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.

The Buck-Passing Account and The No-Priority View

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Jonathan Dancy ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Priority View

According to the No-Priority View (NPV), what it is to be a reason for a pro-attitude cannot be analysed in terms of value but neither can what it is to be good or of value be analysed in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. NPV has been defended by Jonathan Dancy and W. D. Ross. This chapter argues that there are several reasons to accept the buck-passing account of value (BPA) over NPV. First, BPA explains striking correlations between reasons and value that NPV does not. Second, BPA explains why value does not give non-derivative reasons to have pro-attitudes; NPV cannot do this. Third, BPA is more qualitatively parsimonious than NPV, and, as explained in this chapter, there are strong reasons to prefer more to less qualitatively parsimonious theories. Fourth, BPA explains why similar theoretical debates arise about reasons and value; NPV cannot do this. Fifth, BPA is more informative than NPV.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
The Third ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Priority View

This chapter introduces the buck-passing account of value and explains the structure of this book in which the account is motivated, defended, and extended. The buck-passing account analyses value in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. This chapter explains the notion of a reason for a pro-attitude and its component parts, as well as the types of goodness and value that the buck-passing account is an account of. It then sketches several motivations for accepting the buck-passing account rather than its two competitors: the value-first account of reasons for pro-attitudes and the no-priority view. This chapter further clarifies how various distinctions in value can be made according to the buck-passing account and explores whether the buck-passing account is a metaphysical or conceptual thesis. This chapter maps out the structure of the first two parts of the book and explains how the buck-passing account will be extended to provide a reasons-first account of morality, fittingness, ought, and all of practical normativity in the third part of the book.

The Why-Be-Rational Challenge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kiesewetter
Keyword(s):  
Structural Requirements ◽  
The Third ◽  
Rational Requirements ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Apparent Reasons

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).

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.

The Priority View Bites the Dust?

Utilitas ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Conflicts ◽  
Priority View

This article distinguishes between a telic and a deontic version of Derek Parfit's influential Priority View. Employing the distinction, it shows that the existence of variations in how intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts should be resolved fails to provide a compelling case in favour of relational egalitarianism and against all pure versions of the Priority View. In addition, the article argues that those variations are better understood as providing counterevidence to certain distribution-sensitive versions of consequentialism.

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.

Excellence and Means: On the Limits of Buck-Passing

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