Varieties of Value

The theories of most writers on Ethics, with whose works I am acquainted, appear to be based upon the assumption of the unique character of goodness or The Good. By the word unique these writers mean, I think, among other things that goodness cannot be analysed into or described in terms of anything other than itself, that it can be and is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of some other thing which is not goodness, and (...) that the apprehension of or desire for goodness is a distinct and specific character of our mental states. By asserting, however, that the state of mind constituted by the apprehension of goodness, or that the state of emotion aroused by the desire for goodness, is distinguished by a specific and unique property, they do not, I think, necessarily mean that this property is the same as the specific property of goodness itself. Most writers on Ethics have also believed that man is free to desire goodness, and to act in accordance with his desire, that is to say, they have held in some form or other the doctrine of free-will. (shrink)

Achievement is among the central goods in life, but just what is achievement, and how is it valuable? There is reason to think that it is a constitutive part of wellbeing; yet, it is possible to sacrifice wellbeing for the sake of achievement. How might it have been worthwhile, if not in terms of wellbeing? Perhaps, achievement is an intrinsic good, or perhaps it is valuable in terms of meaning in life. This article considers various ways in which we can (...) understand the nature and value of achievement, as well as the significance of achievement for other areas of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

G.E. Moore said that rightness was obviously a matter of maximising plain goodness. Peter Geach and Judith Thomson disagree. They have both argued that ‘good’ is not a predicative adjective, but only ever an attributive adjective: just like ‘big.’ And just as there is no such thing as plain bigness but only ever big for or as a so-and-so, there is also no such thing as plain goodness. They conclude that Moore’s goodness is thus a nonsense. However attention has been (...) drawn to a weakness in their arguments. Mahrad Almotahari and Adam Hosein have sought to plug that weakness. If their plug holds, then there is no goodness. Doing most of their work is the following premise: adjective φ is predicative only if it can be used predicatively in ‘x is a φ K’ otherwise it is attributive. In this paper I argue that this premise is false, that their plug does not hold and that if one is to reject plain goodness it will have to be for other reasons. (shrink)

Emotions are crucial to human agency. But what are emotions? And how do they relate to agency? The aim of this book is to spell out an account of emotions, which is grounded on analogies between emotions and sensory experiences, and to explore the implications of this account for our understanding of human agency. The central claim is that emotions consist in perceptual experiences of values, such as the fearsome, the disgusting or the admirable. A virtue of this account is (...) that it affords a better grasp of a variety of interconnected phenomena: the relationship between emotions and motivation, the nature of evaluative judgements, the relationship between responsibility and attitudes such as anger, and, finally, the relation between emotions and reasons. (shrink)

Argues against G. E. Moore’s conception of organic unities, attempting to replace it with a conception more amenable to particularism. Considers the possibility of a form of default value acceptable to particularism. Ends by contrasting the views expressed here with those of Kagan.

_Art and Morality_ is a collection of groundbreaking new papers on the theme of aesthetics and ethics, and the link between the two subjects. A group of distinguished contributors tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life. The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the relation of (...) aesthetic to ethical judgement; the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness; the moral status of fiction; the concepts of sentimentality and decadence; the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music; the moral significance of tragedy; and the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal both to the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art. (shrink)

In a recent article, Sven Nyholm argues that the use of biomedical enhancements in our romantic relationships would fail to secure the final value we attribute to love. On Nyholm's view, one thing we desire for its own sake is to be at the origin of the love others have for us. The satisfaction of this desire, he argues, is incompatible with the use of BE insofar as they are responsible for the attachment characteristic of love. In particular, the use (...) of BE in order to create and sustain the sort of attachment characteristic of love would be less desirable than the creation and sustainment of it by more ordinary means. If one needs such enhancements in order for one's love to be created or sustained, then one's love is of lesser quality than the love we want. In this reply, I raise doubts about the argument. (shrink)

Following the integration of artistic disciplines within the university, artists have been challenged to review their practice in academic terms. This has become a vigorous epicentre of debates concerning the nature of research in the artistic disciplines. The special issue "On Reflecting and Making in Artistic Research Practice" captures some of this debate. This editorial article presents a broad-brush outline of the debates raging in the artistic disciplines and presents three discernible trends in those debates. The trends highlight different core (...) questions: Art as research: Can artistic practice represent forms of inquiry acceptable within academic settings? Academically-attuned practice-led research: Can art practice and research practice cooperate as equal partners within the university context? Artistic research: Can the academic notion of research be extended to include the unique results possible through artistic research? The articles in the special issue offer a discussable overview of the current stage in the development of artistic research, demonstrating how creative practice and research practice can come together. (shrink)

The editor of this anthology discusses the distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics, and provides lucid organizational prefaces to each of the five chapters. The first four are arranged on a "thesis-reply" model. For example, essays by Ayer and Stevenson present an 'emotive-imperative' account of moral judgments, while essays by Blanshard and Baier afford critical replies. There are similarly arranged treatments of objectivism, subjectivism and instrumentalism. The final chapter is given over to "new directions" in meta-ethical theory, and contains readings (...) on the use of moral words and the logic of moral reasoning.--N. S. C. (shrink)

Gwen Bradford presents the first systematic account of what achievements are, and why they are worth the effort. She argues that more things count as achievements than we might have thought, and offers a new perfectionist theory of value in which difficulty, perhaps surprisingly, plays a central part in characterizing achievements.

Suppose you own a garden-variety object such as a hat or a shirt. Your property right then follows the ageold saw according to which possession is nine-tenths of the law. That is, your possession of a shirt constitutes a strong presumption in favor of your ownership of the shirt. In the case of land, however, this is not the case. Here possession is not only not a strong presumption in favor of ownership; it is not even clear what possession is. (...) Possessing a thing like a hat or a shirt is a rather straightforward affair: the person wearing the hat or shirt possesses the shirt or the hat. But what is possession in the case of land? This essay seeks to provide an answer to this question in the form of an ontology of landed property. (shrink)

This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based (...) on coefficients in a happiness equation. But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur or conflate important concepts: well-being, subjective well-being, happiness, utility, satisfaction. A preference-realization account of well-being denies the equivalence of happiness and welfare, since someone can have preferences for non-mental attributes, such as health, autonomy, goal-fulfillment, knowledge or the quality of her relationships. It is critical, therefore, to differentiate two potential policy roles for happiness surveys. First, the survey response may provide prima facie evidence of the respondent’s preference-utility: the extent to which her preferences are realized. Second, it may indicate her experience-utility: the quality of her mental states. The Article clarifies these two, very different, ideas. It then criticizes, in turn, the preference-utility and the experience-utility defenses of the policy relevance of happiness surveys. Enthusiasm about happiness is premature. (shrink)

Many contemporary authors argue that the Hindu doctrines of karma and/or rebirth entail that both human and nonhuman entities in nature are interconnected, and hence have intrinsic value. These doctrines do not entail that entities in nature are interconnected, however. Even if they did, the interconnectedness of entities cannot establish their intrinsic value. If the interconnectedness of entities did establish their intrinsic value, the account would attribute equal intrinsic value to all things, both natural and non-natural, and hence, fail to (...) meet the “non-vacuity requirement.” The doctrines of karma and/or rebirth do entail that nonhuman entities in nature have intrinsic value, but not because they are interconnected. First, the doctrines entail that distinctions among embodied beings are trivial. If human beings have intrinsic value—as is typically assumed—and if the differences between a human embodiment and an animal or plant embodiment are trivial, then these differences seem less able to explain differences in the intrinsic value of humans, animals, and plants. Second, the best explanation of the connection between the treatment of nonhuman entities and the merit or demerit that arises as a result is that all living beings are intrinsically valuable. Other explanations are circular, or fail to explain the severe punishments that result from harming nonhuman entities. (shrink)