Graham Oddie

I address two related questions. First: what value is there in visiting a museum and becoming acquainted with the objects on display? For art museums the answer seems obvious: we go to experience valuable works of art, and experiencing valuable works of art is itself valuable. In this paper I focus on non-art museums, and while these may house aesthetically valuable objects, that is not their primary purpose, and at least some of the objects they house might not be particularly aesthetically valuable at all. Second: to what ontologicaltypeorcategorydo museum objects belong? Whattypeof item should be featured on an inventory of a museum collection? I distinguish betweentypicalobjects andspecialobjects. While these are different types of object, both, I argue, areabstracta, notconcreta. The answer to the second question, concerning the ontological category of special objects, throws new light on various philosophical questions about museums and their collections, including the question about the value of museum experiences. But it also throws light on important questions concerning the preservation and restoration of museum objects.

What's Wrong?: Applied Ethicists and Their Critics is a thorough and engaging introduction to applied ethics that covers virtually all of the issues in the field. Featuring more than ninety-five articles, it addresses standard topics--such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, world hunger, and animal rights--and also delves into cutting-edge areas like cloning, racial profiling, same-sex marriage, prostitution, and slave reparations. The volume includes seminal essays by prominent philosophers (Robert Nozick, James Rachels, Peter Singer, and Judith Jarvis Thomson) alongside work by newer voices in the field. Employing a unique approach to teaching argumentation, editors David Boonin and Graham Oddie unify the wealth of material presented in this collection. Each chapter opens with a featured article that takes a strong stand on a particular issue; the essays that immediately follow offer objections and critical responses to the arguments put forth in the featured selection. This format helps students learn how to better engage in debates because it illustrates how philosophers argue with each other. In addition, a general introduction describes strategies for understanding and evaluating the different types of arguments contained in the readings, while detailed chapter introductions enable students to see precisely how the arguments presented in the various writings are related to one another. Discussion questions and suggestions for further reading are included for each chapter. Ideal for courses in introduction to ethics and applied ethics/contemporary moral problems, What's Wrong? can also be used in critical thinking courses that emphasize philosophical argumentation.

Why should a Bayesian bother performing an experiment, one the result of which might well upset his own favored credence function? The Ramsey-Good theorem provides a decision theoretic answer. Provided you base your decision on expected utility, and the the experiment is cost-free, performing the experiment and then choosing has at least as much expected utility as choosing without further ado. Furthermore, doing the experiment is strictly preferable just in case at least one possible outcome of the experiment could alter your choice of options. That is, you should pursue the information just in case it could make a difference to what you do. The problem remains, however, why one should do an experiment when nothing of much practical consequence hangs in the balance. One possibility here is to invoke the pure cognitive utility of states. It is shown that one constraint on cognitive value (what I call cogency) guarantees the value of learning: from a cognitive point of view you are justified in performing an experiment if the outcome of the experiment could make a different to what you think. A bonus of the basic framework is that it provides a new decision theoretic argument for the rationality of conditionalization.

The core of the truthmaker research program is that true propositions are made true by appropriate parts of the actual world. This idea seems to give realists their best shot at capturing a robust account of the dependence of truth on the world. For a part of the world to be a truthmaker for a particular it must suffice for, or necessitate, the truth of the proposition. There are two extreme and unsatisfactory truthmaker theories. At one extreme any part of the world (up to and including the whole world) that suffices for a proposition is deemed to be a truthmaker for that proposition. At the other extreme there is only one truthmaker that can do the job, and that is the entire world, the whole show. Another possibility suggests itself, that a truthmaker be any minimal sufficer for a proposition. A truthmaker is minimal if it suffices but no proper part of it suffices. A minimal sufficer would be both sufficient for the truth of the proposition and, in one sense, necessary for it as well. A minimal sufficers would be commensurate with the proposition it makes true. Unfortunately not all propositions have minimal sufficers. But it does not follow that not every proposition has a commensurate sufficer. The problem, then, is to specify a coherent notion of commensurateness on which every truth has a commensurate sufficer. I argue that this problem may not be soluble.

Moral dilemmas can arise from uncertainty, including uncertainty of the real values involved. One interesting example of this is that of experimentation on human embryos and foetuses, If these have a moral stauts similar to that of human persons then there will be server constraitns on what may be done to them. If embryous have a moral status similar to that of other small clusters of cells, then constraints will be motivated largely by consideration for the persons into whom the embryos may develop. If the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, the embryo having neither the full moral weight of persons, nor a completely negligible moral weight, then different kinds of constraints will be appropriate. On the face of it, in order to know what kinds of experiements, if any, we are morally justified in performing on embryos we have to know what the moral weight of the embryo is. But then an impasse threatens, for it seems implausible that we can settle with certainty the exact moral status of the human embryo. It is the purpose of this paper to show that moral uncertainty need not make rational moral justification impossible. I develop a framework which distinguishes between what is morally right/wrong, and what is morally justified/unjustified, and applies standard decision theoretic tools to the case of moral uncertainties. (This was the first published account of what has subsequently become known as Expected Moral Value Theory. An earlier version of the paper, "A decision theoretic argument against human embryo experimentation", was published in M. Fricke (ed.), Essays in honor of Bob Durrant. (University of Otago Press, 1986) 111-27.)

According to Fitting Attitude theorists, for something to possess a certain value it is necessary and sufficient that it be fitting (appropriate, or good, or obligatory, or something) to take a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. The idea seems obvious for thick evaluative attributes, but less obvious for the thin evaluative attributes—like goodness, betterness, and degrees of value. This paper is an extended argument for the thesis that the fitting response to the thin evaluative attributes of states is desire, broadly construed. The good is what it is fitting to desire, the bad what it is fitting to be averse to, and the better what it is fitting to prefer. I start with two prominent challenges to the FA schema (Wrong Kinds of Reasons and Solitary Goods). For the FA schema to survive these challenges—along with some developments of them—the fitting response to the goodness of a state has to be a non-factive, non-doxastic representation of the state as good—in other words, an appearance of the goodness that state. That desires and preferences are non-doxastic value appearances is independently attractive, and I argue that this is in fact the simplest hypothesis compatible with the Fitting Attitude approach.Fitting Attitudes

Suppose that the value of each act of compliance with some maxim is lower than the value of each act of non-compliance, even though maxim-compliance overall would be best for the agent. In such a case we have what I will call value-discrepancy between act and maxim. While the value of overall maxim-compliance is high, no particular act of compliance with the maxim seems to be worth it. Consequentialism is the thesis that the rightness of an option is determined by the comparative value of that option, and that the value of an option is determined in some way by the value of its outcomes. What should the consequentialist say about maxim-compliance in cases of value discrepancy? An enormous amount of work has been done on the possible value-discrepancy between individual compliance, and group compliance. Call this the multiple-agent problem. Less work has been done on the related but distinct single-agent problem: value discrepancy between act and maxim for a single perduring individual over an extended period of time. There is a reason for the comparative lack of attention directed at the single-agent problem. An analogy is often drawn between a group of synchronic agents and a single perduring agent, and it is usually assumed that solutions to the one problem will be strict analogues to solutions to the other. But the enthusiasm for this analogy has become exaggerated. Significant disanalogies between the two cases have been ignored. As a result, simple and elegant solutions to the single-agent problem, which are often not available in the multiple-agent case, are overlooked. I offer such a solution.