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136Hedonism, preferentialism, and value bearersJournal of Value Inquiry 36 (4): 463-472. 2002.While hedonism has been subjected to much criticism over the years, it is still a widely endorsed axiological view. One objection that appears to be generally recognised as especially troublesome to hedonists is that their central claim, that final value accrues only to experiences of pleasure gives us a narrow view of value. Much more than pleasure is valuable for its own sake. A competing theory, preferentialism, is another widespread theory about value. According to one version of preferentia…Read more
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77Analysing Personal ValueThe Journal of Ethics 11 (4): 405-435. 2007.It is argued that the so-called fitting attitude- or buck-passing pattern of analysis may be applied to personal values too if the analysans is fine-tuned in the following way: An object has personal value for a person a, if and only if there is reason to favour it for a’s sake. One benefit with it is its wide range: different kinds of values are analysable by the same general formula. Moreover, by situating the distinguishing quality in the attitude rather than the reason part, the analysis adm…Read more
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108Stephen Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care, Princeton Monographs in Philosophy, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. 135 pp (review)SATS 5 (1): 171-180. 2004.
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158Normative reasons and the agent-neutral/relative dichotomyPhilosophia 37 (2): 227-243. 2008.The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative val…Read more
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17Ett problem för Hares supervenienstesSATS 5 (2): 47-58. 2004.The supervenience thesis about value customarily expresses two intuitions: (i) that there is some kind of dependence between the value and the natural properties of the value bearer; (ii) 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. R M Hare’s account of supervenience is problematic since it only expresses (ii) but not (i). A solution to this problem is outlined,…Read more
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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
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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
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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
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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
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24Introduction to Recent Work on Intrinsic ValueIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent work on intrinsic value, Springer. 2005.
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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
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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
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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
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99Recent 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
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119Instrumental 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.
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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
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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 ...