Running across this post quite a few years later, but our paper on the upper limit of value addresses this incommensurability a bit, and cites Chang’s “Incomparability and practical reason” which (we feel) addresses this fairly completely.
Secondarily, Mobiot’s claim isn’t really incommensurability, it’s that those with power (mostly economic power,) value things he cares about too little, that the environment, which is a public good, is underprotected by markets, and that humanity isn’t cautious enough of the environmental risks. All reasonable points, but not really incommensurability.
But you can still have a partial ordering for incommensurable goods—if the natural world is incommensurable with money, you can have states that are strictly worse/better, as well as incommensurable ones. And that still isn’t neutral—it’s better and worse on different dimensions.
This piece by George Monbiot represents one strand of potential deep criticism, which is that many goods are incommensurable in value: http://www.monbiot.com/2014/07/24/the-pricing-of-everything/
This is a pretty common view in philosophy, and it would make the EA project much more limited in what it could achieve.
Running across this post quite a few years later, but our paper on the upper limit of value addresses this incommensurability a bit, and cites Chang’s “Incomparability and practical reason” which (we feel) addresses this fairly completely.
Secondarily, Mobiot’s claim isn’t really incommensurability, it’s that those with power (mostly economic power,) value things he cares about too little, that the environment, which is a public good, is underprotected by markets, and that humanity isn’t cautious enough of the environmental risks. All reasonable points, but not really incommensurability.
If many things are incommensurable at least we wouldn’t be doing harm—our actions would often be merely neutral.
But you can still have a partial ordering for incommensurable goods—if the natural world is incommensurable with money, you can have states that are strictly worse/better, as well as incommensurable ones. And that still isn’t neutral—it’s better and worse on different dimensions.