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Chartier, Gary; Fox, Jere L. --- "Incommensurable goods" [2019] ELECD 2215; in Crowe, Jonathan; Lee, Y. Constance (eds), "Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 253

Book Title: Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory

Editor(s): Crowe, Jonathan; Lee, Y. Constance

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Incommensurable goods

Author(s): Chartier, Gary; Fox, Jere L.

Number of pages: 14

Abstract/Description:

Gary Chartier and Jere L. Fox’s chapter casts light on a central idea in contemporary natural law theorizing: the idea that categories of intrinsic human goods are incommensurable, in the sense that they cannot be quantitatively compared, while individual human goods are not only incommensurable but also non-fungible, in the sense that they cannot be substituted for each other without loss or remainder. Chartier and Fox seek to motivate this account by appealing to the phenomenology of practical choice. We experience ourselves as pursuing a range of diverse objectives in life, many of which seem valuable for their own sake. These goods strike us as diverse, heterogeneous, and not readily interchangeable. The notions of incommensurability and non-fungibility therefore make sense of how intrinsic goods figure in our practical reasoning, while undermining the appeal of consequentialism as an account of the same phenomena. The authors then respond to some critics of this picture, arguing that the counterintuitive results these critics identify can be avoided when the view is properly articulated.