Intrinsic Value: Some Comments On The Work Of G. E. Moore

Philosophy ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 33 (126) ◽  
pp. 240-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Jones-Duncan

The object of this paper is to review and examine some of the things which G. E. Moore says about the nature of intrinsic value, about the sort of objects which possess it, and about the method of ascertaining the intrinsic values of things. Most of the discussion will be based on Principia Ethica (1903): for in that work Moore stated the substance of his ethical theories once and for all. He explicitly changed his mind later on a few specific issues, which will be noted when they arerelevant: and I shall argue in my fourth section that he also changed his mind in one matter without acknowledging that he was doing so. With those exceptions, it seems to me that his later writings differ from Principia chiefly by their style of presentation and by the introduction of some new distinctions, and I shall think myself justified, on most points, in treating them as an aid to amplifying or refining the position which Moore adopted in Principia.The other works to be referred to are Ethics (1912); “The conception of intrinsic value”, written about 40 years ago and published in Philosophical Studies; “Is goodness a quality?” in Arist. Soc. Sup. Vol. 1932; and “A reply to my critics” in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, edited by Schilpp (1942). The last work will be cited as Reply.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Julia Genz

Digital media transform social options of access with regard to producers, recipients, and literary works of art themselves. New labels for new roles such as »prosumers « and »wreaders« attest to this. The »blogger« provides another interesting new social figure of literary authorship. Here, some old desiderata of Dadaism appear to find a belated realization. On the one hand, many web 2.0 formats of authorship amplify and widen the freedom of literary productivity while at the same time subjecting such production to a periodic schedule. In comparison to the received practices of authors and recipients many digital-cultural forms of narrating engender innovative metalepses (and also their sublation). Writing in the net for internet-publics enables the deliberate dissolution of the received autobiographical pact with the reader according to which the author’s genuine name authenticates the author’s writing. On the other hand, the digital-cultural potential of dissolving the autobiographical pact stimulates scandals of debunking and unmasking and makes questions of author-identity an issue of permanent contestation. Digital-cultural conditions of communication amplify both: the hideand- seek of authorship as well as the thwarting of this game by recipients who delight in playing detective. In effect, pace Foucault’s and Barthes’ postulates of the death of the author, the personality and biography of the author once again tend to become objects of high intrinsic value


Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard

Opponents of Kant suppose he thinks that autonomy gives rational beings a special kind of intrinsic value. Since knowledge of intrinsic values would have to be a kind of metaphysical knowledge, this interpretation is contrary to Kant’s strictures on the limits of knowledge. Rather, Kant thinks that only rational beings can engage in reciprocal lawmaking, which is the source of moral laws. Animals cannot obligate us in the sense of participating in making laws for us. This, however, ignores a second sense in which we can have duties to animals: the laws we make for the treatment of people might also cover the treatment of animals. The chapter ends by explaining why it is hard to get this kind of conclusion using the universalization test.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Arif Rahman Bramantya

Archives can be said to be "inanimate" if we look it from the physical side. On the other hand, archives can be said to be "a living thing" if we look it in terms of the information that is contained in. Archives can explain anywhere, anytime and any purpose, because archives have evidential value, informational value and intrinsic value. In short, archives is a source of knowledge if we look it through academic view point. Archives in relation to the Japanese occupation in Indonesia is very limited.Nowadays, the study related to the Japanese occupation in Indonesia is also decrease. However, the study about the Japanese occupation in Indonesia in the 80s was massive and varied. Nishijima Collection is one of the valuable sources of knowledge related to the Japanese occupation in Indonesia. Unfortunately, many people do not use the collection as source for their Indonesian study. The result of this study provides a new perspective on the materials related with the Japanese occupation in Indonesia contained in Nishijima Collection. Intellectual network was formed through Nishijima Collection. Eventually, the study about Nishijima Collection through the historical method can be an initial foundation to raise the historical awareness that will be able to affect the civilization (of Indonesia).


Author(s):  
Andrew Targowski

The purpose of this chapter is to define intrinsic values of information-communication processes in human development. The development of civilization depends upon the accumulation of wisdom, knowledge and cultural and infrastructural gain. Man is prouder of his heritage than of that which he can eventually achieve in the future. The future is often the threat of the imminent unknown, something that can destroy our stability, qualifications and position within society. On the other hand, the “future” is also the hope of the desperate for a better life.


Author(s):  
Scott A. Davison

The theodicy explored in Chapter 13 is naturalistic in the sense that it does not appeal to the existence of good things or events or processes that cannot be studied using the natural sciences. More specifically, unlike most of the theodicies that are typically discussed in the literature, this one does not involve any claims about human survival of death, the existence of a soul, libertarian human freedom, or divine intervention, miraculous or otherwise. The theodicy explored here involves the following claims: Everything that exists is intrinsically valuable to some degree; the universe as a whole is a thing of immense intrinsic value; the immense intrinsic value of the universe as a whole provides God with a justifying reason for creating it; the evil in the world is offset by the intrinsic values of the creatures affected together with the intrinsic value of the world that comes from its regularity.


Author(s):  
Dwayne A. Meisner

The third chapter is about a theogony that had been known to the philosopher Eudemus (fourth century BC), and all of the other fragments that modern scholars have associated with this theogony. The Neoplatonist Damascius (fifth century AD) says that the theogony started with Night, but modern scholars have tried to link this to other early fragments of Orphic poetry. This chapter discusses Aristophanes in the first section, and Plato and Aristotle in the second section, arguing that their scattered references to Orphic poems might not have been from the same theogony. The third section introduces the Orphic Hymn(s) to Zeus that appear in different variations, the earliest of which are from around the same time as these other fragments. The fourth section suggests that early Orphic fragments about Demeter and Dionysus are not from the Eudemian theogony.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Sam Mickey

This article focuses on three examples of religious considerations of plants, with specific attention to the uselessness of plants. Drawing on Christian and Daoist sources, the examples include the following: (1) the lilies of the field described by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; (2) the useless tree of Zhuangzi; and (3) Martin Heidegger’s reading of a mystic poet influenced by Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, for whom a rose blooms “without why,” which resonates with Heidegger’s deconstruction (Destruktion) of the history of metaphysics and his interpretation of uselessness in Zhuangzi. Each of those examples involves non-anthropocentric engagements with the uselessness of plants, which is not to say that they are completely free of the anthropocentrically scaled perspectives that assimilate uselessness into the logistics of agricultural societies. In contrast to ethical theories of the intrinsic value (biocentrism) or systemic value (ecocentrism) of plants, these Christian and Daoist perspectives converge with ecological deconstruction in suggesting that ethical encounters with plants emerge through attention to their uselessness. A viable response to planetary emergency can emerge with the radical passivity of effortless action, which is a careless care that finds solidarity with the carefree ways of plants.


1973 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 135-235

SynopsisThe first, introductory, section of the paper refers to the Committee's main report on the mortality of immediate annuitants in 1967-70 and to the features of the latest data which prevent it from recommending the preparation of a new standard table at present.The second section describes the preliminary work which led to the suggestion of a graduation formula which appeared to fit the 1967-70 assured lives' data at each duration, and over the whole range of ages up to 90; the graduation, like the experience, showed decreasing mortality with increasing age up to age 28. This work included consideration of mortality from motor vehicle accidents at the ages either side of 20, where the shape of the curve differed from the population experience. It also examined ages 90 and over, to indicate the extent to which very late notification of deaths to the offices distorted the exposed to risk.The third section describes the fitting, with the aid of a computer, of the formula suggested in the preceding section, in order to produce two alternative graduations, one with a two-year select period, the other a five-year select period. Below age 17, where the data were insufficient to indicate the underlying course of the mortality curve, an arbitrary extension of the graduations was made by reference to population experience. The graduations are compared with earlier tables in a short fourth section.The fifth and final section examines the possibility of producing a new table for pensioners, a class of lives for which hitherto there has been no appropriate mortality yardstick. It concludes with recommendations for the preparation of experience tables for male and female pensioners based on the 1967-70 data for “lives”.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S292) ◽  
pp. 290-290
Author(s):  
B. A. Pastrav ◽  
C. C. Popescu ◽  
R. J. Tuffs ◽  
A. E. Sansom

AbstractHere we present results on the effects of dust on the derived Sérsic index of disks and bulges. This is part of a larger study (see Pastrav et al. 2012a, Pastrav et al. 2012b) that quantifies the dust effects on all photometric parameters, including scale-lengths, axis-ratios, central surface brightness and effective radii of individual and decomposed (from B/D decomposition) disks and bulges. The effects of dust are derived for both broadband and narrow line (Balmer lines) images. The changes in the derived photometric parameters from their intrinsic values (as seen in the absence of dust) were obtained by fitting simulated images of disks and bulges produced using radiative transfer calculations and the model of Popescu et al. (2011). This study follows on the analysis of Möllenhoff et al. (2006), who quantified the effects of dust on the photometry of old stellar disks seen at low and intermediate inclination. We extend the study to disks at all inclinations and we investigate the changes in the photometry of young stellar disks and bulges. For the individual components, in the majority of cases: 1) the dust lowers the Sérsic index from its intrinsic value; 2) the Sérsic index decreases as the inclination and the B band central face-on dust opacity, τBf, increase. For the decomposed disks and bulges, dust slightly increases the Sérsic index as compared with the one derived on individual components (e.g. Fig. 1); this effect is stronger for higher values of the inclination, τBf and B/D.


2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Wittwer

AbstractThe fact that the topic of emergency situations has been neglected almost completely by ethical theory raises the question why normative ethics has had so little to say about extreme situations so far. One can assume that this disinterest is not due to the rarity of emergency situations but rather to their peculiar properties. All ethical theories rest on the premise that moral agents make the most of their decisions under normal circumstances. The aim of the paper is to answer the question whether or not normative ethics is able to adequately evaluate emergency situations. In order to do this, different types of extreme situations must be distinguished. It is argued that, on the one hand, self-defence and agreements by which all the participants refrain from certain of their rights in order to enable some of them to survive are morally unproblematic. On the other hand, there are emergency situations that do not allow for a solution which would be morally acceptable to all of the involved persons. Hence, morality itself can be unacceptable under extreme circumstances.


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