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Christian Piller, Against Absolute Goodness, by Richard Kraut., Mind, Volume 122, Issue 488, October 2013, Pages 1124–1129, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzu011
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Extract
In thirty brief chapters and six appendices (accessible only to the perfectly sighted), Richard Kraut argues against the idea that ethics and practical thought in general needs absolute goodness. His target is G. E. Moore who said that ‘the only possible reason that can justify any action is that by it the greatest possible amount of what is good absolutely should be realized’ (G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903, p. 153). Against Moore, Kraut claims that absolute goodness is not a reason-providing property; and if it does not connect with reasons it is, at best, useless. At worst, namely if someone takes it to be reason-providing, it misleads. Ethics has to concentrate on what is good for people not on what is good absolutely.
Kraut compares the idea of absolute goodness to the idea of phlogiston. Both are remnants of misdirected worldviews. Goodness talk is not meaningless; it is often simply false. Here is an example. Smoking is bad for the person who smokes. But is at bad absolutely? ‘I believe that we should count “smoking is bad (period)” as meaningful but false’ (p. 42). Any explanation of why one should not smoke has to refer to its effects on one’s health — smoking is bad for the person who smokes — no need to invoke badness. Similarly, pain is bad for the person who suffers it. But is pain bad absolutely? Kraut thinks it is not. Once we have recognized the badness for the sufferer, there is no need to add absolute badness. Doing so would be double counting. Pain, Kraut tells us, ‘has just one kind of disvalue: it is bad for us’ (p. 46). Is it bad to cause (needless) pain? Kraut says that ‘the answer must be no, because otherwise we would be overlooking a vital feature of the situation: injuring or disadvantaging him is precisely what the agent aimed at and achieved. She was not seeking to bring into the universe something bad (period)’ (p. 46). What about pleasant experiences? ‘We can say, not that they are good simpliciter, but that they are good for the person who experiences them’ (p. 51).
