II. A STRAW CHALLENGE

To set the pattern for the replies to Aristotle, Geach and Thomson, let us first address a similar but simpler challenge. This straw challenge holds that there is no such thing as being simply good, because to be ‘good’ is always only to be good as opposed to some alternative or alternatives. A friendly farewell instead of a kick is good; but as opposed to a kiss it is not. Hence there is no such predicate as goodness; to complete the predicate we must specify an alternative. (Or if you like, there is simple goodness, but the only things that have it are things of the form ‘X as opposed to O.’) Commonly, of course, the alternatives we have in mind are understood tacitly.

Causal Hedonism easily survives this challenge, for it agrees with the challenge on every point. Something's causing net pleasure is always its doing so as opposed to this or that. A nickel in Oxfam's bucket (that is, as opposed to none) causes net pleasure; but a nickel rather than a dime does not.Footnote ⁶ In that sense Causal Hedonism insists that goodness is not a complete predicate. There is no such thing as simply being good.

We might pause here to note that partly because causation is relative to alternatives, the truth about the consequences of almost any event we can think of will be a rough generalization over an imperfectly defined class of diverse cases. Regarding any event we might point to, such as Smith's coin toss just the way it happened, the alternatives we have in mind will normally be indefinite, so that ‘the consequences of her toss’ will perforce be a sort of average difference made. And any action or event we deliberate about can itself be realized in various ways, with different results. The coin toss you decide to perform may yield heads or tails. The whole effect of an event conceived in prospect is not an actual state of affairs, but rather an average difference in outcomes (or, if you like, an objective probability).

III. ARISTOTLE

‘Little Lisa was good all morning. Her parents must be good people.’ These two goodnesses seem to differ in at least one abstract way. The parents’ goodness is a property or enduring disposition, or is constituted by properties or enduring dispositions. But Lisa's goodness is only a condition or activity, or is constituted by conditions or activities. Thus ‘good’ may seem to have at least two different senses.

Aristotle was thinking of differences at this level of abstraction when he argued that ‘good’ is homonymous on the grounds that ‘good is said in as many ways as being is said.’ On J. L. Ackrill's reading, Aristotle's point is that ‘is good’ can fall into any of the categories of predication because what grounds or constitutes goodness may fall into any category. Something may ‘be good’ in virtue of what it is (that it is mind or God), or in virtue of its qualities (Callias is just or temperate), or in virtue of its time (the sortie was opportune), or its place, quantity, being-affected, and so on.Footnote ⁷

Aristotle may have thought that the category of goodness would be determined by the subject of the predication – God, Callias, or a sortie. But the challenge for Hedonism may be brought out more vividly if we note that ‘is good’ can fall into different Aristotelian categories even when the grammatical subject seems the same. I look at my hammer and say in admiration, ‘Hammers are such good things!’ I mean hammers are good in the category of substance or what it is. What is good about my hammer is what it is: a hammer rather than, say, a stone. Now I use my hammer all week, and the head never leaves the handle. ‘This hammer is good!’ I say, for it is sturdy. This goodness is constituted by a quality. Now we are building shelves, and I have been training you, my apprentice, to hand me tools just in time. ‘The chisel was late, and the tongs were even worse. But the hammer was good.’ For it was timely. This goodness is constituted by a time, or a time of arrival. Finally, I give unwelcome advice while you make a memorial collage from the tools we used. ‘The level was better where you had it before, and I'd move the pencil up an inch. But the hammer is good; leave it where it is.’ This goodness is constituted by the hammer's place. I have said each time that the hammer is ‘good’, but the things I have said fall into different Aristotelian categories. There is no such thing as a hammer's simply being good; there is only its being good in one or another category (Aristotelian or otherwise). That is the challenge.

But these abstract points do not cut against Causal Hedonism. On the contrary, Causal Hedonism predicts them. For on Causal Hedonism only events can be good, or rather events as opposed to alternative events. Hence on Causal Hedonism a hammer cannot strictly be good, even as opposed to another hammer. Hence Causal Hedonism wants to read the goodness ‘of the hammer’ as the goodness of events associated with the hammer. When it makes sense to say ‘the hammer is good’, that is because we understand which sorts of events associated with the hammer are meant. And different sorts of events pick out different categories. The hammer's being good in the categories of (a) place, (b) quality, and (c) substance, would seem to be the goodness of these events: (A) the hammer's being in this place rather than another now, (B) the hammer's having these qualities rather than others (now or over some interval) and (C) the existence or presence of a hammer as opposed to other things over some wide range of situations. And there is no reason in principle why (A), (B) and (C) cannot be good (or bad) on Causal Hedonism. In this way Causal Hedonism implies that objects can be good in this or that category but cannot be good simply. So that point is no objection to Causal Hedonism.

Still, on Causal Hedonism some things can be simply good. Events-as-opposed-to-other-events can be simply good.

IV. GEACH

Peter Geach points out in ‘Good and Evil’ that (1) to be a good knife is not to be a knife and good, any more than to be a big flea is to be a flea and big, or to be someone's putative father is to be her father and putative. A knife's being a good one is unlike a knight's being a good one or a knish's being a good one. Geach holds more controversially that (2) to be meaningful, ‘good’ needs a general noun, or at least an understood reference to a kind. In other words, ‘there is no such thing as being just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so.’Footnote ⁸

Hedonism has its own reasons to insist with Geach that (1) being a ‘good K’ is not being a K and good. To see why, let us look first at Geach's other point: that (2) there is no such thing as being simply good. Defending Geach on (2), Philippa Foot writes,

If the laugh recognizes a strict absurdity, Causal Hedonism laughs along. For as we have seen, Causal Hedonism finds a strict absurdity in holding that any object is good.

On the other hand, we do sometimes speak of the effects of an object, meaning more than just the effects of its presence on some particular occasion; and so if goodness is about consequences, we might similarly speak of the goodness of objects. Pragmatics might find some sense to make of that.

But then what would we count as the effects of object O? We might count the effects of events associated with the object, selected by the context, as proposed in the previous section. Or if we want a context-independent notion of the effects of an object, we might take them to be (i) the effects of O's having been present, instead of whatever counts as ‘nothing’, at the actual start of O's history; or (ii) the aggregate effects of O's being present instead of ‘nothing’ at the start of each main adventure in O's actual biography; or (iii) the generic effects there are when O rather than ‘nothing’ is present in normal circumstances. Yet each of these conceptions would seem to leave O's effects highly indeterminate, and none seems determinately the right conception.

Granted, the indeterminacies make little difference in some cases. Such objects as Nelson Mandela or a cluster-bomb may be hedonically good or bad on such conceptions. Conceptions (i) and (ii) might sometimes even allow for the hedonic goodness of a scrap of paper. You are in the library near a deadline with no other paper, and that scrap saves your project, as the main adventure in its short life. But it is absurd to think one could learn of such effects just by examining the scrap. Hence even on such conceptions of causation by objects, Causal Hedonism laughs along with Foot's audience.

The idea that objects have consequences plays a role in an argument by Michael Slote. Slote points out that Bentham held that anything is good just insofar as it tends to cause net pleasure. That is the view I have been calling Causal Hedonism. Slote's key objection is that Bentham's view implies the manifest falsehoods that your painting can be a better painting than mine by being more widely seen, and that your knife is a better knife than mine if I stab someone with mine.Footnote ¹⁰

Slote's objection seems to conceive object causation along the lines of (ii) above. Now, such a conception of the consequences of a knife is defensible on grounds of pragmatics if at all. Hence it is defensible only if information about a knife's type-(ii) overall effects has some use – say, in choosing among knives. But Slote's objection shows why that information has no such use. What matters for choosing knives is their qualities, not their histories (nor should the idle future of the unchosen knife count against it for that choice). Hence it is unnatural to read ‘the consequences of the knife’ in the way that Slote's objection requires.

In any case Slote's objection does not touch Causal Hedonism, the theory that to be good is to cause net pleasure. His objection about what makes a good knife or good painting attacks only the view that a ‘good K’ is a K that causes net pleasure. Causal Hedonism implies this view only if being a ‘good K’ is the same as being a K and good. Geach's point (1) is his denial of the latter proposition. Since Geach is right, Slote's objection bypasses Causal Hedonism.

Causal Hedonism's own reason to insist on Geach's point (1) about the logic of ‘good K’ starts from the point that causes net pleasure in so many applications makes no sense as a predicate. When an adjective does not signal a complete predicate, commonly a noun following the adjective will modify the adjective to complete a predicate. For example, the noun in ‘big flea’ specifies a comparison class and thus completes a predicate. The noun in ‘putative father’ specifies an imputation and thus completes a predicate. And a noun after ‘good’ may do similar work. Such a view is suggested, for example, by John Rawls's claim that A is a good K iff:

For it is natural to see this account as deriving from two others: (a) the theory that to be good is to be ‘rational to want’,Footnote ¹² and (b) an account of the specification or modification contributed by the noun. To see (b) alone, remove (a) from Rawls's formula by replacing ‘it is rational to want’ with ‘are good’. (Rawls never endorses (a) or (b).)

Hence it may be that for ‘good’, as for ‘big’ and ‘putative’, the adjective has a way of being supplemented, hence modified, by a noun to complete a predicate. The noun would thus play an adverbial role, like the adverb phrase in ‘good qua K’.

But one wants to know how a Hedonist reading of ‘good K’ could work in detail. Ideally the Hedonist should show that a true account of exactly what the nouns add, conjoined with Hedonism, has the right implications about which sorts of Ks are good Ks. I shall argue only for the more modest point that when we conjoin Hedonism to a rough account of the role of the nouns that is plausible independently of Hedonism, the conjunction has promising resources for picking out the right sorts of Ks as ‘good Ks’. Each step toward an independently plausible view of the nouns reduces the appearance that Hedonism conflicts with the facts, partly because in most cases the noun does much of the work in determining which Ks are good Ks. ‘Good’ may bear a larger share of the burden for phrases like ‘good person’ and ‘good character’. I shall say very little about such difficult and controversial cases. The aim here is only to survive Geach's special challenge, which is most powerful in connection with nouns that pertain to narrow departments of life.

Before we begin, let us recall that Hedonism claims to describe goodness, not the sense or meaning of the word ‘good’. Granted, Causal Hedonism is implausible unless the sorts of things people take as signs of goodness are also mostly signs of the causing of net pleasure. But Causal Hedonism does not imply that regarding something as good means holding that it ‘causes net pleasure’ or even having concepts of causation and pleasure. What does Hedonism imply about what it is like to regard something as good, and about how we can know whether something is good? These two questions are important here, but I shall say very little about them here. They are hard, not least because of the large roles that both sensibility and testimony play in our judgments of goodness. Here I shall simply assume a certain amount of common sense about what causes (or represents) net pleasure in highly simplified cases. And I shall assume that thinking something is good (with or without qualification) does not require an articulate grasp of what goodness is. Now to the import of the nouns.

Rawls's formula suggests several points about the role of the noun in ‘good K’ that seem plausible independently of any particular theory of goodness. The noun says something like ‘as opposed to other Ks’.Footnote ¹³ The noun also, or therefore, says that the goodness being ascribed to the thing is in what we might call the category of properties. That is, being a good K tends to be like having a property, not like being in a passing condition or circumstance. A good K is, as it were, a kind of K. (Compare ‘slow K’. The tortoise is slow on this lap. But if I say, ‘She is a slow tortoise’, I am talking about other slow events – even hypothetical ones. For I might be right even if she is galloping now.) The suggestion is that A is a good K iff the presence or operation of A rather than other Ks would be good in some generic context. What counts as A's presence in a hypothetical context depends of course on the features A firmly has, not on its current context or ephemeral condition.Footnote ¹⁴

Specifically, ‘good K’ seems to mean ‘good as a K’. That seems to mean that A is good in the way that a K is good, or to mean that A's acting as a K is good. To mark the modesty of our aims here, let us give the name ‘The Crude Account’ to the following account of the role of the noun:

Typically the standard scenario will involve a standard role or chain of events against a standard background. For example, the standard role of a knife, at least in my circles, is to cut (or to be used in an effort to cut) food or packaging material under ordinary circumstances. There is no standard role of pebbles, so the Crude Account explains why ‘good pebble’ normally makes no sense.

Let us add that ‘the standard scenario’ signaled by the noun is (KK) the standard scenario for which one thinks about comparative Ks, or (KO) the standard scenario in which it is good that there be a K rather than none – whichever is more salient, given that (KK) and (KO) do not strongly diverge. When they do strongly diverge, the Crude Account leaves ‘good K’ undefined. For example: for ‘earthquake’, (KK) is simply the ordinary case, but (KO) is the extraordinary case that great destruction would be good; hence there is no such thing as a ‘good earthquake’.Footnote ¹⁵ (In section V we shall discuss other nouns for which (KK) and (KO) diverge.)

There are standard scenarios and roles for many kinds or general nouns because our thinking is organized by kinds such as cutting tools, tools, machines, artworks, foods, musicians and bodily organs. These kinds can suggest standard scenarios and roles even for new kinds. And some nouns have roles as it were written in: musician, farmer, day for a picnic.

If we conjoin Causal Hedonism to the Crude Account, the conjunction can explain which knives are good ones, at least to a first approximation. In the standard case, using a sharp strong knife to cut, as opposed to using a dull weak one, causes net pleasure. For it saves time and labor (and frustration and embarrassment); and these effects in turn cause net pleasure in the generic case. So the conjunction says sharpness and strength are among the main qualities that make a knife a good one. Whether the knife is actually used makes no difference.

One might object that even in the standard case the good knife could be so sharp that you do not realize the bird is undercooked, so you eat some and get sick; hence a good knife need not be one that represents net pleasure in the standard case. The reply is that a standard case is like an average. The standard case does not include fowl at all; the standard case has no such details. In the standard case the standard person is cutting the generic thing in the average circumstance. Saying, as I did above, that in the generic case the proximate effects of a sharp strong knife cause net pleasure, is like saying that in a representative sample of real cases resembling the standard case, those proximate effects would on average cause net pleasure. Real cases have numberless details and therefore special quirks and unpredictable long-run effects. But were we to average the real cases, any effects dependent on non-standard features would average out. It is this great simplification that creates a knowable fact about hedonic consequences in connection with our knife: a fact about an artificially simple case.

One might associate Causal Hedonism with the idea that questions about goodness have quantitatively precise answers in principle. But the conjunction of Causal Hedonism with the Crude Account opposes the idea that there is a precise degree to which our good knife is a ‘good knife’. For standard scenarios are vague, and ‘other knives’ is vague. There is no fact of the matter about exactly how felicific our knife as opposed to the general run of other knives would be in the standard scenario. There may, however, be a fact of the matter about whether our knife as opposed to other knives in that scenario would be felicific at all. And that is what counts.

The notion of the role of a K, or the plot of the standard scenario for a K, is vague especially in respect of what we might call its narrowness or breadth. Is the role of a painting (A) to hang in view, or (B) to be viewed in a certain way, or (C) to be seen, or (D) to be seen in a certain way? If the answer is (A), then the Crude Account seems to imply that a fire extinguisher makes a good painting. If the answer is (B), then the Crude Account seems to imply that a painting can be a bad one in virtue of its bad odor. If the answer is (C), the odor is no longer relevant, but a painting might be a better one in virtue of including a good recipe for cheesecake.

If the answer is along the lines of (D), then the conjunction of the Crude Account with Causal Hedonism can do a fairly good job of picking out the good paintings. For a good painting is one such that its playing role (D) – that is, its interacting with us in the kind of way a painting standardly does via being seen – stimulates or entertains (not too baselyFootnote ¹⁶). And under standard conditions, innocent entertainment or mental stimulation causes net pleasure – at least as opposed to the lesser entertainment or stimulation given by a mediocre painting.

Answer (D) may seem too careful. And in a way it is. So long as the item under evaluation is actually a painting, and not a freak painting (with an odor or a great recipe), we can conceive the role of a painting as (A) or (B) or (C) without damage to our conjunction's ability to tell whether it is a good painting. But if we are asked whether a certain freak painting or a non-painting is a good painting, the oddity of the case tells us to be careful about the precise standard role of a ‘painting’.

The Crude Account fits the idea that the phrase ‘good knife’ works by evoking the mental framework, or reusable set of defeasible tacit assumptions about the case at hand, that one uses in thinking about comparative knives – thinking about whether it is now good that there be this knife rather than that. This framework assumes that certain background conditions obtain, and that a certain role is going to be played either by this knife or another. The noun posits those hypotheses.

For kinds that we happen to have had no business with, such as newly unearthed ancient machines, there can still be enough of a standard scenario. If we know from the picture on it that a Hittite curlometer measures the curl of toenails, but we have no idea when or how that might be worthwhile, then the standard scenario is that efficiency and accuracy in measuring curl are the main proximate goods that may be expected from one curlometer as opposed to another. This one hypothesis gets to the heart of the matter; it is enough to give sense to the phrase ‘good curlometer’.

A different kind of problem case includes such abstract nouns as ‘event’, ‘outcome’ and ‘state of affairs’. Geach holds that ‘good event’ makes no sense;Footnote ¹⁷ while Hedonism seems to hold that it does make sense. The reply is that, first, ordinarily when we speak of a ‘good event’ we are understood to mean, say, a good fundraising party or campaign appearance. We do not commonly use ‘event’ in such a way that a pebble's not moving for a minute is an ‘event’. Ordinary conversation, then, affords no direct evidence about whether ‘good event’ makes sense when ‘event’ is meant abstractly. Second, even if the abstract use were common, ‘good event’ in that sense would fail to suggest alternatives, so that Hedonism would not imply that the phrase makes sense by itself. What Causal Hedonism does imply is that it sometimes makes sense to say, ‘It would be good that X happen rather than Y.’

In ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’, Foot has argued that while theories like Hedonism hold that a ‘good outcome’ or ‘good state of affairs’ is one that includes, say, net pleasure, in fact in common usage these phrases mean something quite different (and highly dependent on context).Footnote ¹⁸ The reply is that Hedonism holds that view only for cases when by ‘outcome’ or ‘state of affairs’ we mean the odd sort of outcome that represents nothing beyond itself (and some alternative outcome or state of affairs is understood). And that is rarely or never what we mean in ordinary conversation. Foot is surely right, however, to say that a view like Hedonism cannot be established simply by careful analysis of the common use of ‘good event’, ‘good outcome’, or ‘good state of affairs’. (I hope to address on another occasion Foot's positive proposals about the normal import of the phrases.)

Perhaps what has been said so far is enough to dispose of the idea that Geach's valuable observations about ‘good’ constitute a tour de force against Hedonism. But let us dally over some harder cases before proceeding to Thomson's challenge.

V. HARDER NOUNS

Hedonism aside, the Crude Account may have trouble with nouns that involve conflict, such as ‘good murder weapon’. I said above that the Crude Account leaves ‘good K’ undefined when there is a strong divergence between (KK) the standard scenario for which one thinks about comparative Ks, and (KO) the standard scenario in which it is good that there be a K rather than none. And there is a strong divergence in the case of ‘good murder weapon’. The standard party who thinks about comparative murder weapons is someone contemplating murder; but in her situation it would be better that there be no murder weapon at all. Hence the Crude Account suggests that ‘good murder weapon’ makes no sense. But it does make sense.

To defend the Crude Account or something like it, we might take another page from the book of ‘big’. Phrases such as ‘big flea’ and ‘big house’ suggest a simple picture of the way a noun modifies ‘big’. But consider ‘big field of study’, ‘big news’, ‘big change in tone’ and ‘big numbers’. Here arguably what happens is that after saying ‘in comparison to other Ks’, the noun comments further: ‘If it makes no sense or no currently interesting sense to speak strictly of a K's being bigger than other Ks, let us ask: is there a uniquely obvious and interesting sense that it would make loosely? For example, if we were to pretend that some numbers are greater in spatial magnitude than others, which numbers would those be? If there is an easy answer, then those are the “big numbers”.’ The answer to the noun's question may be determined by our ways of representing or envisioning numbers, so that among negative numbers we may regard the lower ones as bigger numbers. For positive numbers, however, there is no question which ones would have greater volume if numbers had volume; so to say that the phrase ‘big numbers’ involves a metaphor is not to say that we hesitate over it any longer than we hesitate over ‘big dog’. It is not to say that the meaning of ‘big numbers’ is at all underdetermined, at least regarding positive numbers.

Perhaps then a Refined Account of the import of any noun after ‘good’ should begin with the Crude Account and then add that for nouns for which the Crude Account is at a loss, we should conceive a ‘good K’ by analogy with the way the Crude Account addresses the cases it does address, if there is a uniquely obvious way to do that. (Or perhaps the Refined Account is unnecessary because analogical extensions for peripheral cases are implicit in the Crude Account, for that is how all language works. We should be skeptical if someone were to suggest that ‘good K’ does not work that way.)

To apply the Refined Account to ‘good murder weapon’, we might notice that though there is a strong divergence between actual standard scenarios (KK) and (KO) for murder weapons, there seems to be a coincidence between standardly envisioned scenarios (EKK) and (EKO) for murder weapons. The party who standardly thinks about comparative murder weapons is the standard murderer, so the scenario he imagines he is in is (EKK). And a murderer choosing among weapons standardly values a murder weapon over none, so that the situation he presumably or standardly envisions is also (EKO): one in which the presence of a murder weapon rather than none is good. Indeed, he presumably or standardly envisions his situation as one in which a murder (with ease and impunity) is good. If his assumption about his case were correct, then the Crude Account would say that a good murder weapon is one that facilitates quick and quiet murder. So that is what the Refined Account says in fact.

But if we want to conjoin Hedonism with the Refined Account and apply the latter as above, we must ask whether Hedonism can consistently hold that a standard murderer thinks a successful murder would be good. Whether it can depends on whether Hedonism can regard a person's values or aims as her presumptive views about what is good (at least in the absence of other special information about her beliefs about what is good). And that depends perhaps on whether Hedonism allows that wanting something and thinking it good normally or properly or standardly go together (as Hedonism might if sympathy and other sensibility are normally essential to our best available cognition of the pleasure at stake in our options). Anyway we should be surprised if there are not many peripheral cases for ‘good K’, as for ‘big K’. We expect ‘big news’ to show us less about bigness than about the psychology of our grasp of bigness; perhaps we should not expect ‘good murder weapon’ to be any more revealing about goodness.

Other nouns present a special problem for Causal Hedonism. In ‘good guess’, ‘good intentions’, and perhaps ‘good deed’, the nouns seem to hypothesize not just generic circumstances, but also epistemic standpoints. ‘Good strategy’ can be meant in prospect or in retrospect. But unlike rational desirability, the causing of net pleasure is standpoint-independent. Strictly speaking, hypothesizing epistemic standpoints makes no sense on Causal Hedonism.

Nevertheless, it can make sense on Hedonism. For Hedonism has standpoint-relative versions, such as Causal Promise Hedonism: the theory that something is good insofar as it promises to cause net pleasure (roughly, consequences count insofar as they are reasonable to expect). Driving below 40 on some occasion can be good on this view even if by accident 80 would have better results, say by killing young Adolph.

Causal Promise Hedonism is faithful to the idea that what ultimately matters is pleasure. It sees net pleasure as being represented by whatever handles put it within one's causal and cognitive reach. Unlike Causal Hedonism, Causal Promise Hedonism does not peddle invisible handles.Footnote ¹⁹

Causal Promise Hedonism allows us to read the ‘scenario’ mentioned in the Crude Account as involving a perspective or epistemic standpoint.

By making hedonic potentials irrelevant insofar as they are unknowable, Causal Promise Hedonism makes goodness more knowable. But standpoint-relativity blocks simple goodness in a new way, for there are significantly different standpoints on most events we talk about. (Morality might center on options’ goodness from the deliberator's standpoint, perhaps presuming the cognitive resources that come with a good character or that come with maturity, sobriety and basic respectful engagement with others – the beginnings of theoretical reason for us, especially about human affairs.) Still, most differences in standpoint will hardly matter for the question whether a genocide is bad, nor for the question whether it is normally good to use a clean rather than a rusty knife.Footnote ²⁰

A strength of standpoint-relative Hedonism is that it can let tacitly hypothesizing shade more smoothly into not hypothesizing a standard scenario. If I am looking for a knife to chop carrots and you say, ‘This is good’, there is little difference between our hypothesizing tacitly or not at all the standard case and standpoint (for knives or chopping-knives). For we are in a representative instance. Unlike the generic scenario, any actual scenario has details that have unpredictable consequences; but standpoint-relative Hedonism discounts these (partly because what is reasonable to expect depends on what policies of judgment make for good thinking, and good policies ignore some knowable details).

Another potential strength of standpoint-relative Hedonism is that by letting us read nouns after ‘good’ as hypothesizing not just circumstances but also epistemic standpoints, it might let us account for ‘good murder weapon’ without appeal to metaphor. For perhaps the standard murderer as such does not or cannot appreciate the superior goodness of failing in his attempt at efficient unpunished murder. Given his stunted epistemic standpoint, a good murder weapon might be good.Footnote ²¹

Let us briefly note two other standpoint-relative versions of Hedonism.

Causal Promise Hedonism cannot explain why it is good that my speedometer's hand stay below the 40; for I know the hand does not affect my speed. Another theory can, using the notion of agent causation. Proxy Hedonism holds that something is good insofar as in causing it, one would (so far as one can reasonably tell) be causing net pleasure. In keeping the hand below the 40, I am keeping my speed below 40. The hand is a practical proxy for the speed. On old Causal Promise Hedonism, the goodness of an action can depend on whether an action includes the intention to do it, or the motivation, or the preparation. But on Proxy Hedonism these boundary questions matter less; for on this theory the side effects of an action's antecedents can count toward the goodness of the action itself, as the side effects of the foot motion by which I keep the hand below 40 make it good that the hand stay below 40. A possible drawback is that Proxy Hedonism makes goodness agent-relative,Footnote ²² and so may have difficulty with the goodness of kinds of things nobody causes.Footnote ²³ And it cannot easily handle our next problem cases, which will lead us to our last relative Hedonism.

Consider good readings on the barometer, promising nice weather; or a good application (from the standpoint of the hiring committee). An account of ‘good K’ should fit these. Nor does indicative goodness need special nouns such as ‘readings’. The speedometer's staying below 40 is good even from the standpoint of the passenger. And to vary an example of Thomson's: ‘It's good that you have purple spots’, said the doctor; ‘it means your body is fighting back.’Footnote ²⁴ Earlier I said, ‘The hammer was good’, meaning that its delivery was timely. Part of what is good about a timely delivery or a good painting or deed can be what it shows in the maker, and what that promises in turn.

Another relative Hedonism can handle these cases and all the others discussed above. Promising Hedonism holds that to be good is to promise net pleasure. Roughly, something is good insofar as if it happens, then there is more net pleasure than if it does not, so far as one can reasonably tell.Footnote ²⁵ This theory prefers evidential over causal decision theory. Whether that is a moral advantage is debated.Footnote ²⁶

There are more and perhaps better versions of Hedonism, but they need not detain us. The differences among versions play no further role in our discussion. The main aim has been to show that Hedonism has promising resources for saving the phenomena about what it is to be a ‘good K’ even in hard cases. Hedonism offers rich matter to be worked by the nouns; for it captures a wide variety of interests and concerns, it can allow for qualification by epistemic standpoints, and it can allow for indicative goodness.

VI. THOMSON

In ‘Goodness and Utilitarianism’, Judith Thomson adopts Geach's conclusion that, as she puts it, ‘there is no such property as goodness.’ But she rejects the view of the logic of ‘good’ that grounded Geach's conclusion, holding instead that reference to a kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to make sense of ‘good’. Only the context shows whether or not by ‘a good knife’ you mean a good butter knife for company. To be ‘good’ or to be a ‘good K’ is only to be so in some way specified by the context.Footnote ²⁷

Thomson identifies two broad classes of way. The first is specified by prepositional phrases: good to eat, good at dancing, and so on. The second class of way is specified by names of qualities such as loyalty, serenity, and wholesomeness. The relation these qualities are supposed to bear to the word ‘good’ is complex. The main story is that for some nouns K, such as ‘person’ and ‘action’, being a ‘good K’ means having one such quality, or means having another, or others – whichever ones the context specifies.Footnote ²⁸ Let us discuss Thomson's second class of way first.

Thomson is right that ‘good K’ is often vague and susceptible to modification by the context. But allowing modification by context is not the same as being vague. Verbal and non-verbal modifiers can modify clear adjectives. Out of context we understand that a ‘good knife’ is sharp; but discussing butter knives we understand otherwise. Given the picture of the role of the nouns set out in the previous section, Hedonism is compatible with the vagueness and flexibility we find in ‘good K’. For the standard scenario signaled by any noun is vague, and the context can signal additional or overriding specifications. There is no mystery in this kind of flexibility, and no particular difficulty for Hedonism.

Consider further what a simple theory like Causal Hedonism implies even about knives. There are various respects in which knives can be good ones, on Causal Hedonism. Knives’ hedonic virtues include sharpness, rigidity, non-stickiness and elegant appearance. Each of these qualities is felicific in different ways, by different kinds of causal channel. Identifying these hedonic virtues is easy. We can even weigh them against each other, grossly. But fine general commensurations among them are impossible in principle. How much more felicific is this increment of sharpness than that increment of rigidity, in a knife, in general? On the account of the role of the nouns developed above, the answer depends on the relevant generic scenario, which is both vague and sensitive to context. Hence Causal Hedonism says the specific virtues of knives are not perfectly commensurable. So the lack of perfect commensurability among knifely virtues is no objection to Causal Hedonism.

The generic scenario signaled by ‘person’ is vaguer and more sensitive to context. Like knives, people have many different kinds of quality that represent pleasure in different ways and in different generic contexts: beauty, honesty, skills. It is much easier to list than to commensurate these hedonic virtues. So Hedonism is not embarrassed by the fact that there is much more to be said about who is a good person in this or that respect and context than about who is a good person simply.Footnote ²⁹

Thomson's other ways of being good are given by prepositional phrases. She offers the following list:

Now, one would expect a prepositional phrase of this sort to qualify its adjective by a certain limitation in scope. But if Thomson were making only the point that while an object or person cannot be simply good, it might yet be good in a certain specified respect – or its playing a certain specified role might be good – then her point would be no challenge to Hedonism. Hedonism itself insists on all that. Rather, if this list represents a real challenge, the challenge must be that Hedonism cannot handle the details. How can any one account of goodness fit both ‘good with anchovies' and ‘good with children’? Here ‘good’ can seem flatly ambiguous.

But the truth about ‘good’ can be simpler. Most of the phrases on Thomson's list apply mainly to objects or persons, not events. We have seen above that especially in using ‘good’ with objects or persons we commonly advert to standard courses of events in generic scenarios. Now if ‘good’ is ambiguous, then the phrases ‘with children’ and ‘with anchovies’ flag different senses of ‘good’ by evoking very different kinds of scenario, with different kinds of plot. Changing the object of the preposition changes the whole story. But once we grant that the phrases evoke different scenarios, the simpler analysis is that rather than flagging different senses of ‘good’, the phrases qualify ‘good’ by positing those scenarios, so that there need not be different senses of ‘good’ after all. Pizza is good ‘with anchovies’ iff the eating of pizza in the generic case is good with rather than without anchovies. Joe is good ‘with children’ iff his interacting with children in the generic case is good. Jane is good ‘at swimming’ if she can do good swimming. The different flavors of goodness – tastiness, usefulness, skill – reflect very different broad types of scenario. When we conjoin Hedonism with these independently plausible analyses of the prepositional modifiers, the conjunctions do not fail grossly to pick out the right babysitters or foods. Hence, while there may be puzzles about fine points, Hedonism has no apparent difficulty with the kinds of diversity we find in the bulk of Thomson's list.Footnote ³¹

But one line on the list stands out from the others: ‘good for England, Smith, the tree in Jones’ backyard’. (While all the other phrases apply mainly to objects or persons, these three commonly apply to states of affairs, actions, or other events.) This line suggests a special challenge. For while Hedonism is associated with the doctrine that to be good for Smith is to cause Smith's net pleasure,Footnote ³² surely what is good for the tree does not represent its net pleasure. ‘Good for Smith’ and ‘good for the tree’ seem parallel, but Hedonism cannot acknowledge the parallel. That is the implicit challenge.Footnote ³³

Is Hedonism committed to the doctrine that to be good for Smith is to represent Smith's net pleasure?Footnote ³⁴ If Hedonism needs a plain proof, and if the least unpromising strategies for plain proof use the doctrine, then Hedonism needs the doctrine. Hedonism needs a plain proof if its implications are radically out of step with common sense. But if Hedonism's implications are not so radical, then Hedonism has no such need for the doctrine.

Hedonism does not imply that to be good for Smith is to represent her net pleasure. Or rather, whether it implies that doctrine depends entirely on what we actually mean by ‘for Smith’ when we say something is ‘good for Smith’. If we actually mean something like ‘apart from any ultimate implications outside Smith’, with just the right understanding of ‘ultimate’, then Hedonism implies the doctrine. But if we do not also use ‘for X’ in this way when X is a plant, then the premiss of the challenge is false. The premiss was that what we actually mean by ‘for Smith’ and by ‘for the tree’ run parallel.

Hedonism may be thought to imply that the representing of Smith's net pleasure and the representing of Jones's net pleasure are important concepts for good deliberation because they are indispensable columns in good calculative practical accounting. Hedonism would thus imply that we do or should have a common phrase for such columns – presumably the phrases ‘good for Smith’ and ‘good for Jones’.

But to estimate the mean kinetic energy of the molecules in your body, you do not first estimate the energy of each molecule. Similarly, it is far from obvious that the analogous ‘calculative’ approach to goodness is often a reasonable approach to estimating the goodness of one's options, if goodness is what Hedonism says it is. Recall that the main hedonic implications of many options are through their implications regarding one's character and relationships, which in turn help determine the quality of one's future decision-making. Further, deliberating by estimating the ultimate hedonic implications for each party cannot be a good general method, because it cannot be done for each action, since each calculation is itself many actions. For most actions, a careful ‘calculation’ would displace or disrupt actions of similar or greater importance.Footnote ³⁵ Hence Hedonism should not be taken to imply that a phrase for ‘representing Smith's net pleasure’ is in common use.

A proper exploration of ‘good for X’ is beyond the scope of the present article, but a few brief comments can sketch the lay of the land. For different uses of ‘good for X’ suggest many different readings of ‘for X’. In some uses it seems that (1) to be ‘good for X’ is to represent X; or in other words, to be good on the hypothesis that X is the main nodal good that can be represented. Thus tenure is good for your peace of mind; a nine iron is good for distance; Smith is good for a laugh; and for a healthy lawn, mulching is good. Also, (2) students sometimes say that an action is right or good ‘for Smith’, meaning that it is good from her standpoint (though they underestimate her ability to reason to new opinions). Perhaps ‘for X’ normally tends to privilege X's standpoint. Also, (3) something's being good for X can mean that X's getting it would be good. Allotting sledgehammers to the work team, you say ‘The big one is good for Smith’, for she is the strongest. Also, (4) to be good for X can be to represent goods-for-X – that is, to represent X's having or receiving goods. Here by ‘goods’ I mean things such that their presence or one's having them is normally good, in abstraction from the point that my having it might mean you lack it. If we are talking about gymnastics, then to be good for Smith is to represent her ability or her victory (without the strict implication that her ability or victory is good, or good for her, in any further way); if we are talking about tax law, to be good for Smith is to represent her wealth; if we are talking about moral training, to be good for Smith can be to represent her virtue. If our topic is intrinsic goods, to be good for Smith is to represent her getting intrinsic goods; but Hedonism does not imply that we talk much about intrinsic goods as such.Footnote ³⁶ In the same sense, perhaps, a regular scraping is good for your sailboat in that it gives her qualities or conditions that are generically good. Here the relevant sort of generalizing would seem to depend partly on the kind we have in mind.

Of these four readings of ‘for X’, at least (2), (3), and (4) are familiar for ‘for Smith’, and at least (3) and (4) are familiar for ‘for the tree’. Readings (1), (2), and (4), in conjunction with Hedonism, each arguably can make strong roots ‘good for the poison ivy’.Footnote ³⁷ Hence it is at least not obvious that there are real parallels intolerable to Hedonism between being good for Smith and being good for a plant.

The last point we shall consider from Thomson is her claim that as there is no plain good, so there is no plain better (though there is bigger without plain big). She supports this claim by an example. ‘Which is better, Russell's Theory of Descriptions or chocolate? . . . It's a crazy question.’Footnote ³⁸

Causal Hedonism agrees that it is a crazy question. It is crazy if read strictly as comparing a theory with a stuff, given that such entities strictly cannot cause anything. And it is crazy if read more charitably as comparing events, because it does not say or even suggest what events to compare. The discovery of chocolate versus the invention of the theory? Eating chocolate after dinner versus using Russell's theory at school? As opposed to eating and using what? Causal Hedonism can plausibly hold that, in general, (eating) chocolate is simply better than (eating) candy corn, even though we do not specify just how much is eaten, the state of the eater, whether she has read Strawson, and what the alternative is. For we understand that we are to compare eating the same amounts of each, in the same circumstances, against the same alternative or against each other. Thus we have something to compare. But no such understanding is available when we are asked, ‘Is chocolate better than Russell's Theory of Descriptions?’ That question does not say what to compare, and so it poses no problem.