In The Grasshopper, Bernard Suits argues that the best life is the one whose essence is game-play. In fact, only through the concept of game-play can we understand how anything at all is worth doing. Yet this seems implausible: morality makes things worth doing independently of any game, and games are themselves subject to moral evaluation. So games must be logically posterior to morality. The current paper responds to these objections by developing the theory of Ludic Constructivism. Constructivist theories such (...) as Kant’s explain normativity in a way that is both objective and cognitivist but also mind-dependent. Roughly, constructivists ground normative structures in rational procedures. But rational agency is diverse: it is realized in different ways and to different degrees by different agents. Yet Kantian Constructivism requires a strong identity of rational procedures across rational agents. Ludic Constructivism avoids this challenge by rejecting this strong identity of agency, instead building a normative framework out of the ingredients of Suits’s definition of game-play. We want to play the best games we can. In order to do so we must play games with a certain structure: they must be nested multiplayer games in which everyone who is capable of self-originating activity is engaged as a fellow player rather than a plaything. Nested games – games that are constructed out of other games – go best when each game contributes to the value of each other game in the nest. Such game nests are “reciprocating value-maximization structures”. Our lives go best when we design, play, and revise the game of our Individual Life and we also embed that game within the highest-order nested game of Fate of Humankind. In this way, Ludic Constructivism delivers a normative system that expands Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, and a life that meets Aristotle’s conception of pleasure. (shrink)

According to some philosophers of technology, technology embodies moral values in virtue of its functional properties and the intentions of its designers. But this paper shows that such an account makes the values supposedly embedded in technology epistemically opaque and that it does not allow for values to change. Therefore, to overcome these shortcomings, the paper introduces the novel Affordance Account of Value Embedding as a superior alternative. Accordingly, artefacts bear affordances, that is, artefacts make certain actions likelier given the (...) circumstances. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective that invokes recent moral anthropology, I conceptualize affordances as response-dependent properties. That is, they depend on intrinsic as well as extrinsic properties of the artefact. We have reason to value these properties. Therefore, artefacts embody values and are not value-neutral, which has practical implications for the design of new technologies. (shrink)

As a growing number of embryos collect in fertility clinics, it is imperative to evaluate the permissibility of available options for genetic parents and fertility institutions. Much of the discussion on appropriate treatment of embryos has focused on the circumstances under which it is permissible to destroy embryos for instrumental purposes, and thus has little application to the fertility context. I aim to develop a new account of the value of embryos whereby embryos have final value in virtue of their (...) relationship to persons that could exist. I call this symbolic value. To establish this value, I first show that corpses have this same symbolic value in virtue of their relationship to prior persons, and then show that the cases of corpses and embryos are relevantly similar. Because of this value, we ought to treat embryos in particular respectful ways. It is currently common practice in the United States to simply discard extra embryos that exist as a result of in vitro fertilization. I argue it is generally impermissible to simply discard embryos because it is an act of disrespect and does not treat them in accordance with their value. (shrink)

This paper argues that if motivation by rightness de re is praiseworthy, then so is motivation by rightness de dicto. I argue that these two types of moral motivation have been unfairly compared, in light of a widespread failure to appreciate the structural similarities between them. These structural similarities become clear when we think more carefully about the nature of motivation and about moral metaphysics. I then argue that the two types of moral motivation are on a par by discussing (...) a series of minimal pairs. I argue that in good cases, in which the agent succeeds in doing what she is motivated to do, both motivations seem praiseworthy, and that bad cases, in which the agent fails, arise for motivation by rightness de re in precisely the same way as they do for motivation by rightness de dicto. I then offer a way to evaluate the unsuccessful agents, according to which someone's motivations can still be praiseworthy even if her actions and moral beliefs are both blameworthy, and someone can have certain praiseworthy motivations while lacking others. On my view, most of us are deeply flawed agents who nonetheless have some redeeming features—including our moral motivations. (shrink)

A large part of the explainable AI literature focuses on what explanations are in general, what algorithmic explainability is more specifically, and how to code these principles of explainability into AI systems. Much less attention has been devoted to the question of why algorithmic decisions and systems should be explainable and whether there ought to be a right to explanation and why. We therefore explore the normative landscape of the need for AI to be explainable and individuals having a right (...) to such explanation. This exploration is particularly relevant to the medical domain where the (im)possibility of explainable AI is high on both the research and practitioners’ agenda. The dominant intuition overall is that explainability has and should play a key role in the health context. Notwithstanding the strong normative intuition for having a right to explanation, intuitions can be wrong. So, we need more than an appeal to intuitions when it comes to explaining the normative significance of having a right to explanation when being subject to AI-based decision-making. The aim of the paper is therefore to provide an account of what might underlie the normative intuition. We defend the ‘symmetry thesis’ according to which there is no special normative reason to have a right to explanation when ‘machines’ in the broad sense, make decisions, recommend treatment, discover tumors, and so on. Instead, we argue that we have a right to explanation in cases that involve automated processing that significantly affect our core deliberative agency and which we do not understand, because we have a general moral right to explanation when choices are made which significantly affect us but which we do not understand. (shrink)

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good (...) in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel account of the value of knowledge. The account is novel insofar as it advocates a shift in focus from the value of individual items of knowledge to the value of the commodity of knowledge. It is argued that the commodity of knowledge is valuable in at least two ways: in a wide range of areas, knowledge is our way of being in cognitive contact with the world and for us the good life is a life (...) rich enough in knowledge. (shrink)

There is a common refrain in the literature on punishment that presumes the mutual exclusivity of defending retribution and adopting a humanistic or welfare-oriented outlook. The refrain, that if we want to be humane, or care about human welfare, we must abandon retributive punishment, anger, and resentment is readily repeated, endorsed, and relied upon. This article suggests that this opposition is false: retribution and welfare-orientation can not only be endorsed concomitantly, but are complimentary projects, and may even be grounded in (...) the same normative basis, such that if we endorse one we are already committed to ideas that ground reason to care about the other.My primary target will be claims that aim to undermine retributivism by demonstrating the desirability of welfare-orientation. If both can live together, demonstrating the attractiveness of one goes nowhere toward displacing the other. Further, establishing this claim invites further inquiry into classic questions about the “barbaric,” or “morally repugnant” credentials of retributivism. Confronting these claims will elucidate the consistency of adopting both retributive and welfare-oriented views, which, I suggest, can be jointly adopted and pursued. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 305-317, April 2022.

The universe that surrounds us is vast, and we are so very small. When we reflect on the vastness of the universe, our humdrum cosmic location, and the inevitable future demise of humanity, our lives can seem utterly insignificant. Many philosophers assume that such worries about our significance reflect a banal metaethical confusion. They dismiss the very idea of cosmic significance. This, I argue, is a mistake. Worries about cosmic insignificance do not express metaethical worries about objectivity or nihilism, and (...) we can make good sense of the idea of cosmic significance and its absence. It is also possible to explain why the vastness of the universe can make us feel insignificant. This impression does turn out to be mistaken, but not for the reasons typically assumed. In fact, we might be of immense cosmic significance—though we cannot, at this point, tell whether this is the case. (shrink)

The universe that surrounds us is vast, and we are so very small. When we reflect on the vastness of the universe, our humdrum cosmic location, and the inevitable future demise of humanity, our lives can seem utterly insignificant. Many philosophers assume that such worries about our significance reflect a banal metaethical confusion. They dismiss the very idea of cosmic significance. This, I argue, is a mistake. Worries about cosmic insignificance do not express metaethical worries about objectivity or nihilism, and (...) we can make good sense of the idea of cosmic significance and its absence. It is also possible to explain why the vastness of the universe can make us feel insignificant. This impression does turn out to be mistaken, but not for the reasons typically assumed. In fact, we might be of immense cosmic significance-though we cannot, at this point, tell whether this is the case. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend a novel version of the Reactive Attitude account of moral blameworthiness. In Section 1, I introduce the Reactive Attitude account and outline Allan Gibbard's version of it. In Section 2, I present the Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem, which has been at the heart of much recent discussion about the nature of value, and explain why a reformulation of it causes serious problems for versions of the Reactive Attitude account such as Gibbard's. In (...) Section 3, I consider some ways in which Gibbard might attempt to avoid the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem. I argue that all of these ways fail to achieve their aim and further contend that the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem cannot be solved in a sufficiently convincing manner by the widely used method of making ad hoc distinctions among kinds of properties, kinds of attitudes, and kinds of reasons. In Section 4, I sketch my own version of the Reactive Attitude account of moral blameworthiness and show that it simply avoids the Wrong Kind of Reason Problem rather than attempting to solve the problem on a piecemeal basis. (shrink)

Many believe that because we are so small, we must be utterly insignificant on the cosmic scale. But whether this is so depends on what it takes to be important. On one view, what matters for importance is the difference to value that something makes. On this view, what determines our cosmic importance is not our size, but what else of value is out there. But a rival view also seems plausible: that importance requires sufficient causal impact on the relevant (...) scale; since we have no such impact on the grand scale, that would entail our cosmic insignificance. I argue that despite appearances, causal impact is neither necessary nor sufficient for importance. All that matters is impact on value. Since parts can have non-causal impact on the value of the wholes that contain them, this means that we might have great impact on the grandest scale without ever leaving our little planet. (shrink)

What are the limits of well-being? This question nicely captures one of the central debates concerning the nature of the individual human good. For rival theories differ as to what sort of facts directly constitute a person's being well-off. On some views, well-being is limited to the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. But other views push the boundaries of well-being beyond this, so that it encompasses a variety of mental states, not merely pleasure alone. Some theories then (...) draw the line here, limiting well-being to the presence of the appropriately broadened set of mental states. But still others extend the limits of well-being even further, so that it is constituted in part by facts that are not themselves mental states at all; on such views, well-being is partly constituted by states of affairs that are “external” to the individual's experiences. In this essay, I want to explore some of this debate by focusing on a particular stretch of the dialectic. That is, I want to think hard about a particular connected series of arguments and counterarguments. These arguments – or, at least, the concerns they seek to express – emerge naturally in the give and take of philosophical discussion. Together they make up a rather simple story, whose plot, in very rough terms, is this: first there is an attempt to push the limits of well-being outward, moving from a narrow to a broader conception; then comes the claim that the resulting notion is too broad, and so we must retreat to a narrower conception after all. (shrink)

With the development of increasingly sophisticated sociable robots, robot-human relationships are being transformed. Not only can sociable robots furnish emotional support and companionship for humans, humans can also form relationships with robots that they value highly. It is natural to ask, do robots that stand in close relationships with us have any moral standing over and above their purely instrumental value as means to human ends. We might ask our question this way, ‘Are there ways we can act towards robots (...) that would be wrong to the robot?’ To address this, Part I lays out standard approaches to moral standing: appealing to intrinsic properties, human responses, and values inhering in relationships. Part II explores the third, relational strategy in detail. Looking beyond Western analyses, it considers Eastern philosophy and the environmental philosophy of 'deep ecology' and extends these approaches to sociable robots. Part III examines practical implications for the case of Samantha, a sex robot that was allegedly raped. Part IV identifies and replies to objections. (shrink)

We explore aversion to the use of algorithms in moral decision-making. So far, this aversion has been explained mainly by the fear of opaque decisions that are potentially biased. Using incentivized experiments, we study which role the desire for human discretion in moral decision-making plays. This seems justified in light of evidence suggesting that people might not doubt the quality of algorithmic decisions, but still reject them. In our first study, we found that people prefer humans with decision-making discretion to (...) algorithms that rigidly apply exogenously given human-created fairness principles to specific cases. In the second study, we found that people do not prefer humans to algorithms because they appreciate flesh-and-blood decision-makers per se, but because they appreciate humans’ freedom to transcend fairness principles at will. Our results contribute to a deeper understanding of algorithm aversion. They indicate that emphasizing the transparency of algorithms that clearly follow fairness principles might not be the only element for fostering societal algorithm acceptance and suggest reconsidering certain features of the decision-making process. (shrink)

It is often supposed that valuable organisms are more valuable if they are rare. Likewise if they belong to endangered species. I consider what kinds of value rarity and endangerment can add in such cases. I argue that individual organisms of a valuable species typically have instrumental value as means to the end of preserving their species. This progenitive value, I suggest, tends to increase exponentially with rarity. Endlings, for their part, typically have little progenitive value; however, I argue that (...) they may nonetheless have persistence value because, merely by existing, they postpone the numerical extinction of their species. Finally, I propose that a sentient endling can have higher lifeworld value than it would have had were it not the last of its kind. This, I argue, is because when a sentient endling dies, very little of its lifeworld is preserved – and this, I suggest, can be a bad thing. (shrink)

In the US Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wide Fund for Nature and many other environmental organisations, it is standard practice to evaluate particular woods, wetlands and other such places on the basis of the ‘ecosystem services’ they are thought to provide. I argue that this practice cannot account for one important way in which places are of value to human beings. When they play integral roles in our lives, particular places have a kind of value which cannot be adequately (...) conceived in terms of service provision. Since it is in this respect limited, the ecosystem services framework can, I suggest, be criticised on grounds of justice. (shrink)

Veritism claims that only true beliefs are of basic epistemic value. Michael DePaul argues that veritism is false because it entails the implausible view that all true beliefs are of equal epistemic value. In this paper, I discuss two recent replies to DePaul's argument: one offered by Nick Treanor and the other by Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij and Stephen Grimm. I argue that neither of the two replies is successful. I propose a new response to DePaul's argument and defend my response against (...) a possible objection. (shrink)

In recent discussions of the so-called “value of truth,” it is assumed that what is valuable in the relevant way is not the things that are true, but only various states and activities associated with those things: knowing them, investigating them, etc. I consider all the arguments I know of for this assumption, and argue that none provide good reason to accept it. By examining these arguments, we gain a better appreciation of what the value of the things that are (...) true would be, and why it would matter. We also encounter three indications that what is true really is valuable, each of which provides a promising starting point for a serious argument with that conclusion. (shrink)

To my knowledge, the term “flourishing” was introduced into contemporary philosophy in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 article “Modern Moral Philosophy.” In this article and in much of the writing subsequent to it, the concept of flourishing seems to have three principal facets, or to be associated with three philosophical views.

This paper distinguishes two interpretations of G. E. Moore''s principle of organic unities, which says that the intrinsic value of a whole need not equal the sum of the intrinsic values its parts would have outside it. A holistic interpretation, which was Moore''s own, says that parts retain their values when they enter a whole but that there can be an additional value in the whole as a whole that must be added to them. The conditionality interpretation, which has been (...) defended by Korsgaard, says that parts can change their values when they enter wholes, so no additional value is needed. The paper shows that the two interpretations, which differ on such apparently important issues as the nature of intrinsic value, can always yield the same conclusions about the overall value in a state of affairs, so there is in that sense nothing to choose between them. At the same time, though, the differences between the interpretations make sometimes one and sometimes the other more appropriate for expressing a given evaluative view. In this last connection the paper considers views about beauty, posthumous achievement, vices of disproportion, deserved and compassionate pain, and undeserved and malicious pleasure. (shrink)

This paper argues against the call to democratize artificial intelligence (AI). Several authors demand to reap purported benefits that rest in direct and broad participation: In the governance of AI, more people should be more involved in more decisions about AI—from development and design to deployment. This paper opposes this call. The paper presents five objections against broadening and deepening public participation in the governance of AI. The paper begins by reviewing the literature and carving out a set of claims (...) that are associated with the call to “democratize AI”. It then argues that such a democratization of AI (1) rests on weak grounds, because it does not answer to a demand of legitimization, (2) is redundant in that it overlaps with existing governance structures, (3) is resource intensive, which leads to injustices, (4) is morally myopic and thereby creates popular oversights and moral problems of its own, and finally, (5) is neither theoretically nor practically the right kind of response to the injustices that animate the call. The paper concludes by suggesting that AI should be democratized not by broadening and deepening participation but by increasing the democratic quality of the administrative and executive elements of collective decision making. In a slogan: The question is not so much whether AI should be democratized but how. (shrink)

This essay discusses monism and pluralism about two related evaluative notions: welfare, or what makes people better off, and value simpliciter, or what makes the world better. These are stipulatively referred to as 'axiological value'. Axiological value property monists hold that one of these notions is reducible to the other (or else eliminable), while axiological value property pluralists deny this. Substantive monists about axiological value hold that there is just one basic kind of thing that makes our lives or the (...) world better, while substantive pluralists hold that there is more than one such thing. A more radical kind of pluralism holds that each of the plurality of good things is good in its own way, thus raising questions concerning value comparability and compensability. The essay elucidates these theories and discusses important arguments for and against them. (shrink)

I analyse the concept of sentimental value, with a view to identifying its relations with the notions of intrinsic, final, extrinsic and instrumental value. The analysis explores issues arising in the understanding of an object as sentimentally valuable, and reveals a serious tension in the common sense extrinsic conception of sentimental value.

Moral philosophers who differ from one another on a wide range of questions tend to agree on at least one general point. Most believe that things are worth valuing either because of their relationship to something else worth valuing, or because they are simply (in themselves) worth valuing. I value my car, because I value getting to work; I value getting to work, because I value making money and spending time productively; and I value those things because I value leading (...) a fulfilling life—and that valuing needs no justification. The values that need to be justified by other values are extrinsic; those that do not are intrinsic. Most traditional philosophical approaches to value justification are foundational in this sense: intrinsic values provide a foundation upon which other values can be justified. (shrink)

G.E. Moore’s principle of organic unity holds that the intrinsic value of a whole may differ from the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Moore combined this principle with invariabilism about intrinsic value: An item’s intrinsic value depends solely on its bearer’s intrinsic properties, not on which wholes it has membership of. It is often said that invariabilism ought to be rejected in favour of what might be called ‘conditionalism’ about intrinsic value. This paper is an attempt to (...) show how invariabilism might be filled out in ways that allow its proponents to answer their conditionalist opponents. The main point consists in identifying how some amount of extrinsic part-value may contribute to whole-value that is nevertheless intrinsic. This enables an invariabilist to explain how the intrinsic value of a whole may differ from the sum of its intrinsic part-values, without abandoning the Moorean doctrine that intrinsic value supervenes on intrinsic properties (the proposal is nevertheless consistent with the view that invariabilist and conditionalist accounts might exist side by side). I finish with a brief explanation of how the main proposal could help construct invariabilist accounts of particular organic unities, looking beyond the more general argument they have with conditionalists. (shrink)

Advances in biotechnology mean that it may soon be possible to recreate previously extinct species. This has led to an emerging debate within bioethics about whether we ought to reintroduce extinct species into our ecosystems. In this paper, we discuss the role that biodiversity could play in this debate. Many believe that biodiversity is a good that should be protected. We argue that if biodiversity is a good, then this suggests it should also be promoted, including by reintroducing previously extinct (...) species. We begin by outlining different ways in which biodiversity could be conceptualized, and then analyze various accounts of its value. We suggest no approach justifies an asymmetry between “protecting” biodiversity by conserving species alive today, and “creating” biodiversity by introducing previously extinct species. This suggests that if we have reasons stemming from biodiversity to protect species from extinction, we will have similar reasons to reintroduce previously extinct species. We close by asking whether arguments from biodiversity speak in favor of introducing some novel species into the ecosystem. (shrink)

In her paper, 'Two distinctions in goodness', Korsgaard points out that while a contrast is often drawn between intrinsic and instrumental value there are really two distinctions to be drawn here. One is the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value, the other is that between having value as an end and having value as a means. In this paper I apply this contrast to some issues in environmental philosophy. It has become a commonplace of environmentalism that there are intrinsic values (...) in nature. What is usually meant by this is that some values in nature are not merely instrumental to human ends. By using the notion of intrinsic value to express this philosophers have developed positions which are open to a number of meta-ethical and practical objections. The view that there are objective values in nature, which are independent of human interests, is better served by an environmental philosophy which sees most value in nature as objective, extrinsic value. The resulting environmental ethic is sketched and some apparent difficulties discussed. (shrink)

This essay begins with a consideration of one way in which animals and persons may be valued as “irreplaceable.” Drawing on both Plato and Pascal, I consider reasons for skepticism regarding the legitimacy of this sort of attachment. While I do not offer a complete defense against such skepticism, I do show that worries here may be overblown due to the conflation of distinct metaphysical and normative concerns. I then go on to clarify what sort of value is at issue (...) in cases of irreplaceable attachment. I characterize “unique value” as the kind of value attributed to a thing when we take that thing to be (theoretically, not just practically) irreplaceable. I then consider the relationship between this sort of value and intrinsic value. After considering the positions of Gowans, Moore, Korsgaard, Frankfurt, and others, I conclude that unique value is best understood not as a variety of intrinsic value but rather as one kind of final value that is grounded in the extrinsic properties of the object. (shrink)

The idea that there is an important place in philosophical aesthetics for virtues of art is not new, but it is now undergoing a serious re‐examination. Why might this be? What are the principles behind virtue aesthetics? Are there any good arguments for the theory? (I will take virtue aesthetics to be the theory that there is a central place for virtues of art.) What problems does virtue aesthetics face? And what might the implications be of virtue aesthetics both in (...) philosophy and in related disciplines? (shrink)

What is the point of art, and why does it matter to us human beings? The answer that I will give in this paper, following on from an earlier paper on the same subject, is that art matters because our being actively engaged with art, either in its production or in its appreciation, is part of what it is to live well. The focus in the paper will be on the dispositions—the virtues of art production and of art appreciation—that are (...) necessary for this kind of active engagement with art. To begin with, I will argue that these dispositions really are virtues and not mere skills. Then I will show how the virtues of art, and their exercise in artistic activity, interweave with the other kinds of virtue which are exercised in ethical and contemplative activity. And finally, I will argue that artistic activity affords, in a special way, a certain kind of emotional sharing that binds us together with other human beings. (shrink)

Bobonich argues that, in the Laws, Plato is committed to the view that the goodness of all goods entirely distinct from virtue is dependent on the virtue of their possessor. He suggests further that Plato's commitment to this dependency thesis is best explained by Plato's commitment to two other theses: (1) that knowledge is sufficient for all virtue, and (2) that the goodness of goods entirely distinct from virtue depends on their possessor's knowledge of the nature of their goodness. While (...) I agree with Bobonich that Plato maintains his commitment to a strong relationship between virtue, knowledge, and happiness in the Laws, I disagree with the details of Bobonich's account of this relationship. (shrink)

Final value accrues to objects that are good for their own sakes, while instrumental value accrues to objects that are good for the sake of their effects. The following paper aims to show that this distinction cuts across some surprising areas of the evaluative domain. This means that there may be some unexpected types of value that can come in a final or instrumental form. The argument proceeds by looking at two prominent types of value, namely kind-value and personal value. (...) The former accrues to objects that are good as the kinds of things that they are, while the latter accrues to objects that are good for someone. Substantive examples are offered in support of the idea that these types of value can come in final or instrumental form. The substantive examples are then given additional support by considering the structure and behavior of fitting attitudes. (shrink)

Philosophers have applied the framework of constitutive grounds to make sense of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism. The framework understands the two theories as being involved in a disagreement about the extent to which value is determined by attitudes. Although the framework affords us with some useful observations about how this should be interpreted, the question how value can be determined by attitudes in the first place is left largely unanswered. Here we explore the benefits of a positive interpretation (...) which aims to address this oversight and make the framework more informative. This interpretation, which is inspired by the recent work of Schroeder and Sobel, claims that the relevant sense in which value can be determined by attitudes is discovered by seeing how facts can be endowed with the normative property of being a reason. We argue that this interpretation significantly deepens our understanding of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism. (shrink)

Recently there has been a somewhat surprising interest among Kantian theorists in the moral standing of animals, coupled with a no less surprising optimism among these theorists about the prospect of incorporating animal moral standing into Kantian theory without contorting its other attractive features. These theorists contend in particular that animal standing can be incorporated into Kantian moral theory without abandoning its logocentrism: the claim that everything that is valuable depends for its value on its relation to rationality. In this (...) essay I raise doubts about the prospects for accommodating animal moral standing within a logocentric Kantianism. I argue instead that the best way to incorporate animal moral standing into Kantian theory is to admit more radical departures from Kant’s position by maintaining that consciousness is a locus of moral standing independent from rationality. I propose that we should attribute moral standing to all conscious animals because the capacity of consciousness is the criterion distinguishing individuals whose well-being generates reasons from individuals whose well-being fails to do so. We need such a criterion because we speak of the well-being of things, such as artifacts and meteorological phenomena, which clearly lack moral standing. Having already argued against the Kantian view that the criterion of moral standing is rationality, I proceed to argue that consciousness is also superior to its other principal rival for the criterion of moral standing: life. On the view that emerges from this discussion, we have obligations to show concern for conscious individuals by treating their well-being as providing us with reasons for action; the view thus endorses the criterion of moral standing typically advanced by utilitarians. On this view we also have a distinct class of obligations to show respect for conscious rational individuals; the view thus endorses the Kantian claim that persons have a distinctive moral status in virtue of their possession of rational capacities. In this essay thus begin to show how a principal insight of each leading approach to modern moral theory may be captured in a unified theory. (shrink)

The literature on Hinduism and the environment is vast, and growing quickly. It has benefitted greatly from the work of scholars in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, Asian studies, history, anthropology, political science, and so on. At the same time, much of this work fails to define key terms and make fundamental assumptions explicit. Consequently, it is at least initially difficult to engage with it philosophically. In the first section of this paper, I clarify a central, (...) implicit assumption that many of the authors working in this area share—namely, the assumption that a plausible environmental ethic must attribute direct moral standing to individual, living, non-human entities in nature, such as animals and plants. In the second section, I offer a preliminary defense of this assumption. In the third section, I respond to objections, and conclude that the argument is at least initially convincing. (shrink)

Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection. This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implications for liberal theories of justice. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, it argues (...) that both the CMP and the potential capacity for moral personality are bases of moral status. This pluralist account of the basis of moral status can broaden the scope of justice and provide a solid philosophical justification for the common-sense intuition that almost all human beings have a moral status that is different and superior to that of nonhuman animals. Second, contra what is commonly suggested, it contends that potential and actual moral persons have different and unequal rights, other things being equal. (shrink)

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS. I begin §1 by dealing with preliminary issues such as the different relations expressed by the “good for” locution. I then (§2) outline the Locative Analysis of good for and explain its main elements before moving on to (§3) outlining and discussing the positive features of the view. In the subsequent sections I show how the Locative Analysis can respond to objections from, or inspired by, Sumner (§4-5), Regan (§6), and Schroeder and (...) Feldman (§7). I then (§8) reply to an imagined objector who claims that the Locative Analysis generates implausible results with respect to punishment, virtue and agent-centered duties. (shrink)

In this article, I examine two of the standard objections to forms of value hedonism. The first is the common claim, most famously made by Bradley and Moore, that Mill's qualitative hedonism is inconsistent. The second is the apparent problem for quantitative hedonism in dealing with malicious pleasures. I argue that qualitative hedonism is consistent, even if it is implausible on other grounds. I then go on to show how our intuitions about malicious pleasure might be misleading.

For many people, among the first experiences they have of things as being valuable are experiences of things as possessing sentimental value. Such is the case in childhood where treasured objects are often among the first things we experience as valuable. In everyday life, we frequently experi- ence apparent sentimental value belonging to particular garments, books, cards, and places. Philosophers, however, have seldom discussed sentimental value and have also tended to think about value generally in a way that makes it (...) difficult for sentimental value to be a real kind of value. (shrink)

Despite its apparent ubiquity, philosophers have not talked much about sentimental value. One exception is Anthony Hatzimoysis (The Philosophical Quarterly 53:373–379, 2003). Those who wish to take sentimental value seriously are likely to make use of Christine Korsgaard’s ideas on two distinctions in value. In this paper I show that Hatzimoysis has misrendered Korsgaard’s insight in his discussion of sentimental value. I begin by briefly summarising Korsgaard’s idea before showing how Hatzimoysis’ treatment of it is mistaken.

A belief is valuable when it “gets it right”. This “getting it right” is often understood solely as a matter of truth. But there is a second sense of “getting it right” worth exploring. According to this second sense, a belief “gets it right” when its concepts accurately match the way the world is objectively organized – that is, when its concepts are joint-carving, or have fidelity. In this paper, I explore the relationship between fidelity and epistemic value. While many (...) philosophers (especially metaphysicians) acknowledge fidelity's value, they overlook just how much it might disrupt our understanding of epistemic value. To tease out this disruption, I draw on the Jamesian balance between seeking the truth and avoiding the false. A similar balance must be struck both within the pursuit of fidelity itself (“seeking the joints” and “avoiding the gruesome”) as well as between the pursuit of fidelity and the pursuit of truth. I then give an argument against the claim that truth is the higher epistemic good. (shrink)

Work on the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is often motivated by its use in other areas, such as intrinsic value, real vs. Cambridge change, supervenience and other topics. With the exception of Figdor 2008, philosophers have sought to articulate a global distinction -- a distinction between kinds of properties, rather than ways in which individuals have properties. I argue that global I/E distinctions are unable to do the work that allegedly motivates them, focusing on the case of intrinsic value.

Since the publication of Truth, Paul Horwich’s ‘Minimalism’ has become the paradigm of what goes under the label ‘the deflationary conception of truth’. Despite the many theoretical virtues of Horwich’s minimalism, it is usually contended that it cannot fully account for the normative role that truth plays in enquiry. As I see it, this concern amounts to several challenges. One such challenge—call it the axiological challenge—is about whether deflationists have the theoretical resources to explain the value of truth. Some philosophers (...) have argued that they do not. The thought is that by being valuable in the way it is, truth plays a non-trivial explanatory role with respect to core phenomena of enquiry. In order to account for this aspect of truth, the challenge goes, we need to inflate truth’s nature to an extent incompatible with core tenets of the minimalist conception. In this paper, I first provide some clarifications of what we mean exactly when we say that truth is valuable. By borrowing important distinction from the current debate in axiology, I elaborate a framework within which to conduct investigations into the value of truth. With reference to Horwich’s discussion of the issue, I then discuss the link between questions concerning the explanatory role of truth and the issue of its metaphysical inflation. I conclude by briefly exploring a few strategies on behalf of minimalists to address the axiological challenge. (shrink)

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...) persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic. (shrink)