-
341A distinction in value: Intrinsic and for its own sakeProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (1). 2000.The paper argues that the final value of an object-i.e., its value for its own sake-need not be intrinsic. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things (or persons) in virtue of their relational rather than internal features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the contrary, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The endeavour to reduce thing-values to state-v…Read more
-
256Buck-passing and the right kind of reasonsPhilosophical Quarterly 56 (222). 2006.The ‘buck-passing’ account equates the value of an object with the existence of reasons to favour it. As we argued in an earlier paper, this analysis faces the ‘wrong kind of reasons’ problem: there may be reasons for pro-attitudes towards worthless objects, in particular if it is the pro-attitudes, rather than their objects, that are valuable. Jonas Olson has recently suggested how to resolve this difficulty: a reason to favour an object is of the right kind only if its formulation does not inv…Read more
-
201Intrinsic and Extrinsic ValueIn Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford University Press Usa. 2015.Section 2.1 identifies three notions of intrinsic value: the finality sense understands it as value for its own sake, the supervenience sense identifies it with value that depends exclusively on the bearer’s internal properties, and the nonderivative sense describes intrinsic value as value that provides justification for other values and is not justified by any other value. A distinction between final intrinsic and final extrinsic value in terms of supervenience is subsequently introduced. Sect…Read more
-
82Dislodging Butterflies from the SupervenientThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 103-112. 2006.Applied to evaluative properties the supervenience thesis is customarily understood as expressing two intuitions: (i) the idea that there is some kind of dependence between the (supervenient) value of an object and some (or all) of the natural properties of the object; (ii) the idea that if you assert that x is valuable and if you agree that y is relevantly similar to x, with regard to natural properties, you must be prepared to assert that y too is valuable. It is argued that the influential ac…Read more
-
24Introduction to Recent Work on Intrinsic ValueIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent work on intrinsic value, Springer. 2005.
-
69On For Someone’s Sake AttitudesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (4): 397-411. 2008.Personal value, i.e., what is valuable for us, has recently been analysed in terms of so- called for-someone's-sake attitudes. This paper is an attempt to add flesh to the bone of these attitudes that have not yet been properly analysed in the philosophical literature. By employing a distinction between justifiers and identifiers, which corresponds to two roles a property may play in the intentional content of an attitude, two different kinds of for-someone's-sake attitudes can be identified. Mo…Read more
-
84Fitting-Attitude Analyses: The Dual-Reason Analysis Revisited (review)Acta Analytica 28 (1): 1-17. 2013.Classical fitting-attitude analyses understand value in terms of its being fitting, or more generally, there being a reason to favour the bearer of value. Recently, such analyses have been interpreted as referring to two reason-notions rather than to only one. The idea is that the properties of the object provide reason not only for a certain kind of favouring(s) vis-à-vis the object, but the very same properties should also figure in the intentional content of the favouring; the agent should fa…Read more
-
111A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and for its own sakeIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent work on intrinsic value, Springer. pp. 115--129. 2005.The paper argues that the final value of an object-i.e., its value for its own sake-need not be intrinsic. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things in virtue of their relational rather than internal features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the contrary, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The endeavour to reduce thing-values to state-values is large…Read more
-
100Recent work on intrinsic value (edited book)Springer. 2005.Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the fundamental questions concerning the natu…Read more
-
120Instrumental values – strong and weakEthical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (1). 2002.What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it is a kind of extrinsic final value.
-
341Dislodging Butterflies from the SupervenientThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 103-112. 2006.Applied to evaluative properties the supervenience thesis is customarily understood as expressing two intuitions: (i) the idea that there is some kind of dependence between the (supervenient) value of an object and some (or all) of the natural properties of the object; (ii) the idea that if you assert that x is valuable and if you agree that y is relevantly similar to x, with regard to natural properties, you must be prepared to assert that y too is valuable. It is argued that the influential ac…Read more
-
92Personal ValueOxford University Press. 2011.This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or ...
-
64Motivation and Motivating ReasonIn Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, Ontos Verlag. pp. 464-485. 2013.For quite some time now philosophers have stressed the need to distinguish between explanatory (motivating) reasons and justifying (good) reasons. The distinction is often illustrated with an example of someone doing something that is intended to strike the reader or listener, at least at the outset, as incomprehensible. The story of Abraham on Mount Moriah, who decided to sacrifice his son, Isaac, illustrates this pattern. Killing one’s own child is a horrific thing to do, and it is hard to und…Read more
-
463On Locating Value in Making Moral ProgressEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1): 137-152. 2015.The endeavour to locate value in moral progress faces various substantive as well as more formal challenges. This paper focuses on challenges of the latter kind. After some preliminaries, Section 3 introduces two general kinds of “evaluative moral progress-claims”, and outlines a possible novel analysis of a descriptive notion of moral progress. While Section 4 discusses certain logical features of betterness in light of recent work in value theory which are pertinent to the notion of moral prog…Read more
-
135Good and Good forIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
-
13Scott A. Davison, On the Intrinsic Value of Everything, Continuum, 2012Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.