Joshua Gert and Wlodek Rabinowicz have developed frameworks for value relations that are rich enough to allow for non-standard value relations such as parity. Yet their frameworks do not allow for any non-standard preference relations. In this paper, I shall defend a symmetry between values and preferences, namely, that for every value relation, there is a corresponding preference relation, and vice versa. I claim that if the arguments that there are non-standard value relations are cogent, these (...) arguments, mutatis mutandis, also show that there are non-standard preference relations. Hence frameworks of Gert and Rabinowicz's type are either inadequate since there are cogent arguments for both non-standard value and preference relations and these frameworks deny this, or they lack support since the arguments for non-standard value relations are unconvincing. Instead, I propose a simpler framework that allows for both non-standard value and preference relations. (shrink)

According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude – a fitting object of favoring. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then, in this view, the object has final value. If it is fitting to favor an object for the sake of its effects, then its value is instrumental. Disvalue is connected in the analogous way (...) to disfavoring, i.e., to con-attitudes. For a history of this fitting-attitudes analysis, or FA-analysis for short, see the following text. The label itself was coined rather recently, though, in Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen. (shrink)

The explanatory objection against the fitting attitude account of value states that if the properties of attitudes explain fittingness facts, but do not always explain value facts, then value facts cannot be identical with or reduced to fittingness facts. One reply to this objection is to claim that the constitutive properties of attitudes also explain value facts, for they are enablers for the value possessed by an object. In this paper we argue (...) that the enabling maneuver exposes FA to a new explanatory objection, to the extent that the explanatory role played by the constitutive properties of attitudes in value facts is assumed to be different from the explanatory role they play in fittingness facts. (shrink)

According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude – a fitting object of favoring. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then, in this view, the object has final value. If it is fitting to favor an object for the sake of its effects, then its value is instrumental. Disvalue is connected in the analogous way (...) to disfavoring, i.e., to con-attitudes. For a history of this fitting-attitudes analysis, or FA-analysis for short, see the following text. The label itself was coined rather recently, though, in Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen. (shrink)

According to Wlodek Rabinowicz's (2008) fitting-attitude analysis of value relations, two items are on a par if and only if it is both permissible to strictly prefer one to the other and permissible to have the opposite strict preference. Rabinowicz’s account is subject, however, to one important objection: if strict preferences involve betterness judgements, then his analysis contrasts with the intuitive understanding of parity. In this paper, I examine Rabinowicz’s three responses to this objection and argue (...) that they do not succeed. I then propose an alternative solution. I argue that the objection can be avoided if we ‘relativize’ Rabinowicz’s account and define parity in terms of opposite strict preferences between two items that are only relatively permissible, rather than permissible simpliciter. I argue that this account of parity can be defended if we take seriously the distinction between sufficient and decisive reason for a preference relation. I also show that, on the basis of this distinction, we can arrive at a more extensive taxonomy of value relations than the one proposed by Rabinowicz. (shrink)

Understanding value in terms of fitting attitudes is all the rage these days. According to this fitting attitude analysis of value (FA-analysis for short) what is good is what it is fitting to favour in some sense. Many aspects of the FA-analysis have been discussed. In particular, a lot of discussion has been concerned with the wrong-reason objection: it can be fitting to have an attitude towards something for reasons that have nothing (...) to do with the value the thing has in itself. Much less attention has been paid to the problem of identifying the relevant attitudes in virtue of which value is supposed to be defined. An old complaint, however, is that the FA-analysis is bound to be circular, because the fitting attitude is best seen as an evaluative judgement or an evaluative experience. In this paper, I am arguing that the challenge to find a non-circular account is deepened by the fact that on many popular non-evaluative understandings of favouring, there are good states of affairs that it is never fitting to favour, because it is logically impossible or irrational to favour them. I will also show that the remaining candidate of favouring, 'imaginative emotional feeling', will generate a new version of the wrong-reason objection if it is put to use in the FA-account. I shall conclude that the prospects of finding a non-circular FA-analysis look bleak. (shrink)

According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not (...) presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The second challenge is normative: the FA analysis must account for the fittingness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, but again without presupposing the mastery of the relevant value concepts. In this paper, we show that real progress is possible if we pay close attention to the nature of the attitudes recruited by the analysis. More specifically, we claim that an FA analysis that appeals to emotions conceived as evaluative attitudes — as opposed to, for instance, evaluative judgements or evaluative perceptions — has the best prospects of meeting the two challenges and of putting the FA analysis on a strong footing. (shrink)

It is a noteworthy disanalogy between contemporary ethics and aesthetics that the fitting-attitude account of value, so prominent in contemporary ethics, sees comparatively little play in aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to articulate what a systematic fitting-attitude-style framework for understanding aesthetic value might look like. In the bulk of the paper, I sketch possible fitting-attitude-style accounts of three central aesthetic values – the beautiful, the sublime, and the powerful – (...) so that the general form of the framework come through. (shrink)

Norm-attitude accounts of value say that for something to be valuable is for there to be norms that support valuing that thing. For example, according to fitting-attitude accounts, something is of value if it is fitting to value, and according to buck-passing accounts, something is of value if the reasons support valuing it. Norm-attitude accounts face the partiality problem: in cases of partiality, what it is fitting to value, and (...) what the reasons support valuing, may not line up with what’s valuable. Buck-passers have a solution to this problem and may claim that this gives them an advantage over fitting-attitude accounts. In this paper, we show how fitting-attitudes accounts can offer a broadly analogous, and equally attractive, solution to the problem. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that all of normativity, such as our reasons for action, what we ought to do, and the attitudes that it is fitting for us to have, derives from what is valuable. But value-first approaches to normativity have fallen out of favour as the virtues of reasons- and fittingness-first approaches to normativity have become clear. On these views, value is not explanatorily prior to reasons and fit; rather the value of things is (...) understood in terms of the pro-attitudes it is fitting to have, or that we have reasons to have, towards these things. The value-first accounts of reasons and fit that have been proposed have been direct accounts of reasons and fit. On these views, the fittingness of an attitude is explained in terms of the value of having it or the value of the object of that attitude. This chapter details and surveys these problems, explaining which are yet to be overcome, and explaining which problems direct value-first accounts can overcome. This chapter then explores the prospects of an indirect value-first account of reasons and fit. It argues that it avoids the problems that direct value-first accounts face and may be as explanatorily powerful as fittingness- and reasons-first accounts of value and normativity more generally. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Bykvist’s recent challenges to the fitting-attitude account of value (FA) can be successfully met. The challenge from solitary goods claims that FA cannot account for the value of states of affairs which necessarily rule out the presence of favouring subjects. I point out the modal reasons why FA can account for solitary goods by appealing to contemplative attitudes. Bykvist’s second challenge, the ‘distance problem’, questions the ability of (...) FA to match facts about the intensity of fitting attitudes and facts about value, particularly in the case of solitary goods. I argue that this challenge can be met by including the notion of a veil of ignorance in the formulation of FA, and understanding its role as bracketing the relevance of certain facts when determining the fittingness of attitudes to states of affairs. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of (...) philosophers’ other commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses the so-called Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem (WKR problem) that arises for the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This format of analysis is exemplified for example by Scanlon's buck-passing account, on which an object's value consists in the existence of reasons to favour the object- to respond to it in a positive way. The WKR problem can be put as follows: It appears that in some situations we might well have reasons to (...) have pro-attitudes toward objects that are not valuable. Or vice versa: we might have reasons not to have pro-attitudes toward some valuable objects. The paper goes through several attempts to solve (or dissolve) the WKR problem and argues that none of them is fully satisfactory. (shrink)

The buck-passing account of value (BPA) is very fertile ground that has given rise to a number of interpretations and controversies. It has originally been proposed by T.M. Scanlon as an analysis of value: according to it, being good ‘is not a property that itself provides a reason to respond to a thing in certain ways. Rather, to be good or valuable is to have other properties that constitute such reasons’. Buck-passing stands in a complicated relation to (...) the fitting-attitude analysis of normativity that reaches back to the work of Brentano and Ewing. Proponents of FA-analysis hold that, as a matter of the conceptual analysis of ‘good’, something is good if it is fitting to have pro-attitudes of a certain kind towards it. The ambition of FA-analysis is to explain all practical normativity in terms of the fittingness of attitudes, which – while being itself a normative concept – is the only normative concept which grounds all others. Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen welcomed BPA as a contemporary version of FA-analysis, and others have followed this suggestion. But whether BPA should be regarded as a version of FA-analysis is a moot point. In section I, I show that BPA is not as obviously a successor of the fitting-attitude analysis of value as some have thought. The much discussed wrong-kind-of-reasons (for short: WKR) problem afflicts buck-passing only in so far as it incorporates a version of FA analysis, or at any rate is expressed in terms of reasons for attitudes. There can be a buck-passing account of value which is not affected by the problem: one that limits the account to reasons for actions (rather than attitudes). However, insofar as BPA does inherit elements of FA analysis, it also has a WKR problem. In section II, I discuss this problem and its solution. I show that it has been misidentified in the current literature, and that – once we understand the problem correctly – its solution is likely to be unavailable to the buck-passer. Hence we should reject any account of BPA that incorporates FA analysis. That leaves us with versions which do not: versions that formulate BPA in terms of reasons for actions only, rather than reasons for attitudes. Finally, in section III, I discuss why buck-passing seemed to be appealing to begin with, and whether a version of BPA that does not incorporate FA analysis is a viable contender of the account – beyond the WKR problem. (shrink)

Classical fitting-attitude analyses understand value in terms of its being fitting, or more generally, there being a reason to favour the bearer of value. Recently, such analyses have been interpreted as referring to two reason-notions rather than to only one. The idea is that the properties of the object provide reason not only for a certain kind of favouring(s) vis-à-vis the object, but the very same properties should also figure in the intentional content of the (...) favouring; the agent should favour the object on account of those properties that provide reason for favouring the object in the first place. While this expansion of the original proposal might seem intuitive given that favourings are discerning attitudes, it is nonetheless argued that proponents of the fitting-attitude analysis are in fact not served by such an expansion of the classical analysis. The objections raised here are relevant not only for advocates and critics of fitting-attitude analyses, but for anyone interested in the relation between normative reasons and motivation. (shrink)

Some standards, such as moral and prudential standards, provide genuinely or authoritatively normative reasons for action. Other standards, such as the norms of masculinity and the mafia’s code of omerta, provide reasons but do not provide genuinely normative reasons for action. This paper first explains that there is a similar distinction amongst attitudinal standards: some attitudes (belief, desire) have standards that seem to give rise to genuine normativity; others (boredom, envy) do not. This paper gives a value-based account (...) of which attitudinal standards give rise to genuine normativity. It argues that this account has interesting implications before extending it to provide an account of which action-guiding standards are genuinely normative. It argues that this value-based account of which standards are genuinely normative is more plausible than alternatives suggested in the literature and has interesting implications for genuine normativity in law and aesthetics. (shrink)

According to ‘Fitting Attitude’ (FA) analyses of value, for an object to be valuable is for that object to have properties—other than its being valuable—that make it a fitting object of certain responses. In short, if an object is positively valuable it is fitting to favour it; if an object is negatively valuable it is fitting to disfavour it. There are several variants of FA analyses. Some hold that for an object to be valuable (...) is for it to be such that it ought to be favoured; others hold that value is analyzable in terms of reasons or requirements to favour. All these variants of the FA analysis are subject to a partiality challenge : there are circumstances in which some agents have reasons to favour or disfavour some object—due to the personal relations in which they stand to the object—without this having any bearing on the value of the object. A. C. Ewing was one of the first philosophers to draw attention to the partiality challenge for FA analyses. In this paper I explain the challenge and consider Ewing's responses, one of which is preferable to the other, but none of which is entirely satisfactory. I go on to develop an alternative Brentano-inspired response that Ewing could have offered and that may well be preferable to the responses Ewing actually did offer. (shrink)

The authors of this paper earlier argued that concrete objects, such as things or persons, may have final value , which is not reducible to the value of states of affairs that concern the object in question.Our arguments have been challenged. This paper is an attempt to respond to some of these challenges, viz. those that concern the reducibility issue. The discussion presupposes a Brentano-inspired account of value in terms of fitting responses to value (...) bearers. Attention is given to a yet another type of reduction proposal, according to which the ultimate bearers of final value are abstract particulars rather than abstract states or facts. While the proposal is attractive , it confronts serious difficulties. To recognise tropes as potential bearers of final value, along with other objects, is one thing; but to reduce the final value of concrete objects to the final value of tropes is another matter. (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)

Brentano is often considered the originator of the fitting-attitudes analysis of value, on which to be valuable is to be that which it’s fitting to value. But there has been comparatively little attention paid to Brentano’s argument for this analysis. That argument advances the stronger claim that fittingness is part of the analysis of normativity. Since the argument rests on an analogy between truth and fittingness, its impact may seem limited by the idiosyncratic features of Brentano’s (...) later notion of truth. I argue, however, that the Brentanian argument is defensible even if fittingness is analogized to a more typical realist account of truth. The result is what I call the worldly Brentanian account of normativity. I defend this account as a form of naturalistic realism. I then show how the account can fare better than prominent alternatives against two kinds of error-theoretic arguments. (shrink)

According to fitting-attitudes accounts of value, the valuable is what there is sufficient reason to value. Such accounts face the famous wrong kind of reason problem. For example, if an evil demon threatens to kill you unless you value him, it may appear that you have sufficient reason to value the demon, although he is not valuable. One solution to this problem is to deny that the demon’s threat is a reason to value him. (...) It is instead a reason to want to value the demon, and to bring it about that you value him. However, many proponents of the wrong kind of reason problem find this solution unmotivated. This paper thus offers a new argument for this solution. The argument turns on the ‘transmission’ of reasons – the familiar fact that there is often reason for one action or attitude because there is reason for another. I observe that putative reasons of the wrong kind transmit in a very different way to other reasons. I then argue that this difference is best explained by the hypothesis that putative reasons of the wrong kind are not reasons for the attitude in question, but are instead reasons to want and bring about that attitude. (shrink)

According to the fitting-attitudes account of value, for X to be good is for it to be fitting to value X. But what is it for an attitude to be fitting? A popular recent view is that it is for there to be sufficient reason for the attitude. In this paper we argue that proponents of the fitting-attitudes account should reject this view and instead take fittingness as basic. In this (...) way they avoid the notorious ‘wrong kind of reason’ problem, and can offer attractive accounts of reasons and good reasoning in terms of fittingness. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the implication from value to fittingness. I shall argue that those committed to this implication face a serious explanatory challenge. This argument is not intended as a knock-down argument against FA but it will, I think, show that those who endorse the theory incur a particular explanatory burden: to explain how counterfactual favouring of actual value is possible. After making two important preliminary points I briefly discuss an objection to FA made by Krister (...) Bykvist a few years ago. The point of discussing this objection is to enable me to more easily present my own, and I believe stronger, version of that objection. The overall argument takes the form of, simply, a counterexample which can be constructed on the back of of my two preliminary points. Throughout the paper I try to respond to various objections. (shrink)

Few errors were identified in the original publication of the article. The corrections are as follows.

According to the fitting-attitude analysis of value , to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. In earlier publications, setting off from this format of analysis, I proposed a modelling of value relations which makes room for incommensurability in value. In this paper, I first recapitulate the value modelling and then move on to suggest adopting a structurally similar analysis of probability. Indeed, many probability theorists from Poisson onwards (...) did adopt an analysis of this kind. This move allows to formally model probability and probability relations in essentially the same way as value and value relations. One of the advantages of the model is that we get a new account of Keynesian incommensurable probabilities, which goes beyond Keynes in distinguishing between different types of incommensurability. It also becomes possible to draw a clear distinction between incommensurability and vagueness in probability comparisons. (shrink)

The paper argues that Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s fitting-attitude analysis of ‘good’ and ‘good for’ allows us to interpret and justify Kant’s Formula of Humanity (FH) in a constructive way. His classification of ‘good’ as a non-relational intrinsic final value and ‘good for’ as a relational extrinsic final value sheds light on two main features of FH, namely that it requires us to display a specific attitude to human beings, while also obligating us to recognize this (...) class='Hi'>value in the relational dimension. Based on a reflection of what attitudes toward persons are fitting, we might well come to endorse that persons are “ends in themselves” and merit respect and recognition. I then argue (by way of an ethical reading of Kant’s demand to leave the state of nature and move to a rightful civil condition) that we have, in addition to a fitting attitude, deontic normative reasons (not mere pro tanto reasons) for making this very attitude toward persons the principal standard for our relations to others and to ourselves. (shrink)

According to the fitting-attitude analysis of value (FA-analysis), to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. In earlier publications, setting off from this format of analysis, I proposed a modelling of value relations which makes room for incommensurability in value. In this paper, I first recapitulate the value modelling and then move on to suggest adopting a structurally similar analysis of probability. Indeed, many probability theorists from Poisson onwards (...) did adopt an analysis of this kind. This move allows to formally model probability and probability relations in essentially the same way as value and value relations. One of the advantages of the model is that we get a new account of Keynesian incommensurable probabilities, which goes beyond Keynes in distinguishing between different types of incommensurability. It also becomes possible to draw a clear distinction between incommensurability and vagueness (indeterminacy) in probability comparisons. (shrink)

According to fitting-attitude (FA) accounts of value, X is of final value if and only if there are reasons for us to have a certain pro-attitude towards it. FA accounts supposedly face the wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem. The WKR problem is the problem of revising FA accounts to exclude so called wrong kind of reasons. And wrong kind of reasons are reasons for us to have certain pro-attitudes towards things that are not of (...) value. I argue that the WKR problem can be dissolved. I argue that (A) the view that there are wrong kind of reasons for the pro-attitudes that figure in FA accounts conflicts with the conjunction of (B) an extremely plausible and extremely weak connection between normative and motivating rea- sons and (C) an extremely plausible generality constraint on the reasons for pro- attitudes that figure in FA accounts. I argue that when confronted with this trilemma we should give up (A) rather than (B) or (C) because there is a good explanation of why (A) seems so plausible but is in fact false, but there is no good explanation of why (B) and (C) seem so plausible but are in fact false. (shrink)

What is it for a car, a piece of art or a person to be good, bad or better than another? In this first book-length introduction to value theory, Francesco Orsi explores the nature of evaluative concepts used in everyday thinking and speech and in contemporary philosophical discourse. The various dimensions, structures and connections that value concepts express are interrogated with clarity and incision. -/- Orsi provides a systematic survey of both classic texts including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Moore (...) and Ross and an array of contemporary theorists. The reader is guided through the moral maze of value theory with everyday examples and thought experiments. Rare stamps, Napoleon's hat, evil demons, and Kant's good will are all considered in order to probe our intuitions, question our own and philosophers' assumptions about value, and, ultimately, understand better what we want to say when we talk about value. -/- 1. Value and Normativity 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Which Evaluations? 1.3 The Idea of Value Theory 1.4 Value and Normativity 1.5 Overview 1.6 Meta-ethical Neutrality 1.7 Value Theory: The Questions -/- 2. Meet the Values: Intrinsic, Final & Co. 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Final and Unconditional Value: Some Philosophical Examples 2.3 Intrinsic Value and Final Value 2.4 The Reduction to Facts 2.5 Intrinsic and Conditional Value 2.6 Elimination of Extrinsic Value? 2.7 Summary -/- 3. The Challenge against Absolute Value 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Geach and Attributive Goodness 3.3 Foot and the Virtues 3.4 Thomson and Goodness in a Way 3.5 Zimmerman's Ethical Goodness 3.6 A Better Reply: Absolute Value and Fitting Attitudes 3.7 Summary -/- 4. Personal Value 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Moore on Good and Good For 4.3 Good For and Fitting Attitudes 4.4 Moore Strikes Back? 4.5 Agent-relative Value 4.6 Impersonal/Personal and Agent-neutral/Agent-relative 4.7 Summary -/- 5. The Chemistry of Value 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Supervenience and Other Relations 5.3 Organic Unities 5.4 Alternatives to Organic Unities: Virtual Value 5.5 Alternatives to Organic Unities: Conditional Value 5.6 Holism and Particularism 5.7 Summary -/- 6. Value Relations 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Trichotomy Thesis and Incomparability 6.3 A Fitting Attitude Argument for Incomparability 6.4 Against Incomparability: Epistemic Limitations 6.5 Against Incomparability: Parity 6.6 Parity and Choice 6.7 Parity and Incomparability 6.8 Summary -/- 7. How Do I Favour Thee? 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Three Dimensions of Favouring 7.3 Responses to Value: Maximizing 7.4 Two Concepts of Intrinsic Value? 7.5 Summary -/- 8. Value and the Wrong Kind of Reasons 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The Fitting Attitude Account and its Rivals 8.3 The Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem 8.4 The Structure of the Problem and an Initial Response 8.5 Reasons for What? 8.6 Characteristic Concerns and Shared Reasons 8.7 Circular Path: No-Priority 8.8 Summary . (shrink)

According to the popular fitting attitude analysis of value, to be good is to be the object of a proattitude that it is fitting, in some sense, to have. One version of this analysis can be traced back to Franz Brentano, according to which “good” means “worthy of love.” In a review in Ethics of Brentano's The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, G. E. Moore accuses Brentano of committing a fallacious inference, which I (...) will call “Brentano's fallacy.” I shall show that Moore's accusation, properly formulated, hits the target and that his argument can be generalized so that it undermines other Brentano-like versions of the fitting attitude analysis. (shrink)

Abstract: The paper provides a general account of value relations. It takes its departure in a special type of value relation, parity, which according to Ruth Chang is a form of evaluative comparability that differs from the three standard forms of comparability: betterness, worseness and equal goodness. Recently, Joshua Gert has suggested that the notion of parity can be accounted for if value comparisons are interpreted as normative assessments of preference. While Gert's basic idea is attractive, (...) the way he develops it is flawed: His modeling of values by intervals of permissible preference strengths is inadequate. Instead, I provide an alternative modeling in terms of intersections of rationally permissible preference orderings. This yields a general taxonomy of all binary value relations. The paper concludes with some implications of this approach for rational choice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Confronted with the “wrong kind of reason problem”, several proponents of the fitting attitude analysis of emotional values have argued in favor of an epistemic approach. In such a view, an emotion fits its object because the emotion is correct. However, I argue that we should reorient our search towards a practical approach because only practical considerations can provide a satisfying explanation of the fittingness of emotional responses. This practical approach is partially revisionist, particularly because it is (...) no longer an analysis of final value and because it is relativistic. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The FA Analysis of Emotional Values and Practical Reasons*Volume 51, Issue 1Stephane Lemaire DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000224Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The ‘buck-passing’ account equates the value of an object with the existence of reasons to favour it. As we argued in an earlier paper, this analysis faces the ‘wrong kind of reasons’ problem: there may be reasons for pro-attitudes towards worthless objects, in particular if it is the pro-attitudes, rather than their objects, that are valuable. Jonas Olson has recently suggested how to resolve this difficulty: a reason to favour an object is of the right kind only if (...) its formulation does not involve any reference to the attitudes for which it provides a reason. We argue that despite its merits, Olson's solution is unsatisfactory. We go on to suggest that the buck-passing account might be acceptable even if the problem in question turns out to be insoluble. (shrink)

Uriah Kriegel presents a rich exploration of the philosophy of the great nineteenth-century thinker Franz Brentano. He locates Brentano at the crossroads where the Anglo-American and continental European philosophical traditions diverged. At the centre of this account of Brentano's philosophy is the connection between mind and reality. Kriegel aims to develop Brentano's central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano's death a century ago; and to (...) offer a partial defense of Brentano's system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking. Brentano's system grounds a complete metaphysics and value theory in a well-developed philosophy of mind, and accordingly the book is divided into three parts, devoted to Brentano's philosophy of mind, his metaphysics, and his moral philosophy. The book's fundamental ambition is to show how Brentano combines the clarity and precision of the analytic philosopher with the sweeping vision of the continental philosopher. Brentano pays careful attention to important distinctions, conscientiously defines key notions, presents precise arguments for his claims, judiciously considers potential objections, and in general proceeds very methodically - yet he does so not as an end in itself, but as a means only. His end is the crafting of a grand philosophical system in the classical sense, attempting to produce nothing less than a unified theory of the true, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is (...) class='Hi'>fitting that it be the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In the contemporary moral responsibility debate, most theorists seem to be giving accounts of responsibility in the ‘desert-entailing sense’. Despite this agreement, little has been said about the notion of desert that is supposedly entailed. In this paper I propose an understanding of desert sufficient to help explain why the blameworthy and praiseworthy deserve blame and praise, respectively. I do so by drawing upon what might seem an unusual resource. I appeal to so-called Fitting-Attitude accounts of value (...) to help inform a conception of desert or merit, one that can be usefully applied to discussions of moral responsibility. I argue that the view, which I call, Desert as Fittingness (DAF), merits additional attention. I do so by making two claims: First, that it does better than extant Fitting Attitude accounts of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness; second, that it has an initial plausibility with respect to informing a general account of desert. While these reasons are insufficient to show the view is true, they do make the case for taking the view seriously. (shrink)

According to Fitting Attitude theorists, for something to possess a certain value it is necessary and sufficient that it be fitting (appropriate, or good, or obligatory, or something) to take a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. The idea seems obvious for thick evaluative attributes, but less obvious for the thin evaluative attributes—like goodness, betterness, and degrees of value. This paper is an extended argument for the thesis that the fitting (...) response to the thin evaluative attributes of states is desire, broadly construed. The good is what it is fitting to desire, the bad what it is fitting to be averse to, and the better what it is fitting to prefer. I start with two prominent challenges to the FA schema (Wrong Kinds of Reasons and Solitary Goods). For the FA schema to survive these challenges—along with some developments of them—the fitting response to the goodness of a state has to be a non-factive, non-doxastic representation of the state as good—in other words, an appearance of the goodness that state. That desires and preferences are non-doxastic value appearances is independently attractive, and I argue that this is in fact the simplest hypothesis compatible with the Fitting Attitude approach.Fitting Attitudes. (shrink)

There is currently a wide-ranging philosophical discussion of two kinds of reasons for attitudes which are sometimes called the right and wrong kinds of reasons for those attitudes. The question is what the distinction shows about the nature of the attitudes, and about reasons and normativity in general. The distinction is deemed to apply to reasons for different kinds of attitudes such as beliefs and intentions, as well as so-called proattitudes, e.g. admiration or desire. Wlodek Rabinowicz’s and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s paper (...) “The Strike of the Demon” (2004) forged the shape and structure of the current discussion. Their focus is on the fitting-attitude theory of value (henceforth: FA theory), a version of which is (as they see it) the so-called ‘buck-passing account’, the view that the value of an object consists in the fact that it has properties other than that of being valuable which provide reasons for pro-attitudes. The main problem for this approach is that there are some reasons for having those attitudes which are not provided by properties that make their object valuable. Those are the wrong kind of reasons in the sense that FA theory must be able to distinguish them from those properties that figure in the analysis of value. -/- But the discussion of the wrong kind of reasons problem (for short: WKR problem) has spread far beyond FA theory and buck-passing accounts: various philosophers hope to provide a unified account of central issues concerning practical and theoretical normativity by giving an explanation of why certain reasons are of the wrong kind for forming an attitude. -/- They perceive what appears to be a unified phenomenon, and suspect that the explanation of why some reasons are of the wrong kind and others of the right kind for having an attitude are relevantly similar across different attitudes, and may reveal constitutive normative constraints that the attitudes in question are subject to. If the explanation of the right kind/wrong kind of reasons distinction is basically the same, or has the same general form, for theoretical attitudes such as belief, and practical attitudes like intention, and both rely on the normative constraints that are constitutive for the attitudes, then we may be able to provide a unified account of theoretical and practical normativity. Thus, explaining why certain reasons are of the wrong kind would furnish a heuristic for discovering important features of practical and theoretical normativity alike. -/- In this paper I want to show why this ambition is misguided. I argue for two claims: (1) we should sharply distinguish the wrong kind of reasons problem as it arises for FA theories from any other problem that comes under the same name, and (2) the WKR problem outside of FA theory doesn’t have a very clear shape (if indeed there is such a problem at all). In particular, there is no similarity between reasons to believe and reasons to intend in this regard, and therefore no hope for a unified explanation of the alleged phenomenon. (shrink)

According to Fitting Attitude theorists, for something to possess a certain value it is necessary and sufficient that it be fitting to take a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. This seems obvious for thick evaluative attributes, but less obvious for thin evaluative attributes. This chapter argues that the fitting response to the thin evaluative attributes of states is desire. The good is what it is fitting to desire, the bad (...) what it is fitting to be averse to, and the better what it is fitting to prefer. For the FA schema to survive the challenges of “wrong kinds of reasons” and “solitary goods,” the fitting response to the goodness of a state has to be a non-factive, non-doxastic representation of the state as good. That desires and preferences are non-doxastic value appearances is independently attractive; this is the simplest hypothesis compatible with the Fitting Attitude approach. (shrink)

A rather promising value theory for environmental philosophers combines the well-known fitting attitude (FA) account of value with the rather less well-known account of value as richness. If the value of an entity is proportional to its degree of richness (which has been cashed out in terms of unified complexity and organic unity), then since natural entities, such as species or ecosystems, exhibit varying degrees of richness quite independently of what we happen (...) to feel about them, they also possess differing degrees of mind-independent and subject-independent value. In particular, their value is not dependent on the desires or preferences of humans. The fitting attitudes account of value, at least as it is standardly developed, demands isomorphic evaluative responses on the part of all valuers. In particular, it entails that all valuers should have isomorphic preferences. But this seems absurd. I consider three different strategies with which the fitting attitude theorist can deflect this challenge. The first makes use of an account of non-standard value relations in terms of permissible preference orderings. The second appeals to value appearances and the associated notions of value distance and value perspective. The third involves an account of the ultimate bearers of value as properties, rather than as propositions or states of affairs. These strategies are not all mutually incompatible. While it isn’t possible to combine the first and second strategies, it is possible to combine the first and third strategies, and also to combine the second and the third. (shrink)

Evaluative concepts and emotions appear closely connected. According to a prominent account, this relation can be expressed by propositions of the form ‘something is admirable if and only if feeling admiration is appropriate in response to it’. The first section discusses various interpretations of such ‘Value-Emotion Equivalences’, for example the Fitting Attitude Analysis, and it offers a plausible way to read them. The main virtue of the proposed way to read them is that it is well-supported (...) by a promising account of emotions, namely the Perceptual Theory of Emotions, which emphasises the analogies between emotions and sensory perceptual experiences. The second section considers a worry about whether concepts such as admirable are really evaluative. It is maintained that even though the arguments used to show that thick terms and concepts are not inherently evaluative can be transposed to affective concepts, these arguments can be resisted. So there is no need to abandon the intuitive claim that affective concepts are inherently evaluative. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and respond to Kent Hurtig's objection to the fitting attitude account of value (FA). According to the objection, when a good or bad state of affairs is indexed to the actual world, but is such that the actual world does not contain anyone for whom it is fitting to (dis)favor it, it cannot be fitting for anyone in a non-actual world to (dis)favor it. So there are good or bad (...) states of affairs that it is not fitting for anyone to (dis)favor. First I comment on a solution proposed by Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. Then I argue that if, due to their location in modal space, the relevant states of affairs cannot even be evaluated as good or bad (and a fortiori favored or disfavored) by readers, then such cases are dialectically powerless against FA; if, on the other hand, they can be evaluated as good or bad—despite their location in modal space—then they can also be favored or disfavored, and it will be fitting for us (if for no one else) to favor or disfavor them, thus defusing the challenge. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the Complex Experiential Theory. It asserts that pleasure is a pro-attitude toward a de se experience. I argue that it is better than its competitors. In particular, it is better than monadic theories that view pleasure as a distinct type of experience or a pro-attitude in isolation. It is also better than other non-monadic theories. In particular, it is better than accounts that involve pro-attitudes and beliefs in states of affairs or propositions (...) (or ones that obtain, are true, or that focus on the subject’s own life). When conjoined with hedonism, this theory fits nicely into a building block theory of well-being. (shrink)

How does valuing something for its own sake differ from valuing an entity for the sake of other things? Although numerous answers come to mind, many of them rule out substantive views about what is valuable for its own sake. I therefore seek to provide a more neutral way to distinguish the two valuing attitudes. Drawing from existing accounts of valuing, I argue that the two can be distinguished in terms of a conative-volitional feature. Focusing first on “non-final valuing”—i.e. valuing_ (...) x_ for the sake of something else—I argue that it involves adopting certain reasons on account of a desire for _x_ to contribute to other things. I then show how this contrasts final valuing. The result, I argue, is a plausible account of how the two modes of valuing differ that leaves open substantive views about what all can be valued for its own sake. This is helpful because it develops a popular methodology used to explore the value of a wide range of things, including natural entities, family heirlooms, and artworks, as well as, more broadly, entities that might have “extrinsic final value.”. (shrink)

This paper explores the so-called buck-passing accounts of value. These views attempt to use normative notions, such as reasons and ought to explain evaluative notions, such as goodness and value . Thus, according to Scanlon's well-known view, the property of being good is the formal, higher-order property of having some more basic properties that provide reasons to have certain kind of valuing attitudes towards the objects. I begin by tracing some of the long history of such accounts. I (...) then describe the arguments which are typically used to motivate these views. The rest of this article investigates how some of the central details of the buck-passing accounts should be specified, and what kind of problems these views face. (shrink)

In a number of recent philosophical debates, it has become common to distinguish between two kinds of normative reasons, often called the right kind of reasons (henceforth: RKR) and the wrong kind of reasons (henceforth: WKR). The distinction was first introduced in discussions of the so-called buck-passing account of value, which aims to analyze value properties in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes and has been argued to face the wrong kind of reasons problem. But nowadays it also (...) gets applied in other philosophical contexts and to reasons for other responses than pro-attitudes, for example in recent debates about evidentialism and pragmatism about reasons for belief. While there seems to be wide agreement that there is a general and uniform distinction that applies to reasons for different responses, there is little agreement about the scope, relevance and nature of this distinction. Our aim in this article is to shed some light on this issue by surveying the RKR/WKR distinction as it has been drawn with respect to different responses, and by examining how it can be understood as a uniform distinction across different contexts. We start by considering reasons for pro-attitudes and emotions in the context of the buck-passing account of value (§1). Subsequently we address the distinction that philosophers have drawn with respect to reasons for other attitudes, such as beliefs and intentions (§2), as well as with respect to reasons for action (§3). We discuss the similarities and differences between the ways in which philosophers have drawn the RKR/WKR distinction in these areas and offer different interpretations of the idea of a general, uniform distinction. The major upshot is that there is at least one interesting way of substantiating a general RKR/WKR distinction with respect to a broad range of attitudes as well as actions. We argue that this has important implications for the proper scope of buck-passing accounts and the status of the wrong kind of reasons problem (§4). (shrink)

The buck-passing account of value involves a positive and a negative claim. The positive claim is that to be good is to have reasons for a pro-attitude. The negative claim is that goodness itself is not a reason for a pro-attitude. Unlike Scanlon, Parfit rejects the negative claim. He maintains that goodness is reason-providing, but that the reason provided is not an additional reason, additional, that is, to the reason provided by the good-making property. I consider (...) various ways in which this may be understood and reject all of them. So I conclude that buck-passers cannot reject the negative claim. (shrink)

Many authors, including Derek Parfit, T. M. Scanlon, and Mark Schroeder, favor a “reasons-first” ontology of normativity, which treats reasons as normatively fundamental. Others, most famously G. E. Moore, favor a “value-first” ontology, which treats value or goodness as normatively fundamental. Chapter 10 argues that both the reasons-first and value-first ontologies should be rejected because neither can account for all of the normative reasons that, intuitively, there are. It advances an ontology of normativity, originally suggested by (...) Franz Brentano and A. C. Ewing, according to which fittingness is normatively fundamental. The normative relation of fittingness is the relation in which a response stands to an object when the object merits—or is worthy of—that response. The author argues that his “fittingness-first” ontology is no less parsimonious than either the reasons- or the value-first ontology, but it can plausibly accommodate the existence of all the normative reasons there are. It therefore provides a superior ontology of normativity. (shrink)