Oberdiek, Hans

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Swarthmore College Works Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 4-1-1989 Review Of "A Theory Of Value And Obligation" By R. Attfield Hans Oberdiek Swarthmore College, hoberdi1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy  Part of the Philosophy Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Hans Oberdiek. (1989). "Review Of "A Theory Of Value And Obligation" By R. Attfield". Ethics. Volume 99, Issue 3. 638-640. DOI: 10.1086/293103 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/119   The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics.http://www.jstor.orgReview Author(s): Hans Oberdiek Review by: Hans Oberdiek Source:   Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Apr., 1989), pp. 638-640Published by:  The University of Chicago PressStable URL:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/2380872Accessed: 09-06-2015 20:14 UTCYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jspJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions638 Ethics April 1989 usual worth and therefore to deserve above-average compensation (chap. 14). This notion of desert rests, in turn, on the underlying belief in the goodness of human autonomy: "Wage systems offer greater rewards for the performance of more serious jobs, and . . . these more serious jobs also guarantee a greater autonomy to the person performing them" (p. 201). No one interested in either normative theories ofjustice or empirical studies of justice can fail to profit from this book. It cannot, however, be viewed as a definitive treatment of its own thesis. In the first place, Soltan puts forward the criteria of difficulty and importance of tasks asa proposal about our underlying conceptions of the good, but he does not really test this proposal, or even show that it is the most plausible interpretation of previous empirical findings. It is at present a research program. Second (and much more fundamental), Soltan does not clinch his argument for moral objectivity as persuasiveness in nondistortive circumstances. Not everyone would grant that universal justification extending beyond the bounds of a specific tradition/community is possible. And even those who grant the possibility will want to distinguish between the form of universal justifications and their content. Different communities offer (and respond to) very different kinds of universal justifications for their rules and practices. It is far from clear that inhabitants of different communities, brought together in nondistortive conditions, will find the same universal propositions equally persuasive. Individuals and groups within a specific community are indeed likely, as Soltan suggests, to participate in whatever broader conception of the good animates that community. But this seems far less likely to occur when the boundaries dividing communities are crossed. This would not pose a problem if Soltan intended to define moral objectivity relative to a particular community. But I believe that his aspiration is more ambitious- that is, to define an empirical method (as a substitute for state of nature theories) that can gradually overcome the influence of historical loyalties and "proceed step by step from relativity to universality" (pp. 75-76). WILLIAM A. GALSTON University of Maryland Attfield, Robin. A Theory of Value and Obligation. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Pp. x+262. $45.00 (cloth). Moral standing, Attfield contends, belongs to whatever has a good of its own, including (possible) future creatures, plants, and animals; however, not all have equal moral significance. What is deemed to have intrinsic value, and thus supply the underlying reasons for moral action, is pleasure and, more important, "flour- ishing," said to consist in realizing most of the essential (not necessarily distinctive) capacities of one's species in an integrated and harmonious development. As flourishing is "species-dependent," we must investigate the good of each species. In the case of humans, flourishing consists in exercising capacities for growth and self-motion; perceptual faculties; linguistic communication; practical reasoning; autonomy; self-determination and theoretical reasoning; responsibility for one's beliefs, attitudes and actions; memory and experiencing emotions; meaningful work; self-respect; aesthetic appreciation; forming friendships; self-creation; and evil. The latter concession troubles, but Attfield attempts to limit the damage by This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsBook Reviews 639 asserting that his general principle "concerns only the ability to exercise various powers; it does not require that they actually be exercised" (p. 51). A "life worth living," then, will be one in which states, activities, and experiences of intrinsic value of the sort alluded to offset those we have reason to shun. But how are we to determine priorities among intrinsically valuable char- acteristics? Attfield maintains that survival needs take precedence over other basic needs as basic needs generally take precedence over nonbasic needs, which, in turn, take precedence over wants and preferences. Basic human needs take precedence over basic needs of creatures with less complex and sophisticated characteristics, but the basic needs of sentient creatures take precedence over the preferences of humans. Moreover, worthwhile lives of future creatures, in- cluding humans, count for neither more nor less than the lives of those currently alive. However, only individuals have moral standing: thus, trees have moral standing, but woods and ecological systems generally do not-though they may have instrumental value because they make it possible for individuals to flourish. This sets the stage for a lengthy defense of a version of "practice-conse- quentialism," which maintains that acts falling under practices are right or obligatory when and because the practices are optimific. More explicitly, we are not called upon "to consider whether each and every action, whether important or trivial, should become part of a social practice, but rather to adhere to optimific practices which are already in force, and also to comply with ones of whose adoption by the relevant agents there is a significant prospect.... Where no optimific practice is either in being or in prospect, agents are urged instead to look to the foreseeable consequences just of their own action" (p. 110). Attfield is acutely sensitive to the familiar charges leveled against consequentialism and shows that his version fares better than most with respect to integrity, supererogation, autonomy, negative responsibility, and justice. His discussion of these objections is thoughtful, though breaks little new ground, except for his rebuttal of Derek Parfit's criticism that consequentialism leads to advocacy of overpopulation. Attfield rounds out his case with an analysis of the foundations of moral knowledge intended to rebut skeptical claims that we lack the resources to transcend emotivism, subjectivism, and relativism. He develops his cognitive, naturalistic metaethic within a framework set by Joel Kupperman, R. M. Hare, and Renford Bambrough. His argument, though always plausible, is too cursory to be convincing. For instance, he briefly rehearses and endorses several of Bambrough's criticisms of skepticism without considering in depth and detail the kinds of objections that can and have been brought against the entire approach. Indeed, Attfield's arguments for each central thesis-that some things have intrinsic value, that intrinsic value may be located independently of specifically moral criteria, that we can draw sufficiently sharp distinctions between basic needs, nonbasic needs, and wants, that what ought to be done consists in optimizing value primarily through practices, and that the concepts of morality can be shown to be analytically derived from a naturalistic base-fails to grapple in depth and detail with counterarguments. Here, for instance, is Attfield's central "knock- down" argument for the thesis that something must have intrinsic value: "If nothing is of intrinsic value, then nothing is of value at all. For if anything is of instrumental value, there must be something else which confers value upon it; and though this too could be of instrumental value, there could not be an infinite series of items of instrumental value, each dependent for its value on the others. For then there would be nothing to tie their value to any of the items in the This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions640 Ethics April 1989 series, and all would be valueless. Thus either there is something of intrinsic value, or everything is valueless" (p. 30). So much for those, like Dewey, who fully appreciated this "proof" but developed philosophically sophisticated positions designed to avoid its conclusion. Nor does Attfield give sufficient justification for what is perhaps his most distinctive claim: namely, that plants and animals have moral standing because they have a good of their own. Bentham restricted the moral domain to those creatures who could suffer. But Attfield worries that such constraints sets up "an elitism of the sentient" and "another equally irrelevant limit" to the claims of morality (p. 16). Such excesses follow from hi's reliance on the ordinary moral judgments of most reflective people-and their extension by analogy and pre- supposition. Again, not enough attention is paid to the difficulties inherent in this method, especially as strained in such arguments as this: "If trees lack moral standing it is very difficult to account for several intuitions which most people would endorse. Most people, for example, would hold that it would be wrong for the last human being, even if she were also the last sentient creature, deliberately to cut down a tree, if no benefit could be derived from doing so; but this judgement strongly suggests that the tree itself is of independent value" (p. 17). But I don't wish to end on a negative note, for whatever its deficiencies, Attfield's book provides challenging theses gracefully presented, earnestly argued, and distinctively molded into a coherent, if challengeable, theory of morality. HANS OBERDIEK Swarthmore College Lomasky, Loren E. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. ix+283. $24.95 (cloth). Loren Lomasky's title tells us to expect a theory of rights. His acknowledgments to the Reason Foundation and the Liberty Fund tell us to expect a theory with a libertarian flavor. We are not disappointed; for the most part Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community defends Nozickian orthodoxy concerning individual rights, distributive justice, and the minimal state. Committed libertarians will therefore find much here to their liking. But the book is primarily intended not to preach to the faithful but to convert the rest of us. Those who found Nozick entertaining but unconvincing might profit from trying Lomasky. Aside from occasional lapses into cuteness (it seems to be a libertarian disease), his style is engaging, accessible, and often vivid. Furthermore, aside from occasional lapses into declamation or innuendo, his defense of his own convictions is appealingly modest and his treatment of contrary views respectful and fair-minded. Quite the most valuable feature of this book is that, in place of Nozick's parenthetical questions and undefended assumptions, it actually sets out to make a systematic case in favor of a libertarian rights theory. Although the distinction is not highlighted, this case has both an analytic and a substantive side. On Lomasky's favored conception, rights impose constraints on the pursuit of goals by defining protected spheres within which individuals have control over central aspects of their lives. Although this is a plausible picture of the normative function of rights, it is not a uniquely libertarian one; socialists can accept it just as readily. This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review Of  A Theory Of Value And Obligation  By R. Attfield

Swarthmore College 
Works 
Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 
4-1-1989 
Review Of "A Theory Of Value And Obligation" By R. Attfield 
Hans Oberdiek 
Swarthmore College, hoberdi1@swarthmore.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy 
 Part of the Philosophy Commons 
Let us know how access to these works benefits you 
 
Recommended Citation 
Hans Oberdiek. (1989). "Review Of "A Theory Of Value And Obligation" By R. Attfield". Ethics. Volume 99, 
Issue 3. 638-640. DOI: 10.1086/293103 
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/119 
This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in 
Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact 
myworks@swarthmore.edu. 
  The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics.
http://www.jstor.org
Review 
Author(s): Hans Oberdiek 
Review by: Hans Oberdiek 
Source:   Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Apr., 1989), pp. 638-640
Published by:  The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/2380872
Accessed: 09-06-2015 20:14 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
 info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content 
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. 
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
638 Ethics April 1989 
usual worth and therefore to deserve above-average compensation (chap. 14). 
This notion of desert rests, in turn, on the underlying belief in the goodness of 
human autonomy: "Wage systems offer greater rewards for the performance of 
more serious jobs, and . . . these more serious jobs also guarantee a greater 
autonomy to the person performing them" (p. 201). 
No one interested in either normative theories ofjustice or empirical studies 
of justice can fail to profit from this book. It cannot, however, be viewed as a 
definitive treatment of its own thesis. In the first place, Soltan puts forward the 
criteria of difficulty and importance of tasks asa proposal about our underlying 
conceptions of the good, but he does not really test this proposal, or even show 
that it is the most plausible interpretation of previous empirical findings. It is at 
present a research program. 
Second (and much more fundamental), Soltan does not clinch his argument 
for moral objectivity as persuasiveness in nondistortive circumstances. Not everyone 
would grant that universal justification extending beyond the bounds of a specific 
tradition/community is possible. And even those who grant the possibility will 
want to distinguish between the form of universal justifications and their content. 
Different communities offer (and respond to) very different kinds of universal 
justifications for their rules and practices. It is far from clear that inhabitants of 
different communities, brought together in nondistortive conditions, will find 
the same universal propositions equally persuasive. Individuals and groups within 
a specific community are indeed likely, as Soltan suggests, to participate in whatever 
broader conception of the good animates that community. But this seems far 
less likely to occur when the boundaries dividing communities are crossed. This 
would not pose a problem if Soltan intended to define moral objectivity relative 
to a particular community. But I believe that his aspiration is more ambitious- 
that is, to define an empirical method (as a substitute for state of nature theories) 
that can gradually overcome the influence of historical loyalties and "proceed 
step by step from relativity to universality" (pp. 75-76). 
WILLIAM A. GALSTON 
University of Maryland 
Attfield, Robin. A Theory of Value and Obligation. 
London: Croom Helm, 1987. Pp. x+262. $45.00 (cloth). 
Moral standing, Attfield contends, belongs to whatever has a good of its own, 
including (possible) future creatures, plants, and animals; however, not all have 
equal moral significance. What is deemed to have intrinsic value, and thus supply 
the underlying reasons for moral action, is pleasure and, more important, "flour- 
ishing," said to consist in realizing most of the essential (not necessarily distinctive) 
capacities of one's species in an integrated and harmonious development. As 
flourishing is "species-dependent," we must investigate the good of each species. 
In the case of humans, flourishing consists in exercising capacities for growth 
and self-motion; perceptual faculties; linguistic communication; practical reasoning; 
autonomy; self-determination and theoretical reasoning; responsibility for one's 
beliefs, attitudes and actions; memory and experiencing emotions; meaningful 
work; self-respect; aesthetic appreciation; forming friendships; self-creation; and 
evil. The latter concession troubles, but Attfield attempts to limit the damage by 
This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Book Reviews 639 
asserting that his general principle "concerns only the ability to exercise various 
powers; it does not require that they actually be exercised" (p. 51). A "life worth 
living," then, will be one in which states, activities, and experiences of intrinsic 
value of the sort alluded to offset those we have reason to shun. 
But how are we to determine priorities among intrinsically valuable char- 
acteristics? Attfield maintains that survival needs take precedence over other 
basic needs as basic needs generally take precedence over nonbasic needs, which, 
in turn, take precedence over wants and preferences. Basic human needs take 
precedence over basic needs of creatures with less complex and sophisticated 
characteristics, but the basic needs of sentient creatures take precedence over 
the preferences of humans. Moreover, worthwhile lives of future creatures, in- 
cluding humans, count for neither more nor less than the lives of those currently 
alive. However, only individuals have moral standing: thus, trees have moral 
standing, but woods and ecological systems generally do not-though they may 
have instrumental value because they make it possible for individuals to flourish. 
This sets the stage for a lengthy defense of a version of "practice-conse- 
quentialism," which maintains that acts falling under practices are right or obligatory 
when and because the practices are optimific. More explicitly, we are not called 
upon "to consider whether each and every action, whether important or trivial, 
should become part of a social practice, but rather to adhere to optimific practices 
which are already in force, and also to comply with ones of whose adoption by 
the relevant agents there is a significant prospect.... Where no optimific practice 
is either in being or in prospect, agents are urged instead to look to the foreseeable 
consequences just of their own action" (p. 110). Attfield is acutely sensitive to 
the familiar charges leveled against consequentialism and shows that his version 
fares better than most with respect to integrity, supererogation, autonomy, negative 
responsibility, and justice. His discussion of these objections is thoughtful, though 
breaks little new ground, except for his rebuttal of Derek Parfit's criticism that 
consequentialism leads to advocacy of overpopulation. 
Attfield rounds out his case with an analysis of the foundations of moral 
knowledge intended to rebut skeptical claims that we lack the resources to transcend 
emotivism, subjectivism, and relativism. He develops his cognitive, naturalistic 
metaethic within a framework set by Joel Kupperman, R. M. Hare, and Renford 
Bambrough. His argument, though always plausible, is too cursory to be convincing. 
For instance, he briefly rehearses and endorses several of Bambrough's criticisms 
of skepticism without considering in depth and detail the kinds of objections that 
can and have been brought against the entire approach. 
Indeed, Attfield's arguments for each central thesis-that some things have 
intrinsic value, that intrinsic value may be located independently of specifically 
moral criteria, that we can draw sufficiently sharp distinctions between basic 
needs, nonbasic needs, and wants, that what ought to be done consists in optimizing 
value primarily through practices, and that the concepts of morality can be shown 
to be analytically derived from a naturalistic base-fails to grapple in depth and 
detail with counterarguments. Here, for instance, is Attfield's central "knock- 
down" argument for the thesis that something must have intrinsic value: "If 
nothing is of intrinsic value, then nothing is of value at all. For if anything is of 
instrumental value, there must be something else which confers value upon it; 
and though this too could be of instrumental value, there could not be an infinite 
series of items of instrumental value, each dependent for its value on the others. 
For then there would be nothing to tie their value to any of the items in the 
This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
640 Ethics April 1989 
series, and all would be valueless. Thus either there is something of intrinsic 
value, or everything is valueless" (p. 30). So much for those, like Dewey, who 
fully appreciated this "proof" but developed philosophically sophisticated positions 
designed to avoid its conclusion. 
Nor does Attfield give sufficient justification for what is perhaps his most 
distinctive claim: namely, that plants and animals have moral standing because 
they have a good of their own. Bentham restricted the moral domain to those 
creatures who could suffer. But Attfield worries that such constraints sets up "an 
elitism of the sentient" and "another equally irrelevant limit" to the claims of 
morality (p. 16). Such excesses follow from hi's reliance on the ordinary moral 
judgments of most reflective people-and their extension by analogy and pre- 
supposition. Again, not enough attention is paid to the difficulties inherent in 
this method, especially as strained in such arguments as this: "If trees lack moral 
standing it is very difficult to account for several intuitions which most people 
would endorse. Most people, for example, would hold that it would be wrong 
for the last human being, even if she were also the last sentient creature, deliberately 
to cut down a tree, if no benefit could be derived from doing so; but this judgement 
strongly suggests that the tree itself is of independent value" (p. 17). 
But I don't wish to end on a negative note, for whatever its deficiencies, 
Attfield's book provides challenging theses gracefully presented, earnestly argued, 
and distinctively molded into a coherent, if challengeable, theory of morality. 
HANS OBERDIEK 
Swarthmore College 
Lomasky, Loren E. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. 
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. ix+283. $24.95 (cloth). 
Loren Lomasky's title tells us to expect a theory of rights. His acknowledgments 
to the Reason Foundation and the Liberty Fund tell us to expect a theory with 
a libertarian flavor. We are not disappointed; for the most part Persons, Rights, 
and the Moral Community defends Nozickian orthodoxy concerning individual 
rights, distributive justice, and the minimal state. 
Committed libertarians will therefore find much here to their liking. But 
the book is primarily intended not to preach to the faithful but to convert the 
rest of us. Those who found Nozick entertaining but unconvincing might profit 
from trying Lomasky. Aside from occasional lapses into cuteness (it seems to be 
a libertarian disease), his style is engaging, accessible, and often vivid. Furthermore, 
aside from occasional lapses into declamation or innuendo, his defense of his 
own convictions is appealingly modest and his treatment of contrary views respectful 
and fair-minded. 
Quite the most valuable feature of this book is that, in place of Nozick's 
parenthetical questions and undefended assumptions, it actually sets out to make 
a systematic case in favor of a libertarian rights theory. Although the distinction 
is not highlighted, this case has both an analytic and a substantive side. On 
Lomasky's favored conception, rights impose constraints on the pursuit of goals 
by defining protected spheres within which individuals have control over central 
aspects of their lives. Although this is a plausible picture of the normative function 
of rights, it is not a uniquely libertarian one; socialists can accept it just as readily. 
This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:14:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions


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Review Of A Theory Of Value And Obligation By R. Attfield

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