Reply to Ben Eggleston

Ben Eggleston’s comment nicely weaves together several strands of the approach to normative ethics that informs the essays in Part II of Facts, Values, and Norms. I quite agree with what he says concerning how and where the strands might reinforce one another, so I will concentrate in my reply on the places he finds strains and gaps especially his questions concerning the nature of valoric consequentialism and how it might differ from more familiar forms of consequentialism. As mentioned in the Précis above, the chief aim of valoric consequentialism is to translate as directly and faithfully as possible into the domain of practical ethics what I think of as the guiding consequentialist idea: the touchstone in moral assessment is the effect of what we do and how we are on the good of all concerned. I take ‘‘good’’ in the broad sense that extends beyond welfare, and includes all the forms of intrinsic value realized in and through our lives. The basic evaluative category of valoric consequentialism is fortunateness. Roughly, the fortunateness of x where x ranges over acts, motives, experiences, practices, act-tendencies, etc. is a function of how much x contributes to the overall good of those affected; x is more fortunate than y, other things equal, to the extent that x contributes more than y to this good.