Relativist Dispositional Theories of Value: Relativist Dispositional Theories of Value
Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (4):557-582 (2012)
Abstract
Adopting a dispositional theory of value promises to deliver a lot of theoretical goodies. One recurring problem for dispositional theories of value, though, is a problem about nonconvergence. If being a value is being disposed to elicit response R in us, what should we say if it turns out that not everybody is disposed to have R to the same things? One horn of the problem here is a danger of the view collapsing into an error theory—of it turning out, on account of the diversity of agents' relevant dispositions, that nothing is really a value, since nothing is disposed to elicit R in everybody. Alternatively, there is a danger of an objectionable fragmentation of value, according to which there is no such thing as a value simpliciter, but only valuesme and valuesyou, valuesus and valuesthem. I advocate a de se relativist version of a dispositional theory of value. If we go for this sort of de-se-ified dispositional theory, we get to keep our theoretical goodies, but we avoid the problem of nonconvergence that leads to a danger of either collapse into an error theory, or else talking-past, and a loss of common subject matter.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1111/j.2041-6962.2012.00136.x
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Citations of this work
Noncognitivism Without Expressivism.Bob Beddor - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Expressing Disagreement: A Presuppositional Indexical Contextualist Relativist Account.Dan López de Sa - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (1):153-165.
References found in this work
From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis.Frank Jackson - 1998 - Oxford University Press.
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment.Allan Gibbard - 1990 - Harvard University Press.