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233Belief change for introspective agentsSpinning Ideas, Electronic Essays Dedicated to Peter Gärdenfors on His Fiftieth Birthday. 1999.We discuss various possibilities for developing a dynamic doxastic logic (DDL) for introspective agents: agents who have the ability to form higher-order beliefs. Such agents can reflect upon and change their minds about their own beliefs. The project of constructing such a logic, full DDL or DDL unlimited, is ridden with difficulties due to the fact that the agent's own doxastic state now becomes a part of the reality he is trying to explore. When an introspective agent learns more about the wo…Read more
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105From values to probabilitiesSynthese 194 (10): 3901-3929. 2017.According to the fitting-attitude analysis of value , to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. In earlier publications, setting off from this format of analysis, I proposed a modelling of value relations which makes room for incommensurability in value. In this paper, I first recapitulate the value modelling and then move on to suggest adopting a structurally similar analysis of probability. Indeed, many probability theorists from Poisson onwards did adopt an analysis of this …Read more
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85The Size of Inequality and Its Badness – Some Reflections around Temkin’s “Inequality”Theoria 69 (1-2): 60-84. 2003.This paper puts forward the following claims: (i) The size of inequality in welfare should be distinguished from its badness. (ii) The size of a pairwise inequality between two individuals can be measured by the absolute or the relative welfare distance between their welfare levels, but it does not depend on the welfare levels of other individuals. (iii) The size of inequality in a social state may be understood either as the degree of pairwise inequality or as its amount. (iv) The badness of a …Read more
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31Cooperating with cooperatorsErkenntnis 38 (1). 1993.Jan Österberg (Self and Others, 1988) argues that the most defensible form of egoism should not only tell each of us what to do but also tell us what we ought to do. He also claims that collective norms should take precedence over individual ones. An individual ought to do one's part in an action pattern that is prescribed for the group - provided that other members of the group do their part. question This paper questions Österberg's claim that Collective Egoism, unlike other forms of egoism…Read more
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17Relacje WartościEtyka 42 85-120. 2009.W artykule przedstawiam ogólne ujęcie relacji wartości. Jako punkt wyjścia przyjmuję szczególny typ relacji wartości, równorzędność, stanowiącą zdaniem Ruth Chang pewną postać porównywalności wartości, która rożni się od trzech standardowych postaci porównywalności: lepszości, gorszości i równowartości. Joshua Gert zasugerował niedawno, iż pojęcie równorzędności można wyjaśnić, jeśli porównania wartości zinterpretuje się jako normatywne oceny preferencji. Chociaż podstawowa idea przyświecająca G…Read more
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22Presumption of equality as a requirement of fairnessIn , . 2011.in Undetermined Presumption of Equality enjoins that individuals be treated equally in the absence of discriminating information. My objective in this paper is to make this principle more precise, viewing it as a norm of fairness, in order to determine why and under what conditions it should be obeyed. Presumption norms are procedural constraints, but their justification might come from the expected outcomes of the procedures they regulate. This outcome-oriented approach to fairness is pursued i…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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179In memoriam: Jordan Howard Sobel (1929–2010)Theoria 76 (3): 192-196. 2010.It's an obituary of Jordan Howard Sobel, a prominent American-Canadian moral philosopher and a decision theorist who died in 2010. The obituary focuses on Sobels' close contacts with the Swedish philosophical community and on his contributions to Theoria.
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375The Ramsey test revisitedIn G. Crocco, Luis Fariñas del Cerro & Andreas Herzig (eds.), Conditionals: from philosophy to computer science, Oxford University Press. pp. 131-182. 1995.
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51II-A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and For Its Own SakeProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (1): 33-51. 2000.The paper argues that the final value of an object, i.e., its value for its own sake, need not be intrinsic. It need not supervene on the object’s internal properties. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things in virtue of their relational features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the opposite, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The endeavour to redu…Read more
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52Value relations: old wine in new barrelsIn , . 2011.In Rabinowicz 2008, I considered how value relations can best be analyzed in terms of fitting pro-‐attitudes. In the formal model presented in that paper fitting pro-‐attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of "better", "worse", "equally as good as" and "incomparable in value". Un…Read more
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56The negative Ramsey testIn André Fuhrmann & Michael Morreau (eds.), The Logic of Theory Change: Workshop, Konstanz, FRG, October 13-15, 1989, Proceedings, Springer. 1991.The so called Ramsey test is a semantic recipe for determining whether a conditional proposition is acceptable in a given state of belief. Informally, it can be formulated as follows: (RT) Accept a proposition of the form "if A, then C" in a state of belief K, if and only if the minimal change of K needed to accept A also requires accepting C. In Gärdenfors (1986) it was shown that the Ramsey test is, in the context of some other weak conditions, on pain of triviality incompatible with th…Read more
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34Discussion – Ryberg's doubts about higher and lower pleasures – put to rest?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2): 231-235. 2003.
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45To Have One's Cake and Eat It, Too: Sequential Choice and Expected-Utility ViolationsJournal of Philosophy 92 (11): 586-620. 1995.
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151Actual truth, possible knowledgeTopoi 13 (2): 101-115. 1994.The well-known argument of Frederick Fitch, purporting to show that verificationism (= Truth implies knowability) entails the absurd conclusion that all the truths are known, has been disarmed by Dorothy Edgington''s suggestion that the proper formulation of verificationism presupposes that we make use of anactuality operator along with the standardly invoked epistemic and modal operators. According to her interpretation of verificationism, the actual truth of a proposition implies that it could…Read more
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22Ryberg’s Doubts About Higher and Lower Pleasures –Put to Rest?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2). 2003.
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163Value Based on PreferencesEconomics and Philosophy 12 (1): 1. 1996.What distinguishes preference utilitarianism from other utilitarian positions is the axiological component: the view concerning what is intrinsically valuable. According to PU, intrinsic value is based on preferences. Intrinsically valuable states are connected to our preferences being satisfied
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56Analyticity and Possible-World SemanticsErkenntnis 72 (3): 295-314. 2010.Standard approaches to possible-world semantics allow us to define necessity and logical truth, but analyticity is considerably more difficult to account for. The source of this difficulty lies in the received model-theoretical conception of a language interpretation. In intuitive terms, analyticity amounts to truth in virtue of meaning alone, i.e. solely in virtue of the interpretation of linguistic expressions. In other words, an analytic sentence should remain true under all variations of ‘ex…Read more
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39Kripke on psychophysical identityIn , . 2002.This paper deals with Kripke’s influential criticism of the view that mental states are physical in nature, i.e. that such states are identical with certain physical states or processes.
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179What if I were in his shoes? On Hare's argument for preference utilitarianismTheoria 62 (1-2): 95-123. 1996.This paper discusses the argument for preference utilitarianism proposed by Richard Hare in Moral Thinking(Hare, 1981). G. F. Schueler (1984) and Ingmar Persson (1989) identified a serious gap in Hare’s reasoning, which might be called the No-Conflict Problem. The paper first tries to fill the gap. Then, however, starting with an idea of Zeno Vendler, the question is raised whether the gap is there to begin with. Unfortunately, this Vendlerian move does not save Hare from criticism. Paradoxicall…Read more
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38Conditionals and the Ramsey testIn D. Gabbay & P. Smets (eds.), Handbook of Defeasible Reasoning and Uncertainty Management Systems, Vol 3, Kluwer Academic. 1998.
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58According to the fitting-attitude analysis of value (FA-analysis), to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. In earlier publications, setting off from this format of analysis, I proposed a modelling of value relations which makes room for incommensurability in value. In this paper, I first recapitulate the value modelling and then move on to suggest adopting a structurally similar analysis of probability. Indeed, many probability theorists from Poisson onwards did adopt an anal…Read more
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105Value, Fitting‐Attitude Account ofIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude – a fitting object of favoring. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then, in this view, the object has final value. If it is fitting to favor an object for the sake of its effects, then its value is instrumental. Disvalue is connected in the analogous way to disfavoring, i.e., to con-attitudes. For a history of this fitting-attitudes analysis, or FA-analysis for s…Read more
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69Safeguards of a Disunified MindInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (3): 356-383. 2014.The papers focuses on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on her beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind typically targets constraint violations. It purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be confronted with 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 herself. Examples of pragmatic argument…Read more
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110. Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (pp. 634-638) (review)Ethics 114 (3). 2004.
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38A 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-va…Read more
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Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |