The Objectivity of Value

I. Issues in Metaethics

When we ask whether "values" are "objective," what are we asking about? What is at stake? The agendas of different questioners are varied, and the issues are seldom entirely clear or explicit. When issues about the "objectivity of values" are raised by people with certain kinds of political motives, one typical aim is simply the short-term legitimation or delegitimation of certain kinds of rhetoric in certain limited argumentative or political contexts. Sometimes the assertion that there are "objective" values (or even "objective truth") is merely a crude rhetorical device used on behalf of dogmatic and intolerant individuals who see themselves as courageous defenders of "The Right" and view anyone who questions what they believe in as enemies of "What is Right." But this superficial ploy works, when it works at all, only by focusing attention on self-answering metaquestions (about whether there is anything "right" at all, and whether one should try to be on its side), thus distracting attention from the real issues, which are whether what they believe really is true, whether they have any good reasons for believing it, and whether any truth at all could possibly warrant the dogmatic and intolerant spirit in which they act in the name of what they believe.

Sadly, the ploy often succeeds at least to this extent, that their confused opponents are led to think that in order to resist dogmatism they must challenge it directly on the rhetorical terrain it has marked out. Thus they think they have to reject the thesis that values are "objective," and this has attracted them to extreme skeptical or nihilistic theories according to which any assertion of the objectivity of values is nothing but a rhetorical device used by dogmatists representing entrenched power structures, whose only possible use is to enforce uniformity of opinion, or exclude marginalized interests, or suppress legitimate questions about existing relations of power. The evident iconoclasm of such theories (which may be "subversive" even to the point of showing contempt for all standards of intelligibility) perhaps makes them seem like suitable vehicles for radical questioning of everything that exists or is accepted. In fact, however, these theories merely deprive us of the capacity to raise meaningful questions or objections regarding anything. They are therefore very well suited to express the spirit of some of the pretentious, hyperintellectualistic, self-deceptive, and quietistic forms that political radicalism has fashionably assumed during the left's period of weakness, confusion, and despair at the end of the twentieth century.

When analytical philosophers in the twentieth century have raised questions about the objectivity of values, their interests have often had little in common with these. They are often motivated by metaphysical or epistemological concerns about what there is, and how it is known--and therefore whether and how claims about values can be understood to be about what is genuinely real or what is knowable about the real. Their questions are about the psychology of human motivation and how a naturalistic understanding of it can be integrated into our understanding of practical reasoning. The questions they raise fall under a distinct variety of different headings. There are, to begin with, metaphysical questions about whether terms like "good" refer to real properties of things--properties as real as those talked about by physics, for example. Then there are epistemological questions, about whether there is, or could be, such a thing as knowledge, or even true beliefs about what is good or has value. There are also semantic questions about whether what are formally or grammatically assertions about values, such as "pleasure is good," are really assertions having truth values, or are better understood instead as expressions of attitude or emotion, or as commands or exhortations, which should no more be considered as having truth values than shouted expletives or sentences in the imperative mood.

In this context, the view that there are "objective" values, about which true assertions can be made, is called realism; ¹ the thesis...