For sentences such as (1), "Columbus knows that the sea is unpredictable", there is a face-value theory, according to which ‘that’-clauses are singular terms denoting propositions. Famously, Prior raised an objection to the theory, but defenders of the face-value theory such as Forbes, King, Künne, Pietroski and Stanley urged that the objection could be met by maintaining that in (1) ‘to know’ designates a complex relation along the lines of being in a state of knowledge (...) having as content. Is the theory safe, then? The aim of this paper is to show that a new problem for the theory arises if we consider attributions of skills, knacks, propensities and abilities. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 71-73.

Arguments concerning central issues of contemporary Medical Ethics often not only bear similarities, but also derive their sheer essence from notions which belong to the celebrated history of Ethics. Thus, argumentation pro euthanasia and assisted suicide which focus on the detainment of dignity and the ensuring of posthumous reputation on behalf of the moral agent is shown to echo stoic views on arête and the subordination of life to the primary human goal, namely the achievement of virtue. The progress made (...) in palliative care when seen alongside the — steadily increasing — requests for suicide, is indicative of the fact that, though pain now days can be effectively controlled, moral agents often consider the preservation of their life detrimental to the detainment of virtue or posthumous reputation. The stoic view is considered to justify elective death as a personal choice, but is deemed inadequate as well as inconsistent in the broader context of a coherent value theory. (shrink)

Capital Redefined presents a unique perspective on the nature of “capital,” departing from the prevailing reductionist accounts. Hosseini and Gills offer an expanded perspective on Marxian value theory by addressing its main limitations and building their own integrative value theory. They argue that the current understanding of “value” must be re-examined and liberated from its subservient ties to capital while acknowledging the ways in which capital appropriates value. This is achieved by differentiating between “fetish (...) value” created by capital and “true value” generated through various commons-based forms of coexistence. The authors propose a defetishization of value by rejecting the commonly accepted idea of its objectivity. They introduce their “commonist value theory,” which redefines capital as both the product and process of perverting the fundamental commoning causes of true value into sources of fetish value. Capital is theorized through a “modular” framework, where multiple intersecting processes constitute a comprehensive power structure, a “value regime,” representing an unprecedented degree of the domination of capital over life. Their theory reconciles two apparently incompatible views on the notion of value. One view encompasses all inputs involved in capitalist value production and conflates intrinsic and commodity values. The other warns against this conflation as it treats capital as an entity tightly associated only with commodity production and wage labor. The authors believe that establishing alternative forms of value creation based on normative principles of living in commons is crucial as an analytical base for criticizing existing power structures and economic systems. The book offers a theoretical foundation for transforming our life worlds toward “post-capitalist” futures. It appeals to scholars and students in various fields, such as political economy, capitalism, and post-capitalist studies, economic and political sociology, globalization, development studies, social ecology, and ecological philosophy. The Open Access version of this book, available at taylorfrancis com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. (shrink)

The theory and practice of constitutionalism is tightly interwoven with references and appeals to values. However, these references and appeals frequently remain undertheorized and are seldom connected directly to philosophical theories of value. This chapter outlines some ways in which such connections might be established.

Christian von Ehrenfels was a student of both Franz Brentano and Carl Menger and his thinking on value theory was inspired both by Brentano’s descriptive psychology and by the subjective theory of economic value advanced by Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics. Value, for Ehrenfels, is a function of desire, and we ascribe value to those things which we either do in fact desire, or would desire if we were not convinced (...) of their existence. He asserts that the needed theoretical understanding of values is to be achieved by generalizing economic laws of valuation to apply to value in general. The law of marginal utility, for example, is a law to the effect that the n+1st sample of a good which I receive is ceteris paribus less valuable than the nth sample (imagine that the samples in question are, for example, a series of identical ham sandwiches). The essay describes how Ehrenfels provides on this basis an account of the different types of values, both intrinsic and non-intrinsic. It outlines also Ehrenfels views on the problem of interpersonal value-comparisons and on the struggle for survival between different values of different types. (shrink)

Boolean-valued models of set theory were independently introduced by Scott, Solovay and Vopěnka in 1965, offering a natural and rich alternative for describing forcing. The original method was adapted by Takeuti, Titani, Kozawa and Ozawa to lattice-valued models of set theory. After this, Löwe and Tarafder proposed a class of algebras based on a certain kind of implication which satisfy several axioms of ZF. From this class, they found a specific 3-valued model called PS3 which satisfies all the (...) axioms of ZF, and can be expanded with a paraconsistent negation *, thus obtaining a paraconsistent model of ZF. The logic (PS3 ,*) coincides (up to language) with da Costa and D'Ottaviano logic J3, a 3-valued paraconsistent logic that have been proposed independently in the literature by several authors and with different motivations such as CluNs, LFI1 and MPT. We propose in this paper a family of algebraic models of ZFC based on LPT0, another linguistic variant of J3 introduced by us in 2016. The semantics of LPT0, as well as of its first-order version QLPT0, is given by twist structures defined over Boolean agebras. From this, it is possible to adapt the standard Boolean-valued models of (classical) ZFC to twist-valued models of an expansion of ZFC by adding a paraconsistent negation. We argue that the implication operator of LPT0 is more suitable for a paraconsistent set theory than the implication of PS3, since it allows for genuinely inconsistent sets w such that [(w = w)] = 1/2 . This implication is not a 'reasonable implication' as defined by Löwe and Tarafder. This suggests that 'reasonable implication algebras' are just one way to define a paraconsistent set theory. Our twist-valued models are adapted to provide a class of twist-valued models for (PS3,*), thus generalizing Löwe and Tarafder result. It is shown that they are in fact models of ZFC (not only of ZF). (shrink)

Husserl and Cassirer stand, according to their own self-understanding, as key 20th century figures in the cultivation of Enlightenment’s principles and views on humanity, culture, and history. In a word, they both understand European culture and history as a story of progress (§ 1). As I see it, central in a culture and its dynamics is its system of values, and a grounded understanding of the issue of progress presupposes an adequate theory of the standing or constitution as well (...) as of the givenness and transvaluation of values. Neither Husserl nor Cassirer, however, actually advanced any such theory. We are still in need of one in order to account for culture’s formation and dynamics in history. Next, I briefly review Husserl’s and Cassirer’s available problematic views on values (§ 2). Then, in § 3, I examine some of the central problems in the traditional approaches to culture and to values. In § 4, I appeal to Köhler’s very interesting Gestalt theoretical approach to values and pinpoint some of its problems. Next, in § 5, I suggest how we could start the research from below, from the level of the organism, which could eventually shed some new light on the problem of value constitution and givenness. Finally, in § 6, I attempt to sketch an explanation for how we can use this new approach to values in order to understand actual cultural formation and its historicity, in a way that goes further than the whiggish philosophy of history. (shrink)

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of (...) finite-valued first order logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature (...) to best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

This paper develops the Value-Based Theory of Reasons in some detail. The central part of the paper introduces a number of theoretically puzzling features of normative reasons. These include weight, transmission, overlap, and the promiscuity of reasons. It is argued that the Value-Based Theory of Reasons elegantly accounts for these features. This paper is programmatic. Its goal is to put the promising but surprisingly overlooked Value-Based Theory of Reasons on the table in discussions of (...) normative reasons, and to draw attention to a number of areas for fruitful further research. (shrink)

This article addresses the following meta-ethical question: do moral values have a special position among other values? According to Robert Adams, moral values do have a special position and are of overriding importance. I argue that the "overridingness" thesis is inconsistent with Adams’s value theory that only God has value in himself and all other things are valuable to the extent that they resemble God. I consider some possible ways of integrating the overridingness thesis that are latent (...) in Adams’s work and argue that none succeeds. My main contribution is to propose a solution to the inconsistency in Adams’s theory. I argue that a theological account of beauty gives us reason to reject the overridingness thesis. Morality overrides some other concerns, but not all other concerns. (shrink)

Infectious logics are systems that have a truth-value that is assigned to a compound formula whenever it is assigned to one of its components. This paper studies four-valued infectious logics as the basis of transparent theories of truth. This take is motivated as a way to treat different pathological sentences differently, namely, by allowing some of them to be truth-value gluts and some others to be truth-value gaps and as a way to treat the semantic pathology suffered (...) by at least some of these sentences as infectious. This leads us to consider four distinct four-valued logics: one where truth-value gaps are infectious, but gluts are not; one where truth-value gluts are infectious, but gaps are not; and two logics where both gluts and gaps are infectious, in some sense. Additionally, we focus on the proof theory of these systems, by offering a discussion of two related topics. On the one hand, we prove some limitations regarding the possibility of providing standard Gentzen sequent calculi for these systems, by dualizing and extending some recent results for infectious logics. On the other hand, we provide sound and complete four-sided sequent calculi, arguing that the most important technical and philosophical features taken into account to usually prefer standard calculi are, indeed, enjoyed by the four-sided systems. (shrink)

Value dimensions of mature theory change in science are considered. It is argued that the interaction of the values of the cross-theories constitutes the major mechanism of theory change in this dimension. Examples from history of science describing the details of the mechanism are given.

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature (...) of aesthetic value. (shrink)

This paper aims 1) to introduce the notion of theoretical story as a resource and source of constraint for the construction and assessment of models of phenomena; 2) to show the relevance of this notion for a better understanding of the role and nature of values in scientific activity. The reflection on the role of values and value judgments in scientific activity should be attentive, I will argue, to the distinction between models and the theoretical story that guides and (...) constrains their construction. The aim of scientific activity is to develop understanding of phenomena, and something that serves this aim and contributes to the development of understanding has a cognitive value. Cognitive values are the features that something that plays a role in scientific activity should have so that it can serve its aim. I will focus my attention on the features of the theoretical story and of the models. (shrink)

The default theory of aesthetic value combines hedonism about aesthetic value with strict perceptual formalism about aesthetic value, holding the aesthetic value of an object to be the value it has in virtue of the pleasure it gives strictly in virtue of its perceptual properties. A standard theory of aesthetic value is any theory of aesthetic value that takes the default theory as its theoretical point of departure. This paper (...) argues that standard theories fail because they theorize from the default theory. (shrink)

Values exist not in isolation, but in complex wholes. Values are what they are because of the complex wholes in which they are situated. To do justice to this thesis will require a holistic ontology, a theory according to which many types of entities exist only as inseparable parts or moments of wider contexts or environments. An ontological theory of environments -- with roots in Gestalt psychology and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson and Roger Barker, and (...) which is related also to the theory of motivation sketched by Edmund Husserl as part of his theory of the lifeworld or Lebenswelt -- will help us to understand the ontology of values. It will help us to understand what values are. It will not, however, tell us what is good or bad. From facts of ontology, no value propositions follow. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature (...) to best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

Theorists of aesthetic value since Hume have traditionally aimed to justify at least some comparative judgments of aesthetic value and to explain why we thereby have more reason to appreciate some aesthetic objects than others. I argue that three recent theories of aesthetic value—Thi Nguyen’s and Matthew Strohl’s engagement theories, Nick Riggle’s communitarian theory, and Dominic McIver Lopes’ network theory—face a challenge to carry out this explanatory task in a satisfactory way. I defend a monotonicity (...) principle according to which the strength of our aesthetic reasons to appreciate varies monotonically with aesthetic value and claim that these theories, because they do not respect the principle, are non-monotonic. If they cannot find a plausible way to preserve the link between the aesthetic goodness of an object and our aesthetic reasons to appreciate it, these non-monotonic theories should be rejected. (shrink)

Richness theory offers a promising axiology. In this paper, I discuss how to translate it into a deontology. To do so, I recruit the concept of moral distance from a recently developed epistemology, and construe it in terms of causal power. Finally, I apply the resulting decision-theoretic framework to the question of how best to avert ecological disaster over the next 36 years and achieve ecological harmony over the next 986.

This paper aims to show errors in common methodology of reasoning about macroeconomic theory. The error comes from confusion about descriptive and scientific methods of inquiry being used as a means of justifying conclusions with a normative basis. I will argue that many tools used in theorizing about the political economy that are thought of as able to express an isolated variable proving a normative point, actually contain normative assumptions which impact the soundness of the conclusion. The hidden values (...) generally serve to justify the status quo. Looking at my argument from a metaperspective, I argue that some popular methodology winds up in the general state of circular reasoning. I will try to weave two arguments together, the first is showing how economic concepts are value-laden, and also that they are implicit values of ideology, and operate as a powerful tool for the status quo. The ideology learns that things must be what they are, because the rest of the ideology seeks to justify it. There is both a factual and a value-driven thesis to this paper. Using examples I show how economic concepts that are thought of as being value neutral, are actually implicitly holding values that uphold the status quo and the growing tides of income inequality. I also wish to demonstrate how ideology constructs the common understanding, and how this effort keeps the populace from seeking emancipatory economic ideals and tax reform. (shrink)

This paper offers a Nietzschean theory of emotion as expressed by following thesis: paradigmatic emotional experiences exhibit a distinctive kind of affective intentionality, specified in terms of felt valenced attitudes towards the (apparent) evaluative properties of their objects. Emotional experiences, on this Nietzschean view, are therefore fundamentally feelings towards value. This interpretation explains how Nietzschean affects can have evaluative intentional content without being constituted by cognitive states, as these feelings towards value are neither reducible to, nor to (...) be thought along the lines of, judgements, perceptions, or other mental states. (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)

In this essay, I argue that the objections that have been raised against the view that equality is intrinsically valuable also provide objections to the view that all practical reasons can be explained in terms of value. Plausible egalitarian principles entail that under certain conditions people have claims to an equal share. These claims entail reasons to distribute goods equally that cannot be explained by value if equality has no intrinsic value.

In this chapter I examine how expected-value theory might inform responses to what I call the dual-use problem. I begin by defining that problem. I then outline a procedure, which invokes expected-value theory, for tackling it. I first illustrate the procedure with the aid of a simplified schematic example of a dual-use problem, and then describe how it might also guide responses to more complex real-world cases. I outline some attractive features of the procedure. Finally, I (...) consider whether and how the procedure might be amended to accommodate various criticisms of it. (shrink)

Consequentialism is seen by Philip Pettit mainly as a theory of the appropriate; in his conception of virtual consequentialism he is much less concerned with the theory of Good. Nevertheless, he pays attention to values such as rights, freedom, loyalty, confidence, dignity and love, although his analyses are isolated, and the connections with other values are not taken into account. He focuses especially on the values of freedom and rights. Contrary to Pettit, Amaryta Sen is much more concerned (...) with the latter, although there is no complex value framework to be find in his evaluator relative theory. He sees these values as the basis of the value system of any morais. (shrink)

Paul Guyer’s Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness is a collection of essays written over a period of ten years on the roles of freedom, reason, law, and happiness in Kant’s practical philosophy. The centrality of these concepts has always been acknowledged, but Guyer proposes a different way to understand their interconnections. Kant extols respect for moral law and conformity to moral principle for its own sake while at the same time celebrating the value of human freedom and autonomy. (...) Guyer sees tensions between these two poles of Kant’s practical philosophy—obedience to law and the value of freedom. He argues: “A profound paradox can be avoided only if it can be shown that Kant intended obedience to universal law to be mandatory solely as the necessary condition for the realization of human freedom and through that freedom a systematic and unselfish distribution of happiness among all persons” and that “the sheer fact of adherence to universal law is not an end in itself but is rather the means to the realization of the human potential for autonomy or freedom in both choice and action” (p. 1). One guiding theme of Guyer’s book is that Kant’s practical philosophy is based on the fundamental, and hence indemonstrable, intrinsic value of freedom, which Guyer understands as a value that is prior to the moral law, providing both an end to be realized through conformity to universal law and the basis of the authority of moral principles. Conformity to universal law has no intrinsic value in itself; it is the means to the preservation, enhancement, and full realization of human freedom, and is required because of its instrumental connection to the prior value of freedom. As he says, “freedom of choice and its natural expression in action are what human beings value most, and the fundamental principle of morality and the rules for both po-. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, humans are superior to their non‐human terrestrial companions because they alone are “rational animals.” Although the traditional view is presupposed by our social and legal institutions, it has been called into question by modern science: Darwin himself claimed that humans differ in degree rather than in kind from animals, and recent discoveries in comparative animal cognition have seemed to confirm Darwin's assertion. Sustaining the traditional view in light of these discoveries calls out for a careful (...) comparison of the human mind with its precursors, the vertebrate mind and the mammalian mind. Psychological capacities shared across the animal kingdom are repurposed in humans, rendering humans uniquely capable of rationality. To be rational is to respond appropriately to value. Humans as such are not rational animals, but have the potential to become rational animals. This potential marks a morally relevant difference in kind between humans and non‐human animals. (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)

In this dissertation, I argue that all extant theories of prudential value are either a) enumeratively deficient, in that they are unable to accommodate everything that, intuitively, is a basic constituent of prudential value, b) explanatorily deficient, in that they are at least sometimes unable to offer a plausible story about what makes a given thing prudentially valuable, or c) both. In response to the unsatisfactory state of the literature, I present my own account, the Disjunctive Hybrid (...) class='Hi'>Theory or DHT. DHT answers to and remedies each of the above inadequacies in a way that no other approach can. This account has the following general structure:Disjunctive Hybrid Theory (DHT): Thing x is basically good for person P if and only if x is either a) cared about (sufficiently and in the right way) by P, b) a bearer of (the right kind of) attitude-independent value, or c) both.Although it follows other recent accounts in combining elements from objective and subjective theories, DHT is a hybrid theory of a quite new kind. This is because it denies both subjective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, P must have some pro-attitude toward x) and objective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, x must have some attitude-independent value). I argue that the rejection of both necessity claims is called for if we are to move beyond the enumerative and explanatory limitations of existing accounts.I begin by outlining the general structure of DHT. I then argue, against various recent authors, that desire-satisfactionism remains the most appealing subjectivist approach to prudential value, in that it is best able to capture the central subjectivist insight. This insight is that a person can confer prudential value upon things by caring about them (sufficiently and in the right way). The subjectivist strand of DHT will thus be a version of desire-satisfactionism, which must be interpreted in line with what I call the object, as opposed to the combo, view. I move on to further motivate and develop the second, objectivist strand of DHT. This part of the theory involves a commitment to robustly attitude-independent prudential goods. I close by addressing some puzzles for the theory, and considering some of its more specific applications. (shrink)

A theory of aesthetic value should explain what makes aesthetic value good. Current views about what makes aesthetic value good privilege the individual’s encounter with aesthetic value—listening to music, reading a novel, writing a poem, or viewing a painting. What makes aesthetic value good is its benefit to the individual appreciator. But engagement with aesthetic value is often a social, participatory matter: sharing and discussing aesthetic goods, imitating aesthetic agents, dancing, cooking, dining, or (...) making music together. This article argues that we should understand aesthetic value in a way that centers these social forms of aesthetic engagement. To this end, the article argues that there is a social practice of aesthetic valuing, characterized as a participatory practice governed by the value of aesthetic community, which engages us in the social development of our capacities for discretionary valuing and volitional openness. Current theories of aesthetic value have trouble capturing the character of the practice of aesthetic valuing, and this motivates a novel communitarian theory of aesthetic value: aesthetic value is what is worthy of engagement in the social practice of aesthetic valuing. (shrink)

All existing explanations of why pain is intrinsically bad are false. They all rest upon a mistaken conception of what pains are. On this false view, pain is merely a kind of sensation or feeling. The nature of a stubbed toe is exhausted by the way it stings and throbs. However, on the correct view, pains are much richer and much more complex. For example, a pain’s intrinsic properties also include its sufferer’s beliefs about the causes and implications of her (...) pain, the fear and anxiety she feels, and the way the pain compels her to contort and groan. But none of the existing accounts of pain’s intrinsic badness can place these additional properties at the source of pain’s evil. We should therefore reject them. Instead, we should adopt an account of pain’s intrinsic badness on which pains are intrinsically bad in two separate ways. One way lies in a certain conjunction of the pain’s intrinsic properties. The other lies in the way that many pains invade and seize control over a person’s mind and body. These novel accounts of pain’s nature and intrinsic badness have many important implications throughout value theory. Accepting them leads us, for example, to a new understanding of the nature and bearers of intrinsic value. (shrink)

It is customary to think that Objective List (“OL), Desire-Satisfaction (“D-S”) and Hedonistic (“HED”) theories of prudential value pretty much cover the waterfront, and that those of the three that are “subjective” are naturalistic (in the sense attacked by Moore, Ross and Ewing), while those that are “objective” must be Platonic, Aristotelian or commit the naturalist fallacy. I here argue for a theory that is both naturalistic (because voluntaristic) and objective but neither Platonic, Aristotelian, nor (I hope) fallacious. (...) In addition, this proposal, called “CHOICE,” is an example of neither an OL, D-S, nor HED theory. It is a theory according to which uncoerced choosings create objective values that we (even everyone) may be wrong about, because valuations are conative rather than epistemic activities. On this view, intrinsic prudential goods necessarily involve likely (pursuant to lawlike regularities) net increases in successful free choosings . (shrink)

Pragmatism is resurging, especially among embodied cognitive scientists. The growing appreciation of the body accompanying this fits with increasing recognition that cognition and perception are valuative, which is to say, emotional, interested and aesthetic. In what follows, I detail how classical pragmatic thinking—specifically that of William James and John Dewey—anticipates recent valuative theories of mind and how it can be used to develop them further.I begin by discussing James's concept of selective interests, how it meshes with contemporary research and how (...) the two together suggest not only that cognition is valuative, but that emotions bring us rationally into touch with our worlds. Recent advocates cite... (shrink)

The Value of Evidence thesis (VE) tells us to gather evidence before deciding in any decision problem, if the evidence is free. This appar- ently plausible principle faces two problems. First, it fails on evidence externalism or nonclassical decision theories. Second, it’s not general enough: it tells us to prefer gaining free evidence to gaining no evi- dence, but it doesn’t tell us to prefer gaining more informative evidence to gaining less informative evidence when both are free. This paper (...) defends an alternative value-of-evidence principle that solves the above two problems. We call it ‘the Comparative Value of Evidence for the Resolute (CVER).’ CVER not only generalizes VE to the comparative case but is also compatible with evidence externalism and nonclassical decision theories. Our argument, if successful, broadens the scope of the value-of-evidence principle and shows that it’s more robust than previously imagined. (shrink)

Recent work within such disparate research areas as the epistemology of perception, theories of well-being, animal and medical ethics, the philosophy of consciousness, and theories of understanding in philosophy of science and epistemology has featured disconnected discussions of what is arguably a single underlying question: What is the value of consciousness? The purpose of this paper is to review some of this work and place it within a unified theoretical framework that makes contributions (and contributors) from these disparate areas (...) more visible to one another. (shrink)

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how (...) one can justify the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice. (shrink)

The intuitions at the core of environmental ethics and of other neglected value realms put pressure on traditional anthropocentric ethics based on monistic value theories. Such pressure is so severe that it has led many to give up on the idea of monistic value theories altogether. I argue that value monism is still preferable to value pluralism and that, indeed, these new challenges are opportunities to vastly improve impoverished traditional theories. I suggest an alternative monistic (...) theory, Richness Theory, and show how it provides an opportunity to capture the needs of both environmental ethics and of our traditional ethics. (shrink)

This paper develops transfinite extensions of transitivity and acyclicity in the context of population ethics. They are used to argue that it is better to add good lives, worse to add bad lives, and equally good to add neutral lives, where a life's value is understood as personal value. These conclusions rule out a number of theories of population ethics, feed into an argument for the repugnant conclusion, and allow us to reduce different-number comparisons to same-number ones. Challenges (...) to these arguments are addressed, including the issue of comparing existence and non-existence in terms of personal value, the possibility of minimal quanta of time and life, and the meaningfulness of measuring closeness between outcomes with different population sizes. An asymmetry is uncovered between transfinite cycles of worseness and betterness, supporting a version of the weak procreative asymmetry. Transfinite transitivity principles are also favourably compared to the better-known principles of continuity. (shrink)

The endeavour to locate value in moral progress faces various substantive as well as more formal challenges. This paper focuses on challenges of the latter kind. After some preliminaries, Section 3 introduces two general kinds of “evaluative moral progress-claims”, and outlines a possible novel analysis of a descriptive notion of moral progress. While Section 4 discusses certain logical features of betterness in light of recent work in value theory which are pertinent to the notion of moral progress, (...) Sections 5 and 6 outline the ambiguous character of “making moral progress”. (shrink)

In the growing literature on decision-making under moral uncertainty, a number of skeptics have argued that there is an insuperable barrier to rational "hedging" for the risk of moral error, namely the apparent incomparability of moral reasons given by rival theories like Kantianism and utilitarianism. Various general theories of intertheoretic value comparison have been proposed to meet this objection, but each suffers from apparently fatal flaws. In this paper, I propose a more modest approach that aims to identify classes (...) of moral theories that share common principles strong enough to establish bases for intertheoretic comparison. I show that, contra the claims of skeptics, there are often rationally perspicuous grounds for precise, quantitative value comparisons within such classes. In light of this fact, I argue, the existence of some apparent incomparabilities between widely divergent moral theories cannot serve as a general argument against hedging for one's moral uncertainties. (shrink)

I offer a line of argument that aims at the conclusion that the notion of radically different and incommensurable systems of value is incoherent, which would mean that the presumption of some significant common ground of valuation is rationally required in value inquiry.

Uniqueness appears to enhance intrinsic value. A unique stamp sells for millions of dollars; Stradivarius violins are all the more precious because they are unlike any others. This observation has not gone overlooked in the value theory literature: uniqueness plays a starring role recalibrating the dominant Moorean understanding of the nature of intrinsic value. But the thesis that uniqueness enhances intrinsic value is in tension with another deeply plausible and widely held thesis, namely the thesis (...) that there is a pro tanto reason to promote the good. It is argued that there is a second, distinct type of uniqueness that plays a more interesting and important axiological role: uniqueness imparts irreplaceable value. This gives occasion to develop the surprisingly undertheorized notion of irreplaceable value. (shrink)

This thesis (110 pages) was submitted in March 1970 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. The work was supervised by Professor Raymond Klibansky, McGill University.

The topic of this thesis is axiological uncertainty – the question of how you should evaluate your options if you are uncertain about which axiology is true. As an answer, I defend Expected Value Maximisation (EVM), the view that one option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. More precisely, I explore the axiomatic foundations of this view. I employ results from state-dependent utility theory, extend them in various (...) ways and interpret them accordingly, and thus provide axiomatisations of EVM as a theory of axiological uncertainty. (shrink)

In epistemology, the concept of knowledge is of distinctive interest. This fact is also reflected in the discussion of epistemic value, which focuses to a large extend on the value problem of knowledge. This discussion suggests that knowledge has an outstanding value among epistemic standings because its value exceeds the value of its constitutive parts. I will argue that the value of knowledge is not outstanding by presenting epistemic standings of checking, transferring knowledge, and (...) proving in court, whose values exceed the value of knowledge in certain contexts. Moreover, the values of these other epistemic standings do not always rely on the value of knowledge. In terms of value, knowledge is not an outstanding epistemic concept. Hence, in terms of value we cannot find support for the privileged position that knowledge enjoys in epistemology. (shrink)

I critically analyze Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values in order to tease out his views on the nature and status of values or value judgments in the text. I show there is a tension in Elliott’s view that is closely connected to a major lacuna in the philosophical literature on values in science: the need for a better theory of values.

‘Value pluralism’ as traditionally understood is the metaphysical thesis that there are many values that cannot be ‘reduced’ to a single supervalue. While it is widely assumed that value pluralism is true, the case for value pluralism depends on resolution of a neglected question in value theory: how are values properly individuated? Value pluralism has been thought to be important in two main ways. If values are plural, any theory that relies on (...) class='Hi'>value monism, for example, hedonistic utilitarianism, is mistaken. The plurality of values is also thought to raise problems for rational choice. If two irreducibly distinct values conflict, it seems that there is no common ground that justifies choosing one over the other. The metaphysical plurality of values does not, however, have the implications for rational choice that many have supposed. A charitable interpretation of value pluralist writings suggests a ‘nonreductive’ form of value pluralism. Nonreductive value pluralism maintains that in the context of practical choice, there are differences between values—whether or not those values reduce to a single supervalue—that have important implications for rational choice. This article examines the main arguments for metaphysical value pluralism, argues that metaphysical value pluralism does not have certain implications that it is widely thought to have, and outlines three forms of nonreductive value pluralism. (shrink)