On Value Pluralism,Its Implications,and the Nature of Philosophy

The Meaning of Value Pluralism

Let me begin by saying that my understanding of value pluralism is quite similar in many respects to that expressed by Talisse (2015) in his critique, and I agree with him that “incommensurability” among different values is certainly a “sine qua non” of value pluralism. In fact, this is why, in discussing the meaning of value pluralism in my book, I state very clearly that, whereas

conflicts among values are recognized as commonplace in much of philosophical, social scientific, and ordinary discourse . . . more unsettling, and perhaps much more subversive, is the pluralist idea that many of these conflicting values can also turn out to be incommensurable with one another. (Spicer, 2010, pp. 20-21)

As I note, consistent with Talisse’s view of the matter, “what is meant by incommensurability among values is that there is no single criterion to which we might appeal in order to resolve value conflicts in a fully rational manner” (p. 21).

In light of this, and also the fact that I have consistently defined value pluralism in precisely this fashion in my writings for well over more than a decade now (see, for example, Spicer, 2001), I must admit to being a little confused as to why Talisse (2015) would wish to claim that I deny this, that I think that value pluralism is “merely the claim that values can clash” (p. 5), and that I “have not grasped what [value pluralism] is” (p. 7). I can only conclude either that I am not the only one confused here or, perhaps, as seems far more likely, that, notwithstanding his somewhat scathing critique of my work, Talisse has actually never found the time to read any of it, apart perhaps from my short rejoinder to Overeem and Verhoef (Spicer, 2014), in which I will readily concede that I mention incommensurability only briefly. If the latter is indeed the case, then, I thank Talisse for the opportunity here to clarify my views regarding this issue. However, may I also humbly suggest that, in evaluating a rejoinder to a critique of an author’s work, in the interests of fairness as well as sound scholarship, it might not be a bad idea to be at least somewhat familiar with that work before putting one’s angry pen to paper.

Moreover, I must take some issue here with Talisse when he asserts that many of those “who are attracted to pluralism . . . distance themselves from Berlin’s doctrines” (p 3). William Galston (2009) writes, for example, of “Berlin’s enduring contribution to moral and political thought” (p. 98). George Crowder (2004), in critically assessing “Berlin’s achievement,” argues that Berlin will “continue to be read” because of “his account of the conceptual roots of totalitarianism, his highlighting of value pluralism and its implications, and his characteristic approach to the history of ideas” (p. 188). John Gray (1996) writes of his own “enormous intellectual debts” to Berlin (p. viii) and argues that Berlin’s value pluralism, with its “implications for moral and political life of the incoherence of the very idea of perfection,” represents a “unique and permanent achievement” (p. 168). If this is what Talisse means by to “distance” oneself from another’s “doctrines” or ideas, many scholars, including myself, would more than welcome a similar fate.

I must also part from Talisse when he writes of value pluralism that its “distinctive claim . . . is that there are certain value conflicts that are impossible to ameliorate” (p. 5). Although this may obviously be true of certain more tragic value conflicts, as portrayed, for example, in the novel Sophie’s Choice, it is quite clear that Berlin believed it perfectly possible to ameliorate others. In fact, as Berlin (1992) stated the matter, collisions of values, “even if they cannot be avoided, can be softened” (p. 17). As he put the matter,

Claims can be balanced, compromises can be reached . . . so much liberty and so much equality; so much for sharp moral condemnation, and so much for understanding a given human situation; so much for the full force of the law, and so much for the prerogative of mercy; for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, sheltering the homeless. Priorities, never final and absolute, must be established. (Berlin, 1992, p. 17)

“The best that can be done, as a general rule,” Berlin (1992) argued, “is to maintain a precarious equilibrium that will prevent the occurrence of desperate situations, of intolerable choices” (pp. 17-18), but he also noted that this will always be “an uneasy equilibrium, which is constantly threatened and in constant need of repair” (p. 19). Berlin’s general advice here is important, to my mind, because, as I indicated in my book, it strongly intimates the essentially political character of the way in which societies should deal with conflicts among incompatible and incommensurable values or conceptions of the good. In fact, Berlin (1979) explicitly argues that “the reality of political questions presupposes a pluralism of values . . . recognition of which is incompatible with a technocratic or authoritarian everything-is-either-an-indisputable-end-or-a-means, monistic structure of values” (pp. 151-152).

The Implications of Value Pluralism

Talisse, of course, will have none of this. He argues, as did Overeem and Verhoef (2014) in their original critique of my work, that value pluralism has “no prescriptive entailments” whatsoever and is, to use his words, “prescriptively barren” (Talisse, 2015, p. 8). He takes my failure to accept this point as evidence, somehow, that I must be “confused” (p. 10). However, setting aside any possible confusion on my own part, the real issue here is that, as Talisse himself acknowledges, not all philosophers agree with him that value pluralism is prescriptively barren. For example, Galston (2004) noted some years back, in an exchange with Talisse, that, even “by itself, value pluralism functions as what lawyers would call a principle of estoppal: No political or moral argument that denies the truth of value pluralism can stand” (pp. 144-145). As such, according to Galston, “this negative argument does a great deal of work in the real-world, because many popular arguments tacitly or explicitly endorse premises that contradict value pluralism” (p. 145). Likewise, Crowder (2002), as part of his broader justification for his own particular brand of liberal pluralism, draws on Berlin’s ideas to argue that “the acceptance of pluralism helps to undermine any temptation to utopianism and its consequences” (p. 97). Crowder (2004) finds persuasive the argument that “pluralism implies the impossibility of political perfection” and “hence . . . the need for a politics which accommodates and manages the imperfectibility of human life rather than a politics which strives impossibly to transcend it” (p. 144).

These comments by Galston and Crowder lend support to my own view, expressed in my earlier rejoinder, that “the normative implications of value pluralism taken alone are somewhat limited and mainly negative,” but “this does not mean they are negligible” (Spicer, 2014, p. 1013). Moreover, Crowder’s observation here that value pluralism implies “the need for a politics which accommodates and manages the imperfectability of human life” closely parallels my own views regarding the nature of politics, at least as we have historically understood it, and its relationship to value pluralism. It expresses precisely the same type of anti-utopianism that is conveyed in Bernard Crick’s (1993) observation (which I quote in my book) that “we cannot through politics grasp for an absolute ideal” (p. 15).

However, in rereading my original rejoinder, I must admit that, in owning up to and defending my liberal values in response to Overeem and Verhoef’s critique, I may not have been sufficiently clear as to what my own views are regarding the relationship between value pluralism and politics, as opposed to my views on liberalism. As a point of clarification, therefore, let me emphasize that my own particular argument that value pluralism is best served by politics rather than violence or force, unlike those of philosophers such as Galston or Crowder, is not meant to endorse any particular set of political doctrines or institutions, be they liberal, conservative, or socialist. In this regard, my argument, which I readily admit is not terribly original, draws as much on my reading of Stuart Hampshire as it does on my reading of Berlin. This is why, as I argue in my earlier rejoinder, although “many of us recognize and appreciate the value of settling disputes by argument rather than by force,” there is no “universal set of just procedures or universal rules for political discourses that are available to resolve the value conflicts that arise among us” and “the very character of the procedures, which have evolved within a given society at a given time, is inevitably contingent upon its particular historical experience” (Spicer, 2014, p. 1016).

In advancing his critique against me, Talisse, like Overeem and Verhoef, places a great deal of weight here on the idea that it is an error to try and derive an ought statement from an is statement. However, as I made clear in my earlier rejoinder, it is not at all obvious to me that, in fact, I make any such error. As I clearly write there, “my statement that value pluralism provides a more truthful account of our moral experience than monism both in our private lives and in government,” while “certainly in part an empirical statement about what we experience or what we believe in moral matters,” is also, “assuming the validity of our moral experience . . . a statement that, at least implicitly for us, carries with it certain normative implications in regard to how we should think and act” (Spicer, 2014, p. 1012). These implications include for me, as a value pluralist, what Bernard Williams (1978) once termed “a sensibility to moral costs” (p. 65) and, as noted earlier, a resistance to utopianism. Part of the confusion that Talisse sees here may arise perhaps because I was not sufficiently explicit that when I used the word “truthful” in the above statement, I was using this word, perhaps a little too cleverly, to refer to what is, at least for me, at the same time both factually and morally truthful. If that is the case, then, I again thank Talisse for the opportunity to clarify my views.

The foregoing discussion relates to the “fact-value distinction” that I had also mentioned here and with which Talisse takes some umbrage. In this regard, I fully agree with him when he says that the “is/ought error,” discussed above, and the fact–value distinction are separate ideas. However, although separate, they are not unrelated ideas (Dodd & Stern-Gillet, 1995) and, as Talisse is fully aware, they are often discussed together as a matter of course by philosophers and political theorists. In fact, as Niels Nijsingh and Marcus Düwell (2009) state the matter, despite the differences between these ideas, they “are generally mentioned in the same breath” (p. 80).

However, even, as is quite possible, were I mistaken here and Talisse correct in his charge that I have not fully understood the issue of the “is/ought error,” then, perhaps, I can take at least some solace in the fact that I am not alone. As Berlin (1969) wrote more than six decades ago in a footnote,

The relations of factual beliefs to moral attitudes (or beliefs)—both the logic and psychology of this—seems to need further philosophical investigation. The thesis that no relevant logical relationship exists, e.g. the division between fact and value attributable to Hume, seems to me to be implausible, and to point to a problem, not to its solution. (p. xii, Note 1)

Stuart Hampshire (1989), in a more definitive manner, argues, quite contrary to Talisse, that, in his view, “there is no unbridgeable gap between so-called descriptive expressions and so-called prescriptive expressions” (p. 96). In other words, for some philosophers at least, matters here are not quite as cut and dried as Talisse claims.

The Nature of Philosophy

Turning to the question of the nature of philosophy, Talisse sharply rebukes me for suggesting, in my earlier rejoinder, that the argument that I set forth in my book might be viewed as a form of what Richard Rorty terms edifying philosophy, rather than systematic philosophy, and he argues that my attempt to do so simply demonstrates that I just do “not have sufficient command of the philosophical materials” that I am “attempting to wield” (p. 11). This is because, as Talisse states very emphatically, “no one interested in neo-pragmatist edification should embrace value incommensurability” (p. 11). Notwithstanding Talisse’s strongly expressed view here, however, I would argue that Rorty (2007), a noted neopragmatist himself, seems to do precisely this when, in advancing his idea of a secular form of “polytheism,” he observes that

you are a polytheist if you think that there is no actual or possible object of knowledge that would permit you to commensurate and rank all human needs . . . To be a polytheist in this sense . . . all you need to do is abandon the idea that we should try to find a way of making things hang together, which will tell all human beings what to do with their lives, and tell all of them the same thing. (p. 30)

Moreover, Rorty states here, specifically, that “Isaiah Berlin’s well-known doctrine of incommensurable human values is, in my sense, a polytheistic manifesto” (p. 30).

Furthermore, Talisse’s critique of my argument hinges on a questionable presumption that all moral and political arguments in philosophy should consist solely of logical entailments. Moral reasoning, as I point out in my book (Spicer, 2010), is a form of practical reasoning or deliberation and, to borrow Hampshire’s (1949) words,

If the procedure of practical deliberation does not conform, either in its intermediate steps or in the form of its conclusions, with any forms of argument acknowledged as respectable in logical text-books, this is a deficiency of the logical text-books . . . Arguments may be, in the ordinary and wider sense, rational, without being included among the types of argument which are ordinarily studied by logicians. (p. 470)

Moreover, Talisse’s view of moral and political argument in philosophy runs exactly counter to Berlin’s argument that what we have come to call philosophical questions are precisely those that, in the final analysis, cannot be settled by the methods of either science or logic. As Berlin (1979) writes, it is in the nature of such questions that

it is not only that we may not know the answers to [these] questions, but that we are not clear how to set about to answer them—where to look—what would constitute evidence for an answer and what would not . . . we are puzzled from the outset, that there is no automatic technique, no universally recognized expertise, for dealing with such questions. We discover that we do not feel sure how to set about clearing our minds, finding out the truth, accepting or rejecting earlier answers to these questions. Neither induction (in its widest sense of scientific reasoning), nor direct observation (appropriate to empirical enquiries), nor deduction (demanded by formal problems) seems to be of help. (pp. 145-146)

Such questions, some of which “in their very essence involve value judgments,” remain, as Berlin (1979) puts it, “obstinately philosophical . . . unable or unwilling to emerge by either the empirical or the formal door” (pp. 147).

Furthermore, as Berlin (1979) sees it, because philosophy addresses those questions that cannot be answered solely by means of science or logic, philosophy can only exist in a world “where ends collide” (p. 149). In other words, philosophy, in the sense that Berlin views the subject, presupposes the very value pluralism that Talisse so glibly dismisses as “prescriptively barren.” This is because, as Berlin (1979) argues, in “a society, dominated by a single goal there could in principle only be arguments about the best means to attain this end—and arguments about means are technical, that is, scientific and empirical in character” rather than philosophical (p. 149).

This is not to claim that all philosophers, least of all Talisse, would endorse Berlin’s views on the nature of their field. However, when one considers Berlin’s views, along with Rorty’s distinction between systematic and edifying philosophy, one can only conclude that the nature of philosophy itself is yet one more issue, in addition to those discussed above, that is not nearly as settled as Talisse would have us all believe, but rather is an issue about which respected philosophers can and do disagree. In other words, as Berlin himself states the matter, “what philosophy is, is itself a philosophical question” (Berlin & Jahanbegloo, 1991, p. 24).

Conclusion

In conclusion, to use the language of the logician that Talisse would seem eager to have all of us use, most, if not all, of the substantive arguments that he advances against me derive from premises that are contested by respected scholars within his own field. There is, of course, nothing wrong per se with basing arguments on contestable premises. Most of us do it all the time, and it is one of the reasons why we argue with each other so much. However, I must admit I find Talisse’s view of what constitutes proper philosophical argument, at least as expressed here in his critique, overly narrow and restrictive and, were this view universally shared by all philosophers, I would be more than pleased, as he suggests, to leave “moral philosophy to the professionals” (p. 12) and to advise my colleagues in public administration to do much the same. This is because if the arguments of philosophers, and the prescriptions for practical action they offer, were limited to logical entailments, then it is not clear that philosophy would have very much to offer that would be interesting or relevant to the practice of public administration or, for that matter, to practical life in general. Fortunately, from my reading of philosophy over the years, this does not appear to be the case. In fact, the irony here, perhaps, is that if Talisse himself had adhered strictly to the rules of argument he so zealously prescribes for others in his critique, he would arguably never have been able to make some of the more interesting and significant contributions to political philosophy and theory over the course of his career that he has.