This paper analyses the communicative and epistemic value of retweeting (and more generally of reposting content on social media). Against a naïve view, it argues that retweets are not acts of endorsement, motivating this diagnosis with linguistic data. Retweeting is instead modelled as a peculiar form of quotation, in which the reported content is indicated rather than reproduced. A relevance-theoretic account of the communicative import of retweeting is then developed, to spell out the complex mechanisms by which retweets achieve (...) their communicative goals. The last section outlines the epistemic threats posed by the increasing prevalence of retweeting on social media, linking them to the low reputational, cognitive and practical costs linked to this emerging form of communication. (shrink)

Many think that a specific aspect of phenomenal consciousness—valenced or affective experience—is essential to consciousness’s moral significance (valence sentientism). They hold that valenced experience is necessary for well-being, or moral status, or psychological intrinsic value (or all three). Some think that phenomenal consciousness generally is necessary for non-derivative moral significance (broad sentientism). Few think that consciousness is unnecessary for moral significance (non-necessitarianism). In this paper, I consider the prospects for these views. I first consider the prospects for valence sentientism (...) in light of Vulcans, beings who are conscious but without affect or valence of any sort. I think Vulcans pressure us to accept broad sentientism. But I argue that a consideration of explanations for broad sentientism opens up possible explanations for non-necessitarianism about the moral significance of consciousness. That is, once one leans away from valence sentientism because of Vulcans, one should feel pressure to accept a view on which consciousness is not necessary for well-being, moral status, or psychological intrinsic value. (shrink)

It is now generally understood that constraints play an important role in commonsense moral thinking and generally accepted that they cannot be accommodated by ordinary, traditional consequentialism. Some have seen this as the most conclusive evidence that consequentialism is hopelessly wrong,1 while others have seen it as the most conclusive evidence that moral common sense is hopelessly paradoxical.2 Fortunately, or so it is widely thought, in the last twenty-five years a new research program, that of Agent-Relative Teleology, has come to (...) the rescue on all sides. While consequentialism says that every agent ought always to do that action that will bring about the most good, according to Agent- Relative Teleology. (shrink)

There seem to be many kinds of moral duties. We should keep our promises; we should pay our debts of gratitude; we should compensate those we’ve wronged; we should avoid doing or intending harm; we should help those in need. These constitute, some worry, an unconnected heap of duties: the realm of commonsense morality is a disorganized mess. In this paper, we outline a strategy for unifying commonsense moral duties. We argue that they can be understood in terms of contact (...) with value. You are in contact with a value when you are manifest in it or when it is manifest in you. You have reason to get in contact with the good and avoid contact with evil. And when you’re in contact with a value, the weight of the reasons it grounds are amplified for you. These ideas, we argue, can bring order to the chaos of commonsense morality. (shrink)

Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. This is made (...) possible by a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation has been of considerable interest to bioethicists, in large part because of the effects that the intervention can occasionally have on central features of the recipient’s personality. These effects raise questions regarding the philosophical concept of authenticity. In this article, we expand on our earlier work on the concept of authenticity in the context of deep brain stimulation by developing a diachronic, value-based account of authenticity. Our account draws on both existentialist and essentialist approaches to authenticity, (...) and Laura Waddell Ekstrom’s coherentist approach to personal autonomy. In developing our account, we respond to Sven Nyholm and Elizabeth O’Neill’s synchronic approach to authenticity, and explain how the diachronic approach we defend can have practical utility, contrary to Alexandre Erler and Tony Hope’s criticism of autonomy-based approaches to authenticity. Having drawn a distinction between the authenticity of an individual’s traits and the authenticity of that person’s values, we consider how our conception of authenticity applies to the context of anorexia nervosa in comparison to other prominent accounts of authenticity. We conclude with some reflections on the prudential value of authenticity, and by highlighting how the language of authenticity can be invoked to justify covert forms of paternalism that run contrary to the value of individuality that seems to be at the heart of authenticity. (shrink)

The law views with suspicion statistical evidence, even evidence that is probabilistically on a par with direct, individual evidence that the law is in no way suspicious of. But it has proved remarkably hard to either justify this suspicion, or to debunk it. In this paper, we connect the discussion of statistical evidence to broader epistemological discussions of similar phenomena. We highlight Sensitivity – the requirement that a belief be counterfactually sensitive to the truth in a specific way – as (...) a way of epistemically explaining the legal suspicion towards statistical evidence. Still, we do not think of this as a satisfactory vindication of the reluctance to rely on statistical evidence. Knowledge – and Sensitivity, and indeed epistemology in general – are of little, if any, legal value. Instead, we tell an incentive-based story vindicating the suspicion towards statistical evidence. We conclude by showing that the epistemological story and the incentive-based story are closely and interestingly related, and by offering initial thoughts about the role of statistical evidence in morality. (shrink)

Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. Thus the idea, frequently expressed by commentators on science, that science is “self-correcting”—that hypotheses are simply abandoned when they are undermined by empirical evidence—may not be correct in all (...) contexts. In this paper, documentation spanning from the early 1970s to the present is collected, which reveals the influence of scientists’ moral and political commitments on the study of intelligence. It is suggested that misrepresenting findings in science to achieve desirable social goals will ultimately harm both science and society. (shrink)

It is a noteworthy disanalogy between contemporary ethics and aesthetics that the fitting-attitude account of value, so prominent in contemporary ethics, sees comparatively little play in aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to articulate what a systematic fitting-attitude-style framework for understanding aesthetic value might look like. In the bulk of the paper, I sketch possible fitting-attitude-style accounts of three central aesthetic values – the beautiful, the sublime, and the powerful – so that the general form of the (...) framework come through. (shrink)

According to internalism about prudential value, the token states of affairs that are basically good for you must be suitably connected, under the proper conditions, to your positive attitudes. It is commonly thought that any theory of welfare that implies internalism is guaranteed to respect the alienation constraint, the doctrine that you cannot be alienated from that which is basically good for you. The assumption is that because internalism requires a necessary connection between a subject’s positive attitudes and each (...) state of basic benefit to that subject, theories that imply internalism will only postulate goods that resonate with the subject. In this paper, I show that extant formulations of internalism do not have this desirable feature. The central defect of traditional formulations is that they do not respect an important but overlooked truth about alienation: namely, that even if a state of affairs is suitably connected to your positive attitudes, your negative attitudes can nonetheless render you alienated from it. By taking into account the relevance of the negative attitudes, I propose the new internalism—the view that x is basically good for you only if you have a net positive attitude towards it—as a way to advance our thinking about what is required to avoid alienating theories of welfare. (shrink)

Paul Guyer is well known for defending the claim that freedom, understood as the capacity to set ends, is Kant’s fundamental value. In contrast, I have developed a reading of Kant’s ethics that places autonomy and community at the heart of Kant’s ethics. At the heart of my account is a conception of autonomy understood as what I call the capacity for sovereignty. I argue that these two positions can be made compatible. To do this involves making a distinction (...) between the concepts of dignity and value and arguing that although autonomy, understood as the capacity for sovereignty, is the source of the dignity of humanity, this is compatible with the claim that the ultimate value for Kant is freedom understood as the capacity to set ends. To explain how this is possible I appeal to Wilfrid Sellars Kantian account of the moral point of view in Science and Metaphysics. (shrink)

A work of Vietnamese art crossed a million-dollar mark in the international art market in early 2017. The event was reluctantly seen as a sign of maturity from the Vietnamese art amidst the many existing problems. Even though the Vietnamese media has discussed the issues enthusiastically, there is a lack of literature from the Vietnamese academics examining the subject, and even rarer in from the market perspective. This paper aims to contribute an insightful perspective on the Vietnamese art market, and (...) hesitantly the Vietnamese art as well, through the lens of fake, forgery and copy artworks. 35 cases of fake, forgery and copy paintings were found on the news and from the experts' wisdom. Through the examples, we argue that the Vietnamese art market is a temporary reaction to the immaturely rising of the Vietnamese art and the economy. Therefore, the art market is unable to function healthily unless the Vietnamese art and the economy developed. (shrink)

This paper makes an argument for the democratic value of distrust. It begins by analyzing distrust, since distrust is not merely the negation of trust. The account that it develops is based primarily on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work in Why We Can’t Wait. On this view, distrust is the confident belief that another individual or group of individuals or an institution will not act justly or as justice requires. It is a narrow normative account of distrust, since it (...) concerns a specific normative task. Distinctions between vertical and horizontal distrust, as well as trust and agnostic trust are also discussed. This paper argues that distrust’s democratic value lies in its ability to secure democracy by protecting political minorities from having their voices ignored. As such, distrust can be viewed as a kind of Madisonian “check and balance” that works to prevent tyranny. Distrust also works to secure democracy by forging new or alternative forms of democratic participation. The main example discussed in this paper is King’s involvement in the Birmingham Campaign during the Black Civil Rights movement in America. In this case, King and his supporters’ distrust of fellow White citizens and political institutions led to alternative forms of political expression such as non-violent protests, boycotts, and other forms of civil disobedience, all of which led to greater racial justice by working to alleviate White tyranny. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that, when making moral decisions under uncertainty, we should choose the option that has the greatest expected moral value, regardless of how risky it is. But their arguments for maximizing expected moral value do not support it over rival, risk-averse approaches. In this paper, I present a novel argument for maximizing expected value: when we think about larger series of decisions that each decision is a part of, all but the most risk-averse agents would (...) prefer that we consistently choose the option with the highest expected value. To the extent that what we choose on a given occasion should be guided by the entire series of choices we prefer, then on each occasion, we should choose the option with the highest expected moral value. (shrink)

According to all-luck egalitarianism, the differential distributive effects of both brute luck, which defines the outcome of risks which are not deliberately taken, and option luck, which defines the outcome of deliberate gambles, are unjust. Exactly how to correct the effects of option luck is, however, a complex issue. This article argues that (a) option luck should be neutralized not just by correcting luck among gamblers, but among the community as a whole, because it would be unfair for gamblers as (...) a group to be disadvantaged relative to non-gamblers by bad option luck; (b) individuals should receive the warranted expected results of their gambles, except insofar as individuals blamelessly lacked the ability to ascertain which expectations were warranted; and (c) where societal resources are insufficient to deliver expected results to gamblers, gamblers should receive a lesser distributive share which is in proportion to the expected results. Where all-luck egalitarianism is understood in this way, it allows risk-takers to impose externalities on non-risk-takers, which seems counterintuitive. This may, however, be an advantage as it provides a luck egalitarian rationale for assisting ‘negligent victims’. (shrink)

Consider the following two (hypothetical) generic causal claims: “Living in a neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles” and “living in an affluent neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles.” These claims not only differ in what they suggest about how bicycle ownership is distributed across different neighborhoods (i.e., “the data”), but also have the potential to communicate something about the speakers’ values: namely, the prominence they accord to affluence in representing and making decisions (...) about the social world. Here, we examine the relationship between the level of granularity with which a cause is described in a generic causal claim (e.g., neighborhood vs. affluent neighborhood) and the value of the information contained in the causal model that generates that claim. We argue that listeners who know any two of the following can make reliable inferences about the third: 1) the level of granularity at which a speaker makes a generic causal claim, 2) the speaker’s values, and 3) the data available to the speaker. We present results of four experiments (N=1,323) in the domain of social categories that provide evidence in keeping with these predictions. (shrink)

Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in (...) this manner, we can capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

This article considers two different ways of formulating a desire-satisfaction theory of prudential value. The first version of the theory (the object view) assigns basic prudential value to the state of affairs that is the object of a person’s desire. The second version (the combo view) assigns basic prudential value to the compound state of affairs in which (a) a person desires some state of affairs and (b) this state of affairs obtains. My aims in this article (...) are twofold. First, I aim to highlight that these are not mere notational variants, but in fact have quite different implications, so that this distinction is not one that the theorist of prudential value should ignore. More positively, I argue that the object view is better able to capture what is distinctive and appealing about subjective theories of prudential value, on any plausible account of what the central subjectivist insight is. (shrink)

Nietzsche criticizes Stoicism for overstating the significance of its ethical ideal of rational self-sufficiency and for undervaluing pain and passion when pursuing an unconditional acceptance of fate. Apparent affinities between Stoicism and Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially his celebration of self-mastery and his pursuit of amor fati, lead some scholars to conclude that Nietzsche cannot advance these criticisms without contradicting himself. In this article, I narrow the target and scope of Nietzsche’s complaints against Stoicism before showing how they follow from his other (...) philosophic commitments. I suggest that the first line of criticism follows from his denial of teleology and his skepticism toward moral values’ descriptive objectivity. I then suggest that the second line of criticism follows from Nietzsche’s account of overcoming as bestowing contributory value upon pain and suffering. Explaining Nietzsche’s criticisms of Stoicism in this way substantially qualifies similarities between his philosophy and that of Stoicism while absolving him of the charge of inconsistency. (shrink)

Some people feel distressed reflecting on human extinction. Some people even claim that our efforts and lives would be empty and pointless if humanity becomes extinct, even if this will not occur for millions of years. In this essay, I will attempt to demonstrate that this claim is false. The desire for long-lastingness or quasi-immortality is often unwittingly adopted as a standard for judging whether our efforts are significant. If we accomplish our goals and then later in life conclude that (...) these accomplishments were of no significance, then this is a sign that the desire for long-lastingness has crept into our standards. By recognizing this, and refraining from adopting an unreasonable standard to judge whether our efforts are significant, it will be to our advantage. Then, when we look back on life from an external perspective that encompasses times after humanity has become extinct, we will not conclude that our efforts amounted to nothing. Rather, we will conclude that many people made significant accomplishments that made their lives and the lives of other people better than they would have been if their goals had never been pursued. (shrink)

This paper explores the epistemological significance of the view that we can literally see, hear, and touch evaluative properties (the high-level theory of value perception). My central contention is that, from the perspective of epistemology, the question of whether there are such high-level experiences doesn’t matter. Insofar as there are such experiences, they most plausibly emerged through the right kind of interaction with evaluative capacities that are not literally perceptual (e.g., of the sort involved in imaginative evaluative reflection). But (...) even if these other evaluative capacities turn out not to alter the content of perceptual experience, they would still be sufficient to do all of the justificatory work that high-level experiences are meant to do. I close by observing that it may matter a great deal whether a certain other picture of value perception is true. This alternative picture has it that desires and/or emotions are perceptual-like experiences of value. (shrink)

Ought parents, in general, to value being biologically tied to their children? Is it important, in particular, that both parents be biologically tied to their children? I will address these fundamental questions by looking at a fairly new practice within IVF treatments, so-called IVF-with-ROPA ( Reception of Oocytes from Partner ), which allows lesbian couples to „share motherhood‟ with one partner providing the eggs while the other becomes pregnant. I believe that IVF-with-ROPA is, just like other IVF treatments, morally (...) permissible; but here I argue that the increased biological ties which IVF-with-ROPA allows for do not have any particular value beside the satisfaction of a legitimate wish, because there is no intrinsic value in a biological tie between parents and children; further, I argue that equality within parental projects cannot be achieved by redistributing biological ties. (shrink)

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the (...) content of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)

One of the central questions in the epistemology of conversational AIs is how to classify the beliefs acquired from them. Two promising candidates are instrument-based and testimony-based beliefs. However, the category of instrument-based beliefs faces an intrinsic problem, and a challenge arises in its application. On the other hand, relying solely on the category of testimony-based beliefs does not encompass the totality of our practice of using conversational AIs. To address these limitations, I propose a novel classification of beliefs that (...) shifts the focus from the properties of the conversational AIs themselves to how recipients perceive AI output, specifically whether they take the output at face value. The proposed categories are beliefs by regarding as instruments and beliefs by regarding as testifiers. By using these complementary categories, a more comprehensive understanding of beliefs acquired from conversational AIs can be achieved while avoiding the problems associated with the traditional classification. (shrink)

Evaluativism about desire, the view that desires just are, or necessarily involve, positive evaluations of their objects, currently enjoys widespread popularity in many philosophical circles. This chapter argues that evaluativism, in both of its doxastic and perceptual versions, overstates and mischaracterises the connection between desires and evaluations. Whereas doxastic evaluativism implausibly rules out cases where someone has a desire, despite evaluating its object negatively, being uncertain about its value, or having no doxastic attitude whatsoever towards its evaluative status at (...) all, perceptual evaluativism cannot even properly apply to the large class of standing desires. It is also argued that evaluativism about desire is not even well-motivated in the first place: the theory is supposed to solve a particular puzzle about the role desires play in the explanation of action, yet, in fact, it does not offer any help whatsoever in dealing with the relevant puzzle. (shrink)

I first distinguish between different forms of the buck-passing account of value and clarify my target in other respects on buck-passers' behalf. I then raise a number of problems for the different forms of the buck-passing view that I have distinguished.

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)

This article attempts a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s metaethics through a constitutivist lens. It examines the relationship between life’s meaningfulness and our distinctive way of valuing to offer a value-based version of constitutivism—a value constitutivism, as it were. For Nietzsche, valuing has a characteristic function or aim, namely, to give life meaning; good values are simply those that perform that function well. This version of Nietzschean constitutivism has both interpretive and substantive upshots. Mainly, it clarifies the general normative structure (...) of Nietzsche’s axiological theory and helps vindicate the kind of revaluation of values he envisioned—with power playing a central normative role. In sum, constitutivism remains a promising approach to Nietzsche, and Nietzsche’s writings continue to offer rich insights into the source and nature of normativity. (shrink)

In this article, I reply to a critical notice of my book, Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study, that Stephen Kershnar has published elsewhere in this issue of Science, Religion & Culture. Beyond expounding the central conclusions of the book, Kershnar advances two major criticisms of it, namely, first, that I did not provide enough evidence that meaning in life is a genuine value-theoretic category as something distinct from and competing with, say, objective well-being, and, second, that, even if (...) there were a value of meaning in life, my fundamentality theory of it would not capture it well. Here I respond to both of these criticisms, aiming to probe these underexplored issues still more deeply. I also contend that these two criticisms are in tension with each other; in order to contend that my theory of meaning is incorrect, Kershnar must draw on intuitions about the existence of meaning that undercut his suggestion that there is no such thing. (shrink)

Suppose justice depends on some very unlikely good behavior. In that case the true (or correct, or best) theory of justice might have no practical value. But then, what good would it be? I consider analogies with science and mathematics in order to test various ways of tying their the value of intellectual work to practice, though I argue that these fail. If their value, or that of some political theory, is not practical then what is good (...) about them? As for political theory, I consider the question of what would even count as an answer to this question, and I conclude with the tentative proposal that it is valuable to come to understand something that is, itself, important. (shrink)

Pufendorf makes a clear distinction between the physical constitution of human beings and their value as human beings, stressing that the latter is justified exclusively by the regular use of the free will. According to Pufendorf, the regular use of free will requires certain inventions (divine as well as human) imposed on the free will and called moral entities. He claims that these inventions determine the moral quality of a human being as well as the standards according to which (...) human beings and their actions are able to be judged. This article examines the normative aspects of Pufendorf’s concepts of moral value and moral estimation in regard to the epistemological question of the accessibility of moral entities for human beings. In the first part, it reconstructs Pufendorf’s doctrine of moral entities and the place of moral estimation in this doctrine. In the second part, it presents Pufendorf’s account of the moral philosophy as a science in order to explain his theory of moral normativity as imposed, and the role of a person in regard to the own moral status. In the last part, it illustrates some consequences in regard to the problem of slavery in Pufendorf. (shrink)

This is just an initial draft, which I hope to work on over the next year in light of comments. If you think I left off a big question, or left on a boring one, please email me! (Thanks to Brian Hedden and Harvey Lederman for some initial comments.).

A range of developing countries and international advocacy organizations have argued that wealthy countries, as a result of their greater historical contribution to human-induced climate change, owe a ?climate debt? to poor countries. Critics of this argument have claimed that it is incoherent or morally objectionable. In this essay we clarify the concept of climate debt and assess its value for conceptualizing responsibilities associated with global climate change and for guiding international climate negotiations. We conclude that the idea of (...) a climate debt can be coherently formulated, and that while some understandings of the idea of climate debt could lead to morally objectionable conclusions, other accounts would not. However, we argue that climate debt nevertheless provides an unhelpful frame for advancing global justice through international climate negotiations ? the only existing means of resolving political conflict over the collective action problems posed by human-induced climate change ? due to its retrospective and potentially adversarial emphasis, and to problems of measurement. (shrink)

After viewing a painting, reading a novel, or seeing a film, audiences often feel that they improve their cognitive standing on the world beyond the canvas, page, or screen. To learn from art in this way, I argue audiences must employ high degrees of epistemic autonomy and creativity, engaging in a process I call ‘insight through art.’ Some have worried that insight through art uses audience achievements to explain an artwork’s cognitive and artistic value, thereby failing to properly appreciate (...) the cognitive and artistic achievements of artists. I move against this worry by arguing that in order to learn via insight through art audiences must collaborate with artists, sharing the labour and credit for the cognitive achievements they co-produce. I claim this co-productive outlook reveals that our appreciation of art’s cognitive and artistic value involves far more audience participation than has hitherto been realised. (shrink)

I argue that aesthetic properties can negatively bias our epistemic evaluations: they can make us think that communications that are actually significant or profound are banal or unimportant. Then, I argue that this observation has implications for our understanding of the value of art. Many people think their favourite artworks are valuable qua art partly because of the insights they convey—a version of a view called aesthetic cognitivism. One objection to this view highlights the difficulty of giving examples of (...) insights learnt from art—articulations of the supposed ‘insights’ often sound hopelessly banal. However, the potential for aesthetically induced epistemic underestimations undermines this objection. The aesthetic properties that articulations of insights from artworks tend to bear are likely to give a false impression of banality. So, attempts to articulate insights from artworks are not reliable evidence of the epistemic value of those works. (shrink)

Much of the existing philosophical literature on BDSM focuses on questions about the ethics of BDSM. But there is an underlying question here regarding the nature of BDSM, one which remains largely unaddressed. In this paper, I take that metaphysical question to be prior to the normative one. In other words: it will be important to have a clear view of what BDSM is before we go on to evaluate it. -/- This is a paper about the nature of BDSM (...) and BDSM activities: what they are like, what makes them unique, and the ways in which these activities might be valuable. Here, I work from the philosophical literature on games to analyze structured erotic encounters (or “scenes”) in BDSM. In the first half of the paper, I argue that BDSM scenes are games, and that understanding them in this way yields important insights into the roles of agency, autonomy, and value in BDSM. In the second half of the paper, I map points of connection between this view of scenes-as-games and the existing literature on BDSM in sexual ethics, in order to illuminate the ways in which a moral evaluation of BDSM scenes might proceed from this analysis. (shrink)

In this article, part of a special issue on meaning in life and medical ethics, I argue that several issues encountered in a bioethical context are not adequately addressed only with values such as morality and welfare. I maintain, more specifically, that the value of what makes a life meaningful is essential to being able to provide conclusive judgements about which decisions to make. After briefly indicating how meaningfulness differs from rightness and happiness, I point out how it is (...) plausibly central to making decisions in six ‘life and death’ matters. My aim is not to draw any firm conclusions about what to do when it comes to these topics, but rather to show that in order to arrive at any, one cannot plausibly ignore the category of life’s meaning that has, until recently, been nearly absent from Western bioethics since its inception. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, (...) we should conclude that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

Concern for vulnerable people is a crucial issue when considering the legalisation of assisted dying (AD), but the meaning and normative significance of vulnerability in this context is under-explored. We examine vulnerability and the protective obligation through the lens of vulnerability theory to improve understanding of vulnerability in the context of AD. By appealing to a more nuanced account of vulnerability, we argue that the current ban on AD in England and Wales is a blunt tool that lacks compassion and (...) fails to recognise the importance of personal autonomy as well as the relationship between vulnerability and autonomy. Recently, some emerging lawful models of AD purport to better protect the vulnerable via prospective legal authorisation. This is also a feature of recent English Assisted Dying bills, with proposals for judicial or quasi-judicial authorisation, and so we consider the potential value of prospective judicial authorisation. Although this approach risks being burdensome for applicants, we suggest that it could, in principle, not only safeguard vulnerable individuals, but also enhance end-of-life autonomy thereby offering support for a restrictive approach to lawful AD. (shrink)

Corporate activities conducted under the banner of creating shared value (CSV) have gained popularity over the last decade, and some MNCs have espoused that CSV has entered the heart of their practices. There has, however, been criticism about the lack of a standard definition of CSV. The purpose of the current study was to develop a working definition of CSV by identifying distinctions between CSV and various conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We conducted 26 semi-structured interviews with managers (...) and stakeholder representatives of five multinational corporations (MNCs) and three small and medium enterprises (SMEs), all headquartered or rooted in Asia. These firms had received public recognition for their CSV engagement. We compared and contrasted interviewees’ conceptions and descriptions of CSV and traditional CSR (philanthropy) and mapped these against Carroll’s four-layer model of responsible corporate management. Interviewees tended to frame CSV as a sustainable business model that generates social and economic value simultaneously. Traditional CSR was characterized as “giving back” some of the surplus from economic returns. In addition, interviewees described examples of strategic CSR, which involved pump-priming interventions for empowering and enabling stakeholders of the CSV practices of the focal firm to participate in the associated wealth and well-being co-creation. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, creating shared value, qualitative, Asia. (shrink)

Virtue reliabilism appears to have a major advantage over generic reliabilism: only the former has the resources to explain the intuition that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. I argue that this appearance is illusory. It is sustained only by the misguided assumption that a principled distinction can be drawn between those belief-forming methods that are grounded in the agent’s intellectual virtues, and those that are not. A further problem for virtue reliabilism is that of explaining why knowledge (...) is more valuable than mere justified true belief. I argue that virtue reliabilism lacks the resources to explain this value difference. I conclude by considering what it would take for a theory to explain the extra value of knowledge over mere justified true belief. (shrink)

It seems appropriate for you to care more about your friends than about strangers, more about your keepsakes and projects than about the keepsakes and projects of others. Some things are personally significant to you. But when is something significant to you? In this paper, we advance the contact account of significance. You are in contact with a value when it is manifest in your life or when your life is manifest in it. And it is this contact with (...) a value that makes it significant to you. We argue that this captures standard cases of personal relationships to people, objects, and projects. We then suggest that it explains various other normative phenomena too: our reasons of gratitude and compensation, as well as how we discount for temporal and modal distance. In light of its theoretical virtues and explanatory power, we conclude, the contact account is worth taking seriously indeed. (shrink)

Few have discussed Rawls's arguments for the value of democracy. This is because his arguments, as arguments that the principle of equal basic liberty should include democratic liberties, are incomplete. Rawls says little about the inclusion of political liberties of a democratic sort – such as the right to vote – among the basic liberties. And, at times, what he does say is unconvincing. My aim is to complete and, where they fail, to reconceive Rawls's arguments and to show (...) that a principle requiring equal political liberty and its fair value is an appropriate component of his theory of justice. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of an important type of human relationship: relationships based on shared ends. These are an indispensable part of most ethically worthy or valuable lives, and our successes or failures at participating in these relationships constitute a great number of our moral successes or failures overall. While many philosophers agree about their importance, few provide us with well-developed accounts of the nature and value of good shared-end relationships. This paper begins to develop a positive account (...) of such relationships. In the interest of highlighting some strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches, it contrasts the theories that are proposed by the Confucian philosopher Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) and the influential moral philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Both philosophers share many of the same core ethical commitments, but as the author shows, Dai Zhen’s approach to thinking about the nature and value of good shared-end relationships is superior to Kant’s because it highlights the fact that such relationships must be motivated by ethically-shaped forms of other-concern and self-interest, whereas Kant does not picture self-interest as an important source of morality or ethically valuable relationships. The author considers clarifications and revisions to Kant’s theory that seem to make more room for the mixture of motives required for good shared-end relationships, but concludes that these ad hoc modifications do not succeed at providing a recognizably Kantian theory that can account for them as well as Dai Zhen’s. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

Several authors have recently argued that intelligibility, rather than value, constitutes life’s meaning. In this paper I criticize the intelligibility view by offering examples of cases in which i...

Thomas Hurka’s recursive account of value appeals to certain intuitions to expand the class of intrinsic values, placing concepts of virtue and desert within the realm of second and third order intrinsic goods, respectively. This is a formalization of a tradition of thought extending back to Aristotle and Kant via the British moralists, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross. However, the evidential status of such intuitions vis a vis the real, intrinsic value of virtue and desert is (...) hostage to alternative explanations. If there is a plausible competing explanation for these intuitions, then the (putative) fact that desert and virtue are intrinsic (rather than instrumental or derivative) goods seems a much less obvious choice for the best explanation. As it turns out, there are plausible evolutionary explanations for these intuitions about desert and virtue. These evolutionary explanations suggest that it is adaptive to value desert and virtue separately from their instrumentality for other goods. Consequently, these explanations debunk intuitions about the intrinsic value of desert and virtue. (shrink)

Discussions of diversity tend to paint a mixed picture of the practical and epistemic value of diversity. While there are expansive and detailed accounts of the value of cognitive diversity, explorations of identity diversity typically focus on its value as a source or cause of cognitive diversity. The resulting picture on which identity diversity only possesses a derivative practical and epistemic value is unsatisfactory and fails to account for some of its central epistemic benefits. In response, (...) I propose that collective virtue epistemology offers theoretical models that can further our understanding of the benefits of diversity. And I offer a case study to illustrate how this approach could be used to explore the logic of the identity diversity bonus. (shrink)