Explaining Value: and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy

by Gilbert Harman

Explaining Value is a selection of the best of Gilbert Harman's shorter writings in moral philosophy. The thirteen essays are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on moral relativism, values and valuing, character traits and virtue ethics, and ways of explaining aspects of morality. Harman's distinctive approach to moral philosophy has provoked much interest; this volume offers a fascinating conspectus of his most important work in the area.

Genres: Philosophy

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2000

Reviews

[Raymond Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of very original essays on moral relativism, values, and desires is a highly methodical, meticulously, and lucidly written work of analytic moral philosophy. The first group of essays on moral relativism illustrates a coherent notion of moral relativism. I found them agreeable even though I am not a moral relativist. In "Moral Relativism Defended", Harman offers moral relativism as the view that moral judgment is based on a tacit agreement which he calls "inner judgment" that a group of people observe according to which actions are morally right or wrong in relation to such agreement. So moral judgement is an agreement within a community. This is a sound observation how morality is observed in the actual world. I would say such implication of morality is undeniable even to moral objectivist or realist. The second essay "What is Moral Relativism" outlines three notions of moral relativism. The first is "normative relativism" which is the notion that different people as agents are subject to different moral demands based on situations. The situations can be based on differences in custom, individual conditions, expectations, and agreements. The second notion is "moral judgement relativism" which is the idea that moral judgment makes implicit reference to particular subjects or groups with a moral standard. That is, moral judgement is egocentric or subject specific. The third notion is meta-ethical relativism which is the idea that conflicting moral judgements can be reached about the same case by different moral reasoning.  All three notions of moral relativism are representation of how moral relativism can be manifested. In the third essay "Relativistics Ethics, Morality as Politics, Harman presents morality like a political or contractual agreement that a group of people has on certain moral principles they accept on moral reasoning for actions.  This notion morality is once again based on how morality is practiced in the real world. In "Justice and Moral Bargaining", Harman presents the original idea that justice is based on competing ideals of justice weighing liberty, equality, entitlements, rewarding virtues, punishing vices which have to be bargained to reach an agreement using different moral reasoning. Such bargaining is best done by explicit moral bargaining for clarity. Moral bargaining is basically a description of how justice is implemented in the real world.

The second part of the book concerns a normative theory of value offering some lucid penetrating discussions of values and desires. In "Toward.a Theory of Intrinsic Value, Harman suggests that a normative notion of intrinsic value needs a notion of "basic intrinsic values" to highlight values being in and of themselves intrinsically valuable. In this essay, he also discusses the difference between something as intrinsically desirable and something as instrumentally desirable which is not intrinsically desirable but merely increase the probability of reaching something intrinsically desirable. In "Intrinsic Value", Harman continues to defend the view of the notion of intrinsic value requiring the notion of basic intrinsic value. This essay he covers instrumental value, something whose value leads to obtaining intrinsic value, and contributory value, something whose value depends upon being a part of a whole. He also addresses distinctive situation. In "Explaining Value", he offers methods to explain why people value something which also explains why something is of value. The methods are basically analysing data from a variety of sources to explain value, namely, answers to trolley problem, double effect, Thomson's Deflection, Foot's positive and negative duties, and even to considerations from evolutionary psychology, wealth maximization, and sociology explanation of morality. In "Desired Desires", Harman presents second-order desire which is a desire with an intention about first order desire.

This work of analytic moral philosophy is highly enlightening and enriching because of its methodical and systematic approaches to issues, as well as its originality. It merits much more attention to it in moral philosophy.