This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

The problem of value disagreement and contextualist, relativist and metalinguistic attempts of solving it are laid out. Although the metalinguistic account seems to be on the right track, it is argued that it does not sufficiently explain why and how disagreements about the meaning of evaluative terms are based on and can be decided by appeal to existing social practices. As a remedy, it is argued that original suggestions from Putnam's 'The Meaning of "Meaning"' ought to be taken seriously. The (...) resulting dual aspect theory of meaning can explain value disagreement in much the same way as it deals with disagreement about general terms. However, the account goes beyond Putnam's by not just defending a version of social externalism, but also defending the thesis that the truth conditional meaning of many evaluative terms is not fixed by experts either and instead constantly contested as part of a normal function of language. (shrink)

This chapter defends an axiological theory of pain according to which pains are bodily episodes that are bad in some way. Section 1 introduces two standard assumptions about pain that the axiological theory constitutively rejects: (i) that pains are essentially tied to consciousness and (ii) that pains are not essentially tied to badness. Section 2 presents the axiological theory by contrast to these and provides a preliminary defense of it. Section 3 introduces the paradox of pain and argues that since (...) the axiological theory takes the location of pain at face value, it needs to grapple with the privacy, self-intimacy and incorrigibility of pain. Sections 4, 5 and 6 explain how the axiological theory may deal with each of these. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, at least, and presumably under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, certain advocates of Aristotle’s ethics have insisted that a proper validation of the virtues of character must proceed only from within, or be internal to, the particular evaluative outlook provided by possession of the virtues themselves. The most influential advocate of this line of thinking is arguably John McDowell, although Rosalind Hursthouse and Daniel C. Russell have also more recently embraced it. Here I consider whether a (...) distinction between the ‘substantive virtues’ and the ‘virtues of will power’ ultimately threatens that way of thinking about Aristotle’s ethics. If so, it would encourage a different reading of Aristotle’s ethics, one that McDowell has described as a “historical monstrosity”. (shrink)

Moral philosophy has long been preoccupied by a supposed dichotomy between the "good" and the "right". This dichotomy has been taken to define certain allegedly central issues for ethics. How are the good and the right related to each other? For example, is one of the two "prior" to the other? If so, is the good prior to the right, or is the right prior to the good?

Ultimately this book provides a theory of intergenerational justice that is both intellectually robust and practical with wide applicability to law and policy.

What reasons for action do we have? What explains why we have these reasons? This paper articulates some of the basic structural features of a theory that would provide answers to these questions. According to this theory, reasons for action are all grounded in intrinsic values, but in a way that makes room for a thoroughly non-consequentialist view of the way in which intrinsic values generate reasons for aaction.

Von Wright’s philosophy is seldom seen as original when compared to that of his master, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Contrary to that orientation, this work seeks to establish the opposition of von Wright to Wittgenstein in relation to the question of whether ethics is an area where logic can legitimately extend. For Wittgenstein, logic deals with what is necessarily true. On the basis of this characterization of logic, Wittgenstein thinks that logic cannot legitimately help to capture ethics for the reason that the (...) referents of ethical discourse are not in the world. Only the referents of scientific discourse are there. For Wittgenstein, therefore, we must adopt a mystical position in ethics both by giving it the greatest importance but also by applying the greatest silence. Von Wright admits, following Wittgenstein, the varieties of goodness. However, he stresses that the varieties of goodness do not leave room for absolute relativism. Norms have both a prescriptive dimension that can be relative to a culture, and a descriptive dimension that makes them assessable to logical standards. (shrink)

Metaethics, understood as a distinct branch of ethics, is often traced to G. E. Moore's 1903 classic, Principia Ethica. Whereas normative ethics is concerned to answer first order moral questions about what is good and bad, right and wrong, metaethics is concerned to answer second order non-moral questions about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of moral thought and discourse. Moore has continued to exert a powerful influence, and the sixteen essays here represent the most up-to-date work in metaethics after, and (...) in some cases directly inspired by, the work of Moore. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most (...) cited authors, the most cited articles, and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials. (shrink)

What is the contrary of pleasure? “Pain” is one common answer. This paper argues that pleasure instead has two natural contraries: unpleasure and hedonic indifference. This view is defended by drawing attention to two often-neglected concepts: the formal relation of polar opposition and the psychological state of hedonic indifference. The existence of mixed feelings, it is argued, does not threaten the contrariety of pleasure and unpleasure.

Can we understand being valuable for in terms of being valuable? Three different kinds of puzzle cases suggest that the answer is negative. In what follows, I articulate a positive answer to this question, carefully present the three puzzle cases, and then explain how a friend of the positive answer can successfully respond to them. This response requires us to distinguish different kinds of value bearers, rather than different kinds of value, and to hold that among the value bearers are (...) totality states of affairs. The final section of the article discusses the possibility of organic unification without organic unities. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that pleasures and pains are characterized by their particular or . Most contemporary writers reject this view: they hold that hedonic states have nothing in common except being liked or disliked (alternatively: pursued or avoided) for their own sake. In this article, I argue that the hedonic tone view has been dismissed too quickly: there is no clear introspective or scientific evidence that pleasures do not share a phenomenal quality. I also argue that analysing hedonic states (...) in terms of liking or wanting is implausible. If it is correct that pleasures and pains are not united by any particular hedonic tone, we should instead simply conclude that there are several different hedonic tones. This pluralistic understanding of the hedonic tone view has generally been overlooked in the literature, but appears to be fairly plausible as a philosophical account of pleasure and pain. (shrink)

Algunos de los más relevantes filósofos del derecho de los últimos años, como Carlos S. Nino y Ronald Dworkin, han defendido que hay una pluralidad de conceptos de Derecho. Scott Shapiro ha sostenido una posición especialmente relevante acerca de ello: la palabra ‘Derecho’ es sistemáticamente ambigua, pues a veces designa un conjunto de normas y otras veces una organización social. Esta es precisamente la tesis criticada en el trabajo. Se argumenta, basándose en determinada literatura filosófica acerca de los conceptos, que (...) los conceptos de objetos sociales de carácter intencional contienen una dimensión social y una dimensión significativa, normativa en el caso del derecho. El mismo concepto de Derecho expresa una dimensión social y una normativa imbricadas entre sí. Some of the most relevant legal philosophers in the last decades, as Carlos S. Nino and Ronald Dworkin, have defended the idea that there is a plurality of concepts of law. Scott Shapiro has sustained this account in a particularly relevant way: the word ‘law’ displays a ubiquitous ambiguity, sometimes designates a set of norms and other a social organization. This is precisely the thesis which is criticized in the paper. It is argued, from a certain philosophical literature about the concepts, that concepts of social objects of intentional character contain a social dimension and a meaning dimension, normative in the case of the law. That is to say, the concept of law expresses a social dimension and a normative dimension intertwined. (shrink)

Moral courage involves acting in the service of one’s convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment. I suggest that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them. A moral stand can only be taken toward another moral agent. Often, we find ourselves unable to face others in this way, because to do so is frightening, or because we are consumed by blinding anger. But (...) without facing others as moral subjects, we risk moral cowardice on the one hand and moral fanaticism on the other. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Aristotelian accounts of disease cannot provide us with an adequate descriptive account of our concept of disease. In other words, they fail to classify conditions as either diseases, or non-diseases, in a way that is consistent with commonplace intuitions. This being said, Aristotelian accounts of disease are not worthless. Aristotelian approaches cannot offer a decent descriptive account of our concept of disease, but they do offer resources for improving on the ways in which (...) we think about the harms that afflict human beings. While they cannot offer an account of ‘disease' they can offer an account of ‘harm'—and this it turns out, is ultimately of greater importance. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is generally searching for the intrinsic value in natural beings. However, there are very few holistic models trying to reflect the various dimensions of the experience-to-be a natural being. We are searching for that intrinsic value, in order to determine which species are holders of rights. In this article, I suggest a set of moral and rational principles to be used for identifying the intrinsic value of a given species and for comparing it to that of other species.

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions des (...) valeurs. (shrink)

Over the last fifty years, traditional farming has been replaced by industrial farming. Unlike traditional farming, industrial farming is abhorrently cruel to animals, environmentally destructive, awful for rural America, and wretched for human health. In this essay, I document those facts, explain why the industrial system has become dominant, and argue that we should boycott industrially produced meat. Also, I argue that we should not even kill animals humanely for food, given our uncertainty about which creatures possess a right to (...) life. In practice, then, we should be vegetarians. To underscore the importance of these issues, I use statistics to show that industrial farming has caused more pain and suffering than the Holocaust. (shrink)

Instrumentalists about need believe that all needs are instrumental, i.e., ontologically dependent upon ends, goals or purposes. Absolutists view some needs as non-instrumental. The aims of this article are: clearly to characterize the instrumentalism/absolutism debate that is of concern (mainly §1); to establish that both positions have recent and current adherents (mainly §1); to bring what is, in comparison with prior literature, a relatively high level of precision to the debate, employing some hitherto neglected, but important, insights (passim); to show, (...) on grounds not previously to the fore in the literature, that insofar as instrumentalism’s advocates have provided arguments for the position, these are unsound (§2); to argue against instrumentalism using a new dilemma concerning whether ‘end’, ‘goal’ and ‘purpose’ are interpreted in a mentalistic manner (§3); to elucidate the implications of the needs/need-satisfiers and preconditions/means distinctions for the debate (§4). (shrink)

Legal terms, such as “ownership,”“contract,”“validity,”“negligence,” are used as middle terms in legal deduction. The paper distinguishes two problems regarding this use. One is the logical function of terms for deduction within a normative system. Specific problems dealt with in this connection are meaning, definition, and economy of expression. The other problem connected with middle terms is the “moulding” and possible manipulation of the meaning of legal terms, for arriving at desired conclusions in a given scheme of inference. It is indicated (...) how the moulding of contested legal concepts, if not restricted, will obscure the ratio of legal rules. This problem is relevant, inter alia, to arguments ex analogia in the law. (shrink)

Abstract What do we mean to say when we call some person a good business manager? And where do the criteria flow from by which we judge people good business managers? I answer these questions by drawing on von Wright's distinction between several varieties of goodness. We can then discriminate between instrumental, technical and moral senses of the expression ?to be a good business manager?. The first two senses presume that business managers have a characteristic task or that they engage (...) in typical activities. It is natural to specify this task and these activities by appealing to goods and to the good of a business. These goods may then be identified as goods for people. Insofar as the welfare of people is of moral value, we obtain a morally loaded account of business management. I argue against this account and plead for a more sober understanding of economic goods and of the good of a business. The latter can be understood in analogy to the good of an individual person, but is largely determined by the goals of the founders and owners. Economic goods are things that are wanted by some people and thus exchanged on markets. If this is so, then there is no direct conceptual path from instrumentally or technically good business managers to morality even though there are certain affinities. To conclude, I trace the consequences for our understanding of business ethics. (shrink)

The development of G. H. von Wright’s work in ethics is traced from the early 1950s to the publication of The Varieties of Goodness in 1963, with special focus on the influences stemming from Wittgenstein’s later thought. In 1952, von Wright published an essay suggesting a formal analysis of the concept of value. This attempt was soon abandoned. The change of approach took place at the time von Wright started his work on Wittgenstein’s Nachlass and tried to articulate the main (...) lines of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen in spoken and written form. This preoccupation with Wittgenstein led to a new approach to value judgments in an 1954 article, which shows strong late-Wittgensteinian influences on methodical as well as stylistic levels. Some traces of the 1954 approach are still visible in The Varieties of Goodness, while the stylistic imitations and allusions have mostly been dropped. Furthermore, von Wright’s approach in The Varieties is wider in scope, aiming at a broad overview of the phenomenon von Wright calls the “varieties of goodness”. But new conncections to the later Wittgenstein also seem to emerge: the idea of a "perspicuous presentation" of ethical concepts and the will to make philosophy relevant for "kulturens större sammanhang". (shrink)

This essay defends a three-dimensional response-model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three-dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response-model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation-specific reasons and requirements. This three-dimen- sional response-model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the (...) distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay discusses a number of questions related to how recognition of situation-specific reasons, and more general values and principles, is related to recognition of persons. The three- dimensional response-model of recognition of persons is in principle compatible with a constructivist view, which holds that the validity of values and principles is dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement. But even if one is a realist on that issue and thinks of validity as independent of acknowledgement, acknowledging relevant values, reasons and principles is a hugely important precondition of actual interpersonal recognition. The essay analyses these connections. (shrink)

This paper examines how middle managers in the long term care sector use the discourse of professionalism to create ‘appropriate’ work conduct of care workers. Using Watson’s concept of professional talk, we study how managers in their daily work talk about professionalism of vocationally skilled care workers. Based on observations and recordings of mundane conversations by middle managers, we found four different professional talks that co-exist: appropriate looks and conduct, reflectivity about personal values and ‘good’ care, methodical work methods, competencies. (...) Jointly, these professional talks constitute an important discursive resource for middle managers to facilitate change on the work floor. Change involves the reconfiguration of care work and different managerial-worker relations. Middle managers use professional talks in both enabling and disenabling ways vis-à-vis care workers. Based on these findings, we suggest a more nuanced portrayal of the relationship between managers and professionals. Rather than being based on an intrinsic opposition, i.e. ‘managers versus professionals’, this relationship is flexibly reconstructed via professional talk. (shrink)

The Scandinavian Realist Karl Olivecrona did not pay much attention to questions of legal reasoning in his many works. He did, however, argue that courts necessarily create law when deciding a case. The reason, he explained, is that judges must evaluate issues of fact or law in order to decide a case, and that evaluations are not objective. Olivecrona's line of argument is problematic, however. The problem is that Olivecrona uses the term "evaluation" in a sense that is broad enough (...) to cover not only evaluations, including moral evaluations, but also considerations that are not evaluations at all, and therefore his claim that judges must evaluate issues of law or fact in order to decide whether a case is false. (shrink)

In his new book, The Force of Law, Frederick Schauer maintains that law has no necessary properties, and that therefore jurisprudents should not assume that an inquiry into the nature of law has to be a search for such properties. I argue, however, that Schauer's attempt to show that legal anti-essentialism is a defensible position fails, because his one main argument is either irrelevant or else incomplete, depending on how one understands it, and because the other main argument is false.

In this thesis I am going to explore the relationship between happiness and imprisonment. I will discuss three theories of happiness - hedonism, life satisfaction theories and emotional states theories. I will argue that the main problem of these theories is that they take happiness to consist only of psychological states. Because of this, I will turn my attention towards those theories that evaluate happiness in terms of how well life is going for the person who is living it. I (...) will argue that my Aristotelian account is the most plausible way to understand the relationship between happiness and imprisonment. This is because it takes into account both the external circumstances and the psychological and emotional life of pnsoners. Through this thesis, I will show that my account of happiness in prison accomplishes three tasks: i) it solves the problems encountered by the other theories of happiness in the evaluation of prisoners' happiness, ii) it does not suffer from two of the main objections to the other objectivist theories of happiness, and iii) it can help us to investigate the happiness of prisoners empirically more accurately. (shrink)

The widespread application of technology in health care has imposed a broad range of challenges. The field of health technology assessment (HTA) is developed in order to face some of these challenges. However, this strategy has not been as successful as one could hope. One of the reasons for this is that social and ethical considerations have not been integrated in the HTA process. Nowadays however, such considerations have been included in many HTAs. Still, the conclusions and recommendations of the (...) HTAs are not followed. The reason for this may be that the methods for integrating ethics for HTA are not sufficiently developed, or that they are not adequate. This article presents a supplementary approach to the ethical inquiry in HTA. It is argued that a value analysis is crucial in order to address the ethical issues of health care technology in a fruitful way and to make viable decisions about such technology. (shrink)

What reasons for action do we have? What explains why we have these reasons? In this paper, I shall articulate some of the basic structural features of a theory that would provide answers to these questions. So my primary focus here is on the nature of reasons for action themselves, not on the meaning of the terms that can be used to talk about such reasons. However, it seems plausible that the term "reason for action" is in fact used in (...) many different ways, and can express many different concepts in different contexts. Hence, some prefatory remarks about the term "reason for action" are in order, to make it clear which of the many senses of the term I have in mind. (shrink)

How do contemporary publics understand happiness? What makes them experience it? Do conceptions and sources of their happiness vary across culturally different societies? This paper addresses these questions, utilizing the 2008 round of the AsiaBarometer surveys conducted in six countries scattered over four different continents. Analyses of these surveys, conducted in Japan, China, and India from the East; and the United States, Russia, and Australia from the West, reveal a number of interesting cross-cultural differences and similarities in the way the (...) people of the East and West understand and experience happiness. Specifically, the former are much less multidimensional than the latter in their conceptions of happiness. Yet, they are alike in that their sense of relative achievement or deprivation is the most pervasive and powerful influence on happiness. (shrink)