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Summary | The general theme of this category is the idea of defining, analyzing or otherwise explaining one kind of evaluative or normative concept or property in terms of another kind of evaluative or normative concept or property. This broad idea is commonly referred to as the fitting attitude account of value, because its early proponents suggested defining value in terms of concepts such as fittingness or correctness of attitudes, e.g., 'x is good' as 'x is a fitting object of a favourable attitude' (Ewing), or 'it is correct to love x' (Brentano). Subsequent accounts used analogous concepts such as 'contemplation of x requires that one favor x' (Chisholm, Lemos). Thomas Scanlon revived this tradition by proposing that x's goodness be understood as the property of having other properties which provide reasons to value x in one or more different ways (admire, care for, protect, etc.). He named his account 'buck-passing' to signal that the property of goodness itself does not provide reasons to value what is good, but 'passes the normative buck' to the other properties which the good thing has and make it good. In this sense the buck-passing account is an intra-normative reductive account of value properties or concepts. The same structure can be applied to other normative notions, e.g. some propose to understand all normative concepts in terms of reasons (or fitting attitudes), including moral ones such as rightness and wrongness. The debate has centered around some difficulties for the fitting attitude/buck-passing account, such as the so called wrong kind of reasons problem (WKR). If a demon orders me to admire a saucer of mud (for its own sake), or else humankind will go extinct, it seems there are very good reasons for me to admire the saucer of mud, but this cannot mean that the saucer of mud is good or valuable (for its own sake). A vast number of papers have contributed by either proposing refinements to the analysis to avoid such counterexamples or by criticizing such refinements. |
Key works | Early fitting attitude style analysis can be found in Sidgwick 1871 ('ought to desire'), Brentano 1889/1969 ('correct love'), but it is A.C.Ewing (Ewing 1948) who develops it systematically (1947), and then refines it in Ewing 1959, indeed anticipating Scanlon's buck-passing account in terms of reasons (Scanlon 1998, chapter 2). Other notable works, focusing on the concept of requirement, are Chisholm 1986, Lemos 1994, Zimmerman 2001. Key papers on the wrong kind of reason problem are Crisp 2000, Jacobson 2000 and Rabinowicz & Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004. For some responses, see: Stratton-Lake 2005, Skorupski 2007, Olson 2004, Danielsson & Olson 2007, Schroeder 2010. For papers dealing with issues different from the WKR problem, see Vayrynen 2006, Bykvist 2009, Olson 2009. Articles which serve well as introductions as well as highlighting difficulties for the fitting attitude account are: Dancy 2000, Zimmerman 2007. |
Introductions | Jacobsen 2011, Suikkanen 2009, Stratton-Lake & Hooker 2006, Dancy 2000, Rabinowicz & Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004 |
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Siblings:
- Value Pluralism (105)
- Theories of Moral Value, Misc (53)
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