Value Incommensurability

Value Incommensurability PDF Author: Henrik Andersson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100052700X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics.

Value Incommensurability

Value Incommensurability PDF Author: Henrik Andersson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100052700X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Get Book Here

Book Description
Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics.

Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason

Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason PDF Author: Ruth Chang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers."

Incommensurability and its Implications for Practical Reasoning, Ethics and Justice

Incommensurability and its Implications for Practical Reasoning, Ethics and Justice PDF Author: Martijn Boot
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786602296
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
If values conflict and rival human interests clash we often have to weigh them against each other. However, under particular conditions incommensurability prevents the assignment of determinable and impartial weights. In those cases an objective balance does not exist. The original thesis of this book sheds new light on aspects of incommensurability and its implications for public decision-making, ethics and justice. Martijn Boot analyzes a number of previously ignored or unrecognized concepts, such as ‘incomplete comparability’, ‘incompletely justified choice’, ‘indeterminateness’ and ‘ethical deficit’ – concepts that are essential for comprehending problems of incommensurability. Apart from problematic implications, incommensurability has also favourable consequences. It creates room for autonomous rational choices that are not dictated by reason. Besides, insight into incommensurability promotes recognition of different possible rankings of universally valid but sometimes conflicting human values. This book avoids unnecessary technical language and is accessible not only for specialists but for a large audience of philosophers, ethicists, political theorists, economists, lawyers and interested persons without specialized knowledge.

Incommensurability and Commensuration

Incommensurability and Commensuration PDF Author: Fred Agostino
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351775235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This title was published in 2003.This volume presents a detailed examination of incommensurability in the value-theoretical sense. Exploring how choosers deal with problems and constraints of choice, the author draws on work in cognitive psychology, in sociology, in jurisprudence, in economics, and in the theory of value to show how choosers learn to make "trade-offs" when there is potential incommensurability among the options they are considering. The analysis is also informed by recent work in the tradition of Michel Foucault. With so many modern devices and ideals of government dependent on the comparability of options, this book is timely and can inform public debate about de-regulation, user-pays, accountability, and the substitution of market mechanisms for government regulation and supply.

Liberalism and Value Pluralism

Liberalism and Value Pluralism PDF Author: George Crowder
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826450482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Value pluralism is the idea, associated with the late Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Ends like liberty, equality and community are intrinsic goods which can neither be ranked in an absolute hierarchy nor translated into units of a common denominator. If that is true, how can we choose among such values when they come into conflict in particular cases? In particular, what reason is there to justify the value ranking characteristic of liberal democracy, favouring personal autonomy and toleration? Recent commentators have seen value pluralism as undermining the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one political form among others with no greater claim to legitimacy. Against that view, George Crowder argues that a strong distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project is implied by value pluralism itself. Reflection on the elements of value pluralism yields a set of ethical principles, including respect for universal values, rejection of political utopianism, promotion of value diversity, accommodation of reasonable disagreement, and cultivation of civic virtues. Those principles are best satisfied by a liberal form of politics characterised by a strong commitment to personal autonomy, by policies of moderate redistribution and multiculturalism, and by constitutional restraints on democractic politics. This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.

The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory PDF Author: Iwao Hirose
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190273356
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good (even if this is not the only thing we ought to do). This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics. The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently.

Value Incommensurability and Practical Reason

Value Incommensurability and Practical Reason PDF Author: David Christopher Moon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In cases of apparent value incommensurability, an agent's alternatives appear to her to be neither better than, nor worse than, nor equally as good as one another. It is plausible to suppose that some cases of apparent incommensurability will turn out to be instances of genuine, ontological incommensurability ("OI"), while others will turn out to be cases of merely epistemic incommensurability ("EI"). In EI cases, the alternatives are in fact commensurable--they are either better than, worse than, or equally as good as one another--but the agent is ignorant as to which of these value relations holds between them. Cases of apparent incommensurability have long posed a vexing challenge for theorists of practical rationality, because we typically suppose that an alternative is rationally permissible (absent deontic constraints) if and only if it is at least as good as each other alternative--that is, if it is (one of) the best alternative(s). But in cases of apparent incommensurability, there either is no best alternative (if the agent faces an OI case), or the agent is irremediably ignorant as to which alternative is the best (if she faces an EI case). Moreover, the agent may not even know whether she faces an OI case or an EI case: she may be "OI-EI uncertain." In this dissertation, I present my theory of what rationality requires of agents who face a choice between apparently incommensurable alternatives. Chapter 1 covers OI cases; Chapter 2 covers EI cases; and Chapter 3 covers OI-EI uncertainty. While a fair amount has been written about OI cases, very little has been written on the practical rationality of EI cases. There is even less literature--really, none at all--on the topic of whether and how OI-EI uncertainty affects rational choice. I therefore content myself in Chapter 1 with a presentation of the main existing theories of how practical rationality operates in OI cases, and focus my original efforts on Chapters 2 and 3

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval PDF Author: Charles C. Hinkley II
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9401201781
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.

Theory of Value Structure

Theory of Value Structure PDF Author: Erich H. Rast
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793616957
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of “better than” and “good,” as well as the way in which values serve as a basis for rational decision making. Drawing methodologically from economics and theories of decision making, the aim of serious axiology in metaethics is to do justice to problems that have puzzled philosophers of value for centuries. Can value comparisons be cyclic? Are all values comparable with each other and can decision makers just add up different aspects of an evaluation to determine the best course of action? A Theory of Value Structure: From Values to Decisions starts with a thorough introduction to the modeling of “better than” comparisons from a normative perspective. In the philosophical part of the book, Erich H. Rast argues that aspects of “better than” comparisons can differ qualitatively so much that one aspect may outrank another. Consequently, the classical weighted sum aggregation model fails. Values cannot always be summed up and comparisons may be fundamentally noncompensatory, an indeterminacy that explains problems like the apparent nontransitivity of “better than” and hard cases in decision making. Using a lexicographic method of value comparisons, Rast develops a multidimensional theory of “better than” and shows how and to which extent it can be combined with standard methods of decision making under uncertainty by using rank-dependent utility theory.

After Socialism: Volume 20, Part 1

After Socialism: Volume 20, Part 1 PDF Author: Ellen Frankel Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521534984
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In this collection, twelve philosophers, historians and political philosophers assess aspects of socialism.