## 1. Some Preliminary Clarifications


### 1.1 Foundational and Non-foundational Pluralism



It is important to clarify the levels at which a moral theory might be
pluralistic. Let us distinguish between two levels of pluralism:
foundational and non-foundational. Foundational pluralism is the view
that there are plural moral values at the most basic level--that
is to say, there is no one value that subsumes all other values, no
one property of goodness, and no overarching principle of action.
Non-foundational pluralism is the view that there are plural values at
the level of choice, but these apparently plural values can be
understood in terms of their contribution to one more fundamental
 value.[3]



Judith Jarvis Thomson, a foundational pluralist, argues that when we
say that something is good we are never ascribing a property of
goodness, rather we are always saying that the thing in question is
good in some way. If we say that a fountain pen is good we mean
something different from when we say that a logic book is good, or a
film is good. As Thomson puts it, all goodness is a goodness in a way.
Thomson focusses her argument on Moore, who argues that when we say
'*x* is good' we do not mean '*x* is
conducive to pleasure', or '*x* is in accordance
with a given set of rules' and nor do we mean anything else that
is purely descriptive. As Moore points out, we can always query
whether any purely descriptive property really is good--so he
concludes that goodness is simple and
 unanalyzable.[4]
 Moore is thus a foundational monist, he thinks that there is one
non-natural property of goodness, and that all good things are good in
virtue of having this property. Thomson finds this preposterous. In
Thomson's own words:



> 
> Moore says that the question he will be addressing himself to in what
> follows is the question 'What is good?', and he rightly
> thinks that we are going to need a bit of help in seeing exactly what
> question he is expressing in those words. He proposes to help us by
> drawing attention to a possible answer to the question he is
> expressing--that is, to something that would be an answer to it,
> whether or not it is the correct answer to it. Here is what he offers
> us: "Books are good." Books are good? What would you mean
> if you said 'Books are good'? Moore, however, goes
> placidly on: "though [that would be] an answer obviously false;
> for some books are very bad indeed". Well some books are bad to
> read or to look at, some are bad for use in teaching philosophy, some
> are bad for children. What sense could be made of a person who said,
> "No. no. I meant that some books are just plain bad
> things"? (Thomson 1997, pp. 275-276)
> 



According to Thomson there is a fundamental plurality of ways of being
good. We cannot reduce them to something they all have in common, or
sensibly claim that there is a disjunctive property of goodness (such
that goodness is 'goodness in one of the various ways'.
Thomson argues that that could not be an interesting property as each
disjunct is truly different from every other disjunct. Thomson (1997),
p. 277). Thomson is thus a foundational pluralist--she does not
think that there is any one property of value at the most basic
level.



W.D. Ross is a foundational pluralist in a rather complex way. Most
straightforwardly, Ross thinks that there are several prima facie
duties, and there is nothing that they all have in common: they are
irreducibly plural. This is the aspect of Ross's view that is
referred to with the phrase, 'Ross-style pluralism'.
However, Ross also thinks that there are goods in the world (justice
and pleasure, for example), and that these are good because of some
property they share. Goodness and rightness are not reducible to one
another, so Ross is a pluralist about types of value as well as about
principles.



Writers do not always make the distinction between foundational and
other forms of pluralism, but as well as Thomson and Ross, at least
Bernard Williams (1981), Charles Taylor (1982), Stuart Hampshire
(1983), Charles Larmore (1987), John Kekes (1993), Michael Stocker
(1990 and 1997), David Wiggins (1997), Christine Swanton (2001), and
Jonathan Dancy (2004) are all committed to foundational pluralism.



Non-foundational pluralism is less radical--it posits a plurality
of bearers of value. In fact, almost everyone accepts that there are
plural bearers of value. This is compatible with thinking that there
is only one ultimate value. G.E. Moore (1903), Thomson's target,
is a foundational monist, but he accepts that there are
non-foundational plural values. Moore thinks that there are many
different bearers of value, but he thinks that there is one property
of goodness, and that it is a simple non-natural property that bearers
of value possess in varying degrees. Moore is clear that comparison
between plural goods proceeds in terms of the amount of goodness they
have.



This is not to say that the amount of goodness is always a matter of
simple addition. Moore thinks that there can be organic unities, where
the amount of goodness contributed by a certain value will vary
according to the combination of values such as love and friendship.
Thus Moore's view is pluralist at the level of ordinary choices,
and that is not without interesting consequences. (We return to the
issue of how a foundational monist like Moore can account for organic
unities in section 3.)



Mill, a classic utilitarian, could be and often has been interpreted
as thinking that there are irreducibly different sorts of pleasure.
Mill argues that there are higher and lower pleasures, and that the
higher pleasures (pleasures of the intellect as opposed to the body)
are superior, in that higher pleasures can outweigh lower pleasures
regardless of the quantity of the latter. As Mill puts it: "It
is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the
fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable
than others." (2002, p. 241). On the foundational pluralist
interpretation of Mill, there is not one ultimate good, but two (at
least): higher and lower pleasures. Mill goes on to give an account of
what he means:



> 
> If I am asked, what I mean by difference in quality in pleasures, or
> what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a
> pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one
> possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or
> almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference,
> irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is
> the more desirable pleasure. (2002, p. 241).
> 



The passage is ambiguous, it is not clear what role the expert judges
play in the theory. On the pluralist interpretation of this passage we
must take Mill as intending the role of the expert judges as a purely
heuristic device: thinking about what such people would prefer is a
way of discovering which pleasures are higher and which are lower, but
the respective values of the pleasure is independent of the
judges' judgment. On a monist interpretation we must understand
Mill as a preference utilitarian: the preferences of the judges
determine value. On this interpretation there is one property of value
(being preferred by expert judges) and many bearers of value (whatever
the judges
 prefer).[5]



Before moving on, it is worth noting that a theory might be
foundationally monist in its account of what values there are, but not
recommend that people attempt to think or make decisions on the basis
of the supervalue. A distinction between decision procedures and
criteria of right has become commonplace in moral philosophy. For
example, a certain form of consequentialism has as its criterion of
right action: act so as to maximize good consequences. This might
invite the complaint that an agent who is constantly trying to
maximize good consequences will often, in virtue of that fact, fail to
do so. Sometimes concentrating too hard on the goal will make it less
likely that the goal is achieved. A distinction between decision
procedure and right action can provide a response--the
consequentialist can say that the criterion of right action, (act so
as to maximize good consequences) is not intended as a decision
procedure--the agent should use whichever decision procedure is
most likely to result in success. If, then, there is some attraction
or instrumental advantage from the point of view of a particular
theory to thinking in pluralist terms, then it is open to that theory
to have a decision procedure that deals with apparently plural values,
even if the theory is monist in every other way.
 [6]


### 1.2 A Purely Verbal Dispute?



One final clarification about different understandings of pluralism
ought to be made. There is an ambiguity between the name for a group
of values and the name for one unitary value. There are really two
problems here: distinguishing between the terms that refer to groups
and the terms that refer to individuals (a merely linguistic problem)
and defending the view that there really is a candidate for a unitary
value (a metaphysical problem). The linguistic problem comes about
because in natural language we may use a singular term as
'shorthand': conceptual analysis may reveal that surface
grammar does not reflect the real nature of the concept. For example,
we use the term 'well-being' as if it refers to one single
thing, but it is not hard to see that it may not.
'Well-being' may be a term that we use to refer to a group
of things such as pleasure, health, a sense of achievement and so on.
A theory that tells us that well-being is the only value may only be
nominally monist. The metaphysical question is more difficult, and
concerns whether there are any genuinely unitary values at all.



The metaphysical question is rather different for naturalist and
non-naturalist accounts of value. On Moore's non-naturalist
account, goodness is a unitary property but it is not a natural
property: it is not empirically available to us, but is known by a
special faculty of intuition. It is very clear that Moore thinks that
goodness is a genuinely unitary property:



> 
> 'Good', then, if we mean by it that quality which we
> assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is
> incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word.
> The most important sense of 'definition' is that in which
> a definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a
> certain whole; and in this sense 'good' has no definition
> because it is simple and has no parts. (Moore, 1903, p. 9)
> 



The question of whether there could be such a thing is no more easy or
difficult than any question about the existence of non-natural
entities. The issue of whether the entity is genuinely unitary is not
an especially difficult part of that issue.



By contrast, naturalist views do face a particular difficulty in
giving an account of a value that is genuinely unitary. On the goods
approach, for example, the claim must be that there is one good that
is genuinely singular, not a composite of other goods. So for example,
a monist hedonist must claim that pleasure really is just one thing.
Pleasure is a concept we use to refer to something we take to be in
the natural world, and conceptual analysis may or may not confirm that
pleasure really is one thing. Perhaps, for example, we refer both to
intellectual and sensual experiences as pleasure. Or, take another
good often suggested by proponents of the goods approach to value,
friendship. It seems highly unlikely that there is one thing that we
call friendship, even if there are good reasons to use one umbrella
concept to refer to all those different things. Many of the plausible
candidates for the good seem plausible precisely because they are very
broad terms. If a theory is to be properly monist then, it must have
an account of the good that is satisfactorily unitary.



The problem applies to the deontological approach to value too. It is
often relatively easy to determine whether a principle is really two
or more principles in disguise--the presence of a conjunction or
a disjunction, for example, is a clear giveaway. However, principles
can contain terms that are unclear. Take for example a deontological
theory that tells us to respect friendship. As mentioned previously,
it is not clear whether there is one thing that is friendship or more
than one, so it is not clear whether this is one principle about one
thing, or one principle about several things, or whether it is really
more than one principle.



Questions about what makes individuals individuals and what the
relationship is between parts and wholes have been discussed in the
context of metaphysics but these issues have not been much discussed
in the literature on pluralism and monism in moral philosophy.
However, these issues are implicit in discussions of the well-being,
nature of friendship and pleasure, and in the literature on
Kant's categorical imperative, or on Aristotelian accounts of
eudaimonia. Part of an investigation into the nature of these things
is an investigation into whether there really is one thing or not.
 [7]



The upshot of this brief discussion is that monists must be able to
defend their claim that the value they cite is genuinely one value.
There may be fewer monist theories than it first appears. Further, the
monist must accept the implications of a genuinely monist view. As
Ruth Chang points out, (2015, p. 24) the simpler the monist's
account of the good is, the less likely it is that the monist will be
able to give a good account of the various complexities in choice that
seem an inevitable part of our experience of value. But on the other
hand, if the monist starts to admit that the good is complex, the view
gets closer and closer to being a pluralist view.



However, the dispute between monists and pluralists is not merely
verbal: there is no prima facie reason to think that there are no
genuinely unitary properties, goods or principles.


## 2. The Attraction of Pluralism



If values are plural, then choices between them will be complex.
Pluralists have pressed the point that choices are complex, and so we
should not shy away from the hypothesis that values are plural. In
brief, the attraction of pluralism is that it seems to allow for the
complexity and conflict that is part of our moral experience. We do
not experience our moral choices as simple additive puzzles.
Pluralists have argued that there are incommensurabilities and
discontinuities in value comparisons, value remainders (or residues)
when choices are made, and complexities in appropriate responses to
value. Recent empirical work confirms that our ethical experience is
of apparently irreducible plural values. (See Gill and Nichols,
2008.)


### 2.1 Discontinuities



John Stuart Mill suggested that there are higher and lower pleasures
(Mill 2002, p. 241), the idea being that the value of higher and lower
pleasures is measured on different scales. In other words, there are
discontinuities in the measurement of value. As mentioned previously,
it is unclear whether we should interpret Mill as a foundational
pluralist, but the notion of higher and lower pleasures is a very
useful one to illustrate the attraction of thinking that there are
discontinuities in value. The distinction between higher and lower
pleasures allows us to say that no amount of lower pleasures can
outweigh some amount of higher pleasures. As Mill puts it, it is
better to be an unhappy human being than a happy pig. In other words,
the distinction allows us to say that there are discontinuities in
value addition. As James Griffin (1986, p. 87) puts it: "We do
seem, when informed, to rank a certain amount of life at a very high
level above any amount of life at a very low level."
Griffin's point is that there are discontinuities in the way we
rank values, and this suggests that there are different
 values.[8]
 The phenomenon of discontinuities in our value rankings seems to
support pluralism: if higher pleasures are not outweighed by lower
pleasures, that suggests that they are not the same sort of thing. For
if they were just the same sort of thing, there seems to be no reason
why lower pleasures will not eventually outweigh higher pleasures.



Ruth Chang argues that values form organic unities, which is to say
that adding more of one value to a situation may not make it better
overall, the balance of values in the situation is also important. For
example, a life where extra pleasure is added, and all other value
contributions left untouched, may not be better overall, because now
the pleasure is unbalanced (Chang 2002). As Chang puts it, the Pareto
principle of improvement (if something is better along one dimension
and at least as good on all the others it will be better overall) does
not hold here.



The most extreme form of discontinuity is incommensurability or
incomparability, when two values cannot be ranked at all. Pluralists
differ on whether pluralism entails incommensurabilities, and on what
incommensurability entails for the possibility of choice. Griffin
denies that pluralism entails incommensurability (Griffin uses the
term incomparability) whereas other pluralists embrace
incommensurability, but deny that it entails that rational choice is
impossible. Some pluralists accept that there are sometimes cases
where incommensurability precludes rational choice. We shall return to
these issues in Section 4.


### 2.2 Value Conflicts and Rational Regret



Michael Stocker (1990) and Bernard Williams (1973 and 1981) and others
have argued that it can be rational to regret the outcome of a correct
moral choice. That is, even when the right choice has been made, the
rejected option can reasonably be regretted, and so the choice
involves a genuine value conflict. This seems strange if the options
are being compared in terms of a supervalue. How can we regret having
chosen more rather than less of the same thing? Yet the phenomenon
seems undeniable, and pluralism can explain it. If there are plural
values, then one can rationally regret not having chosen something
which though less good, was different.



It is worth noting that the pluralist argument is not that all cases
of value conflict point to pluralism. There may be conflicts because
of ignorance, for example, or because of irrationality, and these do
not require positing plural values. Stocker argues that there are (at
least) two sorts of value conflict that require plural values. The
first is conflict that involves choices between doing things at
different times. Stocker argues that goods become different values in
different temporal situations, and the monist cannot accommodate this
thought. The other sort of case (which Williams also points to) is
when there is a conflict between things that have different advantages
and disadvantages. The better option may be better, but it does not
'make up for' the lesser option, because it isn't
the same sort of thing. Thus there is a remainder--a moral value
that is lost in the choice, and that it is rational to regret.



Both Martha Nussbaum (1986) and David Wiggins (1980) have argued for
pluralism on the grounds that only pluralism can explain akrasia, or
weakness of will. An agent is said to suffer from weakness of will
when she knowingly chooses a less good option over a better one. On
the face of it, this is a puzzling thing to do--why would someone
knowingly do what they know to be worse? A pluralist has a plausible
answer--when the choice is between two different sorts of value,
the agent is preferring A to B, rather than preferring less of A to
more of A. Wiggins explains the akratic choice by suggesting that the
agent is 'charmed' by some aspect of the choice, and is
swayed by that to choose what she knows to be worse overall (Wiggins
1980, p. 257). However, even Michael Stocker, the arch pluralist, does
not accept that this argument works. As Stocker points out, Wiggins is
using a distinction between a cognitive and an affective element to
the choice, and this distinction can explain akrasia on a monist
account of value too. Imagine that a monist hedonist agent is faced
with a choice between something that will give her more pleasure and
something that will give her less pleasure. The cognitive aspect to
the choice is clear--the agent knows that one option is more
pleasurable than the other, and hence on her theory better. However,
to say that the agent believes that more pleasure is better is not to
say that she will always be attracted to the option that is most
pleasurable. She may, on occasion, be attracted to the option that is
more unusual or interesting. Hence she may act akratically because she
was charmed by some aspect of the less good choice--and as
Stocker says, there is no need to posit plural values to make sense of
this--being charmed is not the same as valuing. (Stocker 1990,
p.219).


### 2.3 Appropriate Responses to Value



Another argument for pluralism starts from the observation that there
are many and diverse appropriate responses to value. Christine Swanton
(2003, ch. 2) and Elizabeth Anderson (1993) both take this line. As
Swanton puts it:



> 
> According to value centered monism, the rightness of moral
> responsiveness is determined entirely by degree or strength of
> value...I shall argue, on the contrary, that just how things are
> to be pursued, nurtured, respected, loved, preserved, protected, and
> so forth may often depend on further general features of those things,
> and their relations to other things, particularly the moral agent.
> (Swanton 2003, p. 41).
> 



The crucial thought is that there are various bases of moral
responsiveness, and these bases are irreducibly plural. A monist could
argue that there are different appropriate responses to value, but the
monist would have to explain why there are different appropriate
responses to the same value. Swanton's point is that the only
explanation the monist has is that different degrees of value merit
different responses. According to Swanton, this does not capture what
is really going on when we appropriately honor or respect a value
rather than promoting it. Anderson and Swanton both argue that the
complexity of our responses to value can only be explained by a
pluralistic theory.



Elizabeth Anderson argues that it is a mistake to understand moral
goods on the maximising model. She uses the example of parental love
(Anderson 1997, p. 98). Parents should not see their love for their
children as being directed towards an "aggregate child
collective". Such a view would entail that trade offs were
possible, that one child could be sacrificed for another. On
Anderson's view we can make rational choices between conflicting
values without ranking values: "...choices concerning those
goods or their continued existence do not generally require that we
rank their values on a common scale and choose the more valuable good;
they require that we give each good its due" (Anderson 1997, p.
104).


## 3. Monist Solutions



The last section begins by saying that if foundational values are
plural, then choices between them will be complex. It is clear that
our choices are complex. However, it would be invalid to conclude from
that that values are plural--the challenge for monists is to
explain how they too can make sense of the complexity of our value
choices.


### 3.1 Different Bearers of Value



One way for monists to make sense of complexity in value choice is to
point out that there are different bearers of value, and this makes a
big difference to the experience of choice. (See Hurka, 1996; Schaber,
1999; Klocksiem 2011). Here is the challenge to monism in Michael
Stocker's words (Stocker, 1990, p. 272): "[if monism is
true] there is no ground for rational conflict because the better
option lacks nothing that would be made good by the lesser." In
other words, there are no relevant differences between the better and
worse options except that the better option is better. Thomas Hurka
objects that there can be such differences. For example, in a choice
between giving five units of pleasure to *A* and ten units to
*B*, the best option (more pleasure for *B*) involves
giving no pleasure at all to *A*. So there is something to
rationally regret, namely, that *A* had no pleasure. The
argument can be expanded to deal with all sorts of choice situation:
in each situation, a monist can say something sensible about an
unavoidable loss, a loss that really is a loss. If, of two options one
will contribute more basic value, the monist must obviously choose
that one. But the lesser of the options may contribute value via
pleasure, while the superior option contributes value via knowledge,
and so there is a loss in choosing the option with the greater value
contribution--a loss in pleasure-- and it is rational for us
to regret this.



There is one difficulty with this answer. The loss described by Hurka
is not a moral loss, and so the regret is not moral regret. In
Hurka's example, the relevant loss is that *A* does not
get any pleasure. The agent doing the choosing may be rational to
regret this if she cares about *A*, or even if she just feels
sorry for *A*, but there has been no moral loss, as
'pleasure for *A*' as opposed to pleasure itself is
not a moral value. According to the view under consideration, pleasure
itself is what matters morally, and so although *A*'s
pleasure matters qua pleasure, the moral point of view takes
*B*'s pleasure into account in just the same way, and
there is nothing to regret, as there is more pleasure than there would
otherwise have been. Stocker and Williams would surely insist that the
point of their argument was not just that there is a loss, but that
there is a *moral* loss. The monist cannot accommodate that
point, as the monist can only consider the quantity of the value, not
its distribution, and so we are at an impasse.



However, the initial question was whether the monist has succeeded in
explaining the phenomenon of 'moral regret', and perhaps
Hurka has done that by positing a conflation of moral and non-moral
regret in our experience. From our point of view, there is regret, and
the monist can explain why that is without appealing to irrationality.
On the other hand the monist cannot appeal to anything other than
quantity of value in appraising the morality of the situation. So
although Hurka is clearly right in so far as he is saying that a
correct moral choice can be regretted for non-moral reasons, he can go
no further than that.


### 3.2 Diminishing Marginal Value



Another promising strategy that the monist can use in order to explain
the complexity in our value choices is the appeal to
'diminishing marginal value'. The value that is added to
the sum by a source of value will tend to diminish after a certain
point--this phenomenon is known as diminishing marginal value
(or, sometimes, diminishing marginal utility). Mill's higher and
lower pleasures, which seem to be plural values, might be accommodated
by the monist in this way. The monist makes sense of discontinuities
in value by insisting on the distinction between sources of value,
which are often ambiguously referred to as 'values', and
the super value. Using a monist utilitarian account of value, we can
distinguish between the non-evaluative description of options, the
intermediate description, and the evaluative description as
follows:




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *Non-evaluative

description of option* | *Intermediate

description of option* | *Evaluative

description of option* |
| Painting a picture | - | Producing *x* units

of beauty | - | Producing *y* units

of value |
| Reading a book | - | Producing *x* units

of knowledge | - | Producing *y* units

of value |



On this account, painting produces beauty, and beauty (which is not a
value but the intermediate source of value) produces value. Similarly,
reading a book produces knowledge, and gaining knowledge produces
value. Now it should be clear how the monist can make sense of
phenomena like higher and lower pleasures. The non-evaluative options
(e.g. eating donuts) have diminishing marginal non-basic value.



On top of that, the intermediate effect, or non-basic value, (e.g.
experiencing pleasure) can have a diminishing contribution to value.
Varying diminishing marginal value in these cases is easily explained
psychologically. It is just the way we are--we get less and less
enjoyment from donuts as we eat more and more (at least in one
sitting). However, we may well get the same amount of enjoyment from
the tenth Johnny Cash song that we did from the first. In order to
deal with the higher and lower pleasures case the monist will have to
argue that pleasures themselves can have diminishing marginal
utility--the monist can argue that gustatory pleasure gets boring
after a while, and hence contributes less and less to the super
value--well being, or whatever it
 is.[9]



This picture brings us back to the distinction between foundational
and non-foundational pluralism. Notice that the monist theories being
imagined here are foundationally monist, because they claim that there
is fundamentally one value, such as pleasure, and they are pluralist
at the level of ordinary choice because they claim that there are
intermediate values, such as knowledge and beauty, which are valuable
because of the amount of pleasure they produce (or realize, or
contain--the exact relationship will vary from theory to
theory).


### 3.3 Theoretical Virtues



The main advantage of pluralism is that it seems true to our
experience of value. We experience values as plural, and pluralism
tells is that values are indeed plural. The monist can respond, as we
have seen, that there are ways to explain the apparent plurality of
values without positing fundamentally plural values. Another,
complementary strategy that the monist can pursue is to argue that
monism has theoretical virtues that pluralism lacks. In general, it
seems that theories should be as simple and coherent as possible, and
that other things being equal, we should prefer a more coherent theory
to a less coherent one. Thus so long as monism can make sense of
enough of our intuitive judgments about the nature of value, then it
is to be preferred to pluralism because it does better on the
theoretical virtue of coherence.



Another way to put this point is in terms of explanation. The monist
can point out that the pluralist picture lacks explanatory depth. It
seems that a list of values needs some further explanation: what makes
these things values? (See Bradley 2009, p.16). The monist picture is
superior, because the monist can provide an explanation for the value
of the (non-foundational) plurality of values: these things are values
because they contribute to well-being, or pleasure, or whatever the
foundational monist value is. (See also the discussion of this in the
entry on
 value theory).



Patricia Marino argues against this strategy (2015). She argues that
'systematicity' (the idea that it is better to have fewer
principles) is not a good argument in favour of monism. Marino points
out that explanation in terms of fewer fundamental principles is not
necessarily *better* explanation. If there are plural values,
then the explanation that appeals to plural values is a better one, in
the sense that it is the true one: it doesn't deny the plurality
of values. Even if we could give a monist explanation without having
to trade off against our pluralist intuitions, Marino argues, we have
no particular reason to think that explanations appealing to fewer
principles are superior.


### 3.4 Preference Satisfaction Views



There is a different account of value that we ought to consider here:
the view that value consists in preference or desire satisfaction. On
this view, knowledge and pleasure and so on are valuable when they are
desired, and if they are not desired anymore they are not valuable
anymore. There is no need to appeal to complicated accounts of
diminishing marginal utility: it is uncontroversial that we sometimes
desire something and sometimes don't. Thus complexities in
choices are explained by complexities in our desires, and it is
uncontroversial that our desires are complex.



Imagine a one person preference satisfaction account of value that
says simply that what is valuable is what *P* desires.
Apparently this view is foundationally monist: there is only one thing
that confers value (being desired by *P*), yet at the
non-foundational level there are many values (whatever *P*
desires). Let us say that *P* desires hot baths, donuts and
knowledge. The structure of *P*'s desires is such that
there is a complicated ranking of these things, which will vary from
circumstance to circumstance. The ranking is not explained by the
value of the objects,rather, her desire explains the ranking and
determines the value of the objects. So it might be that *P*
sometimes desires a hot bath and a donut equally, and cannot choose
between them; it might be that sometimes she would choose knowledge
over a hot bath and a donut, but sometimes she would choose a hot bath
over knowledge. On James Griffin's slightly more complex view,
well-being consist in the fulfillment of informed desire, and Griffin
points out that his view can explain discontinuities in value without
having to appeal to diminishing marginal utility:



> 
> there may well turn out to be cases in which, when informed, I want,
> say, a certain amount of one thing more than any amount of another,
> and not because the second thing cloys, and so adding to it merely
> produces diminishing marginal values. I may want it even though the
> second thing does not, with addition, lose its value; it may be that I
> think that no increase in that kind of value, even if constant and
> positive, can overtake a certain amount of this kind of value. (1986,
> p. 76).
> 



This version of foundational monism/normative pluralism escapes some
of the problems that attend the goods approach. First, this view can
account for deep complexities in choice. The plural goods that P is
choosing between do not seem merely instrumental. Donuts are not good
because they contribute to another value, and P does not desire donuts
for any reason other than their donuty nature. On this view, if it is
hard to choose between donuts and hot baths it is because of the
intrinsic nature of the objects. The key here is that value is
conferred by desire, not by contribution to another value. Second,
this view can accommodate incomparabilities: if P desires a hot bath
because of its hot bathy nature, and a donut because of its donuty
nature, she may not be able to choose between them.



However, it is not entirely clear that a view like Griffin's is
genuinely monist at the foundational level: the question arises, what
is constraining the desires that qualify as value conferring? If the
answer is 'nothing', then the view seems genuinely monist,
but is probably implausible. Unconstrained desire accounts of value
seem implausible because our desires can be for all sorts of
things--we may desire things that are bad for us, or we may
desire things because of some mistake we have made. If the answer is
that there is something constraining the desires that count as value
conferring, then of course the question is, 'what?' Is it
the values of the things desired? A desire satisfaction view that
restricts the qualifying desires must give an account of what
restricts them, and obviously, the account may commit the view to
foundational pluralism.



Griffin addresses this question at the very beginning of his book on
well being (Griffin, 1986,
 ch.2).[10]
 As he puts it,



> 
> The danger is that desire accounts get plausible only by, in effect,
> ceasing to be desire accounts. We had to qualify desire with informed,
> and that gave prominence to the features or qualities of the objects
> of desire, and not to the mere existence of desire. (1986, p. 26).
> 



Griffin's account of the relationship between desire and value
is subtle, and (partly because Griffin himself does not distinguish
between foundational and normative pluralism) it is difficult to say
whether his view is foundationally pluralist or not. Griffin argues
that it is a mistake to see desire as a blind motivational
force--we desire things that we perceive in a favorable light- we
take them to have a desirability feature. When we try to explain what
involved in seeing things in a favorable light, we cannot, according
to Griffin, separate understanding from desire:



> 
> ...we cannot, even in the case of a desirability feature such as
> accomplishment, separate understanding and desire. Once we see
> something as 'accomplishment', as 'giving weight and
> substance to our lives', there is no space left for desire to
> follow along in a secondary subordinate position. Desire is not blind.
> Understanding is not bloodless. Neither is the slave of the other.
> There is no priority. (1986, p. 30)
> 



This suggests that the view is indeed pluralist at the
foundation--values are not defined entirely by desire, but partly
by other features of the situation, and so at the most fundamental
level there is more than one value making feature. Griffin himself
says that "the desire account is compatible with a strong form
of pluralism about values" (p. 31).



The question whether or not Griffin is a foundational pluralist is not
pursued further here. The aim in this section is to show first, that
monist preference satisfaction accounts of value may have more
compelling ways of explaining complexities in value comparison than
monist goods approaches, but second, to point out that any constrained
desire account may well actually be foundationally pluralist. As soon
as something is introduced to constrain the desires that qualify as
value conferring, it looks as though another value is operating.


## 4. Pluralism and Rational Choice



The big question facing pluralism is whether rational choices can be
made between irreducibly plural values. Irreducible plurality appears
to imply incommensurability--that is to say, that there is no
common measure which can be used to compare two different values. (See
the entry on
 incommensurable values.)
 Value incommensurability seems worrying: if values are
incommensurable, then either we are forced into an ad hoc ranking, or
we cannot rank the values at all. Neither of these are very appealing
options.



However, pluralists reject this dilemma. Bernard Williams argues that
it is a mistake to think that pluralism implies that comparisons are
impossible. He says:



> 
> There is one motive for reductivism that does not operate simply on
> the ethical, or on the non-ethical, but tends to reduce every
> consideration to one basic kind. This rests on an assumption about
> rationality, to the effect that two considerations cannot be
> rationally weighed against each other unless there is a common
> consideration in terms of which they can be compared. This assumption
> is at once very powerful and utterly baseless. Quite apart from the
> ethical, aesthetic considerations can be weighed against economic ones
> (for instance) without being an application of them, and without their
> both being an example of a third kind of consideration. (Williams
> 1985, p. 17)
> 



Making a similar point, Ruth Chang points out that incommensurability
is often conflated with incomparability. She provides clear
definitions of each: incommensurability is the lack of a common unit
of value by which precise comparisons can be made. Two items are
incomparable, if there is no possible relation of comparison, such as
'better than', or 'as good as' (1997,
Introduction). Chang points out that incommensurability is often
thought to entail incomparability, but it does not.



Defenders of pluralism have used various strategies to show that it is
possible to make rational choices between plural values.


### 4.1 Practical Wisdom



The pluralist's most common strategy in the face of worries
about choices between incommensurable values is to appeal to practical
wisdom--the faculty described by Aristotle--a faculty of
judgment that the wise and virtuous person has, which enables him to
see the right answer. Practical wisdom is not just a question of being
able to see and collate the facts, it goes beyond that in some
way--the wise person will see things that only a wise person
could see. So plural values can be compared in that a wise person will
'just see' that one course of action rather than another
is to be taken. This strategy is used (explicitly or implicitly) by
McDowell (1979), Nagel (1979), Larmore (1987), Skorupski (1996),
Anderson (1993 and 1997) Wiggins (1997 and 1998), Chappell (1998),
Swanton (2003). Here it is in Nagel's words:



> 
> Provided one has taken the process of practical justification as far
> as it will go in the course of arriving at the conflict, one may be
> able to proceed without further justification, but without
> irrationality either. What makes this possible is
> judgment--essentially the faculty Aristotle described as
> practical wisdom, which reveals itself over time in individual
> decisions rather than in the enunciation of general principles. (1979,
> p. 135)
> 



The main issue for this solution to the comparison problem is to come
up with an account of what practical wisdom is. It is not easy to
understand what sort of thing the faculty of judgment might be, or how
it might work. Obviously pluralists who appeal to this strategy do not
want to end up saying that the wise judge can see which of the options
has more goodness, as that would constitute collapsing back into
monism. So the pluralist has to maintain that the wise judge makes a
judgment about what the right thing to do is without making any
quantitative judgment. The danger is that the faculty seems entirely
mysterious: it is a kind of magical vision, unrelated to our natural
senses. As a solution to the comparison problem, the appeal to
practical wisdom looks rather like way of shifting the problem to
another level. Thus the appeal to practical wisdom cannot be left at
that. The pluralist owes more explanation of what is involved in
practical wisdom. What follows below are various pluralists'
accounts of how choice between plural values is possible, and whether
such choice is rational.


### 4.2 Super Scales



One direction that pluralists have taken is to argue that although
values are plural, there is nonetheless an available scale on which to
rank them. This scale is not rationalized by something that the values
have in common (that would be monism), but by something over and above
the values, which is not itself a super value. Williams sometimes
writes as if this is his intention, as do Griffin (1986 and 1997),
Stocker (1990), Chang (1997 and 2004), Taylor (1982 and 1997). James
Griffin (1986) develops this suggestion in his discussion of plural
prudential values. According to Griffin, we do not need to have a
super-value to have super-scale. Griffin says:



> 
> ...it does not follow from there being no super-value that there
> is no super-scale. To think so would be to misunderstand how the
> notion of 'quantity' of well-being enters. It enters
> through ranking; quantitative differences are defined on qualitative
> ones. The quantity we are talking about is 'prudential
> value' defined on informed rankings. All that we need for the
> all-encompassing-scale is the possibility of ranking items on the
> basis of their nature. And we can, in fact, rank them in that way. We
> can work out trade-offs between different dimensions of pleasure or
> happiness. And when we do, we rank in a strong sense: not just choose
> one rather than the other, but regard it as worth more. That is the
> ultimate scale here: worth to one's life. (Griffin 1986, p. 90)
> 



This passage is slightly hard to interpret (for more on why see my
earlier discussion of Griffin in the section on preference
satisfaction accounts). On one interpretation, Griffin is in fact
espousing a sophisticated monism. The basic value is 'worth to
one's life', and though it is important to talk about
non-basic values, such as the different dimensions of pleasure and
happiness, they are ultimately judged in terms of their contribution
to the worth of lives.



The second possible interpretation takes Griffin's claim that
worth to life is not a supervalue seriously. On this interpretation,
it is hard to see what worth to life is, if not a supervalue. Perhaps
it is only a value that we should resort to when faced with
incomparabilities. However, this interpretation invites the criticism
that Griffin is introducing a non-moral value, perhaps prudential
value, to arbitrate when moral values are incommensurable. In other
words, we cannot decide between incommensurable values on moral
grounds, so we should decide on prudential grounds. This seems
reasonable when applied to incommensurabilities in aesthetic values.
One might not be able to say whether Guernica is better than War and
Peace, but one might choose to have Guernica displayed on the wall
because it will impress one's friends, or because it is worth
more money, or even because one just enjoys it more. In the case of
moral choices this is a less convincing strategy: it introduces a
level of frivolity into morality that seems out of place.



Stocker's main strategy is to argue that values are plural, and
comparisons are made, so it must be possible to make rational
comparisons. He suggests that a "higher level synthesizing
category" can explain how comparisons are made (1990, p. 172).
According to Stocker these comparisons are not quantitative, they are
evaluative:



> 
> Suppose we are trying to choose between lying on a beach and
> discussing philosophy--or more particularly, between the pleasure
> of the former and the gain in understanding from the latter. To
> compare them we may invoke what might be called a higher-level
> synthesizing category. So, we may ask which will conduce to a more
> pleasing day, or to a day that is better spent. Once we have fixed
> upon the higher synthesizing category, we can often easily ask which
> option is better in regard to that category and judge which to choose
> on the basis of that. Even if it seems a mystery how we might
> 'directly' compare lying on the beach and discussing
> philosophy, it is a commonplace that we do compare them, e.g. in
> regard to their contribution to a pleasing day. (Stocker 1990, p. 72)
> 



Stocker claims that goodness is just the highest level synthesizing
category, and that lower goods are constitutive means to the good.
Ruth Chang's approach to comparisons of plural values is very
similar (Chang 1997 (introduction) and 2004). Chang claims that
comparisons can only be made in terms of a covering value--a more
comprehensive value that has the plural values as parts.



A recent suggestion by Brian Hedden and Daniel Munoz is that *by
definition*, overall value supervenes on the dimensions of value
(Hedden and Munoz 2023). The basic point is that if overall value is
affected, then there must be a relevant and distinct way that goodness
or badness has been contributed. So, for example, in Chang's
case of adding more pleasure disrupting balance (see section 2.1),
Hedden and Munoz argue that balance is a dimension of value, and it is
because balance has been adversely affected that there is less value
overall.



There is a problem in understanding quite what a 'synthesizing
category' or 'covering value' is. How does the
covering value determine the relative weightings of the constituent
values? One possibility is that it does it by pure
stipulation--as a martini just is a certain proportion of gin and
vermouth. However, stipulation does not have the right sort of
explanatory power. On the other hand, if a view is to remain
pluralist, it must avoid conflating the super scale with a super
value. Chang argues that her covering values are sufficiently unitary
to provide a basis for comparison, and yet preserve the separateness
of the other values. Chang's argument goes as follows: the
values at stake in a situation (for example, prudence and morality)
cannot on their own determine how heavily they weigh in a particular
choice situation--the values weigh differently depending on the
circumstances of the choice. However, the values plus the
circumstances cannot determine relevant weightings
either--because (simplifying here) the internal circumstances of
the choice will affect the weighting of the values differently
depending on the external circumstances. To use Chang's own
example, when the values at stake are prudence and morality
(specifically, the duty to help an innocent victim), and the
circumstances include the fact that the victim is far away, the effect
this circumstance will have on the weighting of the values depends on
external circumstances, which fix what matters in the choice. So, as
Chang puts it, "'What matters' must therefore have
content beyond the values and the circumstances of the choice"
(2004, p. 134).



Stocker is aware of the worry that appeal to something in terms of
which comparisons can be made reduces the view to monism: Stocker
insists that the synthesizing category (such as a good life) is not a
unitary value--it is at most 'nominal monism' in my
terminology. Stocker argues that it is a philosophical prejudice to
think that rational judgment must be quantitative, and so he claims
that he does not need to give an account of how we form and use the
higher level synthesizing categories.


### 4.3 Basic Preferences



Another approach to the comparison problem appeals to basic
preferences. Joseph Raz takes the line that we can explain choice
between irreducibly plural goods by talking about basic preferences.
Raz approaches the issue of incommensurability by talking about the
nature of agency and rationality instead of about the nature of value.
He distinguishes between two conceptions of human agency: the
rationalist conception, and the classical conception. The rationalist
conception corresponds to what we have called the stronger use of the
term rational. According to the rationalist conception, reasons
require action. The classical conception, by contrast, "regards
reasons as rendering options eligible" (Raz 1999, p. 47). Raz
favors the classical conception, which regards the will as something
separate from desire:



> 
> The will is the ability to choose and perform intentional actions. We
> exercise our will when we endorse the verdict of reason that we must
> perform an action, and we do so, whether willingly, reluctantly, or
> regretting the need, etc. According to the classical conception,
> however, the most typical exercise or manifestation of the will is in
> choosing among options that reason merely renders eligible. Commonly
> when we so choose, we do what we want, and we choose what we want,
> from among the eligible options. Sometimes speaking of wanting one
> option (or its consequences) in preference to the other eligible ones
> is out of place. When I choose one tin of soup from a row of identical
> tins in the shop, it would be wrong and misleading to say that I
> wanted that tin rather than, or in preference to, the others.
> Similarly, when faced with unpalatable but unavoidable and
> incommensurate options (as when financial need forces me to give up
> one or another of incommensurate goods), it would be incorrect to say
> that I want to give up the one I choose to give up. I do not want to
> do so. I have to, and I would equally have regretted the loss of
> either good. I simply choose to give up one of them. (Raz, 1999, p.
> 48)
> 



Raz's view about the nature of agency is defended in great
detail over the course of many articles, and all of those arguments
cannot be examined in detail here. What is crucial in the context of
this discussion of pluralism is whether Raz gives us a satisfactory
account of the weaker sense of rational. Raz's solution to the
problem of incommensurability hangs on the claim that it can be
rational (in the weak sense) to choose A over B when there are no
further reasons favouring A over B. We shall restrict ourselves to
mentioning one objection to the view in the context of moral choices
between plural goods. Though Raz's account of choice may seem
plausible in cases where we choose between non-moral values, it seems
to do violence to the concept of morality. Consider one of Raz's
own examples, the choice between a banana and a pear. It may be that
one has to choose between them, and there is no objective reason to
choose one or the other. In this case, it seems Raz's account of
choice is plausible. If one feels like eating a banana, then in this
case, desire does provide a reason. As Raz puts it, "A want can
never tip the balance of reasons in and of itself. Rather, our wants
become relevant when reasons have run their course." In the
example where we choose between a banana and a pear, this sounds fine.
However, if we apply it to a moral choice it seems a lot less
plausible. Raz admits that "If of the options available to
agents in typical situations of choice and decision, several are
incommensurate, then reason can neither determine nor completely
explain their choices or actions" (Raz, 1999, p. 48). Thus many
moral choices are not directed by reason but by a basic preference. It
is not fair to call it a desire, because on Raz's account we
desire things for reasons--we take the object of our desire to be
desirable. On Raz's picture then, when reasons have run their
course, we are choosing without reasons. It doesn't matter
hugely whether we call that 'rational' (it is not rational
in the strong sense, but it is in the weak sense). What matters is
whether this weak sense of rational is sufficient to satisfy our
concept of moral choice as being objectively defensible. The problem
is that choosing without reasons look rather like plumping. Plumping
may be an intelligible form of choice, but it is questionable whether
it is a satisfactory account of moral choice.


### 4.4 Accepting Incomparability



One philosopher who is happy to accept that there may be situations
where we just cannot make reasoned choices between plural values is
Isaiah Berlin, who claimed that goods such as liberty and equality
conflict at the fundamental level. Berlin is primarily concerned with
political pluralism, and with defending political liberalism, but his
views about incomparability have been very influential in discussions
on moral pluralism. Bernard Williams (1981), Charles Larmore (1987),
John Kekes (1993), Michael Stocker (1990 and 1997), David Wiggins
(1997) have all argued that there are at least some genuinely
irresolvable conflicts between values, and that to expect a rational
resolution is a mistake. (See also the entry on
 moral dilemmas).
 For Williams this is part of a more general mistake made by
contemporary moral philosophers--he thinks that philosophy tries
to make ethics too easy, too much like arithmetic. Williams insists
throughout his writings that ethics is a much more complex and
multi-faceted beast than its treatment at the hands of moral
philosophers would suggest, and so it is not surprising to him that
there should be situations where values conflict irresolvably. Stocker
(1990) discusses the nature of moral conflict at great length, and
although he thinks that many apparent conflicts can be dissolved or
are not serious, like Williams, he argues that much of contemporary
philosophy's demand for simplicity is mistaken. Stocker argues
that ethics need not always be action guiding, that value is much more
complex than Kantians and utilitarians would have us think, and that
as the world is complicated we will inevitably face conflicts. Several
pluralists have argued that accepting the inevitability of value
conflicts does not result in a breakdown of moral argument, but rather
the reverse. Kekes (1993), for example, claims that pluralism enables
us to see that irresolvable disagreements are not due to wickedness on
the part of our interlocutor, but may be due to the plural nature of
values.


## 5. Conclusion



The battle lines in the debate between pluralism and monism are not
always clear. This entry has outlined some of them, and discussed some
of the main arguments. Pluralists need to be clear about whether they
are foundational or non-foundational pluralists. Monists must defend
their claim that there really is a unitary value. Much of the debate
between pluralists and monists has focussed on the issue of whether
the complexity of moral choice implies that values really are
plural--a pattern emerges in which the monist claims to be able
to explain the appearance of plurality away, and the pluralist insists
that the appearance reflects a pluralist reality. Finally, pluralists
must explain how comparisons between values are made, or defend the
consequence that incommensurability is widespread.