On External and Internal Goods in Science

by Oded Goldreich


This post articulates my opinion on careerism (as stated in short opinion nr 15), using some terminology and observations that appear in MacIntyre's book After Virtue (1981). Specifically, I have slightly revised the following points, made in Chapter 14 (The Nature of the Virtues) of the book, and specialized their phrasing to the research activity. (The original extracts on which they are based follow.)

There are two kinds of good possibly to be gained by excelling in the research activity. On the one hand, there are those goods externally and contingently attached to this activity by the accidents of social circumstance; such goods as prestige, status and money. There are always alternative ways for achieving such goods, and their achievement is never to be had only by engaging in research. On the other hand, there are the goods internal to the research activity which cannot be had in any way but by performing research. We call them internal for two reasons: first, because we can only specify them in terms of the research activity itself and by means of examples from this activity (otherwise the meagerness of our vocabulary for speaking of such goods forces us into such devices as talking of 'a certain highly particular kind of'); and, secondly, because they can only be identified and recognized by the experience of participating in the activity in question. Those who lack the relevant experience are incompetent thereby as judges of internal goods.

We are now in a position to notice an important difference between internal and external goods. It is characteristic of what is called external goods that when achieved they are always some individual's property and possession. Moreover characteristically they are such that the more someone has of them, the less there is for other people. This is sometimes necessarily the case, as with power and fame, and sometimes the case by reason of contingent circumstance as with money. External goods are therefore characteristically objects of competition in which there must be losers as well as winners. Internal goods are indeed the outcome of competition to excel, but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participates in the activity.


Extracts from Chapter 14 (The Nature of the Virtues) of After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre

[The foregoing text is based on the 2nd and 3rd paragraph, whereas the 1st and 4th paragraphs are reproduced for wider perspective. It is clear that the research activity in each specific discipline fits MacIntyre's definition of a practice. The four reproduced paragraphs do not appear consecutively in the original text.]

By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

There are thus two kinds of good possibly to be gained by playing chess. On the one hand there are those goods externally and contingently attached to chess-playing and to other practices by the accidents of social circumstance -- in the case of the imaginary child candy, in the case of real adults such goods as prestige, status and money. There are always alternative ways for achieving such goods, and their achievement is never to be had only by engaging in some particular kind of practice. On the other hand there are the goods internal to the practice of chess which cannot be had in any way but by playing chess or some other game of that specific kind. We call them internal for two reasons: first, as I have already suggested, because we can only specify them in terms of chess or some other game of that specific kind and by means of examples from such games (otherwise the meagerness of our vocabulary for speaking of such goods forces us into such devices as my own resort to writing of 'a certain highly particular kind of'); and secondly because they can only be identified and recognized by the experience of participating in the practice in question. Those who lack the rele vant experience are incompetent thereby as judges of internal goods.

We are now in a position to notice an imponant difference between what I have called internal and what I have called external goods. It is characteristic of what I have called external goods that when achieved they are always some individual's propeny and possession. Moreover characteristically they are such that the more someone has of them, the less there is for other people. This is sometimes necessarily the case, as with power and fame, and sometimes the case by reason of contingent circumstance as with money. External goods are therefore characteristically objects of competition in which there must be losers as well as winners. Internal goods are indeed the outcome of competition to excel, but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participates in the practice.

But what does all or any of this have to do with the concept of the virtues? It turns out that we are now in a position to formulate a first, even if panial and tentative definition of a virtue: A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effictively prevents us from achieving any such goods. Later this definition will need amplification and amendment. But as a first approximation to an adequate definition it already illuminates the place of the vinues in human life. For it is not difficult to show for a whole range of key vinues that without them the goods internal to practices are barred to us, but not just barred to us generally, barred in a very panicular way.


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