Prioritarianism, Timeslices, and Prudential Value

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Vuko Andrić ◽  
Anders Herlitz
Keyword(s):  
Prudential Value

Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Surprising Result ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Desire Satisfaction ◽  
Individual Good ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Good For

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?

An Analysis of Prudential Value

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN M. CAMPBELL
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Relationship

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.

scholarly journals The harm principle and the greatest happiness principle: the missing link

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (129) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Cinara Nahra
Keyword(s):  
Harm Principle ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Classic Problem ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Legal Force ◽  
The Harm Principle

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.

Reasons as The Unity among the Varieties of Goodness

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-100
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Prudential Value ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Priority View

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.

scholarly journals Against Contextualism about Prudential Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (277) ◽  
pp. 699-720
Author(s):  
Guy Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Good Case ◽  
Prudential Value

Abstract In recent times, there has been a surge of interest in, and enthusiasm for, contextualist views about prudential discourse—thought and talk about what has prudential value or contributes to someone's well-being. In this paper, I examine and reject two cases for radical forms of prudential contextualism, proposed by Anna Alexandrova and Steve Campbell. Alexandrova holds that the semantic content of terms like ‘well-being’ and ‘doing well’ varies across contexts. Campbell proposes that there are plural prudential concepts at play in prudential discourse (and in philosophical reflection upon such discourse) and that we find evidence of this in the conflicting commitments of prudential discourse. The negative aim of the paper is to show that Alexandrova and Campbell have not given us a good case for ambitious forms of contextualism about prudential discourse. The positive aim of the paper is to provide alternative, aspectualist, explanations of the features of prudential discourse that their discussions highlight.

FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN IN VICTORIAN IMPERIAL THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 735-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Of Greece

This article argues that during the closing decades of the nineteenth century a significant group of British imperial thinkers broke with the long-standing conventions of political thought by deliberately eschewing the inspiration and intellectual authority provided by the examples of the ancient empires. While the early Victorian colonial reformers had looked to the template of Greece, and while many later Victorians compared the empire in India with the Roman empire, numerous proponents of Greater Britain (focusing on the settler colonies, and associated in particular with the movement for imperial federation) looked instead to the United States. I argue that the reason for this innovation, risky in a culture obsessed with the moral and prudential value of precedent and tradition, lies in contemporary understandings of history. Both Rome and Greece, despite their differences, were thought to demonstrate that empires were ultimately self-dissolving; as such, empires modelled on their templates were doomed to eventual failure, whether through internal decay or the peaceful independence of the colonies. Since the advocates of Greater Britain were determined to construct an enduring political community, a global Anglo-Saxon polity, they needed to escape the fate of previous empires. They tried instead to insert Greater Britain into a progressive narrative, one that did not doom them to repeat the failures of the past.

scholarly journals Deep Brain Stimulation, Authenticity and Value

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 640-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN PUGH ◽  
HANNAH MASLEN ◽  
JULIAN SAVULESCU
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Deep Brain Stimulation ◽  
Brain Stimulation ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Practical Utility ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Deep Brain

Abstract:Deep brain stimulation has been of considerable interest to bioethicists, in large part because of the effects that the intervention can occasionally have on central features of the recipient’s personality. These effects raise questions regarding the philosophical concept of authenticity. In this article, we expand on our earlier work on the concept of authenticity in the context of deep brain stimulation by developing a diachronic, value-based account of authenticity. Our account draws on both existentialist and essentialist approaches to authenticity, and Laura Waddell Ekstrom’s coherentist approach to personal autonomy. In developing our account, we respond to Sven Nyholm and Elizabeth O’Neill’s synchronic approach to authenticity, and explain how the diachronic approach we defend can have practical utility, contrary to Alexandre Erler and Tony Hope’s criticism of autonomy-based approaches to authenticity. Having drawn a distinction between the authenticity of an individual’s traits and the authenticity of that person’s values, we consider how our conception of authenticity applies to the context of anorexia nervosa in comparison to other prominent accounts of authenticity. We conclude with some reflections on the prudential value of authenticity, and by highlighting how the language of authenticity can be invoked to justify covert forms of paternalism that run contrary to the value of individuality that seems to be at the heart of authenticity.

scholarly journals La valeur de la connaissance des émotions

Labyrinth ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Bertille De Vlieger
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Emotional Knowledge

The Value of the Emotional Knowledge Emotional knowledge is a form of self-knowledge which holds great interest for ordinary individuals. It is not obtained by any obligation but rather because we think it is crucial to obtain (Cassam 2017). In this article it is a matter of demonstrating that emotional knowledge holds an instrumental and a prudential value. By arguing that it can allow a control over our emotions, I shall maintain that emotional knowledge affects individual marginalization or acceptance in society. In addition, this type of knowledge is revealing of our personality by allowing us to identify our affective identities. Finally, I shall defend the idea that emotional knowledge contributes to the conduct of a good life. As such, my hypothesis could be viewed as incompatible with widespread ideas (Montaigne 2019), according to which the knowledge of our own emotions can trigger negative emotional states, e.g. mental rumination, anxiety, that do not contribute to our well-being.  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document