Why do the basic human goods hang together as they do?

According to prominent Natural Law theories, the human good includes a number of basic non-instrumental goods, such as health, contemplation, truth, friendship and play. Now, there is a sense in which the inclusion of some items on the list of basic goods is more puzzling than the inclusion of others. There does not seem be anything deeply mysterious about the inclusion of health, but the inclusion of play is puzzling.

Yet there is an elegant metaphysical explanation of why these goods are included in the human good, and this explanation works just as well for play as for health:

1. The human good includes play (or health) because it is a fundamental telos in the human form to pursue play (or health).

This explanation tells us what makes it be the case that play is a basic human good. But I think it leaves something else quite unexplained. Compare to this the unhelpfulness of the answer

2. Because its molecules have a high mean kinetic energy

to the question

3. Why is my phone hot?

Now, in the case of my hot phone, the reason (2) is unhelpful is because when I am puzzled about my phone being hot, I am puzzled about something like the efficient cause of the phone’s heat, and (2) does not provide that.

That’s not quite what is going on the case of play. When we ask with puzzlement:

4. Why is play a basic non-instrumental human good?

we are not looking for an efficient cause of play being a basic human good. Indeed, it is dubious that there could even be an efficient causal answer to (4), since it seems to be a necessary truth that play is a basic human good, since this is grounded in the essential teleological structure of the human form. I think that when we ask (4), we are not actually clear on what sort of an explanation we are looking for—but if the puzzlement is the kind I am thinking about, the desired explanation is not the one given by (1).

We do become a bit less puzzled about play being a basic human good once it is pointed out to us how play promotes various other human goods like health and friendship. When we ask questions like (4), a part of what we are looking for is a story of how play hangs together with the other basic goods. If, as many Natural Lawyers think, there is a greatest human good (e.g., loving knowledge of God), then we hope that a significant part of the story will tell us how the good of play fits with that greatest good.

But now we have a curious meta-question:

5. Why is it that telling a story about how play hangs together with the other basic goods contributes to an answer to (4), given that play’s promotion of other basic goods seems to only make play be an instrumental good?

Here is another part of the story that helps with (5). Not only does engaging in play promote the other goods, but engaging play as an end in itself promotes the other goods more effectively. Playing Dominion with a friend purely instrumentally to friendship just wouldn’t promote friendship as effectively as playing in a way that appreciates the game as valuable in and of itself. Thus, a part of our story is now that it would be beneficial vis-à-vis the other goods if play were in fact to be non-instrumentally good, as then it could be pursued as an end in itself without this pursuit being a perversion of the will (it is, I take it, a perversion of the will to pursue mere means as if they were ends).

But it is still puzzling why even this enriched story is an answer to our question. The enriched story might make us wish that play were intrinsically good, but it doesn’t make play be instrinsically good. How does the enriched story help with our question, then?

I think that here is one of those places where Natural Law needs theism. It is a good thing for God to make beings whose basic goods exhibit unity in diversity. Thus, amongst the infinity of possible kinds of beings that could have been created, God chose to create beings with the human form in part because the basic goods encoded in the teleological structure of that form hang together in a beautiful way. God could have instead created beings where play was merely instrumentally good, but the teleological structure of such beings, first, wouldn’t exhibit the same valuable unity in diversity and, second, such beings would not as effectively achieve the other basic goods: for either they would be perversely pursuing a means as an end, or they would be missing out on the benefits of pursuing play as an end.

In other words, the story about how the goods hangs together provides a genuine answer to questions like (4) given God’s wise selection of the natures to be instantiated. It is difficult to see a plausible alternative story (here's an implausible one: there are no possible natures where goods don't hang together; here's another implausible one: we live in the best of all possible worlds). Thus, answering questions like (4) seems to call for theism.

Sceptical theism and the infinity of God

I’ve never been very sympathetic to sceptical theism until I thought of this line of reasoning, which isn’t really new, but I’ve just never quite put it together in this way.

There are radically different types of goods. At perhaps the highest level—call it level A—there are types of goods like the moral, the aesthetic and the epistemic. At a slightly lower level—call it level B—there are types of goods like the goods of moral rightness, praiseworthiness, autonomy, the virtue, beauty, sublimity, pleasure, truth, knowledge, understanding, etc. And there will be even lower levels.

Now, it is plausible that a perfect being, a God, would be infinitely good in infinitely many ways. He would thus infinitely exemplify infinitely many types goods at each level, either literally or by analogy. If so, then:

1. If God exists, there are infinitely many types of good at each level.

Moreover:

2. We only have concepts of a finite number of types of good at each level.

Thus:

3. There are infinitely many types of good at each level that we have no concept of.

Now, let’s think what would likely be the case if God were to create a world. From the limited theodicies we have, we know of cases where certain types of goods would justify allowing certain evils. So we wouldn't be surprised if there were evils in the world, though of course all evils would be justified, in the sense that God would have a justification for allowing them. But we would have little reason to think that God would limit his design of the world to only allowing those evils that are justified by the finite number of types of good that we have concepts of. The other types of good are still types of good. Given that there infinitely many such goods, and only finitely many of the ones we have concepts of, it would not be significantly unlikely that if God exists, a significant proportion—perhaps a majority—of the evils that have a justification would have a justification in terms of goods that we have no concept of.

And so when we observe a large proportion of evils that we can find no justification for, we observe something that is not significantly unlikely on the hypothesis that God exists. But if something is not significantly unlikely on a hypothesis, it’s not significant evidence against that hypothesis. Hence, the fact that we cannot find justifications for a significant proportion of the evils in the world is not significant evidence against the existence of God.

Sceptical theism has a tendency to undercut design arguments for the existence of God. I do not think this version of sceptical theism has that tendency, but that’s matter for another discussion (perhaps in the comments).

Basic goods

Many Natural Law (NL) theorists center their exposition of NL around the concept of a basic good. They give lists of basic goods, such as: health, friendship, knowledge, religion, play, etc. The basic goods are incommensurable: each one provides a different aspect of fulfillment to the possessor.

An NL theorist shouldn't, however, think of the theory as depending on the concept of a basic good. For the concept is a fishy one.

The basic goods are types of goods. Types come at many levels of generality. There does not, however, appear to be a non-arbitrary level of generality at which we get the "basic goods". Let me explain.

Here is a non-arbitrary level of generality: infima species of goods, types of good that there is no way of further subdividing into further subtypes that differ qua goods. Given NL's commitments about incommensurability, one might try to characterize an infima species of good as a type of good such that (a) instances of it are all commensurable and (b) it isn't a proper subtype of another type of good with that property. The basic goods are not infima species. For instance, knowledge can be subdivided into knowledge of necessary truths and knowledge of contingent truths, and we have incommensurability between the types. Knowledge of necessary truths can then be subdivided into mathematical knowledge and non-mathematical knowledge, and again there is incommensurability there. I suspect the infima species are going to be extremely specific, e.g., Smith's intellectual friendship with Kowalska focusing on fundamental political philosophy (and it will probably be more specific than that) or Jones's knowledge of Pythagoras' Theorem on the basis of proof P₁₇ (again, further specificity may be called for).

Here is another non-arbitrary level of generality: the highest genera. There might be just one highest genus, good. Or perhaps the highest genera are good of God and good of a creature. Or perhaps there is an infinite list of highest general but they are all instances of the schema good of N where N is a type of entity.

But the basic goods are neither infima species nor highest genera. They fall at some level of generality in between. And there seems to me to be no non-arbitrary way to delineate them. The best approach might be this: the basic goods (for humans) are the highest genera that fall properly under good of a human. (So if the good of a human is a highest genus, then the basic goods are second-highest genera.) But I doubt that there is a non-arbitrary way to define the highest genera under good of a human. There are many ways of subdividing good of a human, and the traditional subdivisions into basic goods are just one of them. For instance, one might subdivide good of a human into good of a human not in relation to other persons and good of a human in relation to God and good of a human in relation to non-divine persons (and maybe one or more hybrid categories). Or one might subdivide it into intellectual good and non-intellectual good. Etc.

Another option: an epistemic distinction. Perhaps the basic goods are the finest partition of the goods into genera with the property that one cannot fully grasp the distinctive value of any of the goods in any one genus on the basis of a grasp of the values of all the goods in the others. But I suspect that a distinction like this, if it can be made at all, would be liable to point to what is in at least some ways a finer level. Can one really grasp the distinctive value of aesthetic knowledge or friendship with Mother Teresa on the basis of other goods? Moreover, it may be that to grasp friendship one needs to grasp at least one other basic good, since friends promote each other's good not just in respect of friendship.

Fortunately, while the notion of incommensurable goods is important to NL, I do not think the NL theorist really needs a non-arbitrary concept of a basic good. The lists of basic goods are useful as heuristics, and they are a pedagogically valuable way to illustrate incommensurability. Moreover, it may be practically useful for guiding one's decisions and self-examination to have a division of goods that is sufficiently thick but not too fine-grained.