Intrinsic Value

Ludwig Wittgenstein has often been called a quietist. His work has inspired a rich and varied array of theories in moral philosophy. Some prominent meta-ethicists have also been called quietists, or ‘relaxed’ as opposed to ‘robust’ realists, sometimes with explicit reference to Wittgenstein in attempts to clarify their views. In this chapter, I compare and contrast these groups of theories and draw out their importance for contemporary meta-ethical debate. They represent countercultures to contemporary meta-ethics. That is, they reject in different (...) ways one or more of the common assumptions that, whilst not universally shared, shape how to understand and engage in contemporary meta-ethical debate. Despite striking similarities, I argue that the ‘quietist’ label has obscured the views it is used to describe, the crucial differences between them, and the challenge that they offer to the predominant culture of meta-ethical enquiry. That challenge is this: there are plausible different ways of understanding and doing meta-ethics to those of the meta-ethical orthodoxy. We ignore such heterodoxy at our own peril. (shrink)

I argue that the main existing accounts of the relationship between the beauty of environmental entities and their moral standing are mistaken in important ways. Beauty does not, as has been suggested by optimists, confer intrinsic moral standing. Nor is it the case, as has been suggested by pessimists, that beauty at best provides an anthropocentric source of moral standing that is commensurate with other sources of pleasure. I present arguments and evidence that show that the appreciation of beauty tends (...) to cause a transformational state of mind that is more valuable than mere pleasure, but that leads us to falsely represent beautiful entities as being sentient and, in turn, as having intrinsic moral standing. To this extent, beauty is not, then, a source of intrinsic moral standing; it’s a source of a more important anthropocentric value than has hitherto been acknowledged. (shrink)

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good (...) in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value. (shrink)

Toby Svoboda argues that humans cannot ever justifiably attribute intrinsic value to nature because we can never have evidence that any part of non-human nature has intrinsic value. We argue that, at best, Svoboda’s position leaves us with uncertainty about whether there is intrinsic value in the non-human natural world. This uncertainty, however, together with reason to believe that at least some non-human natural entities would possess intrinsic value if anything does, leaves us in a position to acquire evidence that (...) non-human nature has intrinsic value. We appeal to Michael Huemer’s Probabilistic Reasons Principle to argue that we have direct reasons to not act in ways destructive to non-human nature, even if this reason is defeasible. Hence, if having intrinsic value just is being a source of direct reasons, it also implies that non-human nature has intrinsic value. (shrink)

Some bioconservatives reject the use of biotechnology for moral enhancement while simultaneously purporting to accept standard theism and process virtue (STPV). Standard theism holds that God is a personal, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, transcendent being. Process virtue holds that intrinsically valuable virtue can only be obtained through a specific process and not by means of biotechnological shortcuts. We describe two internal critiques, one conceptual and the other moral, that arise by combining standard theism and process virtue to reject moral enhancement. First, (...) the conceptual critique argues there is an inconsistency that arises when the process virtue view is applied to the concept of God himself. STPV inconsistently holds that intrinsically valuable virtue must arise through a process, yet also posits the existence of an immutable, omnibenevolent God, whose intrinsically valuable virtue never arose through a process. Theistic bioconservatives must either give up the notion that God has always been perfectly virtuous or give up their claim that virtue must be obtained through a particular kind of process. Second, the moral critique argues that rejecting moral enhancement on a process virtue basis is selfish, which is held to be a vice on all mainstream manifestations of standard theism. Process virtue is selfish because it requires prioritizing the intrinsic value of developing one’s own virtue through a process over using moral enhancement that will improve one’s ability to help others. We conclude that the combination of standard theism and process virtue does not serve as a strong basis from which to oppose moral enhancement. (shrink)

Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. Exploring the place of limits within a well-lived human life this work develops and defends an original account of limiting virtues, which are (...) concerned with recognizing proper limits in human life. The limiting virtues that are the focus are humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty, and they are explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. These virtues have been underexplored in discussions about virtue ethics, and when they have been explored it has not been with regard to the general issue of the place of limits within a well-lived human life. The account of the limiting virtues provided here, however, is intended as a counter to other prominent approaches to ethics: namely, autonomy-centered approaches and consequentialist (or maximizing) approaches. This account is also used to address a number of important contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, distributive justice, cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism, and the ethical status of growth-based economics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Sometimes it seems that an existing bearer of value should be preserved even though it could be destroyed and replaced with something of equal or greater value. How can this conservative intuition be explained and justified? This paper distinguishes three answers, which I call existential, attitudinal, and object-affecting conservatism. I raise some problems for existential and attitudinal conservatism, and suggest how they can be solved by object-affecting conservatism.

Two major philosophical movements have sought to fundamentally rethink the relationship between humans and their environment: environmental ethics and enactivism. Surprisingly, they virtually never refer to or seek inspiration from each other. The goal of this analysis is to bridge the gap. Our main purpose, then, is to address, from the enactivist angle, the conceptual backbone of environmental ethics, namely the concept of intrinsic value. We argue that intrinsic value does indeed exist, yet its "intrinsicality" does not boil down to (...) being independent of the interests and needs of humans. Rather, it is brought forth by what we call shared enaction of an axiological domain. The latter is built upon such core posits of enactivism as autonomy, enaction, participatory sense-making as well as the most recent concept of loving as knowing proposed by Hanne De Jaegher. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In his classic work on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Erik Stenius described Wittgenstein’s study as a critique of pure language, thus pointing to a connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Kant’s critique of pure reason. Besides similarities, there also seems be important differences between the two philosophers. In Kant’s critique, one discerns a subject who does something, namely, constructs the world of experience, while Wittgenstein draws a picture in which neither an agent nor an act is visible. Like Kant and Wittgenstein, contemporary normative (...) theories of assertion are also interested in limits, although in limits set to assertions. They appear to pay special attention to the one who asserts and to the act of asserting. This paper is an effort to search for the traces of normative theories of assertion in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus by focusing on the one who uses language and on the limits of that use. It is shown that both in Wittgenstein and in normative theories of assertion, there is an important ethical dimension, which, however, plays different roles in the two approaches. It is argued that despite the differences in the ways of construing the limits of language, Tractatus and normative theories of assertion share similar ethical concerns. (shrink)

This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the value ‘good for’ expresses is distinctively (...) ‘subject-relative’. One concerns the ground of this value, or the properties that make something good for you; it says these must involve some relation to you. The other concerns the resulting value itself, or what supervenes on this ground; it says that too involves a relation. Neither interpretation, the paper argues, yields a significantly distinct evaluative concept. The ethically fundamental evaluative concept is just ‘simply good’. (shrink)

The concept of basic intrinsic value is important for axiology. Michael Zimmerman and Timothy Perrine each present necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s having basic intrinsic value. I argue that neither account is satisfactory. I present two objections to Zimmerman’s view. First, I argue that his view cannot accommodate some widely held and plausible views about the intrinsic value of knowledge and true belief. Second, I argue that it cannot accommodate some plausible views about the intrinsic value of states when (...) one state occurs in virtue of the other. It cannot handle “clusters” of intrinsically valuable states. In the final section, I explain Perrine’s view and argue that his account also cannot accommodate some plausible views about the value of knowledge and true belief. (shrink)

The paramount role of logic in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is undeniable and must be obvious to anyone even on a cursory reading. Yet, Wittgenstein's formulations often appear metaphorical when he sketches his ideas on logic and its relation to sentence meaning. Sometimes, they seem more apt to invite loose philosophical associations than pinning down rigorously technical details. This impression notwithstanding, the Tractatus still offers one of the deepest philosophical accounts of modern logic and it does so precisely through its suggestive exposition. (...) It is, in particular, the spatial analogies, Wittgenstein’s ‘logical place’ and ‘logical space’, which are crucial in this connection, and while they carry a structure that is specific for Wittgenstein’s own conception of logic, they are sufficiently general to accommodate also alternative conceptions of logic. Thus, even 100 years after its first publication, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus remains a source of inspiration and a highly valuable one for the philosophy of logic. (shrink)

This paper exposits and makes steps towards solving a puzzle about epistemic value. The puzzle is that several principles about the epistemic value of true beliefs and epistemic disvalue of false beliefs are, individually, plausible but, collectively, contradictory. My solution claims that sometimes false beliefs are epistemically valuable. I nonetheless show how my solution is not in deep tension with the Jamesian idea that true beliefs are epistemically valuable and false beliefs are epistemically disvaluable. I conclude by indicating how the (...) results here are relevant to formulating and defending Veritism. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen’s value conservatism entails that we ought to preserve some existing sources of value in lieu of more valuable replacements, thereby repudiating maximizing consequentialism. Cohen motivates value conservatism through illustrative cases. The consequentialist, however, can explain many Cohen-style cases by taking extrinsic properties, such as historical significance, to be sources of final value. Nevertheless, it may be intuitive that there’s stronger reason to preserve than to promote certain sources of value, especially historically significant things. This motivates an argument that (...) the weights of our reasons to preserve such things are especially strong relative to the amounts of value they bear. The value conservative can then explain these intuitions in non-consequentialist terms. There may be reason to preserve historically significant things as a matter of recognition respect for a cultural and historical heritage, or because it is virtuous to cultivate the right kind of connection with such a heritage. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to understand, in the light of Wittgenstein’s Investigations, language as a match or a game, whose performance is trained by using certain rules, taking in traditions and those techniques that propel the young shoots to the integration in the world. In order to this, it will be developed the argument that sustains that the learning process, which is incompatible with an automatic system of direct and instantaneous print of information – considering that there is no way that (...) children resemble programmable automata, such as the film Kynodontas simulates –, should go hand in hand with the manner of doing philosophy, given its irreplaceable role in the formation and development, on the one hand, of perspicuity and elucidation, on the other, of thinking, imagination and personality of children. At this point, it must be clear that what is up to educators and tutors is nothing more than introduce the world to the young shoots as it is seen and conceived, through what is known and actually it is, but mainly to invite them to participate in it. (shrink)

Breaking Down the Barriers to Serendipity Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. ALLEN SAUNDERS, AMERICAN WRITER, JOURNALIST, AND CARTOONIST.

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.

This paper examines what it takes to be the intrinsic human goods of knowledge and achievement and argues that they are at many points parallel. Both are compounds, and of parallel elements: belief, justification, and truth in the one case, and intentional pursuit, competence, and success in the other. Each involves a Moorean organic unity, so its full presence or value requires a connection between its elements: an outside-in connection, where what makes a belief true helps explain why it’s justified, (...) for knowledge, and an inside-out connection, where what makes a pursuit competent helps explain its success, for achievement. The features that determine the degrees of value of instances of the two goods, or make some truths more worth knowing and some goals more worth achieving, are also similar, turning in both cases largely on two forms of generality. And more specific goods that follow from valuing generality, such as integrated understanding and complex, difficult achievement, mirror each other structurally. Taken together, these many parallels suggest that knowledge and achievement may both instantiate a more abstract value of rational connection to reality. With or without that deeper unification, the parallels strengthen the claims of both to be genuine goods. (shrink)

The fitting attitude analysis of value states that for objects to have value is for them to be the fitting targets of attitudes. Good objects are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, while bad objects are the fitting targets of negative attitudes. The following paper presents an argument to the effect that value and the fittingness of attitudes differ in terms of their explanations. Whereas the fittingness of attitudes is explained, inter alia, by both the properties of attitudes and those (...) of their fitting targets, the explanation of value tends to have a different content. In particular, objects have value in virtue of the features that make them valuable, and these need not involve any attitudinal properties. If this is right, then there are reasons to doubt the claim that for objects to have value is just for them to be the fitting targets of attitudes. Insofar as value is a property, it appears to be distinct from the property of objects being the fitting targets of attitudes. (shrink)

Epistemic Value Monism is the view that there is only one kind of thing of basic, final epistemic value. Perhaps the most plausible version of Epistemic Value Monism is Truth Value Monism, the view that only true beliefs are of basic, final epistemic value. Several authors—notably Jonathan Kvanvig and Michael DePaul—have criticized Truth Value Monism by appealing to the epistemic value of things other than knowledge. Such arguments, if successful, would establish Epistemic Value Pluralism is true and Epistemic Value Monism (...) is false. This paper critically examines those arguments, finding them wanting. However, I develop an argument for Epistemic Value Pluralism that succeeds which turns on general reflection on the nature of value. (shrink)

Mooreans claim that intrinsic goodness is a conceptual primitive. Fitting-attitude theorists object: they say that goodness should be defined in terms of what it is fitting for us to value. The Moorean view is often considered a relic; the fitting-attitude view is increasingly popular. I think this unfortunate. Though the fitting-attitude analysis is powerful, the Moorean view is still attractive. I dedicate myself to the influential arguments marshaled against Moore’s program, including those advanced by Scanlon, Stratton-Lake and Hooker, and Jacobson; (...) I argue that they do not succeed. (shrink)

Hedonism claims that all and only pleasure is intrinsically good. One worry about Hedonism focuses on the “only” part: Are there not things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, that are intrinsically good? If so, it can be objected that Hedonism is incomplete. In this paper, I defend Hedonism against this objection by arguing for a distinction between goodness and desirability that understands “desirability” as a deontic concept, in terms of “reason to desire”, but goodness as an (...) evaluative concept. Based on this distinction, I attempt to show that Hedonists should accept that things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, are desirable for their own sakes but deny that these things are intrinsically good. (shrink)

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non-instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I argue (...) that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire-theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti-unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality. (shrink)

It is not difficult to find both affinities and divergences in the work of Wittgenstein and Brandom but this particular text explores several key issues beyond first impressions and reveals hidden divergences in supposed similarities and occasionally less profound dissimilarities where their philosophies seem to differ radically. Both Wittgenstein and Brandom, while agreeing that representations cannot be taken to be primitive, would not approve of Rorty’s drive to jettison the very idea of representation along with that of truth. Wittgenstein, on (...) the other hand, “is averse to any attempt at general, explanatory, theories of how language works” while “Brandom is much more positive about the possibility of general, systematic and explanatory theories of meaning.” The divergence about the builders of Philosophical Investigations § 2 and their language use is traced back to Wittgenstein’s being essentially a worldly pragmatist, while Brandom's practice is essentially intralinguistic. In the second part, the text takes issue with Brandom's theory of making explicit, and in the final sections, the paper questions the supposed contrast between expressivism and the “motley of language” and takes a look at Brandom's strive for a normative realism that distinguishes him from other expressivists. (shrink)

In this reflection I address one of the critical questions this monograph is about: How to justify proposing yet another semantic theory in the light of Wittgenstein’s strong warnings against it. I see two clear motives for Wittgenstein’s semantic nihilism. The first one is the view that philosophical problems arise from postulating hypothetical entities such as “meanings”. To dissolve the philosophical problems rather than create new ones, Wittgenstein suggests substituting “meaning” with “use” and avoiding scientism in philosophy together with the (...) urge to penetrate in one's investigation to unobservable depths. I believe this first motive constitutes only a weak motive for Wittgenstein’s quietism, because there are substantial differences between empirical theories in natural sciences and semantic theories in philosophy that leave Wittgenstein’s assimilation of both open to criticism. But Wittgenstein is right, on the second motive, that given the dynamic character of linguistic practice, the classical project of semantic theory is a disease that can be removed or ameliorated only by heeding the advice to replace concern with meaning by concern with use. On my view, this does not preclude, however, a different kind of theoretical approach to meaning that avoids the pitfalls of the Procrustean enterprise Wittgenstein complained about. (shrink)

J. M. Bernstein argues that to capture the depths of the harm of torture, we need to do away with the idea that we possess intrinsic and inviolable worth. If personhood is inviolable, then torture can inflict only apparent harm on our standing as persons. Bernstein claims that torture is a paradigm of moral injury because it causes what he calls “devastation”: The victim experiences an actual degradation of his or her personhood. Bernstein argues that our value is given to (...) us through mutual recognition and hence can be lost. In this paper, I argue that if our human value can be lost, then it first must be built up. If it must be built up, then the question of our status before the building begins must be answered. Bernstein faces a problem of human beings who fall outside relations of mutual recognition and hence are valueless. His best option for answering this problem is to point to the centrality of the body in his account of recognition, but doing so reveals a notion of intrinsic worth implicit in his account. I call for a revision of Bernstein's account that can hold on to devastation without eschewing intrinsic worth. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it analyses the similarities that stem from Wittgenstein’s (Philosophical Investigations (1953)) and Brandom’s (Making it Explicit (1994)) commitment to pragmatics in the philosophy of language to account for moral utterances. That is, the study of the meaning of moral utterances is carried out resorting to the study of the acts being performed in producing or exhibiting these utterances. Both authors offer, therefore, a pragmatic solution in order to account for the meaning of (...) our moral vocabulary and discursive practices. Secondly, it argues that both approaches lead to differing understandings of the role of “truth” and “falsity” in moral discourse. On the one hand, Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics demonstrate a dismissive attitude towards the notions of truth and falsity in moral discourse. On the other hand, Brandom seems to be committed to a weak version of moral cognitivism: he takes assertions (which express beliefs, i.e. doxastic commitments) as the fundamental linguistic activity in the game of giving and asking for reasons and provides an anaphoric theory of truth to account for “truth” and “falsity” in our discourse. Additionally, it analyses how these differences bear on the Frege–Geach problem. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks that discusses the meaning of being in practical agreement with a rule, arguing that Brandom misconstrues the idea undergirding Wittgenstein’s remarks in terms of the relation between the pragmatic and normative aspects of language. First, I discuss Brandom’s idea of normative pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following in the Philosophical Investigations. I argue that Brandom enforces the picture of implicit rules as a salient solution for the problem of infinite regress regarding explicit (...) rules. Second, I compare both views and show that although Brandom takes his solution for a Wittgensteinian answer to the regress problem it is very likely that Wittgenstein’s understanding of rule-following rather suggests a different view. Moreover, I explain why Brandom thinks that he cannot accept this view and why he offers an interpretation-based account instead which he thinks is underlying the agreement between rule and practice. Third, I criticize Brandom’s account from a Wittgensteinian point of view arguing that what is underlying the agreement are so-called ‘bedrock-practices’ rather than mutual interpretations. (shrink)

Turing was a philosopher of logic and mathematics, as well as a mathematician. His work throughout his life owed much to the Cambridge milieu in which he was educated and to which he returned throughout his life. A rich and distinctive tradition discussing how the notion of “common sense” relates to the foundations of logic was being developed during Turing’s undergraduate days, most intensively by Wittgenstein, whose exchanges with Russell, Ramsey, Sraffa, Hardy, Littlewood and others formed part of the backdrop (...) which shaped Turing’s work. Beginning with a Moral Sciences Club talk in 1933, Turing developed an “anthropological” approach to the foundations of logic, influenced by Wittgenstein, in which “common sense” plays a foundational role. This may be seen not only in “On Computable Numbers” and Turing’s dissertation ), but in his exchanges with Wittgenstein in 1939 and in two later papers, “The Reform of Mathematical Phraseology and Notation” and “Solvable and Unsolvable Problems”. (shrink)

There are several similarities between Robert B. Brandom’s and the later Wittgenstein’s views on linguistic meaning. Like Wittgenstein, Brandom rejects representationalism and takes linguistic practices to be the basis where all meaning rests. His inferentialism is a holistic view, already envisaged by Frege. The idea of a language game connects Brandom to Wittgenstein, although Wittgenstein’s idea has also been developed in various other directions. However, unlike Wittgenstein, Brandom pays special attention to the game of giving and asking for reasons. This (...) difference already suggests that Brandom has a strong ethical overtone in his philosophy of language. For Wittgenstein, normativity seems to be normativity of language, while for Brandom it is basically normativity of actions for which persons are responsible. Brandom’s philosophy, which is loaded with deontic vocabulary, is a philosophy of human encounters. The present paper studies this very aspect of Brandom’s thought. It focuses on his theory of assertions in his Making It Explicit and elaborates a view of assertions that is possible on Wittgenstein’s terms. The paper then reappraises Wittgenstein’s views on philosophy and philosophical, particularly ethical, propositions. It seeks to show that Wittgenstein comes closest to the Brandomian ethical model of discursive practice in his comments on the limits of language. These comparisons also reveal that Brandom and Wittgenstein agree on the nature of ethical vocabulary; neither of them goes in for ethical theorizing. Brandom’s later works, such as his Reason in Philosophy, open up new perspectives on his ethical thought. This paper is primarily a study of the role that ethics plays in his philosophy of language in 1994. (shrink)

This paper questions the idea that Wittgenstein’s account of meaning as use requires an intrinsically normative understanding of this notion, and suggests instead that Wittgenstein is better understood as promoting a naturalistic view of meaning that undertakes an explanation based on non–semantic and non–normative facts of word–usage. It discusses the relevant positions of Kripke, Brandom and McDowell, all of whom are found to be united by the attempt to attribute to Wittgenstein a normative understanding of language that is not convincing. (...) While language does exhibit normative properties that cannot be naturalized, the understanding speakers have of their own words is “a prima facie plausible candidate for naturalistic analysis.”. (shrink)

Both Brandom and Wittgenstein base their concepts of experience on the game metaphor and the associated concept of rule. In fact, what Brandom seems to do is further refine Wittgenstein’s vocabulary by specifying the game as the game of giving and asking for reasons and rules as the rules of inference. By replacing the plurality of “games” with the one and only “game”, though, Brandom also lays the ground for a possible discord. This relates particularly to the cognitive significance of (...) different forms of human experience, such as music or art in general, which are treated by Wittgenstein as language games despite their being rather independent of claims and commitments and despite their utterly lacking the representational dimension. In my paper, I will show that with respect to these objections, one can argue that Brandom is in fact true to Wittgenstein’s instruction to always read his Investigations against his Tractatus. The general idea is to look at the game and picture metaphor as parts of a single concept that both philosophers work on together by going back to the very idealist concept of reflexivity or self-consciousness. (shrink)

Formula One isn’t very important. You can't care about it too much. The refugee crisis is more important. You can care about it much more. In this paper we investigate how important something is. By ‘importance’ we mean how much it is fitting to care about a thing. We explore a view about this which we call Proportionalism. This view says that a thing’s importance depends on that thing’s share of the world’s total value. The more of what matters there (...) is, the less you can care about each thing in particular. The less of what matters there is, the more you can care about each thing in particular. We argue that, in many respects, Proportionalism is superior to its competitors. It captures some intuitions they leave out and it has a powerful motivation. So, we suggest, you should keep things in proportion. (shrink)

In Making It Explicit Brandom distinguishes between, as he puts it, I–We and I–Thou sociality. Only I–Thou sociality, Brandom argues, is adequate to the task of instituting norms relevant to our self–understanding as rational beings because only I–Thou sociality can render intelligible the distinction between how norms are applied and how they ought to be applied —however anyone thinks they ought to be applied. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein defends a version of I–We sociality, one that is not, I argue, (...) subject to Brandom’s criticisms. Indeed, I suggest, it is just such a conception of I–We sociality as we find in Wittgenstein’s Investigations that is needed if we are fully to understand the respects in which we are, as the rational beings we are, answerable to the norm of truth. (shrink)

This paper, originating from a Wittgenstein conference in Delphi, Greece in June 2001, questions Brandom’s reading of Wittgenstein on “Following a Rule”. For the purpose of our current investigative dispute, it is a very good starting point to draw our attention to some of the vital differences between Wittgenstein’s and Brandom’s approach to the relation between practice and rules that may not be quite as clear at first sight from Brandom’s own writings. This writing maintains that Brandom misconstrues Wittgenstein’s remarks (...) about signposts and Philosophical Investigations §201 with the consequence that his own explications about tacit rules involved in practice seem more Wittgensteinian than they really are. For one, Brandom duplicates Wittgenstein’s requirement of correctness in rule following: “...correctness that consists in following a rule [does not presuppose] correctness that does not.” On the other hand Brandom’s reading makes Wittgenstein’s quietism look like ”a pretext for not doing constructive work”, while Wittgenstein’s point is that there is nothing left to enquire. (shrink)

Some authors argue that we have a moral obligation to leave Mars the way it is, even if it does not harbour any life. This claim is usually based on an assumption that Mars has intrinsic value. The problem with this concept is that different authors use it differently. In this chapter, I investigate different ways in which an uninhabited Mars is said to have intrinsic value. First, I investigate whether the planet can have moral standing. I find that this (...) is not a plausible assumption. I then investigate different combinations of objective value and end value. I find that there is no way we can know whether an uninhabited Mars has objective end value and even if it does, this does not seem to imply any moral obligations on us. I then investigate whether an uninhabited Mars can have subjective end value. I conclude that this is very plausible. I also investigate whether an uninhabited Mars can have objective instrumental value in relation to some other, non-Mars related end value. I find also this very plausible. It is also highly plausible, however, that spreading (human or other) life to a presently uninhabited Mars can also have subjective end value, as well as objective instrumental value. I mention shortly two ways of prioritising between these values: (1) The utilitarian method of counting the number of sentient beings who entertain each value and determining the strength of the values to them. (2) Finding a compromise that allows colonisation on parts of the planet while leaving other parts untouched. These methods should be seen as examples, not as an exhaustive list. Also, I do not take a definitive stand in favour of any of the two approaches, though it seems at least prima facie that the second approach may have a better chance of actually leading to a constructive result. (shrink)

Some authors argue that we have a moral obligation to leave Mars the way it is, even if it does not harbour any life. This claim is usually based on an assumption that Mars has intrinsic value. The problem with this concept is that different authors use it differently. In this chapter, I investigate different ways in which an uninhabited Mars is said to have intrinsic value. First, I investigate whether the planet can have moral standing. I find that this (...) is not a plausible assumption. I then investigate different combinations of objective value and end value. I find that there is no way we can know whether an uninhabited Mars has objective end value and even if it does, this does not seem to imply any moral obligations on us. I then investigate whether an uninhabited Mars can have subjective end value. I conclude that this is very plausible. I also investigate whether an uninhabited Mars can have objective instrumental value in relation to some other, non-Mars related end value. I find also this very plausible. It is also highly plausible, however, that spreading life to a presently uninhabited Mars can also have subjective end value, as well as objective instrumental value. I mention shortly two ways of prioritising between these values: The utilitarian method of counting the number of sentient beings who entertain each value and determining the strength of the values to them. Finding a compromise that allows colonisation on parts of the planet while leaving other parts untouched. These methods should be seen as examples, not as an exhaustive list. Also, I do not take a definitive stand in favour of any of the two approaches, though it seems at least prima facie that the second approach may have a better chance of actually leading to a constructive result. (shrink)

In his interesting and provocative article ‘Being Good in a World of Need’, Larry Temkin argues for the possibility of a type of Each-We Dilemma in which, if we each produce the most good we can individually, we produce a worse outcome collectively. Such situations would ostensibly be troubling from the standpoint of effective altruism, the project of finding out how to do the most good and doing it, subject to not violating side-constraints. We here show that Temkin’s argument is (...) more controversial than it may appear initially regarding both impartiality and goodness. This is because it is both inconsistent with (i) a plausible conception of impartiality (Anonymity) and inconsistent with (ii) the standard view of goodness (the Internal Aspects View). Moreover, because (i) and (ii) are entailed by the sense of ‘impartial goodness’ that effective altruism tentatively adopts, Temkin’s argument is less relevant to effective altruism than he suggests. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In addition, it (...) is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

By 1929, after the full acknowledgment of the colour–exclusion problem, Wittgenstein had to admit that material incompatibilities presented in conceptual systems could not be reduced to formal tautologies and contradictions. Wittgenstein then, in his middle period, had to examine the kind of negation which, for instance, colour systems should render, which expose not just one but many or, in some cases, infinite inferentially articulated alternatives. Here, inspired by Brandom’s inferentialism, I explore the idea that Wittgenstein, in his middle period, advocated (...) a form of inferentialism based on the inferentially articulated content of propositions in Satzsysteme. At that time, Wittgenstein suggested that every sentence should be logically connected to many others. I call this feature inferential thickness. Therefore, I use Löf’s normative read of verificationism to explain Middle Wittgenstein’s holist solution to problems concerning the use of negation related to material incompatibilities and determination of propositional sense. I also investigate the distinction between contrariety and contradiction and some possible connections to a mandatory restriction of the principle of excluded middle in Satzsysteme. (shrink)

I maintain that intrinsic value is the fundamental concept of axiology. Many contemporary philosophers disagree; they say the proper object of value theory is final value. I examine three accounts of the nature of final value: the first claims that final value is non‐instrumental value; the second claims that final value is the value a thing has as an end; the third claims that final value is ultimate or non‐derivative value. In each case, I argue that the concept of final (...) value described is either identical with the classical notion of intrinsic value or is not a plausible candidate for the primary concept of axiology. (shrink)

Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsic value is value that is not intrinsic.

Value is an inescapable part of the human experience and what life must be like for a conscious and feeling person. Philosophical questions about value are therefore naturally invited: What sort of thing would value be if it were part of the furniture of the world? How should we understand the relations that value is thought to stand in to other things? In a broad sense, these are formal questions calling for philosophical studies into the understanding of value notions. The (...) following work represents one such study. Its main concern lies specifically with the notion of final value, the idea that things can be good or bad for their own sakes. (shrink)

This essay explores the features in virtue of which games are valuable or worthwhile to play. The difficulty view of games holds that the goodness of games lies in their difficulty: by making activities more complex or making them require greater effort, they structure easier activities into more difficult, therefore more worthwhile, activities. I argue that a further source of the value of games is that they provide players with an experience of freedom, which they provide both as paradigmatically unnecessary (...) activities and by offering opportunities for relatively unconstrained choice inside the ‘lusory’ world that players inhabit. (shrink)