Download or read book Value Incommensurability written by Henrik Andersson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics.

Download or read book Incommensurability Incomparability and Practical Reason written by Ruth Chang and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers."

Download or read book Incommensurability and its Implications for Practical Reasoning Ethics and Justice written by Martijn Boot and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If values conflict and rival human interests clash we often have to weigh them against each other. However, under particular conditions incommensurability prevents the assignment of determinable and impartial weights. In those cases an objective balance does not exist. The original thesis of this book sheds new light on aspects of incommensurability and its implications for public decision-making, ethics and justice. Martijn Boot analyzes a number of previously ignored or unrecognized concepts, such as ‘incomplete comparability’, ‘incompletely justified choice’, ‘indeterminateness’ and ‘ethical deficit’ – concepts that are essential for comprehending problems of incommensurability. Apart from problematic implications, incommensurability has also favourable consequences. It creates room for autonomous rational choices that are not dictated by reason. Besides, insight into incommensurability promotes recognition of different possible rankings of universally valid but sometimes conflicting human values. This book avoids unnecessary technical language and is accessible not only for specialists but for a large audience of philosophers, ethicists, political theorists, economists, lawyers and interested persons without specialized knowledge.

Download or read book Liberalism and Value Pluralism written by George Crowder and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value pluralism is the idea, associated with the late Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Ends like liberty, equality and community are intrinsic goods which can neither be ranked in an absolute hierarchy nor translated into units of a common denominator. If that is true, how can we choose among such values when they come into conflict in particular cases? In particular, what reason is there to justify the value ranking characteristic of liberal democracy, favouring personal autonomy and toleration? Recent commentators have seen value pluralism as undermining the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one political form among others with no greater claim to legitimacy. Against that view, George Crowder argues that a strong distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project is implied by value pluralism itself. Reflection on the elements of value pluralism yields a set of ethical principles, including respect for universal values, rejection of political utopianism, promotion of value diversity, accommodation of reasonable disagreement, and cultivation of civic virtues. Those principles are best satisfied by a liberal form of politics characterised by a strong commitment to personal autonomy, by policies of moderate redistribution and multiculturalism, and by constitutional restraints on democractic politics. This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory written by Iwao Hirose and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good (even if this is not the only thing we ought to do). This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics. The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently.

Download or read book Value Incommensurability and Practical Reason written by David Christopher Moon and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In cases of apparent value incommensurability, an agent's alternatives appear to her to be neither better than, nor worse than, nor equally as good as one another. It is plausible to suppose that some cases of apparent incommensurability will turn out to be instances of genuine, ontological incommensurability ("OI"), while others will turn out to be cases of merely epistemic incommensurability ("EI"). In EI cases, the alternatives are in fact commensurable--they are either better than, worse than, or equally as good as one another--but the agent is ignorant as to which of these value relations holds between them. Cases of apparent incommensurability have long posed a vexing challenge for theorists of practical rationality, because we typically suppose that an alternative is rationally permissible (absent deontic constraints) if and only if it is at least as good as each other alternative--that is, if it is (one of) the best alternative(s). But in cases of apparent incommensurability, there either is no best alternative (if the agent faces an OI case), or the agent is irremediably ignorant as to which alternative is the best (if she faces an EI case). Moreover, the agent may not even know whether she faces an OI case or an EI case: she may be "OI-EI uncertain." In this dissertation, I present my theory of what rationality requires of agents who face a choice between apparently incommensurable alternatives. Chapter 1 covers OI cases; Chapter 2 covers EI cases; and Chapter 3 covers OI-EI uncertainty. While a fair amount has been written about OI cases, very little has been written on the practical rationality of EI cases. There is even less literature--really, none at all--on the topic of whether and how OI-EI uncertainty affects rational choice. I therefore content myself in Chapter 1 with a presentation of the main existing theories of how practical rationality operates in OI cases, and focus my original efforts on Chapters 2 and 3

Download or read book After Socialism Volume 20 Part 1 written by Ellen Frankel Paul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-03 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, twelve philosophers, historians and political philosophers assess aspects of socialism.

Download or read book Incommensurability and Cross Language Communication written by Xinli Wang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dominant epistemological assumption behind Western philosophy is that it is possible to locate some form of commonality between languages, traditions, or cultures - such as a common language or lexicon, or a common notion of rationality - which makes full linguistic communication between them always attainable. Xinli Wang argues that the thesis of incommensurability challenges this assumption by exploring why and how linguistic communication between two conceptually disparate languages, traditions, or cultures is often problematic and even unattainable. According to Wang's presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, the real secret of incommensurability lies in the ontological set-ups of two competing presuppositional languages. This book provides many original contributions to the discussion of incommensurability and related issues in philosophy and offers valuable insights to scholars in other fields, such as anthropology, communication, linguistics, scientific education, and cultural studies.

Download or read book Incommensurability and Commensuration written by Fred Agostino and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was published in 2003.This volume presents a detailed examination of incommensurability in the value-theoretical sense. Exploring how choosers deal with problems and constraints of choice, the author draws on work in cognitive psychology, in sociology, in jurisprudence, in economics, and in the theory of value to show how choosers learn to make "trade-offs" when there is potential incommensurability among the options they are considering. The analysis is also informed by recent work in the tradition of Michel Foucault. With so many modern devices and ideals of government dependent on the comparability of options, this book is timely and can inform public debate about de-regulation, user-pays, accountability, and the substitution of market mechanisms for government regulation and supply.

Download or read book Theory of Value Structure written by Erich H. Rast and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of “better than” and “good,” as well as the way in which values serve as a basis for rational decision making. Drawing methodologically from economics and theories of decision making, the aim of serious axiology in metaethics is to do justice to problems that have puzzled philosophers of value for centuries. Can value comparisons be cyclic? Are all values comparable with each other and can decision makers just add up different aspects of an evaluation to determine the best course of action? A Theory of Value Structure: From Values to Decisions starts with a thorough introduction to the modeling of “better than” comparisons from a normative perspective. In the philosophical part of the book, Erich H. Rast argues that aspects of “better than” comparisons can differ qualitatively so much that one aspect may outrank another. Consequently, the classical weighted sum aggregation model fails. Values cannot always be summed up and comparisons may be fundamentally noncompensatory, an indeterminacy that explains problems like the apparent nontransitivity of “better than” and hard cases in decision making. Using a lexicographic method of value comparisons, Rast develops a multidimensional theory of “better than” and shows how and to which extent it can be combined with standard methods of decision making under uncertainty by using rank-dependent utility theory.

Download or read book Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation written by Giorgio Bongiovanni and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook addresses legal reasoning and argumentation from a logical, philosophical and legal perspective. The main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and are analysed in connection with more general types (and problems) of reasoning. Accordingly, the subject matter of the handbook divides in three parts. The first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the general structures and procedures of reasoning and argumentation that are relevant to legal discourse. The third one looks at their instantiations and developments of these aspects of argumentation as they are put to work in the law, in different areas and applications of legal reasoning.

Download or read book The Problem of Value Pluralism written by George Crowder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-13 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value pluralism is the idea, most prominently endorsed by Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are universal, plural, conflicting, and incommensurable with one another. Incommensurability is the key component of pluralism, undermining familiar monist philosophies such as utilitarianism. But if values are incommensurable, how do we decide between them when they conflict? George Crowder assesses a range of responses to this problem proposed by Berlin and developed by his successors. Three broad approaches are especially important: universalism, contextualism, and conceptualism. Crowder argues that the conceptual approach is the most fruitful, yielding norms of value diversity, personal autonomy, and inclusive democracy. Historical context must also be taken into account. Together these approaches indicate a liberal politics of redistribution, multiculturalism, and constitutionalism, and a public policy in which basic values are carefully balanced. The Problem of Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin and Beyond is a uniquely comprehensive survey of the political theory of value pluralism and also an original contribution by a leading voice in the pluralist literature. Scholars and researchers interested in the work of Berlin, liberalism, value pluralism, and related ideas will find this a stimulating and valuable source.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory written by Iwao Hirose and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2015 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions about value are important in many contexts. Value theory, or axiology, studies which things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. This handbook provides a comprehensive and state-of-art overview of the debate in value theory.

Download or read book Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison written by Léna Soler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-05-29 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a collection of essays devoted to the analysis of scientific change and stability. It explores the balance and tension that exist between commensurability and continuity on the one hand and incommensurability and discontinuity on the other. The book constitutes fully revised versions of papers that were originally presented at an international colloquium held at the University of Nancy, France, in June 2004.

Download or read book Contested Commodities written by Margaret Jane Radin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work looks at ethical and moral questions surrounding certain economic "commodities" such as body parts and babies. It argues that commodification should remain incomplete, with some contested things being bought and sold only under strict regulation.

Download or read book Pluralism and Liberal Neutrality written by Richard Bellamy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-27 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crisis of liberalism is in its claim to endorse neutral procedures that allow individuals and groups to pursue their own good, when the very possibility of such neutrality is affected by the growth of plural societies, and resulting divisions of loyalty. This collection explores this crisis.

Download or read book Valuing Nature written by John Foster and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1997-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.