Fitting-Attitudes, Secondary Qualities, and Values

Philosophical Topics 38 (1):87-105 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Response-dispositional accounts of value defend a biconditional in which the possession of an evaluative property is said to covary with the disposition to cause a certain response. In contrast, a fitting-attitude account of the same property would claim that it is such as to merit or make fitting that same response. This paper argues that even for secondary qualities, response-dispositional accounts are inadequate; we need to import a normative notion such as appropriateness even into accounts of such descriptive properties as redness. A preliminary conclusion is that the normativity that appears in fitting-attitude accounts of evaluative properties need not have anything to do with the evaluative nature of those properties. It may appear there because evaluative properties—or at least thosefor which fitting-attitude accounts are plausible—really are so much like secondary qualities that it might well be appropriate to think of them as a subclass of secondary qualities. In the second half of the paper I discuss the views of three of the philosophers who have been most influential in discussions of response-featuring accounts of evaluative notions and who explicitly distinguish response-dispositional accounts of value from fittingattitude accounts: John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, and Crispin Wright. I highlight some of the theoretical temptations that can be associated with the assumption that the response-dispositional/fitting-attitude distinction parallels the secondary quality/evaluative property distinction.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Value and reasons to favour.Jonathan Way - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 8.
A Theory of Secondary Qualities.Robert Pasnau - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3):568-591.
Secondary and tertiary qualities: Semantics and response--dependence.Nenad Miscevic - 1997 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4):363-379.
Primary and Secondary Qualities.Robert A. Wilson - 2016 - In Matthew Stuart (ed.), A Companion to Locke. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Blackwell. pp. 193-211.
Fitting attitudes and welfare.Chris Heathwood - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3:47-73.
Some problems of perceptions.Douglas Lewis - 1970 - Philosophy of Science 37 (March):100-113.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-09-18

Downloads
114 (#143,568)

6 months
10 (#134,868)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Joshua Gert
College of William and Mary

Citations of this work

Parity, Preference and Puzzlement.Joshua Gert - 2015 - Theoria 81 (3):249-271.
Revenge is sweet.Joshua Gert - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (4):971-986.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references