In her critique of Moore’s (1903, p. 55) suggestion that one might answer the question “What is good?” with “Books are good,” Judith Jarvis Thomson (1997, p. 276) asks what it could mean to say that books are “just plain” good or bad. Aren’t they rather good to read, or in teaching philosophy, or for weighing down papers? This point is apropos in a review of Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s Personal Value in two ways. One might worry, first, about his (...) facile dismissal (p. 7) of the notion that such first-order attributions of goodness (e.g., being good to, good at, good in, and so on) have anything to do with the “genuine evaluative meaning” of the term. This might then lead one to ask whether Rønnow-Rasmussen’s book is good in any way at all. After some struggle, my own answer to this question is a reluctant “yes.”. (shrink)

Personal Values is a delightful and enlightening read. It is teeming with novel insights, ground-breaking distinctions, rich examples, new delineations of the field, refreshing historical reminders, inventive arguments, unprecedented connections, identifications of neglected difficulties, and pioneering proposals. I shall focus here on three of these insights, which are illustrative of the pervasive scrupulousness and inventiveness of the book. The first is that there is a distinction between the supervenience base of values and their constitutive grounds. The second is that FA (...) is admittedly circular (because pro-attitudes have values as formal objects), but that this circularity is benign. The third proposal is that one important kind of for- someome-sake’s attitude⎯prototypically, love⎯is such that it is not justified by the properties it represents its object as exemplifying. This is a small sample of claims not meant to be representative of the book. The reason I have chosen to discuss these in particular is that, while finding them plausible and significant, I believe that each raises a worry that Rønnow-Rasmussen fails to address properly. I shall tentatively suggest a possible solution in each case. (shrink)

This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or ...

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (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)

On the face of it both aggregation and deliberation represent alternative ways of producing a consensus. I argue, however, that the adequacy of aggregation mechanisms should be evaluated with an eye to the effects, both possible and actual, of public deliberation. Such an evaluation is undertaken by sketching a Bayesian model of deliberation as learning from others.

Wlodek Rabinowicz suggested in an e-mail conversation (2001) to me that one might be able to use a particular Hats Puzzle to make a Dutch Book against a group of individually rational persons. I present a fanciful story here that has the same structure as Rabinowicz’s Dutch Book.

In The Value Gap, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is (...) argued, as against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

The much endorsed idea that reasons are facts, gives raise to several issues, not least when it is applied to the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The paper distinguish in broad terms between two important views on the nature of facts. Given in particular a view that conceives of facts as abstract entities, the dichotomy is not particularly problematic. We might run into problems when it comes to identifying which facts are reasons and which are not, but the very (...) dichotomy itself seems sound. On this, the so-called thin approach, it is at least a possibility that some reasons will be (in some sense of the dichotomy) agent-neutral and some will be agent-relative. The second approach, the thick account, is, much less popular. It is argued that the thin approach trivializes an interesting issue among practical philosophers. The thin account is also in one respect less appealing than its thick cousin. The thick account is not flawless, though. At the end, a couple of objections to it will be considered. (shrink)

People are prone to ascribe value to persons they love. However, the relation between love and value is far from straightforward. This is particularly evident given certain views on the nature of love. Setting out from the idea that what causes us to have an attitude towards an object need not be found in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper depicts love as an attitude that takes non‐fungible persons as intentional objects. Taking this view as a starting point, (...) the paper shows why it is difficult to combine with certain views on value. The main challenge comes from the idea that value judgments are universalizable. This view squares badly with the thought that the people whom we love are irreplaceable. Introducing the idea that properties may have different functions in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper determines what precisely it is about love that makes it hard to combine with universalizability. Moreover, it suggests two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)

Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen | : This paper explores a novel metaethical theory according to which value judgments express conditional beliefs held by those who make them. Each value judgment expresses the belief that something is the case on condition that something else is the case. The paper aims to reach a better understanding of this view and to highlight some of the challenges that lie ahead. The most pressing of these revolves around the correct understanding of the nature of (...) the relevant cognitive attitudes. It is suggested that the distinction between “dormant attitudes” and “occurrent attitudes” helps us to understand these conditional beliefs. | : Cet article explore une nouvelle théorie méta-éthique selon laquelle les jugements de valeur expriment les croyances conditionnelles des sujets qui les font. Chaque jugement de valeur exprimerait la croyance selon laquelle quelque chose est le cas à la condition que quelque chose d’autre le soit. L’objectif de cet article est de parvenir à une meilleure compréhension de ce point de vue et de souligner certaines de ses difficultés. La plus urgente d’entre elles concerne la compréhension adéquate de la nature des attitudes cognitives pertinentes. Nous suggérons que la distinction entre « attitudes dormantes » et « attitudes occurrentes » permettrait de mieux comprendre les croyances conditionnelles. (shrink)

For quite some time now philosophers have stressed the need to distinguish between explanatory (motivating) reasons and justifying (good) reasons. The distinction is often illustrated with an example of someone doing something that is intended to strike the reader or listener, at least at the outset, as incomprehensible. The story of Abraham on Mount Moriah, who decided to sacrifice his son, Isaac, illustrates this pattern. Killing one’s own child is a horrific thing to do, and it is hard to understand (...) what would drive a parent to do such a thing. But once we are informed that Abraham actually believed God had told him to do so, we can see (allegedly) that there is at least an explanation of why he decided to kill his son. In the eyes of most people the planned act remains awful. But once we assume that Abraham was mistaken (say, because the best explanation in this case need not postulate the existence of God), we can see that his decision to kill his son is not a response to a normative good reason.1 So in a few lines we have outlined two reason notions: explanatory and normative (good) reasons. Cases like this afford an intuitive grasp of the distinction between explanatory and normative reasons — the difference between what explains Abraham’s motivation and behaviour and the good or bad reasons that apply to him. However, more recently (see e.g. Dancy 2000) the picture such cases present has been supplemented, or perhaps even corrected. There is a further feature of the Abrahamic story that needs to be teased out — one that gives a finer-grained understanding of what is going on than that provided by talk of the agent’s explanatory reasons. I share this view, and so what I will be doing in this paper is mainly to underline the need to dig a bit deeper. Motivation, as I shall argue, comes in different forms . (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)

People are prone to ascribe value to persons they love. However, the relation between love and value is far from straightforward. This is particularly evident given certain views on the nature of love. Setting out from the idea that what causes us to have an attitude towards an object need not be found in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper depicts love as an attitude that takes non‐fungible persons as intentional objects. Taking this view as a starting point, (...) the paper shows why it is difficult to combine with certain views on value. The main challenge comes from the idea that value judgments are universalizable. This view squares badly with the thought that the people whom we love are irreplaceable. Introducing the idea that properties may have different functions in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper determines what precisely it is about love that makes it hard to combine with universalizability. Moreover, it suggests two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)

It is argued that the so-called fitting attitude- or buck-passing pattern of analysis may be applied to personal values too if the analysans is fine-tuned in the following way: An object has personal value for a person a, if and only if there is reason to favour it for a’s sake. One benefit with it is its wide range: different kinds of values are analysable by the same general formula. Moreover, by situating the distinguishing quality in the attitude rather than (...) the reason part, the analysis admits that personal value is recognizable as a value not only by the person for whom it has personal value, but for everyone else too. We thereby avoid facing two completely different notions of value, viz., one pertaining to impersonal value, and another to personal value. The analysis also elucidates why we are justified in our concern for objects that are valuable for us; if value just is, as it is suggested, the existence of reasons for such a concern, the justification is immediately forthcoming. (shrink)

Section 2.1 identifies three notions of intrinsic value: the finality sense understands it as value for its own sake, the supervenience sense identifies it with value that depends exclusively on the bearer’s internal properties, and the nonderivative sense describes intrinsic value as value that provides justification for other values and is not justified by any other value. A distinction between final intrinsic and final extrinsic value in terms of supervenience is subsequently introduced. Section 2.2 contains a discussion of the debate (...) about instrumental value and other varieties of nonfinal extrinsic value. Finally, section 2.3 focuses on recent attacks on the very coherence of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction and its role as a demarcation line between fundamental and nonfundamental value. (shrink)

Reasons are facts, i.e., they are constituted by facts. Given a popular view that conceives of facts as thin abstract rather than thick concrete entities, the dichotomy between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons is not particularly problematic. It is argued that it would be preferable if we could understand the dichotomy even if we had a thick noton of fact in mind. It would be preferable because it is better if our notion of a reason is consistent with a wider rather (...) than narrower set of plausible metaphysical views. But, more importantly, it would also be preferable because the thin approach trivializes an interesting issue among practical philosophers. Moreover, as an additional drawback, the thin account is in one respect less appealing than its thick cousin. The latter is not flawless, though. Some major objections to the thick notion is discussed. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

The endeavour to locate value in moral progress faces various substantive as well as more formal challenges. This paper focuses on challenges of the latter kind. After some preliminaries, Section 3 introduces two general kinds of “evaluative moral progress-claims”, and outlines a possible novel analysis of a descriptive notion of moral progress. While Section 4 discusses certain logical features of betterness in light of recent work in value theory which are pertinent to the notion of moral progress, Sections 5 and (...) 6 outline the ambiguous character of “making moral progress”. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...) focuses on normative theories (and the aims they provide to agents), David McNaughton and Piers Rawling focus on rules and reasons, Skorupski on predicates, and there are other suggestions too. Some writers suspect that we fundamentally talk about one and the same distinction. This work is about practical reasons for action rather than theoretical reasons for belief. Moreover, focus is on whether reasons do or do not essentially refer to particular agents. A challenge that undermines the dichotomy in this sense is posed. After having rejected different attempts to defend the distinction, it is argued that there is a possible defence that sets out from Jonathan Dancy’s recent distinction between enablers and favourers. (shrink)

Applied to evaluative properties the supervenience thesis is customarily understood as expressing two intuitions: (i) the idea that there is some kind of dependence between the (supervenient) value of an object and some (or all) of the natural properties of the object; (ii) the idea that if you assert that x is valuable and if you agree that y is relevantly similar to x, with regard to natural properties, you must be prepared to assert that y too is valuable. It (...) is argued that the influential account of supervenience by R. M. Hare is problematic in that it only expresses the latter but not the former intuition. Two solutions to this problem are outlined, one of which ought to be endorsable by a prescriptivist such as Hare. (shrink)

Invited Critical Précis of Mark Schroeder’s “The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons”.

In Rabinowicz & Rønnow-Rasmussen, we defended the following claims: Not only states of affairs, or facts, but also concrete objects, such as things or persons, may have final value ; The final value of a concrete object need not be intrinsic, i.e., it need not be exclusively based on the internal properties of its bearer; The final value of a concrete object is not reducible to the value of some states of affairs that involve the object in question. Our (...) arguments for – 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 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 paper presents main conceptual distinctions underlying much of modern philosophical thinking about value. The introductory Section 1 is followed in Section 2 by an outline of the contrast between non-relational value and relational value. In Section 3, the focus is on the distinction between final and non-final value as well as on different kinds of final value. In Section 4, we consider value relations, such as being better/worse/equally good/on a par. Recent discussions suggest that we might need to considerably (...) extend traditional taxonomies of value relations. (shrink)

nvited talk at the Philosophy Club April 14th at University of St Andrews in which I Outline three positions regarding the distinction between good (period) and good-for and I then discuss Richard Kraut’s recent attack on Good, period and my own approach to the distinction. Eventually, this discussion develioped into the book The Value Gap (OUP 2021).

in UndeterminedClassical fitting-attitude analyses understand value in terms of it being fitting, or more generally, there being a reason to favour the bearer of value. However, recently such analyses have been interpreted as referring to two reason notions rather than only one. The general idea is that the properties of the object provide reason not only for a certain kind of favouring 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—where “favouring on account of” refers to the agent’s so-called motivating reason. This paper discusses this novel approach to fitting-attitude analysis: should those considerations that constitute the reason for favouring also be included in the intentional content of the favouring. In other words, should fitting-attitude analysts require a reference to the agent’s motivating reason in the analysis? While this enlargement 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. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have argued that the notion of a normative agent-neutral reason is undermined by certain views on reasons; the existence of agent-neutral reasons can be questioned. Here I shall not repeat my doubts but rather address a way of expressing the distinction that I had not considered and which would, if correct, put an end to my worries about the soundness of this dichotomy. The idea, which was suggested to me by Douglas Portmore is that normative reasons are facts (...) of a peculiar kind: they are subjunctive facts of a certain kind. (shrink)

Invited talk at the so-called Thursday Lecture, Oct 25, at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte the International Programme at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Focus was on the distinction between good and good-for.

While hedonism has been subjected to much criticism over the years, it is still a widely endorsed axiological view. One objection that appears to be generally recognised as especially troublesome to hedonists is that their central claim, that final value accrues only to experiences of pleasure gives us a narrow view of value. Much more than pleasure is valuable for its own sake. A competing theory, preferentialism, is another widespread theory about value. According to one version of preferentialism, only the (...) objects of preferences carry final value, and since not all of our preferences have pleasure as their object, preferentialists accuse hedonists of overlooking a great deal that is of value. For instance, if someone has a so-called external preference to the effect that, say, the Californian redwood forests should go on existing, then the world contains more value if the forests continue to exist.1 Given this, the possible pleasure someone would experience on learning that his preference is satisfied has nothing to do with this kind of value. Preferentialists therefore conclude that the hedonist perspective is not wide enough. In this work, it is argued that hedonists are entitled to reverse the argument. Preferentialists are restrained by not being able to recognize the object of value that is cherished by hedonists. (shrink)