Wlodek Rabinowicz

The Strike of the Demon: On Fitting Pro‐attitudes and Value*

According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then, on this view, the object has final value, that is, it is valuable for its own sake. If it is fitting to have a pro-attitude toward an object for the sake of its effects, then its value is instrumental. And so on. Disvalue is connected in an analogous way to contra-attitudes instead. Apart from the linkage between value and attitudes, what is distinctive for this kind of analysis, at least on some of its readings, is that it establishes a connection between the axiological and the deontic notions: value on this approach is explicated in terms of the stance that should be taken toward the object. That it is fitting to have a certain attitude, that there are reasons to have it, or that the attitude in question is appropriate or called for, are different ways to express this deontic claim. Consequently, an important advantage of the “fitting-attitudes” analysis, or the FA analysis for short, is that it removes the air of mystery from the normative ‘compellingness’ of values. (Less)

Democratic answers to complex questions - an epistemic perspective

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue (premise based-procedure, pbp), or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself (conclusion-based procedure, cbp). The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred.

A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and for its Own Sake

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 (or persons) 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 reduce thing-values to state-values is largely motivated by a mistaken belief that appropriate responses to value must consist in preferring and/or promoting. A pluralist approach to value analysis obviates the need for reduction: the final value of a thing or a person can be given an independent interpretation in terms of the appropriate thing- or person-oriented responses: admiration, love, respect, protection, cherishing, etc.

Value Based on Preferences

What distinguishes preference utilitarianism (PU) 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 (wants, desires) being satisfied.

Does Practical Deliberation Crowd Out Self-Prediction?

It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of ones choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for ones willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the options antecedent utility, rather than on the offered odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction.

Ddl Unlimited: Dynamic Doxastic Logic for Introspective Agents

The theories of belief change developed within the AGM-tradition are not logics in the proper sense, but rather informal axiomatic theories of belief change. Instead of characterizing the models of belief and belief change in a formalized object language, the AGM-approach uses a natural language — ordinary mathematical English — to characterize the mathematical structures that are under study. Recently, however, various authors such as Johan van Benthem and Maarten de Rijke have suggested representing doxastic change within a formal logical language: a dynamic modal logic.1 Inspired by these suggestions Krister Segerberg has developed a very general logical framework for reasoning about doxastic change: dynamic doxastic logic (DDL).2 This framework may be seen as an extension of standard Hintikka-style doxastic logic (Hintikka 1962) with dynamic operators representing various kinds of transformations of the agents doxastic state. Basic DDL describes an agent that has opinions about the external world and an ability to change these opinions in the light of new information. Such an agent is non-introspective in the sense that he lacks opinions about his own belief states. Here we are going to discuss various possibilities for developing a dynamic doxastic logic for introspective agents: full DDL or DDL unlimited. The project of constructing such a logic is faced with difficulties due to the fact that the agent’s own doxastic state now becomes a part of the reality that he is trying to explore: when an introspective agent learns more about the world, then the reality he holds beliefs about

Actual truth, possible knowledge

AbstractThe 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 Edgingtons 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 be known in some possible situation that the proposition holds in theactual situation. Thus, suppose that our object language contains the operatorA — “it is actually the case that ...” — with the following truth condition: ⊢vA⌽ iff ⊢w0⌽, wherew0 stands for the designated world of the model — the actual world. Then we can formalize the verificationist claim as follows:

VALUE RELATIONS REVISITED

A\phi \to \diamondsuit KA\phi .