Fred Agostino - Incommensurability and Commensuration

INCOMMENSURABILITY AND COMMENSURATION

This book present the first detailed examination of incommensurability in the value-theoretical sense. Exploring how choosers deal with problems and constraints of choice, the author draws on work in cognitive psychology, in sociology, in jurisprudence, in economics, and in the theory of value to show how choosers learn to make "trade-offs" when there is potential incommensurability among the option they are considering. The analysis is also informed by recent work in the tradition of Michel Foucault. With so many modern devices and ideals of government dependent on the comparability of options, this book is timely and can inform public debate about deregulation, user-pays, accountability, and the substitution of market mechanisms for government regulation and supply.

The Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy series aims to bring high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, the international library market, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars from across the philosophical spectrum, this new monograph series presents cutting-edge research from established as well as exciting new authors in the field; spans the breadth of philosophy and related disciplinary and interdesciplinary perspectives; and takes contemporary philosophical research into new directions and debate.

Professor David Cooper, University of Durham, UK
Professor Peter Lipton, University of Cambridge, UK
Professor Sean Sayers, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Dr Simon Critchley, University of Essex, UK
Dr Simon Glendinning, University of Reading, UK
Professor Paul Helm, King's College London, UK
Dr David Lamb, University of Birmingham, UK
Professor John Post, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Professor Alan Goldman, University of Miami, Florida, USA
Professor Joseph Friggieri, University of Malta, Malta
Professor Graham Priest, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Professor Moira Gatens, University of Sydney, Australia
Professor Alan Musgrave, University of Otago, New Zealand

The Common Denominator

Fred DAgostino
University of New England, Australia

First published 2003 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Fred DAgostino 2003

The author has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2002021441

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-71078-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19918-4 (ebk)

But we should... be skeptical whether there is any sort of common denominator to all that can reasonably be considered good. The human good may be irreducibly various, incommensurable with respect to any single standard.

(Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity )

In the 1960s, Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn initiated discussion, within epistemology and philosophy of science, of the possible incommensurability of rival theories or paradigms. In the 1990s, a related notion assumed considerable prominence in ethical, legal, decision-theoretical, and political theorizing in the broadly analytic tradition. This was marked, in particular, by the publication of Ruth Chang's collection, Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason (1997) and of the collection Conflict and Tradeoffs in Decision Making (2001) edited by Elke Weber, Jonathan Baron and Graham Loomes, and by the symposium on incommensurability and the law which constitutes volume 146, number 5 of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1998). In this book I will examine this ethico-political notion of incommensurability from a variety of points of view. In particular, I will try to show the relevance, to our better philosophical understanding of this concept, of many important recent non-philosophical discussions of it, none, to my knowledge, typically cited by philosophical discussants. Of these non-philosophical materials, I must especially mention at the outset Coping with Tradeoffs by Philip Tetlock, Instrumental Commensurability by Frederick Schauer, and Commensuration as a Social Process by Wendy Espeland and Mitchell Stevens. The political crisis associated with the United States Presidential election in November 2000 also motivates a closer look at methods and presuppositions of measurement in the political realm.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the work reported here is that it embeds the notion of incommensurability in contexts which, while relevant to its proper appreciation, are not often recruited in mainstream philosophical discussions of this notion, especially in its value-theoretical aspects. For instance, I believe, and will try to show, that social choice theory is relevant to our understanding of the possibilities of commensuration. That this is so, or even indeed a possibility, has been all but ignored, Susan Hurley and Jon Elster being honorable exceptions, by those who discuss incommensurability in the contemporary literature. Similarly, I believe that we can only properly understand the significance of incommensurability if we consider the role in contemporary projects of governance of the devices which are variously recruited to commensurate among social (and individual) options. In this regard, I try to show the relevance, to our understanding of commensurability, of the Foucauldian "analytics of governmentality".

Perhaps most importantly, my analysis approaches questions about incommensurability in a social-theoretical rather than an essentialistic manner. The crucial question, then, is not whether, in the nature of things or in light of established useage, we can compare options in a given domain. The question is, rather, under what circumstances, using what devices, both intellectual and practical, and with what benefits and costs (and to whom) these options might be rendered commensurable with one another. My concern then is with the how of such projects of commensuration as are undertaken to ensure comparability and with the ethical pros and cons of such projects (and the interests they might serve).