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North American Philosophical Publications
SANDEL, SEMIOTICS, AND MONEY-BASED EXCHANGEAuthor(s): James Stacey Taylor

Source: Public Affairs Quarterly , Vol. 33, No. 2 (APRIL 2019), pp. 159-176
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Public Affairs Quarterly
Volume 33, Number 2, April 2019
SANDEL, SEMIOTICS, AND MONEY-BASED

EXCHANGE: WHAT WE CAN LEARN
FROM BRENNAN AND JAWORSKI’S
FAILED CRITIQUE
James Stacey Taylor
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have recently developed an increasingly

influential argument against semiotic objections to commodification. A
semiotic argument is one that holds that the commodification of certain
goods or services is morally wrong, either because it violates the social
meaning of those goods or services, or because the market exchange of
them would communicate something wrongful. Brennan and Jaworski focus
much of their attention on showing that Michael Sandel’s deployment of
such arguments fails. However, their argument does not undermine Sandel’s
position because they have fundamentally misunderstood his view. But
this misunderstanding is productive, for it can be used both to clarify the
nature of the debates over the moral limits of markets and to gain a better
understanding of an underexplored criticism of money-based exchange.
Introduction
A semiotic argument is one that holds that “buying and selling certain goods
and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or
because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships.”1
Jason Brennan and Peter Martin Jaworski have recently developed what appears
to be a compelling argument against semiotic objections to the money-based
exchange of certain goods and services.2 They claim that their argument is
important because “nearly every anticommodification theorist at some point
relies upon or advances a semiotic objection” to the money-based exchange
of certain goods or services.3 One of the most prominent of these theorists is
Michael Sandel, and Brennan and Jaworski focus much of their criticism on
159

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160 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY
his arguments.4 Brennan and Jaworski’s argument is becoming increasingly

influential in the debates over the moral limits of markets. However, it does
not undermine Sandel’s arguments against the expansion of money-based ex-
change because they have fundamentally misunderstood his position.But this
misunderstanding is productive because it can be used to clarify the nature of
the debates over the moral limits of markets.5 And this, in turn, can lead to the
development of an underexplored moral criticism of money-based exchange
that draws on Sandel’s observation that some conceptions of relationships are
more conducive to the flourishing of persons within them than are others. With
this observation in hand, this criticism holds that certain types of relationships
(e.g., shared membership in a polity) would be best conceived of in a way that
would preclude the persons within them from treating each other in accord
with market norms. This is because, were they to treat each other in accordance
with these norms, their conception of their relationship—and consequently
their relationship itself—would change for the worse. Hence, this criticism
continues, in such cases, the preservation of the morally preferable conception
of the relationship in question would require that persons should be discouraged
from treating each other in accord with market norms. And this could ground
a moral objection to money-based exchanges occurring between persons who
stand in certain relationships to each other.
I. Brennan and Jaworski’s Arguments against (What They Take

to Be) Sandel’s Semiotic Objections to Markets
Brennan and Jaworski hold that semiotic objections to markets take the following
form: “To allow a market in some good or service X is a form of communication
that expresses the wrong attitude toward X or expresses an attitude that is incom-
patible with the intrinsic dignity of X, or would show disrespect or irreverence
for some practice, custom, belief, or relationship with which X is associated.”6
With this general account of semiotic arguments in hand, they develop a tripar-
tite taxonomy of such objections to markets. The first is the “Mere Commodity
Objection”: that “buying and selling certain goods or services shows that one
regards them as having merely instrumental value.”7 The second is the “Wrong
Signal Objection”: “that buying and selling certain goods and services commu-
nicates, independently of one’s attitudes, disrespect for the objects in question.”8
The third is the “Wrong Currency Objection”: “that inserting markets and money
into certain types of relationships communicates estrangement and distance, and
is objectionably impersonal.”9
Brennan and Jaworski claim that Sandel offers semiotic objections to adop-
tion auctions, “gifts of money or gift certificates,” and “information markets in
terrorism or death.”10 They hold that he objects to “a market in children” as this
“would express and promote the wrong way of valuing them” for “children are

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Sandel, Semiotics, and Money-Based Exchange 161
not properly regarded as consumer goods but as beings worthy of love and care.”11
They also hold that he objects to “gifts of money or gift certificates” as these
do not convey the same “attentiveness” as “traditional gift-giving,” and that he
objects to “information markets in terrorism and death” on the grounds that “if
death bets are objectionable, it must be . . . in the dehumanizing attitudes such
wagers express.”12
Before moving to address Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments against what
they take to be Sandel’s semiotic objections to these markets, it should be noted
that his concerns do not fit neatly into their tripartite taxonomy. Sandel’s concern
with the use of cash and gift certificates as gifts could be construed as a version
of the Wrong Currency Objection insofar as their use for this purpose could be
understood to communicate a lack of attentiveness on the part of the giver, and
hence her “estrangement and distance” from the recipient.13 But his use of the
term “express” in his discussions of markets in children and information mar-
kets in terrorism and death renders these objections ambiguous between Mere
Commodity Objections and Wrong Signal Objections. One might hold that, by
participating in markets in children or in information markets in terrorism and
death, one is thereby expressing an attitude that children or the persons whose
lives one is betting against are of merely instrumental value.14 This would ren-
der this concern a Mere Commodity Objection. Alternatively, one might hold
that participation in these markets would express the “wrong way of valuing”
children or the persons whose lives are being bet upon independently of whether
the participants in these markets valued them in this way. This would render this
concern a Wrong Signal Objection. This ambiguity is not, however, a barrier to
outlining Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments against (what they take to be) San-
del’s semiotic objections to these markets. This is because these arguments can
simply be applied to (what they take to be) Sandel’s objections as if they were
either Mere Commodity Objections or Wrong Signal Objections in turn.
Brennan and Jaworski begin their criticisms of semiotic objections against
markets by arguing that the Mere Commodity Objection is the weakest. They note
that it is possible to distinguish between something being a commodity and some-
thing being a mere commodity. A commodity “is simply anything with a price tag,
anything that could be exchanged on a market.”15 By contrast, a mere commodity
“is something with a price tag, exchanged on a market, that is properly viewed as
merely having instrumental value, as something that may properly be used solely
as a tool to satisfy the (non-moral) desires and preferences of the exchanging
agents.”16 With this distinction in place, they observe that “the fact that people buy
and sell things does not automatically show us that those people have the wrong
attitudes towards those things,” because the buying and selling of a good does not
automatically show that either the buyer or the seller considers the good to be a
mere commodity. They are correct here: a person could, for example, purchase a
pet or a piece of artwork without thereby believing that the animal or sculpture was

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just a mere commodity. The Mere Commodity Objection thus fails.17 Moreover,
Brennan and Jaworski note, one cannot defend this Objection qua semiotic objec-
tion by arguing that the commodification of goods or services would, over time,
cause people to view them as mere commodities. This is because this response
would change the nature of this objection from a semiotic objection to a (distinct)
corruption objection: that “participating in certain markets . . . will tend to cause
us to develop defective preferences or character traits.”18
Brennan and Jaworski’s argument against the Mere Commodity Objection is
sound. To be charitable to Sandel, then, his concerns with markets in children
and information markets in terrorism and death should be construed as Wrong
Signal Objections rather than as Mere Commodity Objections. (However, they
are also intended to be corruption objections. More on this below.) Brennan and
Jaworski’s primary argument against Wrong Signal Objections is also intended
to be an argument against Wrong Currency Objections. It is thus applicable
not only to Sandel’s concerns regarding markets in children, or information
markets in terrorism and death, but also to his concerns regarding the use of
cash or gift certificates as gifts. Recall that Brennan and Jaworski construe the
Wrong Signal Objection as the claim “that buying and selling certain goods
and services communicates, independently of one’s attitudes, disrespect for
the objects in question,” and the Wrong Currency Objection as the claim “that
inserting markets and money into certain types of relationships communicates
estrangement and distance, and is objectionably impersonal.”19 For Brennan and
Jaworski, then, both of these objections are based on the semiotic claim that
“we can determine, a priori, that certain markets essentially signal disrespect”
or estrangement and distance and are therefore necessarily wrongful.20 Thus,
according to Brennan and Jaworski, the Wrong Signal Objection is based on
the claim that market exchanges in certain goods or services would necessar-
ily signal to third parties that at least one of the parties to the exchange had a
wrongful attitude toward the good or service in question. And the Wrong Cur-
rency Objection is based on the claim that the use of “markets and money” in
the exchange necessarily signals that the parties to it are estranged and distant
from each other, and so their use by persons who stand in certain relationships
to each other would be “objectionably impersonal.”
In response, Brennan and Jaworski argue that “the meaning of markets and of
money is, in general, a highly contingent, fluid, socially constructed fact” and so
“what market exchanges mean depends on a culture’s interpretative practices.”21
To support these claims, they offer a wealth of sociological and anthropological
work on the meanings of market exchanges in goods and services that, in the
West, would be considered “contested commodities.”22 For example, the anthro-
pologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry claim that “we can almost always
find real-life examples where people of different cultures buy and sell something

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Westerners find repugnant to buy and sell, but for people in those cultures buy-
ing and selling those things has a very different meaning than what it has for . . .
Westerners.”23 These views are echoed by the sociologist Viviana Zelizer, who
discusses “many . . . instances where different cultures at different times do not
impute the meaning to money or to markets” that they have in the contemporary
West.24 To illustrate these claims, Brennan and Jaworski cite one of the cultural
practices of the Merina people of Madagascar, who expect men to give cash to
their wives after sex, and of the Chinese, who give gifts of cash in red envelopes
on New Year’s Day. Rather than signaling a lack of respect, the Merina hold that
these payments evince it, while the Chinese do not believe that giving cash as a
gift signals distance and estrangement.25
Having presented this empirical evidence, Brennan and Jaworski claim that
we face a dilemma. We could, they hold, either endorse the “philosophical
arguments from prominent theorists” (such as Sandel) that tell us “that we can
determine, a priori, that certain markets essentially signal disrespect.”26 Or we
could accept the “sociological and anthropological work that seems to show
that extant markets in those very goods often have an entirely different meaning
from what we Westerners attribute to them.”27 If we “side with the philosophers,”
claim Brennan and Jaworski, “we must conclude that the people in those other
cultures are just plain wrong”; Merina men do disrespect their wives by giv-
ing them presents of cash after sex, and the Chinese do signal distance and
estrangement when they give gifts of cash on New Year’s Day.28 Or, they note,
we could side with the sociologists and anthropologists and “conclude that
people in these other cultures are doing nothing wrong when they buy and sell
certain goods and services.”29 Brennan and Jaworski hold that we should side
with the empirical evidence on this issue and that we should therefore recog-
nize that “anti-commodification theorists [like Sandel] who rely upon semiotic
arguments have not discovered an essential meaning to money; they are instead
reifying contemporary Western mores.”30 Thus, they conclude, since the signals
that are communicated by money-based exchanges are culturally contingent, it
cannot be the case that market transactions that involve certain goods or services
would necessarily signal to third parties that at least one of the parties to them
had a wrongful attitude toward the good or service in question. The Wrong
Signal Objection thus fails. Similarly, since the meanings of relationships are
culturally contingent, it cannot be the case that the meaning of an exchange
that involved “markets and money” would necessarily signal that the parties
to it are estranged and distant from each other. The Wrong Currency Objection
thus fails. Hence, if Sandel’s concerns with markets in children, information
markets in terrorism and death, or the use of cash or gift certificates as gifts
are understood as Wrong Signal Objections or Wrong Currency Objections, as
these are outlined by Brennan and Jaworski, then they fail.

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II. How Brennan and Jaworski Fundamentally

Misunderstand Sandel’s Views
Brennan and Jaworski’s objections to Sandel’s concerns are based on two claims:
(1) that his primary aim is to offer moral objections to the commodification of
certain goods and services, such as children, information markets concerning
terrorism and death, cash, and gift certificates; and (2) that that these objections
include what they call the Wrong Signal Objection and the Wrong Currency
Objection.
Both of these claims are false.
As Brennan and Jaworski note, among the money-based exchanges that Sandel
is concerned with is the use of cash and gift certificates as gifts. But Sandel’s
concern here cannot be with the commodification of cash and gift certificates.
Cash is money; it is simply a medium of exchange and not something (qua money)
that can be commodified.31 Similarly, gift certificates can be understood as a
form of representative money with the owner having a claim on a certain range
of commodities.32 Rather than being commodifiable qua money, gift certificates
are also simply mediums of exchange.
Sandel’s concern thus cannot be with the moral question of whether cash and
gift certificates should be commodified. Instead, he is concerned with the separate
(and precise) question of whether they should be given as gifts between people
in certain sorts of relationships in contemporary American society. He is thus not
primarily addressing the question of which goods and services ought, morally,
not to be bought and sold in the marketplace (although this question is subsumed
under the broader issue that he is addressing, which is that of where the appro-
priate limits of money-based exchange lie). Rather, he is addressing the distinct
but related question of whether, in addition to being a market economy in which
productive activity is organized by the market, the contemporary United States
should also be a market society in which all human interactions are governed by
the norms of money-based market exchange.33 His challenge is thus not to the
view that economic activity should be market-driven. He agrees with Brennan
and Jaworski that the market has “won,” and he does not lament this.34 Instead, he
is questioning whether the norms of money-based market exchange are morally
appropriate to govern all types of human interaction.
Brennan and Jaworski’s failure to recognize that this is Sandel’s focus does
not necessarily undermine their arguments against his semiotic objections to the
expansion of the norms of money-based market exchange. It is possible that their
objections to his concerns about the commodification of children, and informa-
tion about terrorism and death, are sound even if they do not directly address his
more general concerns about the expansion of the norms of money-based market
exchange. But their failure to recognize the nature of Sandel’s project has led
them to a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of his semiotic concerns.

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Brennan and Jaworski attribute to Sandel the essentialist view that “certain markets
essentially signal disrespect.” But Sandel’s concerns are with the signals that are
sent by certain money-based exchanges within the cultural milieu in which he is
writing. He is thus not committed to the essentialist semiotic claims that Bren-
nan and Jaworski attribute to him. Instead, he is only committed to culturally
contingent semiotic claims about the signals that the money-based exchanges
that he is critical of send. But Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments are directed at
(and are only effective against) essentialist semiotic objections to markets.35 They
thus fail to undermine (indeed, they do not even engage with) Sandel’s concerns
about the expansion of money-based market norms into a greater number of hu-
man interactions.
III. Money and the Norms of Friendship

That Sandel provides only culturally contingent semiotic reasons to be concerned
with the expansion of the norms of money-based exchange into human interactions
that were not previously governed by them can be seen by paying attention to the
structure of his arguments. Sandel observes that differing conceptions of types
of interpersonal relationships will lead to differing conceptions of the norms that
should govern the interactions of persons in those relationships.36 To illustrate
this, consider how differing conceptions of friendship could lead to the adoption
of differing norms governing how friends should interact with each other.37 One
might, for example, conceive of friendship as being a type of relationship in which
friends attempt to enable each other to satisfy their preferences more than they do
for persons with whom they are not friends. The norms governing the actions of
persons who conceived of friendship in this way would direct them to act to enable
their friends to satisfy their preferences. However, if one conceived of friendship
differently, then other norms might be appropriate to govern the interactions be-
tween friends. One might, for example, conceive of friendship as being a type of
relationship in which friends express their appreciation of the non-instrumental
value that they recognize in each other in virtue of each other’s unique character-
istics. On such a conception of friendship, the interactions between friends would
be appropriately governed by norms that direct them to express thoughtfulness
and concern for each other. These norms might direct persons to interact with
their friends in a way that is different from the way that persons who conceived
of friendship in terms of preference-satisfaction would be directed to act by the
norms appropriate to their conception of friendship. It is possible, for example,
that the norms that would be appropriate for a preference-satisfaction concep-
tion of friendship would direct persons to express their friendship for each other
through gifts of money. This way of expressing these norms could arise from the
belief that persons are most likely to be able to satisfy their preferences when
they choose for themselves how to expend their available resources. Similarly,

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it is possible that the norms that would be appropriate for an appreciation-based

conception of friendship would direct persons to avoid gifts of money to express
their friendship for each other. These norms could direct persons to take time
to learn about their friends’ values and interests and then to make the effort to
choose gifts that they believe that their friends would value, with their choices
expressing their appreciation for their friends’ individuality.
Having noted that differing conceptions of what certain interpersonal relation-
ships involve could lead to differing conceptions of the norms that should govern
the interactions of persons in those relationships, Sandel notes that some ways of
conceiving of certain types of relationship might be more conducive than others to
enabling these relationships to contribute to the flourishing of the persons within
them. It is, for example, possible that friendships that are conceived of by the
persons within them as essentially involving appreciation of the non-instrumental
value of their friends are more conducive to the flourishing of those within them
than are friendships that are conceived of by the persons within them as being
vehicles for enabling one’s friends to better satisfy their preferences. If so, then
this would give us reason to prefer the former conception of friendship to the lat-
ter. This, in turn, would give us reason to prefer that friendships be governed by
the appreciation-based norms that are appropriate to this conception of friendship
rather than the preference-orientated norms of its (inferior) rival.38
Sandel’s argument is thus that interpersonal relationships (such as friendship)
should be governed by the norms appropriate to the conception of the relationship
that would be most conducive to the flourishing of the persons within them. He is
thus concerned to establish that certain conceptions of interpersonal relationships
are more conducive to human flourishing than others, and, from this, to identify
the norms that would appropriately direct the interactions of the persons within
those relationships so conceived. He is not concerned with offering an essentialist
argument that certain norms can only be expressed in certain (non-market) ways.
He thus does not offer the essentialist semiotic argument against commodification
that Brennan and Jaworski attribute to him and then proceed to criticize.
To see this, let us turn back to my above account of two of the possible ways
in which persons could conceive of friendship. It was noted that it was possible
that the norms appropriate for a preference-satisfaction conception of friendship
would direct persons to express their friendship for each other through gifts of
money. It was also noted that the norms appropriate for an appreciation-based
conception of friendship could direct persons to buy thoughtfully chosen gifts
to express their friendship with others. These ways of expressing these differing
norms as they arise from these competing conceptions of friendship are those
of contemporary American society, as Sandel notes.39 But these norms could be
expressed differently in another cultural context. Consider, for example, the ways
in which they could be expressed in Alternative America. In Alternative America,
persons who accept the preference-satisfaction conception of friendship do not

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give their friends gifts of money. Instead, believing that persons frequently suffer
from false consciousness and hence frequently acquire things that do not satisfy
their “true” preferences, they hire expert psychologists to draw up profiles of their
friends to help them decide what gifts to purchase for them. The more elaborate
the effort that a person makes to determine what her friends’ “real” preferences
are, the more the gift is valued by its recipient as reflecting her “true” desires. For
persons in Alternative America who accept the preference-satisfaction conception
of friendship, a gift of money would be insulting, indicating that the giver did
not care much for satisfying the “real” preferences of her friend. Conversely, in
Alternative America, persons who accept the appreciation-based conception of
friendship give carefully chosen gifts to acquaintances, reserving gift certificates
and gifts of money only for very close friends. This is because those in Alterna-
tive America who accept the appreciation-based conception of friendship believe
that true friendship only begins with an appreciation of the peculiar traits of one’s
friend. After all, if that was all that there was to it, you would have just as much
reason to act in friendship toward strangers who shared the traits of your friends
as you would toward your friends themselves!40 Accordingly, in Alternative
America, those who accept this conception of friendship consider it appropriate
to give carefully chosen gifts reflecting knowledge of the recipients’ traits only
to acquaintances or new friends. To give such gifts to one’s close friends would
express that one’s friendship with them was shallow, based solely on their pub-
licly knowable traits. As one’s friendship progresses, one signals one’s deeper
appreciation for one’s friends as unique individuals by avoiding gifts based on
their known traits, first by giving them gift certificates and, then, in the ultimate
expression of intimacy, money, to express that their value as a friend can never be
captured by any gift whose choice was based merely on their observable traits. It
is thus common in Alternative America for people who conceive of friendship in
appreciation-based terms to measure increasing intimacy in terms of fungibility,
with increasingly fungible gifts expressing increasing intimacy.
Given that Sandel believes that the appreciation-based conception of friendship
is superior to its preference-satisfaction rival, he would not be alarmed were Al-
ternative America to see an increase in the proportion of gifts welcomed by their
recipients that were gift certificates or money. These gifts would be expressions of
the norms that he believes should govern appropriate interactions between friends.
His concern with the increase in the use of money or gift certificates as gifts in
(Actual) America is thus not based on the view that “inserting markets and money
into certain kinds of relationships [necessarily] communicates estrangement and
distance, is objectionably impersonal, and/or violates the meaning of that relation-
ship,” as Brennan and Jaworski believe.41 Instead, it is based on the view that given
how the norms governing gift-giving relationships between friends associated with
the preference-satisfaction conception of friendship and its appreciation-based ri-
val are expressed in (Actual) America today, the increasing use of money and gift

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certificates as gifts indicates that the conception of friendship that he believes is

superior is losing ground to that which he believes to be its inferior rival. As such,
Sandel offers only a culturally contingent semiotic objection to the increasing use of
cash and gift certificates as gifts, and not an essentialist semiotic objection to their
increasing use for this purpose, as Brennan and Jaworski claim. Moreover, since his
semiotic objection is dependent upon a certain contingent social understanding of
what the use of money and gift certificates as gifts signifies concerning the gifter’s
conception of friendship, it is not only compatible with but is supported by Bren-
nan and Jaworski’s view that the meanings of both money and cash transactions
are culturally dependent.
IV. Children and Information

Since Sandel is not committed to the essentialist semiotic objection to the use of
money and gift certificates as gifts between friends that Brennan and Jaworski
attribute to him—and since they have successfully argued that this objection is
unsound—the principle of charity requires that his discussions of markets in chil-
dren and in information concerning terrorism and death should not be construed
as offering essentialist versions of this objection unless he has clearly endorsed
it in one or both of those contexts.42
But Sandel has a further response to Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments against
his purported essentialist semiotic criticism of such markets: that his objections
to them are not semiotic but consequentialist. Sandel objects to “a market in
children” on the grounds that it “would express and promote the wrong way of
valuing them.”43 This objection is most naturally understood not as a semiotic
objection but as an objection to the characters of those who would participate
in this market and to the likely worsening effect that this market would have
upon them.44 Similarly, Sandel’s objection to “information markets in terrorism
or death” is grounded on the claim that they promote “a callous indifference or,
worse, a ghoulish fascination with the death and misfortune of others.”45 Again,
this is a consequentialist objection to such markets, not a semiotic one.46 And in
line with his consequentialist moral assessment of such markets, Sandel recognizes
that if, within a particular social context, the increase in (or initiation of) certain
money-based exchanges would indicate that their participants conceived of their
relationship in a way that would render it less conducive to their flourishing than
would an alternative conception, this would not in itself indicate that they should
be encouraged to embrace this alternative. This is because, he acknowledges, the
increasing acceptance of a morally sub-optimal conception of certain relationships
that would be brought about by some money-based exchanges might be a price
worth paying for the social good that these exchanges could bring.47 Thus, not
only does Sandel fail to embrace the essentialist semiotic objections to certain
money-based exchanges that Brennan and Jaworski ascribe to him, but he does not

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even consider the culturally contingent semiotic objections that he does provide
to be determinative.48
V. What We Can Learn from Brennan and Jaworski’s

Failed Arguments
One obvious lesson that can be learned from the above discussion is that Brennan
and Jaworski’s arguments against the semiotic objections of the “anticommodifica-
tion theorists” are mistaken because they fundamentally misunderstand Sandel’s
concerns. But three more interesting lessons can also be learned from their failure.
First, Brennan and Jaworski’s misguided arguments against Sandel can teach
a useful lesson about the contours of the commodification debate—a lesson that
is especially important for those who favor expanding the realm of money-based
market exchange. Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments are directed at (what they
take to be) semiotic objections that are intended to establish that certain goods
and services should never be exchanged for money. However, Sandel’s objec-
tions were not intended to establish that certain goods and services should never
be exchanged for money. Instead, they were only intended to establish that they
should not be exchanged for money at certain times and in certain places because,
at those times and in those places, the signals that the transactions would send
would be morally objectionable. The part of the debate concerning which goods
and services should be commodified and which (morally) should not, which
Sandel is participating in, is thus not over which goods and services should never
be exchanged for money. Instead, he is participating in a debate over where the
moral limits of money-based exchange should lie within a particular social
context. Recognizing this is especially important for those who wish to defend
commodification. Failing to do so might lead them to respond to those who (like
Sandel) object to the commodification of certain goods or services by arguing
that their objections would not apply in all possible situations and, from this,
conclude that they do not tell against the commodification of the good or service
in question. But this approach would be mistaken. Once the proper scope of this
part of the commodification debate is recognized (i.e., as limited to the question
of whether certain goods and services should be commodified within a particular
social context), objections to commodification should (unless otherwise indicated
by their authors) be understood as objections to the commodification of the good
or service in question within the social context in which the objection is made.
To attempt to address such objections by arguing that they would not hold in
hypothetical social situations that differ radically from those from which they
were made would thus miss their point.49 It would be to treat them as arguments
for the inherent wrongness of commodifying the good or service in question
when they were only intended to establish its contextual wrongness (e.g., within
the social context from which the objection was made). The commodification

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debate is thus not exclusively a debate over the inherent moral limits of markets,
but, in many cases, a debate over where the moral limits of markets lie within a
particular social context.50
Just as Brennan and Jaworski’s failed criticisms of Sandel’s views teach a
valuable lesson about the scope of the commodification debate, so, too, can their
failure be used to emphasize that the debate over the moral limits of markets is
not only a debate that concerns the legitimate scope of commodification; it also
concerns the question of whether market norms should govern particular types of
relationships. Participants in the debate over “the moral limits of markets” should
thus clarify whether they are concerned with the moral limits of money-based
exchange (within a particular social context) or with the question of whether
market or other norms should govern a particular relationship and hence of which
conception of the relationships in question would be morally preferable.
The third lesson that should be drawn from Brennan and Jaworski’s failed
criticisms of Sandel’s view is that these two distinct debates over “the moral
limits of markets” can be conjoined through a particular line of criticism that
could be leveled at certain money-based exchanges.51 This criticism begins with
Sandel’s observation that some conceptions of relationships are more conducive
to the flourishing of persons within them than others. It then continues with the
claim that a particular type of relationship (e.g., that of membership in a polity)
would best be conceived of in a way that would lead the persons within it to
treat each other according to non-market norms (e.g., by donating, rather than
selling, body parts to each other in times of need). With these claims in place,
it is then held that the participants’ treatment of each other according to non-
market norms is not only supported by, but also supports, the morally preferable
conception of their relationship. (Thus, the conception of the relationship that is
morally preferable leads to the participants’ behavior toward each other being
governed by non-market norms, while their action in accordance with these norms
reinforces their acceptance of this conception of their relationship.) Given this
mutually reinforcing relationship between the morally preferable conception of
the relationship and the norms that govern it, if the participants in the relationship
start to treat each other in accordance with other norms, then their conception of
their relationship is likely to change (i.e., to one that is less morally desirable).
These three claims are then conjoined with a fourth: that the behavior of the
participants in the relationship in question would be less likely to be governed
by the appropriate non-market norms if these norms had to compete against
market norms. Thus, the argument concludes, in such cases, the preservation of
the morally preferable conception of the relationship in question would require
that any competing market norms should be actively discouraged.
To illustrate this type of argument, consider how it might be deployed as
an objection to price-gouging. This argument would begin by holding that the
morally preferable conception of the relationship between persons in a society

151.141.113.230 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 13:02:25 UTC
would lead them to be governed by non-market norms, which hold that in times
of great need, they should do their best to aid each other without thinking of
how they could maximally profit from this. If, however, they were allowed to
maximize their profits in times of great need, then the financial windfalls that
could be gained by some from acting in accordance with market norms and
selling necessary items at greatly inflated prices would entice them to abandon
the communitarian norms that they previously held. This, in turn, would lead
the members of this society to conceive of their relationship with the others as
that of mere atomistic bargainers in a marketplace. Thus, to protect the morally
preferable conception of the relationship between members of society, price-
gouging should be prohibited.
The proponents of this type of argument are not committed to holding that it
should be decisive. They could accept that the social benefits of allowing price-
gouging (e.g., a faster flow of much-needed supplies into the emergency area
and a consequent faster return to pre-emergency supplies and pricing levels)
could outweigh the social costs that would result from the members of society
moving from the morally optimal to the morally suboptimal conception of their
relationship.52 Conversely, they could hold that the gains to be had from certain
types of market transactions would be outweighed by the costs that they would
impose through changing the way in which the participants in these transactions
conceived of their relationship. It should also be noted that the proponents of this
type of argument face an immediate problem because it is not clear how they
would establish the truth of the first normative premise. Despite these complexi-
ties, the above discussion of Brennan and Jaworski’s failed criticism of Sandel’s
objections should prove helpful in clarifying this type of argument. And the above
discussion has also shown that this type of argument should play a role in the
debates over the moral limits of markets that are concerned with the question of
which goods and services should be commodified within a given cultural context.
Conclusion
This paper has focused on showing that Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments against
what they perceive to be Sandel’s semiotic objections to certain money-based
exchanges fail because they are based on fundamental misunderstandings of his
views. But the conclusion that should be drawn from this is not merely negative
because the failure of their arguments is instructive. Not only can the failure of
their arguments be drawn upon to clarify the nature of the debate over “the moral
limits of markets,” but, with this clarification in hand, it can be seen how the two
primary aspects of this debate can be conjoined into an underexplored line of
argument against the expansion of commodification.
The College of New Jersey

151.141.113.230 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 13:02:25 UTC
NOTES
I thank David Boonin for his exceptionally helpful editorial comments on an earlier ver-
sion of this paper. I also thank the students in James Spence’s Reading Group at Adrian
College for their extremely helpful comments and criticisms.
1. Brennan and Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1053.
2. Brennan and Jaworski, Markets without Limits. Part II; Brennan and Jaworski,
“Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1053–77.
3. Brennan and Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1057. Brennan and
Jaworski criticize what they take to be the semiotic arguments of Michael Sandel, Debra
Satz, David Archard, Elizabeth Anderson, and Michael Walzer. As will be argued below,
their criticisms of Sandel’s arguments fail as they fundamentally misunderstand his posi-
tion. They also misunderstand the arguments of the other anti-commodification theorists
whose work they address: they take Satz’s and Archard’s arguments to be semiotic when
they are not, and attribute essentialist semiotic arguments to Anderson and Walzer when
they only offer contingent ones. (An essentialist semiotic argument holds that certain
money-based exchanges necessarily communicate a particular propositional attitude, or that
such exchanges violate the essential meaning of certain goods, services, or relationships.
A contingent semiotic argument holds that in a certain context, money-based exchanges
will communicate a certain propositional attitude, or that such exchanges will violate the
meaning that certain goods, services, and relationships have in particular contexts.)
4. In Markets without Limits, Sandel is mentioned more than any other “anti-
commodification theorist,” appearing on twenty-three pages; 12–13, 48, 67, 68, 80, 111,
120–21, 123, 125, 126–27, 135–37, 160, 163–64, 166–67, 225–26. (Elizabeth Ander-
son, the second most-mentioned anti-commodification theorist, appears on twenty-one
pages;12–13, 36–38, 48–49, 52, 58–59, 76, 78, 80–82, 107, 153–55, 203–04. Debra Satz
is third, appearing on just six pages; 7, 12, 48, 76, 198–99.) Sandel’s concerns with the
expansion of money-based exchange are also the focus of a paper (“How Much Is That
Kidney in the Window?”) that Jaworski frequently presents on college campuses; for
example, at the University of Calgary (February 2018), Berry College (March 2018), St.
Lawrence University (April 2018).
5. Brennan and Jaworski’s arguments against semiotic objections to money-based
exchanges have been widely accepted, and this has led to several attempts to develop
new semiotic objections to such exchanges that avoid their criticisms. See, for example,
Sparks (“Can’t Buy Me Love”); Booth (“Real Symbolic Limits”); Maguire and Brown
(“Markets, Interpersonal Practices”).
6. Brennan and Jaworski, Markets without Limits, 47.
10. Brennan and Jaworski, Markets without Limits, 48. An information market allows
people to bet on when certain events would occur, such as a terrorist attack or the death
of a celebrity. They are designed so that the market price of a bid on the occurrence of a

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certain event is indicative of the estimated probability that the event will occur (e.g., sell-
ing shares at 6c on a bet that I will have an article published in 2019 indicates that there
is an expected probability of 6 percent that this will occur).
13. As will be argued below, construing Sandel’s concern in this way is mistaken. His
concern is not that the use of cash or gift certificates as gifts between friends communicates
estrangement, but that, within the cultural context of the contemporary United States, it
signals that the friends who use these items in this way have a conception of friendship that
is inferior to an alternative. Moreover, since the signal that is sent by the use of these goods
within this cultural context concerns the conception of their relationship that is held by the
person who uses them in this way and not with either the goods themselves or the quality of
the relationship, Sandel’s concern about the use of cash or gift certificates as gifts between
friends fails to be a semiotic concern as Brennan and Jaworski define this. (They state that
semiotic objections hold that “to allow a market in some good or service X is a form of
communication that expresses the wrong attitude toward X or expresses an attitude that is
incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of X, or would show disrespect or irreverence for
some practice, custom, belief, or relationship with which X is associated” [Markets without
Limits, 47]). However, since Sandel’s concern with the use of cash or gift certificates in this
context is a semiotic concern (as it is based on the signal that such a money-based exchange
would send within a particular cultural context), that it does not fall within the scope of a
semiotic objection as this is defined by Brennan and Jaworski shows that their account of
such objections is flawed because it fails to correctly identify the proper scope of the set of
such objections.
14. Note that to understand Sandel’s concern with information markets in terrorism
and death in this way would require a minor modification to Brennan and Jaworski’s ac-
count of the Mere Commodity Objection because the participants in this market would
thereby express their view that the objects of the objects of trade (i.e., the persons whose
lives are being bet upon, not the bets themselves) were of only instrumental value.
16. Brennan and Jaworski, Markets without Limits, 52–53.
21. Brennan and Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1057. It is unclear
why they include the caveat “in general,” especially since this opens up the possibility
that their arguments do not hold against some money-based exchanges—a possibility that
they wish to preclude.
22. This term was coined by Radin (Contested Commodities, xi).
23. The quotation is from Brennan and Jaworski (“Markets without Symbolic Limits,”
1064). They cite Bloch and Parry (“Introduction: Money and the Morality,” 19–33).

151.141.113.230 on Thu, 11 Mar 2021 13:02:25 UTC
24. The quotation is from Brennan and Jaworski (“Markets without Symbolic Limits,”
1063). They cite Zelizer (Economic Lives); Zelizer (Pricing the Priceless Child); and
Zelizer (Purchase of Intimacy).
25. Brennan and Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1064. Brennan and
Jaworski cite Carruthers and Ariovich (Money and Credit, 68) as the source of this example.
31. In contemporary America, cash is fiat money: “Representative (or token) Money
(i.e., something the intrinsic value of the material substance of which is divorced from its
monetary face value)–now generally made of paper except in the case of small denomina-
tions–which is created and issued by the State, but is not convertible by law into anything
other than itself, and has no fixed value in terms of an objective standard” (Keynes, Treatise
on Money, 7).
32. See Jevons (Money and the Mechanism, 191–92).
33. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 10–11.
34. Brennan and Jaworski, Markets without Limits, 3; Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy,
5.
35. See note 3.
37. This example—and the discussion that follows—is original to this paper.
39. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 98, 101–07.
40. Noted by Kolodny, “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” 135.
41. Brennan and Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 1057.
42. In addition to omitting to commit himself explicitly to an essentialist semiotic
argument in either of these contexts, there is further indirect evidence that Sandel does
not endorse such an objection to markets in children or information concerning terrorism
or death. Sandel recognizes that such markets would not signal to some persons (e.g.,
economists!) that the participants in them failed to respect the objects of trade (or, in the
case of information markets, the objects of the objects of trade) or that their transactions
were indicative of an objectionable impersonality. (Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 96,
151–54). Since he does not claim that such persons were “wrong” not to understand
these transactions in these ways, he implicitly acknowledges that transactions can have
more than one symbolic meaning for their observers. He accordingly implicitly rejects
the essentialist position that Brennan and Jaworski ascribe to his discussion of these
markets.
43. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 10; emphasis added.

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44. Brennan and Jaworski’s objections to understanding the Mere Commodity Objec-
tion as a semiotic objection can thus be leveled against their own interpretation of Sandel’s
objections as semiotic objections.
45. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 153.
46. Brennan and Jaworski recognize this and respond to Sandel’s consequentialist
“corruption” arguments in Markets without Limits, ch. 13.
47. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 162.
48. Sandel’s consequentialist approach is thus very similar to that advocated by Bren-
nan and Jaworski (Markets without Limits, 68–73).
49. There is a difference between responding to objections to commodification by
outlining ways in which the social situation from which they are offered could be changed
so that they no longer apply and responding to them by noting that they would not apply
in a hypothetical situation that is unrelated to the actual situation from which they are
offered. The former would be a legitimate form of response whereas the latter would be
to change the discussion from one concerned with the contextual wrongness of the com-
modification of certain goods and services to their inherent wrongness.
50. In arguing that “there are no inherent limits to markets” (Markets without Limits,
224), Brennan and Jaworski miss the point of the commodification debate (and have, in
turn, misled others into misunderstanding it—see Stout and Carothers “Review of Mar-
kets without Limits,” 203). This misunderstanding has thus led them to be engaged in an
argument in which they might be the only participants.
51. Versions of this type of criticism appear in Archard (“Selling Yourself,” 87–103)
and Radin (Contested Commodities, 95–101).
52. Sandel recognizes this—and so agrees with Brennan and Jaworski both that semi-
otic concerns can be costly and that these costs could be outweighed by the benefits of the
money-based exchanges with which they are at odds. See Sandel (What Money Can’t Buy,
154; see also note 48). This tension between the culturally contingent norms that govern
the relationship that holds between members of a particular polity and the expediency of
money-based exchanges can account for why persons still oppose (e.g.) price-gouging
even when they recognize its benefits. Such persons might believe that allowing price-
gouging would undercut a morally preferable conception of the relationship that holds
between members of a polity (given that the culturally relative norms associated with
that conception of the relationship in question precluded such money-based exchanges
in times of emergency).
REFERENCES
Archard, David. “Selling Yourself: Titmuss’s Argument against a Market in Blood.” Journal
of Ethics 6, no. 1 (1999): 87–103.
Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry. “Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange.”
In Money and the Morality of Exchange, edited by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry,
19–33. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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Booth, Anthony. “The Real Symbolic Limits of Markets.” Analysis, forthcoming.

Brennan, Jason, and Peter Martin Jaworski. Markets without Limits: Moral Values and
Commercial Interests. New York: Routledge, 2016.
______. “Markets without Symbolic Limits.” Ethics 125, no. 4 (2015): 1053–77.
Carruthers, Bruce C., and Laura Ariovich. Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach.
London: Polity Press, 2010.
Jevons, W. Stanley. Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. New York: D. Appleton, 1896.
Keynes, John Maynard. Treatise on Money. London: Macmillan, 1965. First published 1930.
Kolodny, Niko. “Love as Valuing a Relationship.” Philosophical Review 112, no. 2 (2003):
135–89.
Maguire, Barry, and Brookes Brown. “Markets, Interpersonal Practices, and Signal Dis-
tortion.” Philosopher’s Imprint, forthcoming.
Radin, Margaret Jane. Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children,
Body Parts, and Other Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Sparks, Jacob. “Can’t Buy Me Love: A Reply to Brennan and Jaworski.” Journal of
Philosophical Research, forthcoming.
Stout, J. Alden, and Amy Carothers. “Review of Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski’s
Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests.” Erasmus Journal
of Philosophy and Economics 9, no. 2 (2016): 203–06.
Zelizer, Viviana. Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2013.
———. Pricing the Priceless Child. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
———. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

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SANDEL, SEMIOTICS, AND MONEY-BASED EXCHANGEAuthor(s): James Stacey Taylor

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26910024

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SANDEL, SEMIOTICS, AND MONEY-BASED

James Stacey Taylor

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have recently developed an increasingly

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his arguments.4 Brennan and Jaworski’s argument is becoming increasingly

I. Brennan and Jaworski’s Arguments against (What They Take

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II. How Brennan and Jaworski Fundamentally

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III. Money and the Norms of Friendship

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it is possible that the norms that would be appropriate for an appreciation-based

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certificates as gifts indicates that the conception of friendship that he believes is

IV. Children and Information

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V. What We Can Learn from Brennan and Jaworski’s

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The College of New Jersey

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Booth, Anthony. “The Real Symbolic Limits of Markets.” Analysis, forthcoming.

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