The Idea Of Judgement

The practice of driving requires that she come to see the avoidance of tyre squeal as a kind of internal good. Within another layer the squeal of rubber will be an external good – made explicit when perhaps she rides a bicycle down a steep incline and the brakes start to squeal. She finds it increasingly difficult to stop and the squeal increases and energy is dissipated not in stopping the bike but in making the noise. Perhaps she learns to use the gears to avoid some of this noise, and perhaps such use may be regarded as an internal good within another practice. The point of this example is to illustrate how it is often necessary to appreciate an external good within one practice, which then serves as an entering wedge to appreciate an internal good in another. It also illustrates how within one practice an external good may be of prime concern which is an internal good in another. Moreover it illustrates how in a sense a customer more concerned with external goods in the case of a work practice, may nonetheless come to be sensitive to the internal goods involved in the work.