Current Philosophy

0005 John Campbell and Robert Pargetter. "Goodness and Fragility," American Philosophical Quarterly 23:2 (April 1986), pp. 155-165.

Can goodness be identified with some natural property such as 'being pleasurable'? J. L. Mackie, among others, has found problems accepting such connections. But the authors maintain that the relationship between goodness and its natural bases is neither unique nor mysterious. They find it directly analogous to the relationship between fragility and its natural bases.

It is clear that an object's being fragile is dependent on its chemical bonding. But fragility is not identical with a particular chemical bonding for three reasons:
  1. what makes a thing fragile may vary for different things;
  2. other objects with the same bonding may not be fragile, because of the presence of some other factor; and
  3. even if (1) and (2) above were false, we can conceive of possible worlds where they would be true.

For similar reasons, goodness is not identical with its natural bases. There may well be more than one basis for goodness, not everything that possesses any putative natural base for goodness (e.g. pleasurability) is always good, and we can imagine worlds different from our own where the relationship would not hold, even if we allow that it holds in our world.

But some hedonists, for example, would deny the first assertion. They say that pleasure is and can be the only basis for goodness. So then why not say that pleasure and goodness are identical? Campbell and Pargetter pose two possible rejoinders. First, it is hard to imagine an argument for the assertion that goodness, in all possible worlds, is necessarily associated with pleasure. Second, it is better not to presume identity just because properties are co-extensive.

In support of this second point, they observe that all equilateral triangles are equiangular -- but equilateral and equiangular are two different things. Now, the hedonist (or other opponent) may respond that the distinction here is between two complex concepts, whereas in the case of goodness and pleasure we are discussing simple, irreducible concepts. The authors doubt, however, whether pleasure is really a simple, unanalyzable concept. Further, they still do not accept that co-extensive properties are by that simple fact identical, although they also recognize that they may be in the minority here.

Nonetheless, they feel that their overall position is strong, for the identity of goodness and pleasure is questionable at best. Most philosophers would be prepared to suggest other bases for goodness.

Returning, then, to fragility, Campbell and Pargetter illustrate the relation between this quality and its natural base in two steps:
  1. Being fragile = having some property which is responsible for being such that 'X is dropped, X breaks', etc.
  2. The property which is responsible for object O's being such that 'O is dropped, O breaks'. etc. = having chemical bonding B.
Likewise, then, with goodness:
  1. Being good = having some property which is responsible for being such that '......'
  2. The property which is responsible for S's being good such that '......' = being pleasurable.

The authors do not try to fill in the blanks, for they recognize that a number of plausible terms exist -- for example, 'a person becomes aware of X, the person tries to bring X into existence'. They do, however, rebut any suggestion of ambiguity in the term 'responsible,' which does mean causally responsible in all cases. And they argue that their formulation works with relativistic moralities as well as others.

They feel, then, that they have cleared up Mackie's problem. And they have done so in a way that prevents naturalism from falling into the naturalistic fallacy.

 Contents     Index