Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning PDF
Preview Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning
Rethinking The Good OXFORD ETHICS SERIES Series Editor: Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford University THE LIMITS OF MORALITY Shelly Kagan PERFECTIONISM Thomas Hurka INEQUALITY Larry S. Temkin MORALITY, MORTALITY, Volume I Death and Whom to Save from It F. M. Kamm MORALITY, MORTALITY, Volume II Rights, Duties, and Status F. M. Kamm SUFFERING AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Jamie Mayerfield MORAL DEMANDS IN NONIDEAL THEORY Liam B. Murphy THE ETHICS OF KILLING Problems at the Margins of Life Jeff McMahan INTRICATE ETHICS Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm E M. Kamm RETHINKING THE GOOD Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning Larry S. Temkin Rethinking The Good MORAL IDEALS AND THE NATURE OF PRACTICAL REASONING Larry S. Temkin OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2012 Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Temkin, Larry S. Rethinking the good : moral ideals and the nature of practical reasoning / Larry S. Temkin. p. cm.—(Oxford ethics series) Includes bibliographical references (p.(cid:9) ) and index. ISBN 978-0-19-975944-6 (alk. paper) 1. Ethics. 2. Good and evil. 3. Practical reason. I. Title. BJ1o31.T395 2011 170-dC22(cid:9) 2011004595 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Derek and Shelly Bud and Lee Daniel, Andrea, and Rebecca And, especially, Meg PREFACE The initial idea that eventually gave rise to this book occurred to me many years ago, when I was still a graduate student at Princeton University. It was 1977, and I was sitting in on a seminar by a visiting professor who I had been told was one of the great living philosophers; but I confess that up until that point I had never heard of him. The professor was presenting an early version of a typescript that he would eventually publish some seven years later. The professor, the typescript, and the seminar were quite literally awe inspiring, and they profoundly changed the direction of my philosophical thinking, and indeed my life. The typescript—of Reasons and Persons1-was filled with fascinating arguments and claims, but one problem that particularly gripped me was the earliest version of Derek Parfit's the Mere Addition Paradox. As the Paradox goes, there are three alternatives, A, B, and A+, and it appears that, all things considered, A is better than B, and B is better than A+, but that, all things con- sidered, A is not better than A+.2 Noting that "all-things-considered better than" is a transitive relation, Parfit claimed that the three judgments were inconsistent and that one of them had to go. The paradox lay in the fact that each of the three inconsistent judgments seemed extremely plausible, so that even though it was clear that at least one of them had to be rejected, it was hard to see how any of them could actually be given up. I was utterly taken with the Mere Addition Paradox. I went round and round in my head considering which of Parfit's three judgments to reject and kept coming up with the thought that it might be a mistake to give any of them up. This led me to entertain a rather radical thought. Perhaps it would be a mis- take to reject any of the three judgments. Perhaps each of the three judgments is, in fact, true. Perhaps the lesson to be learned from the Mere Addition Paradox is that "all-things-considered better than" is not a transitive relation. As I thought about the Mere Addition Paradox more and more, I warmed up to this conjecture, and I managed to convince myself that it was an idea worth pursuing. At that point, I made an appointment to meet with a teacher of mine, Tom Nagel, in order to run my idea by him. I remember sitting in Nagel's office and explaining that I had been thinking about Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox a lot, and I thought that perhaps the lesson to be learned from Parfit's ' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. 2 On the Mere Addition Paradox, see chapter 19 of Reasons and Persons. viii(cid:9) Rethinking the Good paradox was that "all-things-considered better than" was not a transitive rela- tion. Nagel scrunched up his face in what looked to me to be a combination of pity, bewilderment, and scorn and then said, in words I shall never forget, "Larry, I wouldn't understand what someone meant who claimed that all things consid- ered, A is better than B, and all things considered, B is better than C, but all things considered, A is not better than C." That was pretty much the end of our conversation; for Nagel, it was part of the meanings of the words "all-things- considered better than" that "all-things-considered better than" was a transitive relation. Needless to say, I left Nagel's office feeling utterly deflated about the prospect that my radical conjecture might be true. Deflated, but not completely defeated, I decided to run my idea past another professor of mine, Tim Scanlon. Once again, I made an appointment, and sitting in Scanlon's office I raised the possibility that perhaps the lesson to be learned from Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox was that "all-things-considered better than" was not a transitive relation. My conversation with Scanlon lasted a bit longer than my conversation with Nagel, but basically he echoed the view that Nagel had expressed. Scanlon, too, suggested that it was an analytic truth that "all-things-considered better than" was a transitive relation. I tried one last time. I ran my idea by Parfit himself, since it was his par- adox! I thought that if anyone might be open to my idea it would be Derek. After all, Derek would understand better than anyone else the full force of the considerations leading to my conjecture; moreover, if I was right, it would make the Mere Addition Paradox even more revolutionary and significant than anyone had previously imagined. Derek was extremely kind and patient with me, but at the end of the day he sided with Nagel and Scanlon. My conjec- ture couldn't be true, given the meanings of the words "all-things-considered better than:' Stubborn, but not completely crazy, at that point I abandoned my thought. Nagel, Scanlon, and Parfit were three of the greatest living moral philosophers; I was a punk graduate student. I turned my attention to other issues and soon began working on a topic that would engage me for many years to come, the topic of equality. Six years later, in the fall of 1983, I taught an undergraduate class on the typescript of Reasons and Persons. I was at Rice University at the time, and two of my students, Richard Dees and Martin Halbert, were as taken with the Mere Addition Paradox as I had been originally. Each week, for the entire semester, each of them came to my office, separately, to argue that the Mere Addition Paradox failed. Each week, I explained to them why their latest objection to the Paradox missed the mark. Their passion for the Paradox reignited my own, and by the end of the semester I was convinced that the Mere Addition Paradox did fail, although not for any of the reasons that Dees or Halbert had suggested. Rather, it failed for reasons that supported my original conjecture about the Paradox. Specifically, I became convinced that in presenting his arguments in Preface(cid:9) ix support of the Mere Addition Paradox, Parfit implicitly relied on a set of claims that, if correct, vindicated each of the particular judgments that gave rise to the Paradox, but also entailed that "all-things-considered better than" was not a transitive relation. The following year, I wrote up a 125-page draft of my first article on this book's topic, "Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox,"3 and sent it off to Parfit. A year passed before I heard anything from Derek about my paper. Then, during a visit to Rice, Derek relayed the following story. My paper had arrived just as Reasons and Persons was heading off to press, and having worked for many months, without interruption, to get to that stage, he was thoroughly exhausted, and didn't have the heart or energy to read what I'd sent. But he took my work with him on a later trip to India, carried it partway up a moun- tain, and then, with one of the world's tallest peaks looming in the distance, he sat down, cross-legged, and finally read my draft. Derek told me that he couldn't remember ever having read a more impressive paper. He then added that he thought that my paper had destroyed the greatest flower of ten years of his life, but that he didn't mind! This story is, of course, much more of a testimony to Derek's character and generosity (not to mention the poorness of his memory!) than it is to the quality of the draft I had sent him. But you can imagine the impact that his over-the-top remarks had on a young assistant professor. They convinced me that it was worth pursuing the line that I had first come up with in graduate school, and I have been doing so, off and on, ever since. The path has been a long one, and it has taken many unexpected twists and turns. As is common in philosophy, one argument and topic led to another, and I found myself address- ing many issues that never occurred to me when I first began thinking about the Mere Addition Paradox. The result is the book that is now in your hands. East Brunswick, New Jersey June 2011 Postscript. Tim Scanlon has since abandoned his view that it is analytically true that "all-things-considered better than" is a transitive relation. Further, he now grants that there may be an important "all-thing-considered better than" rela- tion that is not transitive. Derek Parfit continues to believe that "all-things-con- sidered better than" can be used with a meaning that must refer to a transitive relation, but he grants that my arguments show that there is another "all-things- considered better than" relation that is fundamental for practical reasoning that is not transitive. I don't know Tom Nagel's current view of the matter. Alas, ever since that initial day in his office I've been afraid to ask him! L.T. 3 Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987): 138-87.
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