Rethinking the Good – A Small Taste

This article aims to convey a few of the key claims and arguments of
my book, Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical
Reasoning. The article gives an example of a Spectrum Argument, and
illustrates that such arguments put pressure on the Axiom of Transitivity,
which holds that for any three possible outcomes or alternatives, A, B, and
C, if, all things considered, A is better than B, and B is better than C, then A
is better than C. The article distinguishes between two different approaches
to understanding the goodness of outcomes, the Internal Aspects View and
the Essentially Comparative View. It suggests that two deeply plausible, but
seemingly incompatible, positions underlying the Spectrum Argument,
an Additive-Aggregationist Position, and an Anti-Additive-Aggregationist
Position, reflect the Essentially Comparative View, and that on such a
view they are not incompatible. The article introduces several widely-held
views about neutrality and dominance principles, and shows that some of
these views are incompatible. The article contends that various ideals or
views that people care about are most plausibly understood as essentially
comparative, and notes that one such view, a Narrow Person-Affecting View,
will be especially difficult to reject in at least some cases. It also illustrates
how such a view, like other essentially comparative views, threatens the
Axiom of Transitivity. The article concludes by contending that we must
seriously rethink our understanding of the good, moral ideals, and the
nature of practical reasoning, while recognizing that the way forward is
murky, at best.