8. A BETTER THEORY

     According to the general standards of Galilean explanation I offered early on, a purportedly Galilean explanation can fail not just in absolute terms, but if it is comparatively inferior to another -- one that coheres better with the Galilean core of beliefs, corresponds better to empirical data, and explains more than its competitor(s). I have brought up a number of reasons to consider Gibbard's explanation a failed one, but they might seem to constitute little more than petty criticism unless a superior theory is proffered. That's what I'll do next -- briefly, for my aim is just to introduce a plausible alternative to Gibbard's norm-expressivism. A complete defense of my view is beyond the scope of this project; a more thorough treatment is found in my unpublished paper, "Metaethical Functionalism: An Alternative to Gibbard's Norm-Expressivism".

     I have already provided, piecemeal, a view to compete with Gibbard's: that human normativity will eventually come to be understood by identifying what sort of objective value exists in the world and how normativity evolved (first in early mammals, and with refinements in our primate ancestors) to respond aptly to it. I'm not asking anything special here; simply that we use the same methods to explain this particular set of human traits as we have used to explain all other human traits: treating them as evolved responses to persistent environmental conditions.

     I have more than hinted that this view is based on finding something we can reasonably view as objective, intrinsic value in nature -- something I call 'reflexive functionality' -- and that explanations of human normativity will naturally unfold from that basis. There are a priori foundations for this view, based on functional definitions of key terms (e.g., 'object', 'situation', 'disposition' and 'valence') and some metaphysical postulates that are, by nature, unprovable, yet appear to be undeniable. Space limitations require that I examine only those postulates directly underlying my claim about objective value.

     "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence -- and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms."³³ The first part of Ayn Rand's claim here is merely an application of the laws of noncontradiction and excluded middle: something cannot both exist and not exist, and there is no third alternative. If we accept that anything at all exists, we must accept that the only metaphysical alternative to its existence is that it not exist.

     The second part of her claim is literally false, but Rand's meaning is not well expressed by it. A square formed by four rods of equal length can cease to exist; if separated, the rods remain in existence, but the square is gone. Similarly, a life can cease to exist, leaving behind all the matter and energy that had composed it. The square is a purely geometrical arrangement, whereas a life is a functional one.

     That's not the only important difference, though. Atoms, too, are functional arrangements, but where the persistence of atoms is concerned, nothing of importance is at stake; their components readily reform into other atoms at the first (frequently available) opportunity. Atoms are fungible commodities. But with a life, something of importance certainly is at stake, for a dismantled life can't be reconstituted by any likely physical process. Living is characterized by the homeodynamic process of maintaining functional integrity. Living organisms have certain requirements, and if the requisite goings-on go off, something important is lost. Purposeful, animate matter becomes indifferently inanimate.

     Our Galilean laws of conservation hold that matter and energy are never destroyed; their form changes. There is some challenge to laws of conservation from quantum theory,³⁴ but purported exceptions are controversial, and apply almost exclusively to the behavior of subatomic particles. We can accept that, for material objects in the universe, their form alone faces what we may as well call the existential alternative.

     Rand was defending the basis of her value theory, the claim that 'value' makes sense only with respect to the interests of a living organism -- a being with things to gain or to lose, with interests at stake. It is from this claim that I refined the view I am defending here.

     Though Rand is not particularly clear on this point, I think it is both charitable and fair to say that, for her, life is at once the source of value and the ultimate value for this reason: when a life is lost, what remains is a different kind of thing -- and the kind of thing that life is differs from alternative kinds in that it is an end in itself. She even makes the point that this end is "a value gained and kept by a constant process of action," and that life is "a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action."³⁵ Though she doesn't speak of kinds, or of function, she might have agreed that life is a functional kind: it exists as a function, and it functions to exist. Put in perhaps the most economical terms, life has a reflexive functionality. Anything having this property would be life, or would be of the same kind as life.

     The concept of the existential alternative provides a foundation for a naturalized, functionalist metaethics. When existence is at stake for a kind of thing whose distinguishing property is that it works to maintain its existence, what is good or bad for that kind of thing seems reasonably measured by how it either promotes or impedes the function of existing as that kind of thing.

     I have been examining this issue in more detail than Rand attempted, for I disagree with her view that the individual life is the ultimate value. While I agree with (and hope I have improved upon) her argument that an individual life has intrinsic value, I impute to it a second, more fundamental variety of value: being an instrumentality of Capital-L Life.

     Life is also an end in itself, and faces the existential alternative. Its claim to reflexive functionality is that it is essentially the process of begetting begetters: of reproducing -- with variations introduced by external influences and internal mechanisms -- generation after generation.

     Life has a better claim than does living to being the ultimate value for a living organism, for no individual life could exist without it. Indeed, individual organisms are simply ways Life has developed for propagating itself. All the self-absorbed concerns of individual organisms fade to insignificance by comparison to the importance of Life's continuation and flourishing. Indeed, though the loss of an entire species may be tragic, given enough time Life can produce many others just as marvelous. This generative power is probably the greatest single quality of the universe.

     Most importantly, once we recognize the objective nature of Life's intrinsic value, and appreciate the sheer quantity of that value represented by the countless generations and kinds of living things over Life's three-plus-billion-year history (and its indefinite extension into the future), the notion of actively promoting the attainment of maximal universal value may seem not only sensible, but important -- even noble!