Resisting buck-passing accounts of prudential value

2010 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Fletcher
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland

The Buck-Passing Account of Value (BPA) analyses goodness simpliciter in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of value. And the No-Priority View (NPV) holds that neither reasons nor value can be analysed in terms of one another. This chapter argues that BPA should be accepted rather than VFA or NPV because if BPA is accepted, then what all the different varieties of goodness have in common can be explained: but if VFA or NPV is accepted, what the different varieties of goodness have in common cannot be explained. In making this argument this chapter motivates and defends accounts of goodness for (prudential value) and goodness of a kind (attributive goodness) in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. It shows that the objections that have been made to buck-passing accounts of goodness for and goodness of a kind can be overcome and that there are many advantages to accepting such accounts.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Kiesewetter

Besides the problems with detachment, proponents of the view that structural requirements of rationality are normative face the challenge to identify a reason that counts in favour of conforming to rational requirements. There are three possible ways to account for this challenge. The first is to present instrumental or other derivative reasons to conform to rational requirements (5.1). The second is to argue that rational requirements are themselves reasons (5.2). The third is to give some kind of buck-passing account of rational requirements, according to which such requirements are verdictive statements about reasons that exist independently of them (5.3–5.4). Chapter 5 argues that none of these strategies succeed. Finally, two accounts that have claimed to explain the normativity of structural rationality without assuming that rational requirements are necessarily accompanied by reasons, are discussed and rejected: the transparency account (5.5), and the apparent reasons account (5.6).


1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it?


Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN M. CAMPBELL

This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of concern, love, pity and envy; and satisfies various other desiderata. I also highlight two ways in which the analysis is informative and can lead to progress in our substantive theorizing about the good life.


2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (129) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Cinara Nahra

In this article I present a possible solution for the classic problem of the apparent incompatibility between Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle and his Principle of Liberty arguing that in the other-regarding sphere the judgments of experience and knowledge accumulated through history have moral and legal force, whilst in the self-regarding sphere the judgments of the experienced people only have prudential value and the reason for this is the idea according to which each of us is a better judge than anyone else to decide what causes us pain and which kind of pleasure we prefer (the so-called epistemological argument). Considering that the Greatest Happiness Principle is nothing but the aggregate of each person's happiness, given the epistemological claim we conclude that, by leaving people free even to cause harm to themselves, we still would be maximizing happiness, so both principles (the Greatest Happiness Principle and the Principle of Liberty) could be compatible.


2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Brännmark
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Yuliana Kusuma Dewi ◽  
Herwan Parwiyanto

<p>Penganggaran senantiasa dihiasi oleh kontestasi kepentingan dari aktor-aktor yang terlibat sehinga memicu patologi akuntabilitas anggaran. Organisasi dalam melakukan pertanggungjawaban mengalami konflik ekspektasi dari tuntutan aktor-aktor dalam penganggaran (<em>Multiple Accountabilities Disorder</em>). Artikel ini bertujuan  menganalisis fenomena <em>MAD</em> dalam kajian penganggaran dana hibah dan bantuan sosial. Teori <em>Multiple Accountabilities Disorder</em> menginduk dari Jonathan GS Koppel (2005), dengan dimensi <em>transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility,</em> dan <em>responsiveness</em>. Kajian analisis menggunakan sudut pandang administrasi dengan fokus analisis politik anggaran dalam konflik akuntabilitas. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan gejala patologi akuntabilitas anggaran <em>buck passing</em>, <em>Antrophy of Personal Responsibility </em>dan MAD. Diindikasikan dari adanya penyelewengan dan kasus korupsi dana hibah dan bantuan sosial di Sukararta. Patologi MAD dalam penganggaran hibah dan bansos terindikasi dari konflik ekpektasi antara dimensi <em>controllability, responsibility,</em> dan <em>responsiveness. </em>Berdasarkan hasil kajian, penganggaran hibah dan bansos perlu disertai monitoring-evaluasi berbasis <em>outcome</em> dan pendampingan berpastisipasi kelurahan-kecamatan sebagai upaya memperkecil peluang penyelewengan pada <em>target group</em>.</p><p><strong>Kata kunci:</strong> <strong>akuntabilitas, bantuan sosial, hibah, <em>multiple accountabilites   disorder, </em>penganggaran.</strong></p>


Author(s):  
Richard Rowland

Jonathan Dancy, Ulrike Heuer, Jonas Olson, and others have argued that there is reason to reject the buck-passing account of value (BPA) because of its implications for first-order normative ethics. Dancy argues that BPA is inconsistent with certain deontological views. Olson argues that BPA is inconsistent with an attractive way of distinguishing between consequentialism and deontology. Heuer argues that it begs the question against Williams’s internalism about reasons. This chapter argues that Dancy, Olson, and Heuer are mistaken. Others claim that certain versions of BPA are inconsistent with a consequentialist view about the reasons for pro-attitudes there are. This chapter argues that even global consequentialism should not involve a consequentialist view about the reasons for pro-attitudes that there are and because of this it is not a problem for BPA that it is inconsistent with a consequentialist view of the reasons for pro-attitudes that there are.


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