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Dissertation Abstract
Philosophers once thought reasons to act are ultimately in the service of some value, which is an intrinsic feature of the world. Philosophers in the mainstream now tend to reject one or both of these claims, although some have defended the older view. This dissertation contributes to the ongoing project of retrieving a value theory that can be traced through the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. This account has two main features. First, value is fundamental to normativity. The explanation of action bottoms out in evaluative territory. Values explain the reasons we have. Second, value is not a single property shared all things that have it. Rather, it is divided into irreducibly distinct modes. For example, assuming that justice and beauty are values, it is not because they share some evaluative property in common. I put this to work in contemporary debates about the meaning evaluative language, the normative relationship between values and reasons for action, the objectivity of value, and theistic accounts of morality.
Chapter Breakdown
Boethius on Qualified Absolute Goodness
In this chapter, I retrieve the value theory partly developed by Boethius in the De hebdomadibus (Opuscula sacra III) and the third book of the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that underwriting Boethius' arguments in both texts is a distinction between two types of absolute value. First, there is Unqualified Absolute Value, which contains all goodness. Second, there is Aspectual Absolute Value, which is one mode or way a thing can be valuable. Both types of values are absolute, meaning that they are not relative.
What a Value Is
In this chapter, I retrieve Boethius' doctrine of Aspectual Absolute Value to comment on contemporary debates about thick values. I argue that although thick values cannot be reduced to various combinations of "purely" thin values and ostensibly non-evaluative facts, there is nonetheless some connection the thick have to the good. I draw from Boethius and Iris Murdoch to articulate that connection.
The Good and Deontic Metanormative Theories
This chapter argues that what I called "deontic theories" of normativity cannot account for the picture of value developed in chapters 1 and 2. First I distinguish between "deontic" theories of normativity vs. "evaluative" theories by appealing to the Kantian notion of a "formalist" ethic. Deontic facts are formalizable without loss of normative content. I argue that deontic theories reduce all values to these sorts of facts. Then I argue that this makes them unable to articulate the relation previously identified between parochial thick values and the Good.
The Normativity of Value
Value-first normative theories are often associated with consequentialism of various sorts. This is due to the fact that such theories, almost without exception, present goodness as a property that gives one reason to promote the thing that has that property. In this chapter, I argue that there is no normative relation between goodness and promoting as a general type of action. Instead, values provide various reasons to act depending on which thick value is in question.
Finite and Infinite Values
This chapter looks at the relationship between God and creaturely goodness. Any theistic account of value must find some way to theistically explain the values described in earlier chapters. I argue that a Platonistic view along the lines present by Robert Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods is the best option, with one important emendation. His view that finite goods are resemblance relations to God faces a dilemma. It either cannot explain how values are shapeless with respect to their non-evaluative base properties, or, if one rejects the shapelessness hypothesis, it requires the attribution of values to inappropriate bearers. I argue that those attracted to Adams's view should instead hold that values stand in resemblance relations, not that they are resemblance relations.
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