Sortal Quality

Our world is rich in things of varying degrees of quality. This book argues that sortal quality, what others have called goodness of a kind, is the fundamental evaluative notion. It shows how it is woven into the most fundamental parts of our cognitive, emotional, and practical lives. It explains how people can identify a sortal's standards of quality and figure out how a thing measures up. It argues that sortal quality is a primary source of pleasure, showing how pleasure is a cognitive response to sortal quality. Even sensory pleasure, it argues, is tied to sortal quality. But people don't just discern and enjoy sortal quality, they also bear it. They are good in some respects and not so good in others. The book shows how a person's desires are grounded in sortal quality and how rational action is under its guise. It explains how the idea of a morally good person can be understood as a case of sortal quality, and how this grounds moral emotions like shame and resentment. By tracing how sortal quality sits at the heart of our moral psychology, the book shows how our world can be rich in sortal quality--including moral quality--even if nothing is intrinsically good or has absolute value. Those traditional evaluative notions, the book argues, are not needed to understand normativity and the roles it plays in our lives.