Abstract Several value pluralists, including proponents of the “New Natural Law Theory,” hold that, if each of two options for choice guards or promotes a basic value that the other lacks, the options are incomparable in value overall. Arguments to that effect take for granted the definition of incomparability relied on by philosophers for years—namely, the failure of items to be related by any of the three familiar basic value-comparative relations: better than, worse than, or equal to. This definition assumes that the familiar trio (better/worse/equal) exhausts the ways to be value-comparable. Ruth Chang denies this. She has argued that we’ve missed a fourth way in which two items might be comparable: parity. But Chang has not given any job for parity to play that incomparability could not also play, so she has provided no sufficient reason to override the presumption in favor of the more familiar view that there are only three comparability relations. Establishing as much sheds further light on what it does and doesn’t mean to say that two options are incomparable in value, and why the answers matter to our practical life.
Sherif Girgis (Sun,) studied this question.