In the Netherlands, the policy of supporting the efforts of ethnic-cultural minorities to express and preserve their cultural distinctiveness, is nowadays considered as problematic because it might interfere with their integration into the wider society. The primary aim is now to reduce these groups' unemployment rate and to stimulate their participation in the wider society. In this article I consider how the notion of the intrinsic value of cultures, if sensible, might affect the policy regarding ethnic-cultural minorities. I develop a (...) theory of intrinsic value of culture, as an analogy of the theory of intrinsic value of non-human natural entities. My conclusion is that the dominant cultural group in the Netherlands should preserve clearly deviant minority cultures which have considerable intrinsic value. (shrink)

According to one prominent view of rationality, for the choice of alternative to be justified, it must be at least as good as other alternatives. Michael Jensen has recently invoked this view to argue that managers should act exclusively to maximize the long-run market value of economic enterprises. According to Jensen, alternative accounts of managerial responsibility, such as stakeholder theory, are to be rejected because they lack a single measure to compare alternatives as better or worse. Against Jensen’s account, this (...) paper argues that choosing the alternative that is at least as good as other alternatives need not preclude managers from respecting considerations in addition to long-run market value. The paper argues that such considerations may be incorporated into managerial decision-making by introducing constraints and priorities into the process of maximizing long-run market value and by allowing for “clumpy” values. (shrink)

When making moral judgments, people are typically guided by a plurality of moral rules. These rules owe their existence to human emotions but are not simply equivalent to those emotions. And people’s moral judgments ought to be guided by a plurality of emotion-based rules. The view just stated combines three positions on moral judgment: [1] moral sentimentalism, which holds that sentiments play an essential role in moral judgment,1 [2] descriptive moral pluralism, which holds that commonsense moral judgment is guided by (...) a plurality of moral rules2, and [3] prescriptive moral pluralism, which holds that moral judgment ought to be guided by a plurality of moral rules. In what follows, we will argue for all three positions. We will not present a comprehensive case for these positions nor address many of the arguments philosophers have developed against them. What we will try to show is that recent psychological work supports sentimentalist pluralism in both its descriptive and prescriptive forms. (shrink)

Two options are ‘incommensurate’ when neither is better than the other, but they are not equally good. Typically, we will say that one option is better in some ways, and the other in others, but neither is better ‘all things considered’. It is tempting to think that incommensurability is vagueness—that it is (perhaps) indeterminate which is better—but this ‘vagueness view’ of incommensurability has not proven popular. I set out the vagueness view and its implications in more detail, and argue that (...) it can explain most of the puzzling features of incommensurability. This argument proceeds without appeal to John Broome’s ‘collapsing principle’. (shrink)

This article discusses the possibility of a rationally justified choice between two options neither of which is better than the other while they are not equally good either (‘3NT’). Joseph Raz regards such options as incomparable and argues that reason cannot guide the choice between them. Ruth Chang, by contrast, tries to show that many cases of putative incomparability are instead cases of parity—a fourth value relation of comparability, in addition to the three standard value relations ‘better than’, ‘worse than’ (...) and ‘equally good as’. It follows, she argues, that many choice situations in which rationally justified choice seems precluded are in fact situations within the reach of practical reason. This article has three aims: (1) it challenges Chang’s argument for the possibility of parity; (2) it demonstrates that, even if parity would exist, its problematic implications for practical reason would not differ from those of Raz’s incomparability; (3) it discusses the underlying cause of hard cases of comparison: the fact that none of the three standard value relations applies (‘3NT’). It will be shown that the problematic implications for the rational justification of the choice are due to 3NT itself, irrespective of whether 3NT is explained as incomparability or parity. (shrink)

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent-regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent-regret. I suggest that the object of agent-regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention (...) is that agent-regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value. (shrink)

In symmetrical moral dilemmas, the agent faces a choice between two incompatible actions, which are equally justified on the basis of the same value. These cases are generally discounted as spurious or irrelevant on the assumption that, when there is no failure of commensurability, choice between symmetrical requirements is indifferent and can be determined by randomization. Alternatively, this article argues that the appeal to randomization allows the agent to overcome a deliberative impasse, but it does not really resolve the moral (...) dilemma. This is because randomization fails to provide the agent with a genuine reason for action. The argument is based on an account of arbitrariness as a threat to the agent’s authorship on action. By focusing on lack of authorship, rather than on failure of commensurability, we gain the adequate perspective to assess the philosophical significance of moral dilemmas, their impact on the agential integrity, and their consequences for ethical theory. (shrink)

Overview of the main issues about value pluralism.

There is substantial evidence that we are currently in a period of rapid and significant change in forest values. Some have charged that managing forests in ways that are responsive to diverse and changing forest values is the main challenge faced by public forest managers. To tackle this challenge, we need to address the following questions: What is the nature of forest values? That is, can all forest values be reduced to a single dimension, as assumed in utilitarian-based traditional forestry (...) and economics, or are these values multidimensional and incommensurate? What specific values are involved? What is the structure of forest values? That is, how are they related to each other in value systems? How and why have forest values changed over time? and What do changing forest values imply for ecosystem management approaches? This article discusses key issues related to these questions. (shrink)