The Fundamentality of Fit

2019 ◽  
pp. 216-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Howard
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Derek Parfit ◽  
A Value ◽  
Franz Brentano ◽  
Normative Relation

Many authors, including Derek Parfit, T. M. Scanlon, and Mark Schroeder, favor a “reasons-first” ontology of normativity, which treats reasons as normatively fundamental. Others, most famously G. E. Moore, favor a “value-first” ontology, which treats value or goodness as normatively fundamental. Chapter 10 argues that both the reasons-first and value-first ontologies should be rejected because neither can account for all of the normative reasons that, intuitively, there are. It advances an ontology of normativity, originally suggested by Franz Brentano and A. C. Ewing, according to which fittingness is normatively fundamental. The normative relation of fittingness is the relation in which a response stands to an object when the object merits—or is worthy of—that response. The author argues that his “fittingness-first” ontology is no less parsimonious than either the reasons- or the value-first ontology, but it can plausibly accommodate the existence of all the normative reasons there are. It therefore provides a superior ontology of normativity.

Justice, Desert, and the Repugnant Conclusion

Utilitas ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Derek Parfit ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Franz Brentano ◽  
Plausible Answer ◽  
Satisfactory Answer

In Chapter 17 of his magnificent Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit asks what he describes as an ‘awesome question’: ‘How many people should there ever be?’ For a utilitarian like me, the answer seems simple: there should be however many people it takes to make the world best. Unfortunately, if I answer Parfit's awesome question in this way, I may sink myself in a quagmire of axiological confusion. In this paper, I first describe certain aspects of the quagmire. Then I introduce and explain some of the elements of a novel axiological view – ‘justicism’. Justicism is derived from some ideas originally suggested by Franz Brentano. It was developed in an effort to solve certain other problems confronting utilitarianism – problems explicitly about justice. I think, however, that as a sort of happy by-product, justicism also generates a plausible answer to Parfit's awesome question. This may come as a bit of surprise, since justicism is a form of totalism, and it is widely thought that no totalistic theory can provide a satisfactory answer to Parfit's question. After presenting and explaining my proposed solution, I address some objections.

Love and Equal Value

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Roger Fjellström ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Third Way ◽  
The Third ◽  
A Value ◽  
Ultimate Explanation ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
Reasons Of Love

This essay offers a way to avoid a clash between reasons of love and reasons of ethics that stems from a difference in the conception of the moral value of people. In moralities of lovers, the loved ones are due to be accorded a value superior to that of other people, whereas in ethics there is an inescapable presumption that people have a value that is equal among them. The usual way to avoid this clash has been either to make room in the ethical arsenal for reasons relating to particular agents, agent-relative reasons, or to acknowledge that love-grounded reasons legitimately compete with ethical reasons and that we need a method of negotiating them. Both escapes have serious problems. The essay proposes a third way. The first step is to reshape the notion of ’love,’ in a direction where important characteristics of our common understanding are kept, notably the loved ones’ uniqueness and incomparability, while the characteristic that is problematic in the present context would be eliminated, namely the you-and-me character of love that gives rise to reasons that are wholly personal and partial. The second step is to show how such a reformed notion of love coheres with the assumption of equal value. And the third step is, through this connection, to change our understanding of love as reason-giving, from generating reason directly to generating reason indirectly. This involves a shift of focus from reason to meta-reason, viz. that which makes our system of, or competence for, normative reasons reasonable. The advantage of the proposed solution would not only be that clash between reasons of love and reasons of ethics is avoided, but also that ethical reasons are seen as underpinned by love, which moreover offers the best ultimate explanation of them.

scholarly journals Davidson’s Meta-Normative Naturalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Myers
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Derek Parfit ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Prescriptive Authority ◽  
Normative Naturalism ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
Important Challenge

Although Donald Davidson is best known for his account of motivating reasons, towards the end of his life he did write about normative reasons, arguing for a novel form of realism we might call anomalous naturalism: anomalous, because it is not just non-reductive but also non-revisionary, refusing to compromise in any way on the thought that the prescriptive authority of normative reasons is objective and reaches to all possible agents; naturalism, because it still treats normative properties as perfectly ordinary causal properties, and thus avoids many of the epistemological problems that bedevil realisms of the sort recently advanced by Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, and T. M. Scanlon. In the first section of the paper, I discuss Davidson’s understanding of objective prescriptivity and one important challenge that it faces. In the second section, I show how an answer to this challenge can be found in Davidson’s holism of the mental. As we shall see, Davidson’s holism of the mental makes the possibility of strongly prescriptive properties much easier to take seriously. In the final section of the paper, I take up various grounds for doubting that such properties could also be causal.

Observations of the Thermal Decomposition of Brucite

1968 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 446-447
Author(s):  
P. L. Burnett ◽  
W. R. Mitchell ◽  
C. L. Houck
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Decomposition ◽  
Magnesium Oxide ◽  
Basal Plane ◽  
Magnesium Ions ◽  
A Value ◽  
Reaction Proceeds

Natural Brucite (Mg(OH)2) decomposes on heating to form magnesium oxide (MgO) having its cubic ﹛110﹜ and ﹛111﹜ planes respectively parallel to the prism and basal planes of the hexagonal brucite lattice. Although the crystal-lographic relation between the parent brucite crystal and the resulting mag-nesium oxide crystallites is well known, the exact mechanism by which the reaction proceeds is still a matter of controversy. Goodman described the decomposition as an initial shrinkage in the brucite basal plane allowing magnesium ions to shift their original sites to the required magnesium oxide positions followed by a collapse of the planes along the original <0001> direction of the brucite crystal. He noted that the (110) diffraction spots of brucite immediately shifted to the positions required for the (220) reflections of magnesium oxide. Gordon observed separate diffraction spots for the (110) brucite and (220) magnesium oxide planes. The positions of the (110) and (100) brucite never changed but only diminished in intensity while the (220) planes of magnesium shifted from a value larger than the listed ASTM d spacing to the predicted value as the decomposition progressed.

Field-assisted ionization theory for microscopists

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 820-821
Author(s):  
Patrick P. Camus
Keyword(s):  
Electric Field ◽  
Electron Tunneling ◽  
Ionization Probability ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Tunneling Probability ◽  
Field Ionization ◽  
Radius Of Curvature ◽  
Field Evaporation ◽  
A Value ◽  
Ion Emission

The theory of field ion emission is the study of electron tunneling probability enhanced by the application of a high electric field. At subnanometer distances and kilovolt potentials, the probability of tunneling of electrons increases markedly. Field ionization of gas atoms produce atomic resolution images of the surface of the specimen, while field evaporation of surface atoms sections the specimen. Details of emission theory may be found in monographs.Field ionization (FI) is the phenomena whereby an electric field assists in the ionization of gas atoms via tunneling. The tunneling probability is a maximum at a critical distance above the surface,xc, Fig. 1. Energy is required to ionize the gas atom at xc, I, but at a value reduced by the appliedelectric field, xcFe, while energy is recovered by placing the electron in the specimen, φ. The highest ionization probability occurs for those regions on the specimen that have the highest local electric field. Those atoms which protrude from the average surfacehave the smallest radius of curvature, the highest field and therefore produce the highest ionizationprobability and brightest spots on the imaging screen, Fig. 2. This technique is called field ion microscopy (FIM).

Vitamin A Value of Plant Food Provitamin A - Evaluated by the Stable Isotope Technologies

2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 25-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangwen Tang
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Vitamin A ◽  
Provitamin A ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Plant Food ◽  
Plant Foods ◽  
A Value ◽  
Provitamin A Carotenoids ◽  
Β Carotene

Humans need vitamin A and obtain essential vitamin A by conversion of plant foods rich in provitamin A and/or absorption of preformed vitamin A from foods of animal origin. The determination of the vitamin A value of plant foods rich in provitamin A is important but has challenges. The aim of this paper is to review the progress over last 80 years following the discovery on the conversion of β-carotene to vitamin A and the various techniques including stable isotope technologies that have been developed to determine vitamin A values of plant provitamin A (mainly β-carotene). These include applications from using radioactive β-carotene and vitamin A, depletion-repletion with vitamin A and β-carotene, and measuring postprandial chylomicron fractions after feeding a β-carotene rich diet, to using stable isotopes as tracers to follow the absorption and conversion of plant food provitamin A carotenoids (mainly β-carotene) in humans. These approaches have greatly promoted our understanding of the absorption and conversion of β-carotene to vitamin A. Stable isotope labeled plant foods are useful for determining the overall bioavailability of provitamin A carotenoids from specific foods. Locally obtained plant foods can provide vitamin A and prevent deficiency of vitamin A, a remaining worldwide concern.

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