INCOMPARABILITY AND THE HUGE-IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENTS

This paper explores the possibility of incomparability. It first focuses on a challenge to the small-improvement argument for incomparability and then turns to some seemingly more promising, “huge-improvement” variations on the argument. After considering an important complication, it is argued that, whether or not options can be strictly incomparable, there is room for cases beyond not just classic cases of trichotomous comparability but even beyond cases involving options that, though not trichotomously comparable, are still comparable as both positive, or both negative, or, even if indeterminate, both fairly neutral. In the relevant further cases, at least one option that combines a positive feature and a negative feature is not positive, negative, neutral, or even fairly neutral (overall). To the extent that comparability is revealed as applicable in such cases, skepticism about incomparability can persist, but its significance is reduced by the revelation of how little comparability requires.