Wlodek Rabinowicz

Discussions about values are common in many contexts. Often, what is debated is the choice of means to realize or protect various values, but sometimes the discussion concerns the very values that ought to be realized or protected. Philosophical debate in this area has mainly been focused on two kinds of issues. Philosophers have tried to identify the set of fundamental values, i.e., to provide what might be called a substantive axiology, but they have also aimed to clarify the general conceptual framework for our thinking about values. This latter area can in turn be subdivided into two interrelated but relatively independent fields of research. In one, we find theories about the meaning, the evidential grounds and the truth status of value statements, along with analyses of the alleged motivational pull of value judgments. In the other research field, which may be called formal axiology, the focus is on the structural features of our value notions: on the logic of value, on the conceptual distinctions and connections between different value types, on the relationships between value concepts and normative notions, etc. While this volume concentrates on formal axiology, it also makes some forays into other fields of value research. The papers appearing in the collection are, for the most part, preliminary reports. Their final versions may later be published in regular journals or books.

In this short summary, which is aimed to give a rough picture of the main lines of research in practical philosophy in Sweden during the last decade, I have decided to organize the presentation by universities rather than by particular research subjects. It is to be hoped that this will give the reader a better grasp of what is going on at various departments. The summary is to a large extent a collective work: It is based on the reports prepared by professors Erik Carlson, Uppsala University, Sven-Ove Hansson, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Christian Munthe, University of Gothenburg, Bo Petersson, Linköping University, Hans Ruin, Södertörn University College, Torbjörn Tännsjö, Stockholm University, and on my own report for Lund University.

Suppose one sets up a sequence of less-and-less valuable objects such that each object in the sequence is only marginally worse than its immediate predecessor. Could one in this way arrive at something that is dramatically inferior to the point of departure? It has been claimed that if there is a radical value difference between the objects at each end of the sequence, then at some point there must be a corresponding radical difference between the adjacent elements. The underlying picture seems to be that a radical gap cannot be scaled by a series of steps, if none of the steps itself is radical. We show that this picture is incorrect on a stronger interpretation of value superiority, but correct on a weaker one. Thus, the conclusion we reach is that, in some sense at least, abrupt breaks in such decreasing sequences cannot be avoided, but that such unavoidable breaks are less drastic than it has been suggested.

This paper takes its departure from the Interpersonal Addition Theorem. The theorem, by John Broome, is a re-formulation of the classical result by Harsanyi. It implies that, given some seemingly mild assumptions, the overall utility of an uncertain prospect can be seen as the sum of its individual utilities. In sections 1 and 2, I discuss the theorem’s connection with utilitarianism and in particular the extent to which this theorem still leaves room for the Priority View. According to the latter, the utilitarian approach needs to be modified: Benefits to the worse off should count for more, overall, than the comparable benefits to the better off.Broome and Jensen have argued that the Priority View cannot be seen as a plausible competitor to utilitarianism: Given the addition theorem, prioritarianism should be rejected for measurement-theoretical reasons. I suggest that this difficulty is spurious: The proponents of the Priority View would be well advised, on independent grounds, to reject one of the basic assumptions on which the addition theorem is based, the so-called Principle of Personal Good for uncertain prospects.According to the Principle of Personal Good, one prospect is better than another if it is better for everyone or at least better for some and worse for none. That the Priority View, as I read it, rejects this welfarist intuition may be surprising. Isn’t welfarism a common ground for prioritarians and utilitarians? Still, as I argue, this welfarist common ground is better captured by a restricted Principle of Personal Good that is valid for *outcomes*, but not necessarily for uncertain prospects. We obtain this surprising result if we take the priority weights imposed by prioritarians to be relevant only to *moral*, but not to *prudential*, evaluations of prospects. This makes it possible for a prospect to be morally better even though it is worse for everyone concerned. The proposed interpretation of the Priority View thus drives a sharp wedge between prudence and morality.

In Rabinowicz & Rønnow-Rasmussen, we defended the following claims: Not only states of affairs, or facts, but also concrete objects, such as things or persons, may have final value ; The final value of a concrete object need not be intrinsic, i.e., it need not be exclusively based on the internal properties of its bearer; The final value of a concrete object is not reducible to the value of some states of affairs that involve the object in question. Our arguments for – have been challenged. This paper is an attempt to respond to some of these challenges, viz. those that concern the reducibility issue. The discussion presupposes a Brentano-inspired account of value in terms of fitting responses to value bearers. Attention is given to a yet another type of reduction proposal, according to which the ultimate bearers of final value are abstract particulars rather than abstract states or facts. While the proposal is attractive, it confronts serious difficulties. To recognise tropes as potential bearers of final value, along with other objects, is one thing; but to reduce the final value of concrete objects to the final value of tropes is another matter.

My focus is on aggregation of individual value rankings of alternatives to a collective value ranking. This is compared with aggregation o individual prefrences to a collective preference. While in an individual preference ranking the alternatives are ordered in accordance with one’s preferences, the order in a value ranking expresses one’s comparative evaluation of the alternatives, from the best to the worst. I suggest that, despite their formal similarity as rankings, this difference in the nature of individual inputs in two aggregation scenarios has important implications: The kind of procedure that looks fine for aggregation of judgments is inappropriate for aggregation of preferences. The procedure I have in mind consists in similarity maximization, or – more precisely – in minimization of the average distance from individual inputs. When applied to judgment aggregation, this procedure can also be approached from the epistemic perspective: the questions are posed concerning its advantages as a truth-tracker. From that perspective, what matters is not only the probability of the outcome of the procedure being true, but also the expected verisimilitude of the outcome: its expected distance from truth.

Presumption of Equality requires that individuals be treated equally in the absence of relevant information that would discriminate between them. Our objective is to make this principle more precise, if viewed as a principle of fairness, and to determine why and under what conditions it should be obeyed. Presumption norms are procedural constraints, but their justification can be sought in the possible or expected outcomes of the procedures they regulate. This is the avenue pursued here. The suggestion is that in the absence of information that would discriminate between the individuals, equal treatment minimizes the expected unfairness of the outcome. A related suggestion is that equal treatment under these circumstances also minimizes the maximal possible unfairness of the outcome. Whether these suggestions are correct or not depends on the properties of the underlying unfairness measure. The required properties are specified. The essay also considers the normative status of equal lotteries on unequal treatments.

Presumption of Equality requires that individuals be treated equally in the absence of relevant information that would discriminate between them. Our objective is to make this principle more precise, if viewed as a principle of fairness, and to determine why and under what conditions it should be obeyed. Presumption norms are procedural constraints, but their justification can be sought in the possible or expected outcomes of the procedures they regulate. This is the avenue pursued here. The suggestion is that in the absence of information that would discriminate between the individuals, equal treatment minimizes the expected unfairness of the outcome. A related suggestion is that equal treatment under these circumstances also minimizes the maximal possible unfairness of the outcome. Whether these suggestions are correct or not depends on the properties of the underlying unfairness measure. The required properties are specified

My focus is on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on his beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be exposed to a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent himself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the transitivity requirement on preferences. It is suggested that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in his decision-making, i.e., only if she makes decisions on various issues she confronts separately rather than jointly. In other words, exploitation is possible only if the decision problem has been framed in a certain way. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be quite costly and inconvenient diachronically, especially when the issues under consideration are widely spread over time. On my view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. The arguments of this kind fail to establish the inherent rationality of the constraints under consideration. Isaac Levis view of the status of pragmatic arguments is diametrically opposed to mine. According to him, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in my paper.

This paper revisits Richard Hare's classical and much discussed argument for preference utilitarianism, which relies on the conception of moral deliberation as a process of thought experimentation, with concomitant preference change. The paper focuses on an apparent gap in Hare's reasoning, the so-called No-Conflict Problem. A solution to this difficulty which was proposed in is re-examined and shown to lead to a number of difficulties. The paper therefore also considers an alternative idea, due to Daniel Elstein. This new proposal may well turn out to be the best way of filling the gap in Hare's argument. The paper also examines whether the gap is there to begin with: The problem should perhaps be dissolved rather than solved. This suggestion goes back to an idea of Zeno Vendler. Unfortunately, it turns out that Vendler's move does not save Hare from criticism: It does dissolve the No-Conflict Problem, but at the same time it gives rise to another, potentially more serious difficulty.

A committee has to address a complex question, the answer to which requires answering several sub-questions. Two different voting procedures can be used. On one procedure, the committee members vote on each sub-question and the voting results then are used as premises for the committee’s conclusion on the main issue. This premise-based procedure can be contrasted with the conclusion-based procedure. On that procedure, the members directly vote on the conclusion, with the vote of each member being guided by her views on the relevant sub-questions. These procedures are by no means equivalent, which has been pointed out in legal theory in connection with jury votes. There may be a majority of voters supporting each premise, but if these majorities do not significantly overlap, there will be a majority against the conclusion. Pettit connects the choice between the two procedures with general political theory, in particular, with the discussion of deliberative democracy. However, the problem we want to examine concerns the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two procedures from the epistemic point of view. In some cases one can assume that the question before the committee has the right answer. In cases like this, is one of the two procedures better when it comes to tracking the truth? As it turns out, the answer to this query is not univocal. On the basis of Condorcet’s jury theorem, we show that the premise-based procedure is clearly superior if the objective is reach truth for the right reasons, i.e. without making any mistakes on the way. However, if the goal instead is to reach truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which using the conclusion-based procedure turns out to be more reliable, even though, for the most part, the premise-based procedure will retain its superiority. Our results partly confirm and partly disconfirm the tentative conjectures that have been put forward in Pettit and Rabinowicz.

This paper traces the intellectual effects of an encounter between Stig Kanger and Donald Davidson -two very different philosophers working in two seemingly unconnected areas. Their meeting in Oslo 1979 led the latter to improve his influential theory of radical interpretation and gave the former an inspiration for a rather striking paradox in preference logic. But, as we show, the paradox can be dis-solved and the radical interpretation continues to confront serious difficulties. Simultaneous elicitation of a speaker’s meaning, beliefs and desires merely from his attitudes to sentences in the language he uses is a very ambitious project, but its theoretic viability is strongly questionable.

In this short summary, which is aimed to give a rough picture of the main lines of research in practical philosophy in Sweden during the last decade, I have decided to organize the presentation by universities rather than by particular research subjects. It is to be hoped that this will give the reader a better grasp of what is going on at various departments. The summary is to a large extent a collective work: It is based on the reports prepared by professors Erik Carlson, Uppsala University, Sven-Ove Hansson, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Christian Munthe, University of Gothenburg, Bo Petersson, Linköping University, Hans Ruin, Södertörn University College, Torbjörn Tännsjö, Stockholm University, and on my own report for Lund University.

Piccione and Rubinstein present and analyse the sequential decision problem of an “absentminded driver”. The driver's absentmindedness leads him to time-inconsistent strategy evaluations. His original evaluation gets replaced by a new one under impact of the information that the circumstances have changed, notwithstanding the fact that this change in circumstances has been expected by him all along. The time inconsistency in strategy evaluation suggests that such an agent might have reason to renege on his adopted strategy. As we shall see, however, this danger is only apparent. There is no serious problem of dynamic inconsistency in this case. My diagnosis of the case under consideration is in many respects similar to the one provided by Aumann, Hart and Perry, but the analysis leading to this diagnosis is not quite the same.