Mereological Dominance and the

Logic of Better-Than
JAMES GOODRICH

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

It’s been argued that better-than is non-transitive – that there are some value bearers
for which better-than fails to generate an acyclic ordering. Michael Huemer has offered
a powerful objection to this view, which he dubs ‘The Dominance Argument’. In what
follows, I consider the extent to which there is a plausible response to be made on behalf
of those who hold that better-than is non-transitive. I conclude that there is.

INTRODUCTION
Philosophers used to assume that better-than is transitive. ‘It’s
analytic’, they said. ’I wouldn’t know what it would mean for A to be
better than B, B to be better than C, but for C to be better than A.’ Many
still feel this way.1 But due to the work of some others, it’s no longer
as clear that the transitivity of better-than can be taken for granted.2
These dissenters argue that better-than is non-transitive – that there
are some value bearers for which better-than fails to generate an acyclic
ordering. Call this view ‘NTB’.
In a trio of recent articles, Michael Huemer has offered a powerful
new objection to NTB, which he dubs ‘The Dominance Argument’.3
In what follows, I consider the extent to which there is a plausible
response to be made on behalf of NTB. Here’s the plan. First, I outline
the Dominance Argument. Then, I discuss a pair of its premises that the
defender of NTB may wish to reject, but I believe can’t. Next, I show that
there’s a plausible, logically weaker principle than the defender of NTB
that’s favoured by all the same evidence as Huemer’s main premise.
Finally, I discuss the prospects for defending a response centred on this
weaker principle.

1 For example, see John Broome, Weighing Lives (Oxford, 2004), p. 50.
2 See Larry Temkin, ‘Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox’, Philosophy and
Public Affairs 16 (1987), pp. 138–87; Temkin, ‘A Continuum Argument for Intransitivity’,
Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (1996), pp. 175–210; Temkin, Rethinking the Good
(Oxford, 2012); Stuart Rachels, ‘Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Better Than’,
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998), 71–83; Ingmar Persson, From Morality to
the End of Reason (Oxford, 2013), pp. 218–21.
3 See Michael Huemer, ‘In Defense of Repugnance’, Mind 117 (2008), pp. 899–933, at
95; Huemer, ‘Against Equality and Priority’, Utilitas 24 (2012), pp. 483–509, at 497–8;
Huemer, ‘Transitivity, Comparative Value, and the Methods of Ethics’, Ethics 123 (2013),
pp. 318–45, at 335–6.


c Cambridge University Press 2016 Utilitas Vol. 28, No. 4, December 2016
doi:10.1017/S0953820815000503

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 362 James Goodrich
THE DOMINANCE ARGUMENT
Huemer’s argument comes in two flavours.4 The first shows that
the conjunction of NTB and a plausible principle called ‘Mereological
Dominance’ entails that better-than is non-asymmetric. The second
shows that the conjunction of NTB and Mereological Dominance entails
that better-than is non-irreflexive. Here’s Mereological Dominance:

Mereological Dominance (MD): Given two sets of [value bearers]

{A1 , A2 . . . An } and {B1 , B2 . . . Bn }, if (i) Ai is better than Bi for
every i and (ii) there are no evaluative relationships between
the Ai and the Bi (e.g., the Ai do not either complement or clash
with one another in ways that would generate extra value or
disvalue), then [A1 + . . . + An ] is better than [B1 + . . . + Bn ].5

This principle is fairly plausible. And of course, better-than is

asymmetric and irreflexive. Therefore, the soundness of either version
of the argument would show NTB to be false. To be a bit more
precise, here’s a deductively valid (albeit informal) iteration of the first
Dominance Argument:

1. Mereological Dominance
2. (MD & NTB) → ¬ (better-than is Asymmetrical)
3. better-than is Asymmetric
4. ¬ (MD & NTB) (2, 3)
5. ¬ NTB (1, 4)

Given premise 1, we could similarly derive conclusions 4 and 5 were we

to substitute premise 2 with premise 6 and premise 3 with premise 7:

6. (MD & NTB) → ¬ (better-than is Irreflexive)

7. better-than is Irreflexive

For the advocate of NTB to avoid the conclusion in either case, a premise
will need to be given up. In both versions of the argument, premise 4
follows via modus tollens, so it can’t be rejected. Premises 3 and 7 each
enjoy Moorean certainty – better-than becomes unintelligible if either
asymmetry or irreflexivity is given up. So, they too are not candidates
for rejection. That leaves premises 1, 2 and 6. But premises 2 and 6 are
true.

4 The first appears in Huemer, ‘In Defense’ and ‘Transitivity’, while the second appears
in Huemer, ‘Against Equality’.
5 See Huemer, ‘In Defense’, p. 335. In what follows, I take better-than to mean ‘all-
things-considered better than’.

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 Mereological Dominance and the Logic of Better-Than 363
PREMISES 2 AND 6
Huemer is right about premise 2.6 That is, if one is committed to
Mereological Dominance and NTB, then one is committed to the view
that better-than is not asymmetric. To see why, assume that there exists
some set of value bearers for which the transitivity of better-than fails
to hold: A > B > C > D > E > F > A. Now, split these six value bearers
between two subsets:
(1a) {A, C, E}
(1b) {B, D, F}
Since (A > B), (C > D) and (E > F), according to Mereological
Dominance, the mereological sum of 1a is better than the mereological
sum of 1b. Now compare 1a with the same set, differently ordered:
(1c) {F, B, D}
Since (A < F), (C < B) and (E < D), according to Mereological
Dominance, the mereological sum of 1a is worse than the mereological
sum of 1c. Thus the mereological sum of 1a is all-things-considered
better than the mereological sum of 1b and all-things-considered worse
than the mereological sum of 1c. Therefore, better-than fails to be
asymmetric in this case and premise two looks fairly well justified.
Premise 6 – that the conjunction of Mereological Dominance and
NTB entails that better-than is not irreflexive – can be argued for in
a similar fashion to above. Again, for the sake of argument, consider a
set containing value bearers A, B and C, which are cyclically ordered
(A > B > C > A):
(2a) {A, B, C}
(2b) {C, A, B}
Since (C > A), (A > B), and (B > C), according to Mereological
Dominance, the mereological sum of 2b is better than the mereological
sum of 2a. But 2a and 2b are identical. Thus 2b would be all-things-
considered better than itself and better-than fails to be irreflexive. As I
said at the outset of this section, Huemer is right about premise 2. As
just shown, he’s also right about premise 6.

PREMISE 1
Mereological Dominance is the only premise left open for criticism.
Huemer’s defence of the principle involves merely pointing out its prima

6 This section is more or less just an explanation of the arguments found in Huemer’s
work.

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 364 James Goodrich
facie plausibility. To illustrate this, he appeals to an example where
driving a Honda is better than driving a Ford and being in California is
better than being in Texas. If there are no holistic interactions between
cars and places one could live, then surely driving a Honda in California
would be better than driving a Ford in Texas.
Though Mereological Dominance may be sufficient to capture such
intuitions, it’s not necessary. To see why, consider a logically weaker
principle, which does the job just as well:

Mereological Dominance∗ : Given two sets of value bearers {A1 , A2

. . . An } and {B1 , B2 . . . Bn }, if (i) for some bijection between the
two sets, Ai is better than Bi for every i, (i∗ ) there’s no bijection
between the two sets such that Ai is worse than Bi for every i
and (ii) there are no evaluative relationships between the Ai and
the Bi , then [A1 + . . . + An ] is better than [B1 + . . . + Bn ].

(i) of this principle is just a different way of stating (i) in Huemer’s

formulation. (i∗ ) is new. If the cars and states are not cyclically ordered,
(i∗ ) will be satisfied, so Mereological Dominance∗ captures just the same
intuitions as Huemer’s original principle.
More interestingly, the Dominance Argument fails if we accept this
weaker principle in lieu of Huemer’s stronger principle. Reconsider
sets 1a and 1b. The mereological sum of 1a satisfies (i) of my revised
principle for being better than the mereological sum of 1b. Now, consider
sets 1a and 1c. The mereological sum of 1a fails to satisfy (i∗ ) for being
better than the mereological sum of 1c. Since 1b and 1c are identical,
1a fails to meet this sufficient condition for its mereological sum to be
all-things-considered better than the mereological sum of 1b/1c.
Therefore, it’s not the case that the conjunction of NTB and
Mereological Dominance∗ entails that better-than is non-asymmetrical.
We can state this point more generally to show that Mereological
Dominance∗ doesn’t introduce any symmetries into better-than: if (i)
is satisfied for [A1 + . . . + An ] being better than [B1 + . . . + Bn ], (i∗ )
could not be satisfied for [B1 + . . . + Bn ] being better than [A1 + . . .
+ An ].
Mereological Dominance∗ and NTB also don’t entail that better-than
is non-irreflexive. Reconsider 2a and 2b. 2b satisfies the first conjunct
of the revised sufficient condition for 2b’s elements jointly being all-
things-considered better than the joint elements of 2a. But since 2a
just is a rearrangement of 2b for which Ai is worse than Bi for every i,
i∗ is not fulfilled. Therefore, the conjunction of NTB and Mereological
Dominance∗ does not entail that better-than is non-irreflexive.

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 Mereological Dominance and the Logic of Better-Than 365
Therefore, the validity of the Dominance Arguments crucially relies
on Huemer’s particular statement of the Mereological Dominance
principle.

HAS THE DOMINANCE ARGUMENT BEEN UNDERMINED?

Huemer gives no defence of his formulation of Mereological Dominance
beyond its prima facie plausibility. Both his principle and my logically
weaker one are in a stalemate on this count. That is, the two principles
deliver the same verdict in nearly all cases. Furthermore, they only
depart on some – but as we will see in a moment, not all – cases of
non-transitive orderings.
Moreover, on transitive orderings, if a set of value bearers satisfies
(i), necessarily, it satisfies (i∗ ). So, Mereological Dominance gets any
of the plausibility points that fulfilling (i∗ ) would add for free on
the assumption that better-than always generates acyclic orderings.
It’s worth stressing again: if better-than is transitive, (i∗ ) holds
anyway – and therefore, Mereological Dominance entails Mereological
Dominance∗ . Of course, assuming transitivity in this discussion
would beg the question. But discounting the plausibility of Huemer’s
Mereological Dominance in the case of cyclic orderings because it would
entail that NTB is false would also be question-begging.
Since Mereological Dominance entails the weaker Mereological
Dominance∗ , Huemer has to argue that though Mereological
Dominance∗ is necessary, it fails to be sufficient to capture all of the
intuitions in non-question begging cases. If there is no non-question
begging case which Mereological Dominance∗ fails to capture, the
Dominance Argument fails to be convincing.
Why does it fail to be convincing? Well, the defender of NTB can
hold each premise of the Dominance Argument besides premise 1 to
be true and accept a principle that is similarly favoured by all of the
same evidence as premise 1. Given this, we might think that premise
one lacks the justification needed for the Dominance Arguments to be
cogent. The defender of NTB thus has her response: Huemer has no
reason to prefer the stronger Mereological Dominance to the weaker
Mereological Dominance∗ taken by itself. And it isn’t clear what such
a reason could be. Therefore, there’s little reason to grant the stronger
principle as a premise. But to be clear: this doesn’t mean Mereological
Dominance∗ is more intuitively plausible.
The defender of NTB could try to get a bit more out of this line
of thought. Given the stalemate in justification between the two
principles, she might think that there is some extra bit of justification
in holding Mereological Dominance∗ in lieu of Mereological Dominance
on coherentist grounds. So if their arguments for NTB are sufficiently

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 366 James Goodrich
compelling and Mereological Dominance is incompatible with such
arguments, then she may be at least weakly justified in rejecting the
stronger Mereological Dominance Principle.
The methodological principle is not that the arguments for
NTB directly undercut Mereological Dominance. It’s that given two
principles with equal non-coherentist justification, one may be justified
in believing one principle in lieu of another on coherentist grounds. This
is importantly different from claiming that the defender of NTB can
reject Mereological Dominance out of hand because of their arguments
for NTB. But even if this coherentist argument would fail, that wouldn’t
undermine the line of thought two paragraphs ago.
But, one might object, the lines of argument offered thus far would
similarly justify the following:

Mereological Dominance∗∗ : Given two sets of value bearers {A1 ,

A2 . . . An } and {B1 , B2 . . . Bn }, if (i) Ai is better than Bi for every
i, (i∗∗ ) all value bearers in the union of both sets can be acyclically
ordered and (ii) there are no evaluative relationships between
the Ai and the Bi , then [A1 + . . . + An ] is better than [B1 + . . .
+ Bn ].

This is clearly ad hoc. It states, roughly, that mereological dominance

principles only hold in cases where all of the value bearers can
be acyclically ordered. Obviously, such a principle couldn’t be used
to show NYB is false. This may seem troubling because it would
deliver many of the same verdicts as Mereological Dominance∗ and
the lines of argument just sketched might appear to apply equally
to it. Furthermore, the underlying methodological point would seem
generalizable to many other philosophical debates: one can simply add
a clause to a premise that says the premise holds except in cases of
contradiction, which looks pretty bad.
But of course, the reason such a revision looks bad is that there
doesn’t appear to be any independent reason to accept it other than
that it avoids the contradiction. So if the defender of NTB is to say
something about why (i∗ ) isn’t objectionable in the way (i∗∗ ) is, she will
need to provide independent grounds for accepting (i∗ ) that don’t apply
to (i∗∗ ).
A couple of quick notes: one may think that the construction of (i∗ ) is
less objectionable than (i∗∗ ) simply on the grounds that (i∗ ) makes no
reference to the issue in question – namely, whether better-than always
generates transitive orderings. Additionally, the general structure of ‘in
one way better and in no way worse’ – which is structurally similar to
the conjunction of (i) and (i∗ ) in my revised principle – is fairly common
among dominance principles (i.e. pareto optimality), while a clause akin

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 Mereological Dominance and the Logic of Better-Than 367
∗∗
to (i ) is not. So given that there are other dominance principles with a
similar structure, Mereological Dominance∗ certainly doesn’t have the
same flavour of ad hocness as Mereological Dominance∗∗ .
But more can be said. Consider two sets in which better-than fails to
be transitive but (i∗ ) still holds:
(3a) {A, C, E}
(3b) {B, D, F}
For the sake of argument, assume the value bearers are intransitively
ranked as follows: A > B > C > D > E > F > C and A > F. The condition
common to each revision holds: (i). But there’s no bijection from one set
to the other for which (i∗ ) fails to hold and ex hypothesi, (i∗∗ ) does fail to
hold. Therefore in this case, Mereological Dominance and Mereological
Dominance∗ both deliver the same verdict: the mereological sum of 3a
is better than the mereological sum of 3b. This is the intuitive verdict.
But Mereological Dominance∗∗ fails to do so since it claims that (i) and
(ii) are only sufficient when there is a transitive ordering.
Therefore, we might conclude that Mereological Dominance∗∗ and
other similarly ad hoc principles do not obviously capture the same
virtues that Mereological Dominance∗ does either in their predictions
or in the plausibility of their formulations. Moreover, Huemer has
no principled reason to have accepted Mereological Dominance over
Mereological Dominance∗ in his arguments other than that it provided
him with an objection to NTB. But such a justification isn’t allowable
in this case.
I’ve argued that the defender of NTB ought not be moved
by Huemer’s Dominance Arguments. Because the logically weaker
Mereological Dominance∗ principle has the same implications as
Huemer’s Mereological Dominance principle in all non-question-
begging cases, the first premise of Huemer’s argument fails to be
compelling. Therefore, I think, the Dominance Arguments will not
settle the question of whether better-than always generates transitive
orderings.7

James.Goodrich@mykolab.com

7 Many thanks to David Black, Michael Huemer and Larry Temkin for insightful
comments on early drafts as well as an anonymous referee for Utilitas, who saved me
from many embarrassing mistakes.

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