Introduction:

Consequentialism refers to a broad family of moral theories that claim that the right thing to do is always to maximize the amount of value in the world. Consequentalism is one of most important moral theories in modern philosophy, along with Kantianism and Social Contract Theory. It has widespread support from many philosophers, and probably seems to many non-academics (such as myself) as the “obvious” way to reason about ethical matters. For a long time I found consequentialism strongly compelling and intuitive, though this feeling slipped over time as I considered thought experiments whose consequentialist implications appeared absurd. However, I never abandoned the idea that a consequentialist approach should make up the central core of an ethical theory, supplemented with some deontological constraints on maximizing the good. However, over the last year I have become increasingly dissatisfied with consequentialism, and I think I am making a shift towards some kind of Virtue Ethics.

In this blog post, and potentially over some future ones, I want to reflect on some problems with consequentialism. I will do this by critiquing parts of a recent article I read, titled “Consequentialism”, by Phillip Pettit. In this essay, Pettit provides a definition for consequentialist approaches, distinguishing it from non-consequentialist theories, and then proceeds to rebut arguments against consequentialism and provide arguments for it. In this post, I will first summarize the content of Pettit’s essay and some of its central claims. Then, I will discuss an issue that arose in my mind from reading the essay, and try to draw this out into an objection to Pettit’s form of consequentialism. This issue is over what items in the world have value. Pettit’s conception of value appears to assume that anything valuable must be multiply realizable i.e. it must be able to be instantiated in distinct actions, situations or objects. In contrast, I will claim that some kinds of valuable items are irreducibly particular, and as a result cannot be responded to in a consequentialist way. Following this, I will outline the implications my claim has for Pettit’s argument and then attempt to resolve some potential objections to my own arguments.

I intend this post, and the posts to come, more as rough meditations on the questions and problems I found in Pettit’s essay, rather than clearly laid out arguments and positions. I encourage you to read Pettit’s essay and consider its arguments for yourself, if you can find a copy. I read his essay in “The Blackwell Companion to Ethics” edited by Peter Singer. I tried to find a copy online to link, but I had no luck.

I.

In “Consequentialism”, Phillip Pettit provides a conception of consequentialism based upon the ideas of values, options and the prognoses associated with an option. He then argues for the merits of consequentialist over non-consequentialist theories by rebutting objections and claiming it is a simpler theory.

The essay is divided into four parts. In the first part, he outlines the basic structure of moral theories, claiming they have two components. The first is a theory of value, which enumerates a set of values that the theory endorses. He defines these values as desirable properties that an agent ought to want to be realized in the world. He does not unpack this much further, but does outline a constraint on what things can be valuable, which he repeats in a different form in Part IV. This constraint is that any property endorsed as a value must be universalizable: it must be a universal feature, capable of being instantiated in distinct actions, situations or objects. Thus, particulars, such as people or specific actions, are excluded from being considered values. In Part IV, he relates this constraint to universalizability, arguing as follows:

Every Moral Theory designates certain choices as the right ones for an agent to make [Premise]. If certain choices are the right ones for an agent to make, then choices of that type by that type of agent in that type of circumstances is the right choice to make [Premise]. If choices of that type by that type of agent in that type of circumstances is the right choice to make, then choice of that type are desirable properties to be realized [Premise]. If certain choices are the right ones for an agent to make, then choices of that type are desirable properties to be realized [inferred from 2, 3; hypothetical syllogism].

So, he argues that because all moral theories designates some choices as the right choice, they all designate certain choices as desirable features. As choices are universal features, this means that all moral theories invoke values i.e. desirable features to be realized. It is this very first part of his essay that I will be reflecting on and ultimately rejecting.

The second component of a moral theory is a theory of the right. This explicates how an agent should respond to the valuable properties endorsed by the theory of value, how they should behave given the things they find valuable. He claims there are two broad theories of right action: consequentialist and non-consequentialist, which differ in how they claim we should respond to values. Consequentialist theories claim that we should always promote value, that is, increase the amount of value in the world as much as possible by ensuring desirable properties are realized to a maximum extent. Non-consequentialist theories, on the other hand, hold that at least some values should not be promoted in all circumstance. Rather, they should be honoured. To honour a value means to realize it in your own actions and in yourself, even if doing so would realize less overall value in the world than some other course of action.

To provide a better understanding of promotion and honouring, Pettit provides some examples of how an agent could respond in each way to a specific value. If the only thing that is valuable is knowledge, then if you promoted that value you would aim to increase the amount of knowledge in the world as much as possible. You might do this by campaigning for better education, increase scientific research etc. However, if you were to honour that value, you would try to pursue it in your own life, perhaps learning all you could about the world and studying as much as possible. You would do this even if there were other actions available to you that would result in more knowledge being realized in the world. Another example he gives is the enjoyment of personal loyalties, such as loyalty to friends and family. To promote this value would be to try and bring about as much enjoyment of personal loyalty in the world as possible. You might campaign for more stable family structures and laws, convince your friends to be more loyal to each other and their families etc. You would do this even if it interfered with your own enjoyment of personal loyalty, as long as the amount of personal loyalty in the world was maximized. If you were to honour this value, you would pursue it in your own life, cultivating your relationships with family and friends even if the amount of the value in the world as a whole was less than it could have been.

Having provided an initial account of the difference between the two theories of right action, Pettit acknowledges that it is still not precise enough, as the notions of “promoting value” and “honouring value” are quite vague. As such, in the second section he explicates two new notions which will help him in clarifying the structure of consequentialism.

The first notion is that of an option. An option is a state of affairs that an agent is able to realize. Pettit explains that it is a possibility which the agent is in a position to realize or not. If A is an option, then an agent can make it the case that A or the case that not-A. Such options can be directly behavioral, such as “I feed the homeless” or “I exercise”. However, they can also be indirectly behavioral, involving the adoption of principles or approval of certain traits or dispositions in the agent or others. These are indirectly behavioural as the options do not involve certain actions being performed, but rather changes in the agent’s commitments or dispositions that will impact their behaviours in the future. Indirectly behavioural options could include “I commit myself to the principle of benevolence” or “I approve of the trait of competitiveness in myself and will not seek to change it”.

The second notion is that of the prognoses associated with an option. For any option, there are various ways the world could become if we realized it or not. For example, if the option I am considering is “I exercise at 2:00 by running around the lake”, then realizing this option could change the world in any number of ways. Perhaps by exercising at 2:00 by running, I will improve my fitness and become happier. Perhaps I will trip and injure my leg, inducing pain. Perhaps I will encounter a child drowning by the lake and save them. These are the different possible worlds in which I realize the option, with each world differing more or less from one another. These different ways the world could be as a consequence of realizing an options is due to the dependence of outcomes on many different factors, including many facts about the world and the actions of other agents. The prognoses of an option are the different possible ways that the option can come to be realized. A prognosis is one specific way the option could be realized (a possible world in which the option is realized), and the prognoses associated with an option is the set of all of these. A prognosis captures the intuitive notion of a “consequence” of an action: what can result from performing an action.

Having clarified these two notions, Pettit identifies two propositions he considers central to consequentialism:

I. Every prognosis for an option has a value that is determined by the valuable properties realized there.

II. Every option has its value fixed by the values of its prognoses: its value is a function of the values of its different prognoses.

This then allows Pettit to clarify what is meant by promoting a value.

When presented with a series of options they can realize, an agent promotes a value if and only if:

The agent determines the value of each prognosis of an option in terms of the value realized by that prognosis (Prop I). The agent ranks the prognoses of each option in terms of the degree of value they realize. The agents ranks the options in terms of the value of their prognoses (Prop II). The agent realizes that option which realizes the most value.

Now, as explained by Pettit, Proposition II is indeterminate, as it does not explicitly state HOW the value of an option is a function of its prognoses. The most common way to compute the value of an option from its prognoses is that of expected value. Under this scheme, each prognosis is assigned a probability representing how likely it is to be realized if the agent realizes its option. The value of the option is then computed by multiplying the value of each prognosis by its probability, and then summing all of these up.

Consider the following example. O is an option; {P1, P2, P3,..} is the set of prognoses for this option; V(O) is the value of the option; VP1, VP2, VP3,… are the value of the prognoses, determined by considering the amount of value each prognosis realizes. If the probability of each prognosis P1, P2, P3,… are 0.23, 0.45, 0.32,… etc, then we could compute the value of the option as follows:

V(O) = 0.23*VP1 + 0.45*VP2 + 0.32*VP3 + …

In this way, we could calculate the value of each option as a function of the values of the prognoses. We could then rank the options according to their value, and we should then realize the option with the greatest value.

So, that is what is meant by promoting a value. The consequentialist claims that the proper way for an agent to respond to any set of values is to promote them: that is, in every choice between options they should select the option with the prognoses that makes it the best gamble with those values. A non-consequentialist, on the other hand, claims that some values should not or cannot be promoted. To make this claim, they must either deny Proposition I or Proposition II. If they deny I, they claim that the the value of a prognosis is not determined by the value of the properties it realizes. This would involve claiming that some values cannot be promoted in options-there can be loyal options or choices, but no sense can be made of the idea of promoting a value like loyalty, for example. If they deny Proposition II, they deny that an option’s values is a function of the value of its prognoses. This affirms that the best option is not necessarily the one that realizes the most value: the best option is sometimes determined by other considerations.

Having clarified the distinction between consequentialism and non-consequentialism, Pettit turns to the main argument against consequentialism in section three. He quickly dismisses the claim that consequentialism can require an agent to perform horrendous actions by asserting that they would only need to do so in horrendous circumstances, in which the non-consequentialist would also require a terrible choice to be made. From this, he turns to the main argument: that by adopting consequentialism, an agent would change how they deliberated about their choices. Whenever they considered what to do, they would calculate the value of each option and choose the highest ranked one, according to the above procedure. This would alienate them from certain values, such as loving, caring relationships which require warmth and affection rather than impartial calculation.

Pettit rejects this argument by distinguishing between the level of deliberation and the level of justification. Consequentialism is a theory of justification: it provides a criterion for justifying and assessing choices, rules, traits etc. It is not a theory of deliberation: it does not necessarily require agents to deliberate about every choice in a consequentialist way. Rather, it would endorse the method of deliberation that would realize the most value, even if this was not a consequentialist mode of thinking. Thus, consequentialism need not turn people into cold, impartial calculating machines. Its role, instead, is to allow agents to consider whether they should adopt certain principles or traits to guide them in their moment to moment decisions. The criterion they will use to determine whether or not to adopt such things will be a consequentialist one: will this principle or trait best promote value or not. So, Pettit rejects this objection by distinguishing between deliberation and justification, holding that consequentialism is primarily concerned with the latter, not the former. It only enters our deliberations during those reflective moments when we decide whether to change our commitments , dispositions or long term projects, rather than the moment to moment decision making that requires non-calculative motives such as love, benevolence, compassion and so on.

Having rejected what he considers to be the main argument against consequentialism, Pettit goes on to outline the main argument for his position in section four. He primarily argues that consequentialism is to be preferred to non-consequentialism because it is a simpler theory, and is capable of accounting for everything that non-consequentialism does. This argument unfolds as follows.

First, as mentioned earlier, Pettit argues that since all moral theories affirm certain choices as right, they thereby commit themselves to endorsing certain properties as desirable and therefore endorse certain values. Then, he claims that for any value, an agent can respond to that value by promoting it or honouring it in their choices. Now, consequentialism is the theory in which only the promoting of values is endorsed, while non-consequentialism requires that some values need to be honoured, not promoted. As such, non-consequentialism invokes two kinds of responses to value, whereas consequentialism only invokes one.

Pettit then claims that consequentialism is simpler in three ways. First, by invoking only one type of response it is a less complicated theory than non-consequentialism. Second, non-consequentialism invokes honouring value without explanation, making their theory ad hoc and unprincipled. Third, consequentialism is more consistent with ordinary prudential rationality, which requires us to promote our own good as much as possible. Thus, consequentialism is simpler than non-consequentialism, which is also ad hoc in its invocation of honouring for certain values without explanation.

In addition to this main argument, Pettit goes on to claim that non-consequentialism is untenable as rejection of Proposition I or II is simply implausible. How could it be that the value of a prognosis is not determined by the values it realizes (Proposition I)? And how could an option be the best choice available unless its prognoses realize the most value in some way (Proposition II)? As such, Pettit believes that consequentialism is far superior to non-consequentialism, being simpler and far more plausible, with the objections to it being unconvincing. He then concludes his article by trying to explain why so many people have found non-consequentialism appealing, and attempts to account for this by arguing that they have confused the level of deliberation and the level of justification. It is true that much of our deliberation is non-consequentialist, and this is even a good thing from the consequentialist point of view. However, consequentialism is still the correct theory of justification, and is more fundamental than non-consequentialist precepts.

II.

Having summarized Pettit’s article and arguments, I will now focus on one specific claim he makes within the essay. The part I want to focus on is Pettit’s account of values, given in Section I and at the beginning of Section IV of his essay. In opposition to Pettit, I will argue that what is valuable is not always a universal feature, but can be a particular object. The paradigm case of this is someone whom you love, as in this case you do not love certain good features of the person, but rather love them in their entirety, as a particular individual. Because you find this person valuable as a whole, and their value is unique in their particularity, you cannot make sense of a general requirement to promote value in this case, as you cannot increase or decrease their value as a particular being. Rather, you can respond to them in various ways which takes account of their value, but these responses cannot be understood as forms of promotion.

I am quite confident that some values are particular, but I am much less certain about the implications this has for Pettit’s arguments. Though I think Pettit is wrong to assert that all values must be universal features, I am uncertain if rejecting this proposition fatally damages his argument or not. It is possible he could reformulate his claims in various ways to accommodate my points, and perhaps he or someone else has already done this in another essay. However, in the spirit of open discussion I will put forth my arguments about the particularity of some valuable items and try to sketch out the consequences this may have, linking it eventually with a form of Virtue Ethics developed by Christine Swanton.

First, I again want to clarify my understanding of Pettit’s position, so I can better distinguish it from my own. Pettit claims that all moral theories invoke certain values, and that these values must be universal features: they cannot be particulars. Thus, what is valuable must be something that is multiply realizable, some feature that can possessed by distinct objects. Examples he gives are happiness, knowledge, loyalty, liberty. Happiness, however you want to understand it, can be enjoyed by multiple different humans, and perhaps animals as well. We can each of us possess knowledge, loyalty can be exemplified in distinct relationships, and different people or agencies can be more or less free. Thus, every one of these things can be realized by distinct particulars, be they people, actions, situations or so on. This position is best exemplified in the following sections of Pettit’s article:

“[Moral theories] each put forward a view about what is good or valuable…they each put forward a view about which properties we ought to want realized in our actions or in the world more generally. A theory like classical utilitarianism holds that the only property that matters is how far sentient beings enjoy happiness. A natural law theory holds that the property which matters is compliance with the law of nature. Various other theories propose that what matters if human freedom, social solidarity, the autonomous development of nature, or a combination of such features. The possibilities are endless, since about the only commonly recognized constraint is that in order to be valuable a property must not involve a particular individual or setting essentially; it must be a universal feature, capable of being realized here or there, with this individual or that.’ -From Section I (Emphasis added).

“Every moral theory designates certain choices as the right ones for an agent to make. In any such case, however, what the theory is committed to is recommending is not just this or that choice by this or that agent but the choice of this type of option by that sort of agent in these kind of circumstances; this is a commitment, s it is sometimes said, of universalizability. The commitment means that every moral theory invokes values, for the fact that such and such choices are made is now seen as a desirable property to have realized. ” – From Section IV (Emphasis added).

Thus, Pettit assumes that only universal features can be considered valuable, and connects this explicitly with universalizability. However, I will contend that universal features are not the only things we find valuable, nor should we, if we attend to our deepest moral commitments.

The clearest case of a valuable particular is a person that we love. In loving someone, we invest the object of our love with a special kind of radiance and importance. We recognize them as a valuable individual, perhaps valuable to us or even valuable to all agents. However, this value we attribute to them is not based upon their repeatable features. It is attributed to them as a whole, as an individual person, the complex combination of all of their features, both good and bad. If a particular person could be valuable in their own right, as a whole, then Pettit’s conception of value would be false. For Pettit claims that only repeatable features can be valuable, and particulars are by their nature non-repeatable, as he himself claims. But what about a perfect clone of a person, who shared all their bodily and mental features (e.g. build, body shape, memories, cognitive processes and dispositions etc)? This would still not be a repeated instance of some property, but rather a distinct particular. The property of “Being Person X” is not capable of being multiply instantiated, because even if we created a complete clone the two particulars would be distinct in their causal histories and relational properties. Though I my be incapable of distinguishing between the two, from lack of knowledge of their histories, I could still know with certainty that they were not identical property instantiations of “Being Person X”. As such, if it is true that a person we love is valued as the particular individual they are, then not all values are universal features as Pettit claims.

How can I justify the assertion, that in loving someone we value them as a particular individual and not just as the sum of their valuable features, such as their honesty, kindness, beauty and so on? There are three main routes I will take, with none of them meant as a proof of my position. Rather, they are stimuli to consider what kind of value we invest in someone we love, and whether this value is repeatable or not.

The first route is the one I think is least convincing. Consider the thought experiment I outline above, in which a person, X, who you love deeply, is perfectly duplicated in some way. You are then presented with a choice of living with X1 or X2, without knowing which of these is the original and which is the clone. Now, the question is whether it would matter to you which of the two particulars, X1 or X2, you would spend your life with. Would it matter to you whether or not you ended up with the original person, the one you loved and valued in the past, or would either particular be acceptable to you? For myself, I would strongly wish to choose and spend my life with the original, with the person I professed to love in the past, that I still claim to love now. This is because I don’t just love their features, their beauty or humor or virtues. Rather, I love them for who they are, and who they are is partly constituted by their history, a history which the duplicate would lack.

I think this argument is the least convincing, as it rests on an outlandish thought experiment and brings up difficult questions about personal identity. Though I believe the answer to the question is that you should want to choose the original, even if you don’t know which one that is, I cannot be certain this is the right answer, nor do I know what others would think. Thus, this argument is weak.

The second argument is based simply on an appeal to the phenomenology of the lived experiences of loving someone. If you have ever been in love with someone, I ask you to reflect on what it was like to love that person. Was it like your “love” for a film or book, in which it is only certain meritorious features you approve of that leads to your evaluation of it. Or was it something more? Do you think you were in love with features of the person, such as their beauty or wit, or were you in love with the person themself, valuing them as a particular? Again, this “argument” is likely to lack a lot of force. From introspection of my own love of certain people, I would answer that I love and value them as particular individuals, not in terms of their good features. However, perhaps other people would find different answers when they turned inwards, and this argument cannot convince people who have never themselves been in love at a deep level. Thus, I turn to my third argument.

For this final argument, I inquire into how our love of a person seems inconsistent with valuing them in terms of their valuable, repeatable features. When we are asked why we love someone, what do we normally say? Well, we often list features of the person we consider good or admirable. For my own partner, I would say they are kind and compassionate, a talented musician, intelligent, dedicated, supportive and have similar views about religion, morality, politics as I do. This suggests that I love my partner in virtue of certain valuable features they exemplify, with these features being repeatable. This would indicate that my thesis is false, and loving someone actually involves attributing value to their universal features, the kind of things capable of being valuable under Pettit’s theory. However, I think my enumeration of valuable features is hiding three important things about our love for other people which support my own thesis.

Firstly, it is often suggested that our love of someone “goes beyond reason”. By this I think we mean that, while we can give some reasons for why we love someone, our love for them will not be proportionate to the reasons we can list. You could interpret this as meaning that love is irrational, and is not guided by reasons. In contrast, I would argue that this is best explained by the fact that we don’t value features of a person we love, which can be enumerated as reasons, but rather value the person themselves. This particular person has an endless number of features which constantly change, and thus we cannot give a finite list of reasons why we love them or what we love about them. Love is not a strong form of liking someone, for we can love someone that we dislike, or like someone that we do not love (parents often dislike their children during their teenage years or afterwards, but they generally do not cease to love them. People can also not love someone, even though they like and approve of them very much). Thus, our love “going beyond reason” is in fact better explained by how we value the particular individual as a whole, not their repeatable features.

Secondly, when we are actually forced to think about it, we love a person not only for their good features but also for their neutral and bad ones. We love them for their idiosyncrasies, their flaws and imperfections. I love that my partner cannot patiently wait for a train, that they fiddle with their hair in an absent minded way. Why would we love them for features that are not themselves valuable? Why do we desire to learn more about a person we love, learn about their flaws and imperfections and not only their admirable qualities? It could be argued that we do this in order to better assess and judge their value and proportion our love to this. But if this is so, why do we often love someone more the more we know their imperfections? We do so because in learning more about them, we understand and know them better as the particular person they are, rather than as an idea of them in our mind. Because we love them as a whole person, a whole individual, we want to learn more about them,.

I think this idea is exemplified in a scene from the movie “Good Will Hunting”, embedded below. In this scene, the main character Will talks to his therapist Sean, about whether Will is going to see a woman, Skylar, for another date. Will claims that he is unsure whether he should, as right now Skylar is “perfect”, and he doesn’t want to mess that up by seeing her and perhaps learning she is in fact boring in some way. Sean responds by both pointing out that this seems a terrible way to go through life, and by speculating that perhaps Will doesn’t want to see her as right now, Will is perfect to her. Will doesn’t want to see her because he doesn’t want Skylar to realize his own imperfections. Sean then suddenly recounts a story about his late wife, who used to fart in her sleep. This brings both men to tears as they laugh, but the point of this story quickly comes to light. Sean explains that it is these idiosyncrasies, these “imperfections”, that are the “good stuff” in a relationship. They are the things only you know about the person.

Here, I think one interpretation of Sean’s point is what I have been trying to articulate. Loving a person, truly loving them, involves valuing them for who they are, valuing them as an entire individual, warts and all. Will is reluctant to open himself up like this and allow himself to love and rely upon another person, and doesn’t want Skylar to become aware of his own flaws. But as Sean explains, love requires caring about the whole person, knowing and valuing their flaws and imperfections. The best things about a person are often their little idiosyncrasies as these are often what help to mark them as unique, and thus as a particular being who is non repeatable. A person without idiosyncrasies and flaws would not be a real person, and failing to find them indicates we do not know our beloved as well as we should.

Thirdly, consider one of the most paradigm cases of love: that of a parent for their child. This love is often described as “unconditional”, meaning that they will continue to love the child no matter what they do. This is to reiterate my earlier point that parents need not like their children to love them, as their love does not consist in valuing the good features of the child but rather valuing them as a particular individual. If their love was that of valuing the good aspects of their child, it would be conditional on those aspects, and would diminish as they diminished. However, it seems clear to me that love and valuing of this kind is clearly not like that: parents love THEIR children, particular human beings, not aggregates of features that they consider valuable.

If you have been convinced by the above thoughts, then you can agree with me that loving another person is a case of valuing them as a particular individual, and not valuing them for the aggregate of valuable properties which they exemplify. As particulars are non-repeatable things, this is inconsistent with Pettit’s assumptions about value. I will now consider the implications this may have for Pettit’s view, and then respond to some potential problems with my arguments.

III.

If the arguments given in Part II are correct, then Pettit’s initial assumption that values must be universal features is incorrect. However, I still need to draw out the implications of this claim to see what impact it has on Pettit’s overall argument, and what additional consequences it has.

The claim that some particulars are valuable in themself as particulars poses problems for Pettit’s arguments at several points. Firstly, his conception of consequentialism rests on the idea that, for any value, we can always make sense of promoting that value. However, promoting a value means enacting those options whose prognoses will be the best gamble for increasing the amount of that value in the world. But particulars, being non-repeatable, cannot be further realized in the world. If my beloved is valuable as a unique individual, then I cannot promote their value as an individual, because I cannot produce more of them-they are the only one of their kind. Pettit could respond by claiming that while we cannot produce more of that particular, we can produce more of that kind of individual. Thus, we can still promote their kind of value. But this would misunderstand my claim, as what is valuable is not a certain kind of person, but this person, a unique person.

There is still one way in which this kind of value can be promoted, but it seems inadequate as an account of responses to that value. Suppose that the only thing that was valuable to me was my partner. I endorse no other values, not pleasure, knowledge, virtuous action, freedom etc. How can I promote the value I endorse? First, I need to consider the various options available to me and their prognoses. For each prognosis, I must consider the degree to which what I value is realized. As I only have one value, and it does not vary in quantity, being the value of a unique individual, the only variation in value will depend on whether my partner exists or does not exist in each prognosis. Thus, an option’s value will be a function of whether my partner will exist in its various prognoses. I should choose that option that represents the best gamble for keeping my partner alive for as long as possible.

I would wholeheartedly agree that this is one thing I should do in responding to the value of my partner. If I truly valued my partner, I should seek to keep them alive, to preserve their unique form of value. However, as a complete guide for decision making, this seems rather thin and unappealing. If the only things with value were particulars such as my partner, would promotion still be the only valid response to this value? I think not. Instead, there would be a number of other ways of responding appropriately to the value of my partner, which should inform my decision making.

Pettit would subsume all of these under his conception of “honouring value”, in that they do not involve promoting value. I think that a better articulation of the different forms of responsiveness to value is that given by Christien Swanton, in her book “Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach”. She claims that virtues are dispositions to respond well to items within their field, and these responses can take on a wide variety of forms. She lists the following types of responses to value:

Promoting.

Appreciating.

Loving.

Respecting.

Creating.

Being receptive or open to.

Using or handling appropriate things in appropriate ways.

I think a number of these responses, distinct from promoting, would be required from me in acknowledging the value of my partner. I could honour them by taking into accounts effects on them in my decisions, I could create works of art that depicted them, I could respect them in my thought and actions, I could be receptive to them and so on. Once we realize how promotion only seems marginally appropriate to valuable particulars, I think we realize that other kinds of response would be warranted. Now, I have presented a case where the only value is that of one particular being, my partner. In the real world, many other things would be valuable to me, and for some of them it would be appropriate to promote them. But I still think other forms of response would be appropriate to my partner, as promotion does not seem to a sufficient form of moral acknowledgement.

As such, I think the value of particulars undercuts Pettit’s arguments that honouring value is unneeded and ad hoc. While the above argument does not prove that promotion does not suffice for responses to values, as it is still appropriate to the value of particulars, I think it renders it implausible. Once we recognize that some valuable items cannot be promoted in the way that things like pleasure or knowledge can, we see clearly that other kinds of responses may be warranted to these items. While this argument only shows that one type of value requires non-promoting responses, I think it helps to undermine Pettit’s larger claims for consequentialism, and suggests that if we examine other values we may find something similar.

IV.

In this last section, I will consider some potential problems with my account of particulars being valuable, and try to defuse them. These problems are: whether judgements about valuable particulars can be universalized; whether we value the particular or that particular’s well-being; whether my account again confuses deliberation and justification; how we can understand ceasing to love someone because of changes they undergo or new discoveries about them. The first and last problems I find to be the most salient, so I will spend more time on them, and give shorter answers to the second and third issues.

One potential problem with my claim that particulars can be valuable is that judgements about such value cannot be universalized. It is widely accepted that universalizability is a fundamental feature of moral judgements. Thus, if a judgement cannot be universalized, then it fails to be a moral judgement and should be rejected.

There are two possible responses to this. The first is to reject universalizability as a general criterion for moral judgements. While some aspects of morality involve impartiality and universality, such as justice, other parts may be partial and particular, such as love, caring, friendship and so one. I think there is some force to this, but I want to explore another option, wherein we show how judgements of the value of a particular individual are universalizable.

We can do this by considering Pettit’s form of universalizability, included in the quote from Section IV above. In this, he claims the following:

If a moral theory designates a choice as the right one for an agent to make, then the theory designates all choices of that type by that type of agent in that type of circumstances as right.

This kind of universalizability does not rule out particulars as valuable. Consider the following statement:

I acted rightly when I respected my partner in circumstances C.

Why might this action be right? Because my partner is uniquely valuable and thus respect is appropriate to them. To be universalizable, I need to be able to endorse a statement in which it is right for all agents of the same type as myself, in the same type of circumstances to make the same type of choice. Consider the following statement:

Any agent who respects their partner in circumstances relevantly similar to C acts rightly.

This is a universalized form of the earlier statement, as it now refers to types of agents (any agents with a partner), types of circumstances (relevantly similar circumstances), and a type of choice (respecting one’s partner). Thus, my judgement is capable of being universalized by Pettit’s own criterion, and thus deserves its place as a possibly true moral judgement.

However, an issue still remains. Why would such a universalized action be right? Well, I could claim it is because people’s partners have a distinct, unique kind of value for them, which calls on them to respect the person. However, the universalization of my own action results in a universal feature, that of an agent respecting their partner in circumstances relevantly similar to C, which can be multiply instantiated (e.g. I can respect my partner, you can respect your partner, Barrack Obama can respect Michelle Obama etc). If I thought this feature was itself valuable and worth promoting, I should try to bring it about in general, by helping others respect their partners, by encouraging this kind of response in my friends etc. Would this not show that Pettit is correct, and promotion is still the correct type of response here?

Two answers are possible. You could argue that the act of respecting your partner is a universal feature, but is not itself valuable. The respect is the correct response TO something valuable (i.e. an agent’s partner), but the act of respecting your partner is not valuable. However, I accept that the cognitive and behavioral state of respecting your partner is valuable. However, this does not show that the only valuable aspect of the situation is the act of respect. Rather, what is primarily valuable is the agent’s partner, and the respect constitutes an appropriate response to that value. The response itself is then an additional valuable feature, and could be promoted. But the value of the partner cannot be promoted in the same way, as it is a particular. So, I can accept that valuable particulars may result in universal features that can be promoted, but this does not show that promotion is the only valid kind of response to values.

In conclusion, this kind of value still allows for a universalizability, but this does not entail that the value can be promoted like other values. Rather, the value itself can be responded to in various ways appropriate to the unique features of the beloved and the circumstances they are in. Some of these responses may be valuable and capable of being promoted, but this does not show that the original responses themself are instances of promotion. Rather, they are forms of acknowledgement of the value of the particular, which cannot itself be promoted.

A second problem for my account is the idea that what you value in loving someone is not that particular being, but rather your relationship to them or their well-being. I agree that how you are related to a person, as a friend, lover, spouse etc can impact the value you place upon them, and can impact the love you have for them. However, I still think that love primarily involves valuing the particular individual, rather than the ties that bind you together. This can be seen in cases where two people’s relationship to each other is severed, but they still love one another. For example, some couples can break off their relationship, but still continue to love one another. You can continue to love your exes, and this does not involve valuing a relationship you have with them. With regard to well-being, I agree that this part of a person plays a special role in how you act towards them. However, in loving someone we are not wholly interested in their well-being, but rather them as a person. If what we valued was their well-being, then our evaluation of them should vary as their well-being varies, but I think we tend to value some people constantly over time despite large fluctuations in their quality of life. Furthermore, it would not account for the way we are so interested in them as a particular being, often taking pleasure at discovering irrelevant features of their personality that are not important to their flourishing. Overall, I think it makes more sense to say that in loving someone, we value them as a particular individual, rather than on account of their relationship to us of their well-being.

A third issue is one I anticipate Pettit might make to my argument. It is that I am again confusing the level of deliberation from that of justification. While he would agree that in thinking about how we should act towards a beloved individual, we should represent them as having a unique kind of value that is non-repeatable, this is consistent with consequentialism as long as we can show it leads to the best consequences overall. However, I think this differs from the cases he articulated in his own article, as I am arguing that particulars in fact have a certain kind of value to their beloveds, and this fact needs to be taken account of in a theory of moral justification. The value of the particulars enters moral theory at the fundamental level, and will be involved in our justification of different actions, principles and dispositions. It will also be present at the level of deliberation, but will not only be present there. As such, this response fails.

Finally, someone could argue that my account of the value of particulars makes it difficult to see how someone could rationally cease to love someone else. We all know cases, either from our own experience or that of others, of people that fall in and out of love with one another. They could be madly in love, marry, and then after a few decades find they no longer love each other. But how could this change be rational if, as I have claimed, when we love someone we attribute that particular person a certain kind of value. For particular humans are considered to be identical across their lifetime until their death, and so if you truly love someone your love for them should continue as long as they live, as their value as an individual will remain unchanged throughout their life.

There are several ways this objection can be responded to, but I am not fully satisfied with any of them. It could be argued that humans are not in fact identical across their lifespans, but rather we can change completely over time, becoming a new person. I think this may be true of some cases, where a person experiences radical bodily and personality change, but it does not seem true in general and doesn’t seem to apply to the paradigm case of falling out of love that I mentioned. One could also claim that what actually happens is that the two people were never actually in love with each other, they just thought they were. As the years went on and they learned more about each other, they realized that they were not who they thought each other to be, and thus realized they were only in love with their ideas of each other, not actual persons. While I think this may be true in many cases, especially “love” that is really just strong infatuation, it is problematic for cases where a couple seems, for all intents and purposes, deeply in love, but this dissipates over time.

Another possibility is that the particular we love and value is not actually the person over the entire life, but rather the particular at a specific point in time. We were in love with the particular at a specific time slice through their life, and our continuing love for them was the continual affirmation of our valuing them at progressive time slices through their life. However, at some stage we find that we no longer love any of the time slices of the person’s life, and thus are no longer in love with them. This account allows for people to fall in and out of love, but introduces a strange ontology of time slices and seems to imply that people saying “I used to love him” is false in these cases, as they loved a particular time slice of their life but not the person (the whole individual’s life) themself.

One more option is that the people still in fact value each other in the same way, but their bonds to one another have diminished. Thus, while they still attribute to each other a unique sort of value, they are no longer lovers, spouses etc and thus no longer have the emotions and behaviors appropriate to such a relationship. However, this would imply that the two people continue to love each other despite professing not to, which seems implausible on the face of it.

What is the solution to this difficulty? I am not sure, as all of the possibilities I could think of did not seem quite right. Perhaps a combined account, taking on aspects of each possibility I raised would resolve the issue. In such a combined account, some cases of people falling out of love with each other would be explained by radical personality or bodily change rendering them a new person, some would be explained by the individual’s initial love turning out to be false, some would be explained by the individual’s loving certain periods of the other’s life rather than their whole person, and some would be explained by appeal to a breakdown in relationship bonds rather than love. I will not explore such a model here, but I think something along these lines may work. However, my failure to resolve this problem saps my confidence in my arguments, which may rest on an incoherent idea of love and value.

Conclusion:

In this post, I have argued that Phillip Pettit’s arguments for consequentialism are flawed because they assume values must be universal features. In contrast, I argued that some particulars, such as human beings we love, can be valuable in themselves. These particulars are non-repeatable and so are not universal features, refuting Pettit’s assumption. As such, moral responses other than promotion would be appropriate to this kind of value, demonstrating that consequentialism gives an inadequate account of right action. This is not to say that promotion is not a valid form of moral response, only that it does not exhaust the different modes of acknowledgements of value. I have defended my conception of particular value against several objections, three of which I have rejected outright. However, I was unable to resolve the issue raised by the last case, that of people falling out of love with each other. This may undermine my argument, and vindicate Pettit’s approach. Only time, combined with critical discussion of these issues, will tell.