous rational agency over happiness, it does not follow from this that we are obligated to honor another agent's autonomous choices no matter the ends that a given exercise of autonomy is meant to serve. In the 'murderer at the door', the murderer intends to exercise his autonomy in the service of a morally impermissible end, and Kant claims that we are obligated to promote others' ends (i.e., others' happiness) only if those ends are themselves morally permissible. I take that to be an indirect statement of the notion that whether we must honor another's autonomy on a given occasion may depend on whether that autonomy is being exercised in morally permissible ways. Autonomy may be the highest moral value, but it is not therefore an unconditioned value. To manipulate by lying is to deceive in order to thwart another's otherwise permissible ends. In the murderer at the door example, this is not what we are considering doing.

It would seem to follow that if I am innocent (i.e., I do not deserve to die for other reasons), my lying in self-defense is not an impermissible violation of the liar's rational autonomy.

2. But would it be permissible for me to lie to the murderer in order to save another's life? To see why it would be, I'm going to introduce what I will call the Kantian Symmetry Thesis. An 'agent' is the person who actually performs the act, and a 'beneficiary' is the person whose autonomy is protected or advanced by the agent's act.

Kantian Symmetry Thesis: Any morally permissible act performed by agent A in which A is also the act's beneficiary is also permissible if another agent B (relevantly similar to A) is the beneficiary of A's act instead.

We see throughout Kant's casuistry implicit appeals to this thesis: Suicide, Kant thought, is wrong for just the same reasons (and in just the same circumstances) that homicide is wrong. Similarly, in Kant's sexual ethics (not that we should accept much of it of course!) acts that treat another's sexuality as a mere tool of one's happiness (rape) are wrong in the same way that acts that treat one's own sexuality as a tool of one's own happiness (masturbation) are wrong. In other words, Kant did not think that there exists a special moral relationship to oneself such that the obligations one bears vis-a-vis oneself are importantly distinct from those one bears toward other agents. (This is a way in which Kant was not a 'liberal,' since one important feature of liberalism has been the idea of a domain of self-regarding behavior that is governed by different norms from the domain of other-regarding behavior).

So, if it is permissible for me to lie to prevent a murderer from killing innocent me, than by the KST, it would follow that it would also be permissible for me to lie to prevent that same murderer from killing another innocent.
------

Again, I don't know if my thoughts about how to address the murderer at the door hold any general lessons about how to develop a non-ideal Kantian theory (one that takes account of others' wrongdoing), but any ideas or suggestions are certainly welcome.

Evolution, Emotion, and Metaethics Workshop

2009-06-26T06:58:34-07:00

University of Sydney, Aug 6-7
Organizer: Richard Joyce (richard.jo...@arts.usyd.edu.au)

SPEAKERS:

David Copp (UC Davis)
Justin D'Arms (Ohio State)
Janice Dowell (Nebraska-Lincoln)
Jamie Dreier (Brown)
Josh Gert (Florida State)
Daniel Jacobson (University of Michigan)
Don Loeb (Vermont)
David Sobel (Nebraska-Lincoln)
Kim Sterelny (ANU)

Further info, including venue, will be announced in due course. There is no formal registration, but if you think you might come along, please send Richard Joyce an email so that we get a sense of numbers.

Nietzschean Expressivist Semantics

2009-06-24T12:27:46-07:00

One of the more serious attempts to provide an expressivist semantics for moral terms (broadly construed) is Gibbard’s. The basic idea is that they express plans. “I should pack” expresses my plan to pack; “You should pack” expresses a contingency plan for the (unlikely) case that I am you. “Journal editors should move papers along faster” expresses a plan for being a journal editor. And so on. Call this view the Gibbard Semantics, or GS.

It seems to me that there are other possible semantics along this line. Consider plans for what I would have someone do, if I were in control. For example, if I were in control of the government, I would have the government give philosophy professors large cash subsidies. If I were in control of journal editors, I would have the editors accept all my manuscripts without revision. Etc. Perhaps I could express these plans somehow. Perhaps like this: “The government should give philosophy professors large cash subsidies; editors should accept all my manuscripts without revision.” In the normal case, I am in control of myself, so “I should…” sentences would express normal plans. Call this the Nietzsche Semantics for moral terms, or NS.

Clearly, NS is not equivalent to GS. One is likely to indulge considerably more temptation to exploit others under NS than under GS. For example, if I were in control of my neighbor, I would have him mow my lawn for me; under NS I would therefore claim, “My neighbor should mow my lawn.” On the other hand, if I were my neighbor, I don’t think I would mow my (that is, HW’s) lawn, so under GS I would not claim, “My neighbor should mow my lawn.”

Suppose that much is right. My next point is that, if expressivism is true, it is an empirical question which states of mind people are expressing when they make should-claims. That is, whether GS or NS or some other S gives the meaning of ‘should’ and cognate terms, depends on which mental states correlate with what should-talk.

However, there is no particular reason to think we’re all on the same page. Some people might express the plans they have for being journal editors; others might express their plans for journal editors under their control. (In general, if you think there is anything to a “hermeneutic of suspicion” or “ideology” then you should think that people sometimes deploy NS-ish should-talk.) Moreover, there is no reason that an individual person should be consistent with all uses of ‘should’ and cognate terms. Sometimes he might express one kind of state, sometimes another. And he might have hefty unconscious motives for disguising this fact from himself.

All that means, I think, that an expressivist semantics makes it highly empirically likely that we talk past one another, morally speaking, much of the time. The journal editors say, “Journal editors should be impartially rigorous” and the grad students say, “Journal editors should go easy on young people,” and, if they are expressing different mental states, there is no disagreement. Similar problems can be generated for reasoning, especially public reasoning between two people. This is Frege-Geach with a vengeance.

I think the source of the problem lies in the fact that we normally think that meanings are public, or determined by something about a whole linguistic population, while an expressivist semantics is committed to the view that meanings are private, determined by what mental states an individual is expressing. Given that, the danger of talking past one another is quite real, whereas we normally would not think it would be.

The ethics of the faculty furlough

2009-06-18T18:29:54-07:00

Let's get a little down to earth here at PEA Soup: I may have to confront an actual ethical quandary in a few months, and I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts about how I ought to respond.

Budget woes in the California State University system are severe. One possibility being considered for the fall is to reduce personnel costs by imposing 'furloughs' on all CSU employees, faculty included. This would mandate that faculty take 1-2 days off per month and take about a 5% cut in their gross pay. Now, as I gather most people understand, I don't actually teach, attend meetings or even come to my campus 5 days a week. The norm is that I come three or four days a week, and often spend the other weekdays, my evenings, and my weekends doing much of the work that constitutes my job (preparing class meeting, grading papers, doing my philosophical research and writing). There's definitely five days per week of work, just not five days per week at work.

The issue is: Should I respond to the furlough mandate by working less, the equivalent of 1-2 days per month? And if so, where should I reduce my efforts? Some possibilities:

I could do nothing and essentially absorb the furlough. After all, given my work patterns, I can simply do what I've always done. It's not as if the state will ask me to report which 1-2 days per month I'm not working that I used to work! The problems with doing nothing are twofold: First, assuming that my existing salary adequately reflects the value of my work, then it seems unjust to me to do that work while being paid less for it. The state is legally entitled to impose the furlough, but it does not seem like an unjust response for me to work less for less pay. Second, working just as much sends a misleading message to students and to the general public: that diminishing resources for public education won't affect faculty performance and educational quality. Not to be too political here, but very often I suspect the general public would in fact like something for nothing (or more charitably, a lot for very little), and indeed, the present budgetary crisis is at least in part the product of that irrational attitude. The lack of funding has led to severe monetary constraints, but I fear that doing nothing hides those constraints (and their effect on educational quality) from the public. And as a teacher, I see myself as educating my students not only in my discipline, but in a more general way, to shape their choices and attitudes on the basis of a realistic and clear-eyed worldview.

But supposing I work less -- where should the reduction in effort come? I could do less by way of research. But I find research rewarding and it's clearly in my professional interests to be a productive scholar. I could actually not come to campus once per month, perhaps on a day I'm supposed to be teaching. But that hurts students. I could perhaps teach less effectively -- returning student papers more slowly, offering less feedback, etc. But that hurts students too. And to my mind, students are mostly innocent in this situation — I should mention they're also being asked to pay much higher tuition this year — and so it's wrong to ask them to bear the costs of the crisis. So I don't see a place to reduce my efforts that isn't injurious to myself or to other innocent people.

So: is there a way to treat myself fairly, send the right message about the budgetary realities to the students, and not harm or shortchange innocent people? I'd be interested in hearing some creative responses that I might have overlooked.

2009 Mad Meta: Program announced

2009-06-16T13:00:23-07:00

Russ has released the program for the 2009 Madison Metaethics Workshop. Needless to say, it looks good.

SIXTH ANNUAL

METAETHICS WORKSHOP

University of Wisconsin - Madison
SEPTEMBER 11-13, 2009

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP - KEYNOTE - PROGRAM

WORKSHOP SITE - LODGING - REGISTRATION - TRAVEL TO MADISON - PAST WORKSHOPS

6th Annual Metaethics Workshop
All Sessions in 313 Pyle Center (702 Langdon Street)

FRIDAY             SEPTEMBER 11
9am - 10:15am           JON TRESAN (Florida)
                                    Naturalistic Moral Realism, Moral Twin Earth, and the Meta-Moral Use of Moral Words
                                                                        Chair: Christian Coons (Bowling Green)

10:40am - Noon         EARL CONEE (Rochester)
                                    The Best Alternative
                                                                        Chair: David Merli (Franklin & Marshall)

1:30pm - 2:45pm       SARAH McGRATH (Princeton)
                                    Moral Knowledge and Experience
                                                                        Chair: Luke Robinson (SMU)

3:00pm - 4:30pm       CHRIS HEATHWOOD (Colorado)
                                    Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure & Welfare
                                                                        Chair: Christian Miller (Wake Forest)

4:45pm - 6pm             SHARON STREET (NYU)
                                    Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons
                                                                        Chair: Noell Birondo (Claremont McKenna)

8pm -11 pm RECEPTION (Memorial Union, Room TBA)

SATURDAY       SEPTEMBER 12
9am - 10:15am           PHIL CLARK (Toronto)
                                    Metaethics and the Mince-Pie Syllogism: Reflections on a Philosophical Joke
                                                                        Chair: Janice Dowell (Nebraska)

10:40am - Noon         CAMPBELL BROWN (Edinburgh)
                                    A New & Improved Supervenience Argument for Ethical Descriptivism
                                                                        Chair: Carla Bagnoli (UW-Milwaukee)

1:30pm - 2:45pm       DAVID SOBEL (Nebraska)
                                    Parfit’s Case against Subjectivism
                                                                        Chair: Teemu Toppinen (Helsinki)

3:00pm - 4:30pm ALLAN GIBBARD (Michigan)
***KEYNOTE ADDRESS***

4:45pm - 6pm             JONAS OLSON (Stockholm)
                                    Getting Real about Moral Fictionalism
                                                                        Chair: Neil Sinclair (Nottingham)

6:30pm DINNER (University Club 803 State Street)

SUNDAY             SEPTEMBER 13
9:30am - 10:45am      MATT BEDKE (British Columbia)
                                    Oughts versus Requirements
                                                                        Chair: Michael Titelbaum (Wisconsin)

11:00am -12:15pm     PAUL KATSAFANAS (New Mexico)
                                    Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency
                                                                        Chair: TBA

More information about the Workshop, including copies of each paper (to be posted on August 13th) can be found at the Worskhop website:
https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/shaferlandau/web/metaethics/workshop_2009/

Too many distinctions in value

2009-06-14T07:58:01-07:00

Perhaps three isn't too many, but it does feel unwieldy. Nevertheless, it seems to me these are all different distinctions in value, even though many people write as if they are the same:

1. Extrinsic-intrinsic

2. Conditional-unconditional

3. Priceable-priceless

Whether something has extrinsic or intrinsic value is a question of where it gets its value—i.e. from something else or from itself. (Instrumental value is thus one kind of extrinsic value, but it is not the only kind; Rae Langton, in her 2007 Phil Review paper, “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” proposes symbolic value as an example of noninstrumental extrinsic value.) This is “something else” intensionally, and not necessarily extensionally, so constitutive value is a form of intrinsic value. E.g. if Mill is right that virtue is valuable because it is a part of happiness, which has intrinsic value, then virtue has intrinsic value.

Whether something has conditional or unconditional value is a question of whether it has its value in virtue of its relation to something else, or rather in all circumstances. Constitutive value is thus an example of intrinsic but conditional value. (And Langton gives the additional example of self-conferred value.)

Whether something has priceable or priceless value is a question of whether there is anything for which one could rationally trade it. I suppose if something has extrinsic value then it must be priceable—it would always be rational to trade it for either the thing from which it gets its value. But consequentialism embodies the notion that intrinsic value can also be priceable.

The issue I’m trying to work out is the relation between un/conditionality and priceability. I think there’s such a thing as conditional priceless value. Consider, for example, the value of time spent with a loved one—it might be priceless, but only on the condition that the relationship hasn’t fallen apart. Is there unconditional priceable value? It strikes me that there could be, but you could rationally trade a thing of unconditional priceable value only for another thing of unconditional value (either priceless or of equal or higher price).

I care about this, obviously, because the Kantian idea that humanity or rational nature is an end-in-itself usually contains all of these: intrinsic, unconditional, priceless value. And I suspect different kinds of value are carrying more weight than others, in different arguments. More specifically, I suspect the really crucial Kantian insight is that something or things have value without price. And, yes, I'm ignoring the subjective-objective distinction, for now.

What do you think?