Comparison and the justification of choice.

• Author: Chang, Ruth
• Position: Symposium: Law and Incommensurability

Suppose two alternatives are incomparable. Does it follow that there can be no justified choice between them? Conventional wisdom has it that the comparability of alternatives is necessary for the possibility of justified choice. After all, if two items cannot be compared, what ground could there be for choosing one rather than the other?(1)

The conventional wisdom is implicit in every account of practical justification according to which the justification of a choice is given by a comparative fact about the alternatives, usually that the chosen alternative is at least as good as the others in t respect. So, for example, choosing to spend the evening preparing tomorrow's lecture rather than watching reruns on television might be justified on the ground that preparing the lecture is better with respect to "prudence" or "worthwhileness." Whatever consideration is deemed relevant to a choice, it standardly is thought that a comparative fact about the merits of the alternatives with respect to that consideration is what justifies choosing one over the others. If there is no such comparative fact, it seems that there can be nothing one rationally ought to choose. Thus the conventional wisdom: The incomparability of alternatives precludes the possibility of justified choice.

Although widely assumed, the conventional wisdom has gone largely unexamined. Recent interest in incomparability, however, has generated a challenge to it. Some philosophers have argued that there are incomparable alternatives--and in some cases that the incomparability is widespread--while insisting that they are not thereby committed to the failure of practical reason where incomparability holds. Practical reason, it is thought, has the resources to justify choice in the face of incomparability, for noncomparative considerations can justify choice. If what justifies choice need not be a comparison, then, it seems, the comparability of the alternatives is not necessary for justified choice.

The challenge to the conventional wisdom takes one of two forms. There are those who seem to admit that comparative facts about the alternatives, if they exist, provide the justification of choice in the first instance, but maintain that if comparative facts run out, noncomparative considerations can step in to justify choice. Joseph Raz, for example, thinks that "the will" can justify choice between incomparable alternatives; if they are incomparable, practical reason favors neither, and so one is justified in doing what one feels like.(2) James Griffin maintains that prudence, as well as legal or moral consensus, helps to "shape" and "extend" the norms that provide the standards according to which we may justifiably choose between morally incomparable alternatives.(3) Thus, although comparisons justify choice in the first instance, where comparison fails, there are further practical resources that can justify waiting in the wings.

Others reject the idea that comparative facts about the alternatives preemptively provide the justification of choice. Comparative facts are either irrelevant to the justification of choice or positively cannot justify choice. Michael Stocker holds that the "concrete" merits of an alternative can justify choosing it over others, whether or not the alternatives can be compared; one might be justified in choosing to read An Instance of the Fingerpost instead of Lord Jim for the particular historical erudition it displays and the particular, suspenseful pleasure it provides, even if the novels are incomparable. Charles Taylor has suggested that "articulation" of goods and a keen sense of both the "shape" of our lives and the way different goods fit within it provide the grounds for choosing one thing over another, not comparisons of the alternatives.(5) "Specificationists" like Elijah Millgrain, Henry Richardson, and David Wiggins maintain that the grounds for choice are given by deliberative specifications of the values at stake, either constrained by or constitutive of one's conception of what really matters.(6) Facts about how the alternatives compare are irrelevant because the justification of choice is given by the specification, not by a comparison.

Elizabeth Anderson has urged that it is not a comparative fact about the alternatives that justifies choosing one over another, but norms of rationality that govern the attitudes it is appropriate to have towards them. So, for instance, she thinks that the justification for choosing to save the life of one's mother rather than to keep a friendship cannot be that saving the life of one's mother is better in some respect; rather, if one is justified in choosing the former option, it is because saving one's mother expresses an appropriate attitude of love towards her. In some cases, Anderson argues, the justification of choice cannot be a comparative fact about the alternatives, because a comparison between certain goods--such as human life on the one hand and money on the other--goes against the very nature of such goods.(7) Steven Lukes makes a similar point about certain choices between alternatives bearing sacred values and those bearing secular values. A monk's choice of celibacy is not justified by a comparative fact about the alternatives open to him but is instead a sacrifice demanded of him by the sacred values involved.(8)

According to these authors, since what justifies choice need not, and in some cases cannot, be a comparison of the alternatives, the comparability of alternatives is not necessary for justified choice. Thus, it is thought, the conventional wisdom is mistaken.

In this Article, I argue that the incomparabilists cannot have it both ways; they cannot both maintain that some alternatives are incomparable and insist that practical reason may nevertheless deliver a justified choice among them. In particular, I defend a view of practical justification according to which a comparative fact about the alternatives determines which alternative one is justified in choosing.(9) Call this view comparativism. If a comparative fact determines justified choice, the comparability of alternatives is necessary to the possibility of justified choice. Thus, if comparativism is true, then so is the conventional wisdom.

We need to ask what it is for something to determine justified choice. It seems plausible to suppose, as opponents of the conventional wisdom seem to, that what justifies choice is what determines that choice as justified. In other words, the justification for choosing x over y determines the choice of x over y as justified. This is such a natural assumption that it is hard to see how it could be doubted. Given this assumption, the question, "What determines justified choice?" becomes the question, "What justifies choice?" Comparativism, on the natural assumption, is the view that a comparative fact about the alternatives provides the justification of choice.

The version of comparativism that embraces the natural assumption is direct; the determination of a justified choice is given directly by the justification of that choice. Defense of direct comparativism, succeeds if it can be shown that the justification of every choice is a comparative fact about the alternatives. I attempt to locate the intuitive appeal of direct comparativism in Part II and examine how far direct comparativism will take us in Part III. As I will suggest, there are some justifications of choice that neither are, nor seem to reduce to, comparisons of the alternatives. But my aim, is not to settle the difficult and controversial question of whether direct comparativism is correct. Rather, I argue that even if direct comparativism fails, comparativism does not, for there is another, indirect, version of comparativism that can be defended. According to indirect comparativism, the natural assumption is mistaken: What determines a choice as justified is not the justification of choice but whatever provides the justifying force of that justification. And the justifying force of any consideration--comparative or not--is itself given by a comparative fact about the alternatives. I explain the distinction between a justification and its justifying force and sketch a defense of indirect comparativism in Part IV. A possible objection is examined in Part V. If indirect comparativism is correct, the conventional wisdom is secured; the comparability of alternatives is necessary to the possibility of justified choice.

1. PRELIMINARIES: CHOICE SITUATIONS, CHOICE VALUES, AND JUSTIFICATION

   A possible general worry about comparativism, in either version, should be put to rest at the outset. This is the thought that, far from needing defense, comparativism is trivially true. It might be thought that comparativism follows from the very nature of choice. After all, choice is essentially for one alternative as opposed to another; if one must choose a dessert, one does not strictly choose the lemon tart if that is all there is on the menu. Choice of one option as opposed to another suggests that the merits of the alternatives must be comparable, for how else can one choose this as opposed to that?

   Although choice involves choosing one thing over something else, it does not follow that choice, let alone justified choice, is determined by facts about how the alternatives compare. At best, choosing one thing over another requires merely that the alternatives be recognized and duly considered. One might choose a life of quiet contemplation, having considered what alternative lives would be like, without that choice having been determined by the comparative facts in the case: the quiet life appeals. If comparativism is to be won, it cannot be won trivially by appeal to this conceptual feature of choice.

   Perhaps comparativism is trivially true given the nature of justification. There is a trivial sense in which comparative facts about the alternatives determine which alternative one rationally ought to...