Christian Piller

Es wird versucht, die Stellung des Vindizierungsarguments im Gesamtzusammenhang des Induktionsproblems genauer festzulegen, und eine neue Sichtweise dieses Arguments als entscheidungstheoretisches Dominanzargument wird vorgeschlagen. Diese neue Interpretation bewährt sich in der Konfrontation mit alten Einwänden, doch zeigt sich schließlich, daß sich auch gegen diese Form des Vindizierungsarguments ein erfolgreicher Widerlegungsversuch führen läßt. Eine allgemeine Formulierung des vorgebrachten Einwandes erweist sich als stark genug, um auch die dem Vindizierungsargument analogen Rechtfertigungsversuche in anderen Bereichen zurückweisen zu können.

Keith Lehrer's notion of acceptance and its relation to the notion of belief is analyzed in a way that a person only accepts some proposition p if she decides to believe it in order to reach the epistemic aim. This view of acceptance turns out to be untenable: Under the empirical claim that we don't have the power to decide what to beheve it follows that we cannot accept anything. If reaching the truth is the epistemic aim acceptance proves ill-formed, it is impossible to pursue the aim of truth by believing or accepting something because belief itself is a truth-directed attitude. If the epistemic aim is formulated in a weaker sense, combined with other aims, the danger lurks that accepting a proposition p is in the end loosing any connection with the truth of p.

This paper defends the claim that if a person P exists, there can be true positive comparisons between P's existence and P's never having existed at all in terms of what is better or worse for P. If correct, this view will have significant implications for various fundamental issues in population ethics. I try to show how arguments to the contrary fail to take note of a general ambiguity in comparisons when compared alternatives contain their own different standards (or, in the case of non-existence, a lack thereof) on which to base these comparisons. After having answered arguments against the possibility of making positive comparisons, the paper develops a positive account of how to make existence/non-existence comparisons in terms of personal value whilst accepting that a person's non-existence fails to make any contact with the relevant categories of personal value. The guiding idea is the following: When some item satisfies some relevant standard, we can, I argue, infer that it satisfies this standard better than something that fails to satisfy this standard (be this failure due to empirical or conceptual reasons).

GE Moore vehemently defended the view that what actually happens and not what we, even reasonably, expect to happen, determines what we ought to do. ‘The only possible reason that can justify any action’, Moore writes, ‘is that by it the greatest possible amount of what is good absolutely should be realized’. Moore is an objectivist about reasons and duties: The world and not our view of it gives us reasons to act; the way the world is, and not the way we think it is, determines what we ought to do. In his new book Jonathan Dancy agrees: the world itself has normative significance, reality, as Dancy puts it, is practical. On this, most general level Dancy and Moore agree. But unlike Moore’s, Dancy’s objectivism is not embedded in any particular normative theory. And whereas Moore strikes me as hard-nosed, and his position as sharp-edged, Dancy’s position looks, in comparison, softer and subtler. Contrasting the two positions will help to bring out these features of Dancy’s view. But it will also help to explain the worry that Dancy’s view might have departed too far from its origin.

Es wird versucht, die Stellung des Vindizierungsarguments im Gesamtzusammenhang des Induktionsproblems genauer festzulegen, und eine neue Sichtweise dieses Arguments als entscheidungstheoretisches Dominanzargument wird vorgeschlagen. Diese neue Interpretation bewährt sich in der Konfrontation mit alten Einwänden, doch zeigt sich schließlich, daß sich auch gegen diese Form des Vindizierungsarguments ein erfolgreicher Widerlegungsversuch führen läßt. Eine allgemeine Formulierung des vorgebrachten Einwandes erweist sich als stark genug, um auch die dem Vindizierungsargument analogen Rechtfertigungsversuche in anderen Bereichen zurückweisen zu können.

So-called Humean theories of practical rationality elaborate on David Hume's famous dictum that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions". According to Humeanism, beliefs alone cannot determine what one rationally should do. Desires are always involved in practical reasons. A version of Humeanism is developed and defended in this dissertation. ;Its basic principle is the following: If a person believes that some event x increases the likelihood of the occurrence of some other event y, whereby y is something this person wants to occur, then he or she has thereby a reason for wanting x to occur. Humeanism is the minimalist view that this basic principle is all that is needed in a theory of practical reasons. Contrary to what is widely assumed, Humeanism does not exclude so-called intrinsic desires from rational criticism. It provides not a foundational but rather a coherentist approach to practical justification. ;Against Thomas Nagel I argue that Humeanism does provide a satisfying account of prudence. Whether one should make a sacrifice for some future gain will depend on contingent facts about how much a person cares about his or her own future self. ;Using Michael Smith as example of a philosopher who holds an opposing view, I try to show how Humeanism can resist a separation of motivating reasons from normative reasons. Humeanism explains as well as justifies actions by reference to the actual beliefs and desires of an agent. ;I discuss an argument by David Lewis that tries to show that any anti-Humean theory of practical reasons would be incompatible with independently plausible principles of rationality. After showing that this argument would prove too much, I locate a technical problem in Lewis's argument related to his treatment of what are arguably second-order attitudes. ;Finally I show that certain phenomena, like everyone's special concern for the people who are close to him- or herself, speak against an anti-Humean theory of practical reasons according to which one's desires should be in accordance with one's beliefs about how good or valuable something is, thereby vindicating Humeanism indirectly