Normativity

Abstract

Thomson’s Normativity is a rich book that plunges with relentlessly detailed argument into a wide array of philosophical issues, only some of which are proprietary to ethics as normally understood. It defends challenging, original theses on most of these topics. I have found it convincing on many points, and unsettling on others on which I thought I had made up my mind. It is one of the most absorbing philosophy books that I have read. I shall of necessity ignore a great deal that is in the book. My focus here will be on one of its subsidiary aims, though I think one dear to Thomson’s heart, which is to undermine the doctrine of consequentialism in ethics by denying it the conceptual resources required for stating it. Her criticism is different from some others that have been offered. Critics as diverse as W.D. Ross and Thomas Nagel have allowed that there could be such a project as maximizing the value of the outcomes brought about by one’s actions; but they have argued that this is not only not what we are morally required to do, but also often something we are required not to do.2 As some have noted, however, this puts the critic in the theoretically awkward position of having to say that we are sometimes not just permitted but required to bring about less good outcomes than we might have done.3 Thomson’s solution, which is not unprecedented but is carried out with far greater subtlety and in far greater detail than in any other discussion I know of, is to argue that consequentialism requires the notion of a possible state of affairs’ being a good one, and that there is no such property as a possible state of affairs’ being, simply, a good one. (More precisely, as she says, it needs for there to be such a thing as a possible world’s being better or worse than another, and she holds that there is no such relation. For simplicity, I shall often stick with the question whether there are good or bad possible states of affairs, and I shall suppress the ‘possible’, which should be understood – though some of my examples of possible states of affairs will be actual ones.) There are, in Thomson’s view, good toasters, good persons, morally good human acts, but no good (or bad) states of affairs. I am unconvinced by her argument; my aim here is to explain some of my reasons.