Having looked at the way we commonly make value judgments and distinguishing it from the formal economic way we make judgments (which reduces everything to one value: utility), Elizabeth Anderson believes that the common sense way is far superior because it allows for a much wider range of values. The short coming is that so far no one has ever elucidated a theory of how common sense valuing is done and so there is no formal rational or critical theory to articulate the much wider range of human values. The weakness of the standard theory of utility is that “utility” is the catch all phrase that is supposed to capture all value and make all value commensurable; that is comparable. But as common sense would suggest not all values can be made commensurate therefore monistic theories of value (theories that reduce all value to 1 or a few) such as utilitarianism are sorely lacking in practicality, common sense, and human expressivity. Anderson labels such theories that have a limited number of values as “consequentialist theories”. She contrasts these theories with her own which she calls “the expressive theory” of rational action and value.
“The expressive theory of rationality distinguishes between two different sorts of ends for the sake of which we act. [1] First, there are the people, animals, communities, and things toward which we direct our actions. These are the things it makes sense for a person to care immediately about, independent of its making sense for her to care about any other particular thing. Call these intrinsic goods. Intrinsic goods are the immediate objects of our intrinsic valuations….These are the things we rationally value in themselves.
“Extrinsic goods,…are goods which it makes sense for a person to value only because it makes sense for her to value some other particular thing. The value of an extrinsic good depends upon the value of something else, in that one’s rational valuation of it is mediated by one’s rational valuation of something else.” Both intrinsic and extrinsic goods are agent-centered values, meaning a particular person must value them and the goods are themselves particular – not universal. “Universals—the standards for rational valuation—provide the grounds for our valuations, not their objects.” The universal aspect of value legitimizes a particular mode of valuation based on socially accepted norms.
[2] “The second kind of end for the sake of which we act is our final aims or goals, the states of affairs we seek to bring about in our actions. These ends are contrasted with means, which are the actions and states of affairs that are rationally desired or chosen because they tend to bring about some other states of affairs (our ultimate goals).” The distinction between intrinsic goods and final aims is important because they are often equated in consequentialist theories. “According to the rational attitude theory of value, states of affairs, whether they be final aims or mere means, are for the most part only extrinsically valuable. It makes sense for a person to value most of them only because it makes sense for a person to care about the people, animals, communities, and things concerned with them. This follows from the fact that our basic evaluative attitudes—love, respect, consideration, affection, honor, and so forth—are non-propositional. They are attitudes we take up immediately toward persons, animals, and things, not toward facts. Because to be intrinsically valuable is to be the immediate object of such a rational attitude, states of affairs are not intrinsically valuable if they are not immediate objects of such attitudes.” Anderson uses the term “for the most part” because she recognizes that in some cases (such as addiction) a high state of affairs may be immediate value but it would not be rational. “Because what is intrinsically valuable is the object of a rational favorable attitude, not just the object of any favorable attitude, the fact that we have favorable attitudes such as appetites and whims toward states of affairs does not show that these states of affairs are intrinsically valuable.”
Consequentialist theories, because they fail to distinguish between intrinsic goods and extrinsic states of affairs, use desired states of affairs as the uncritical intrinsic good pursued by ethical agents. Consequentialist theories therefore rank courses of action depending on how well they will bring about the desired state of affairs regardless if they are rational or not (where their rationality is dependent on usually one value such as utility). For Anderson, “Actions are ranked according to how well they express our rational valuation and this is determined by judging how well our actions live up to the norms constitutive of these valuations.” Not much difference will be noted with commensurable goods but this makes all the difference when determining action when incommensurable goods are at stake. “Call the ways a person describes her relevant options and her conception of what is at stake in her choices her decision frame….The norms for expressing a person’s valuations fundamentally shape the decision frame she uses to ground rankings of her actions. She solves the problem of deciding what frame to use in deliberation when she successfully reaches an interpretation of her predicament that enables her coherently to continue her life. This task amounts to a continuation of the project of rational self-understanding….this project issues in two global norms for making sense of one’s actions: one synchronic, and the other diachronic.
“The synchronic norm tells a person at any given time to act in such a way as to adequately express the ways she rationally values all the persons, and things for whose sake she should act….The diachronic norm tells a person to act in such a way that over time her actions can be fit into a coherent narrative….[O]nly in the context of a decision frame do particular consequences of actions emerge as relevant for evaluating action. This is because the consequences of actions generally have no intrinsic value. Their importance emerges only in a setting in which an agent’s rational attitudes toward people and things are interpreted through a decision frame. But what determines the rational choice of a decision frame? Ideals that embody conceptions of how goods differ in kind play an indispensable role here.” Recall that ideals are aspirational self-conceptions that are given legitimating potential scope within a social setting.
In summary, value categories are plural (meaning there are thousands as can be expressed in words) and expressible in as many ways as an individual can imagine their actions. All values are also given a value component socially in the social recognition of that value and its expression in socially legitimate ways. This social component gives the ground for individual aspirational ideals of how to express their values in the most meaningful and individually creative way possible. This creative and meaningful way is one way of acquiring self-knowledge and individuality along the widest scope of human activity and values. This also means that incommensurable goods can be adequately compared in a reasonable way that fits within what is considered common sense.