March 15, 2008

CF: Raz on Value, Respect and Well-being
By S. Matthew Liao

Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT)

Value, Respect, and Wellbeing: Themes from the Work of Joseph Raz

Friday 9 May 2008
Time: 9.30am - 5.15pm
Venue: The Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester

Provisional Programme:
9.30 - 10.00 registration
10.00 - 11.15 session 1: Steven Wall (Bowling Green State University)
11.15 - 11.30 coffee
11.30 - 12.45 session 2: Leslie Green (University of Oxford)
12.45 - 1.30 lunch
1.30 - 2.45 session 3: Brad Hooker (University of Reading)
2.45 - 3.00 tea
3.00 - 4.15 session 4: Stephen Darwall (University of Michigan)
4.15 - 5.15 session 5: Discussion with replies by Joseph Raz (University of Oxford and Columbia University)

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Posted on March 15, 2008 at 2:42 pm in Normative Ethics, Political Philosophy, S. Matthew Liao's Posts, Value Theory, Conference Announcement | Leave a Comment

October 29, 2007

New issue on metaethics
By Thom Brooks

The latest issue of the Journal of Moral Philosophy has just been published and all articles are on the topic of ‘metaethics’. Papers were originally presented at a conference organized by Fabian Freyenhagen at King’s College, Cambridge. The issue can be found here. The contents are as follows:

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Posted on October 29, 2007 at 5:15 pm in Normative Ethics, Metaethics, General Announcement, Value Theory, Thom Brooks's Posts | 2 Comments

August 17, 2007

Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Chapter 7
By Guy Kahane

This chapter on moral status is very short, and also mercifully short on intricate imaginary examples. Kamm quickly takes us through a number of relatively familiar normative distinctions and I will try to be brief in recounting them here.

In the broadest sense, moral status simply refers to, roughly, an entity’s moral properties:

Moral status in the broad sense X’s moral status = what is morally permissible/impermissible to do to X

Now in this broad sense, rocks also have moral status: we’re permitted to do to them whatever we like. In common use, moral status refers to something narrower. Kamm thus turns to:

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Posted on August 17, 2007 at 8:06 pm in Normative Ethics, Bioethics, Guy Kahane's Posts, Value Theory, Kamm Reading Group | 10 Comments

August 8, 2007

Extrinsic Final Value or Expressive Value?
By Guy Kahane

In her ‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’, Christine Korsgaard drew attention to an overlooked distinction between two distinctions about value. One is the distinction between final and instrumental value. The other is that between intrinsic and extrinsic value. Something has instrumental value only if we desire it for the sake of some further end; something has final value if we aim at it for its own sake, not as a means to some other end. And something has intrinsic value if it’s valuable only in virtue of its intrinsic properties; something has extrinsic value it it’s valuable also in virtue of its extrinsic/relational properties.

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Posted on August 8, 2007 at 1:46 pm in Guy Kahane's Posts, Value Theory | 19 Comments

June 5, 2007

Unbearable Pain, Death, and the Rational Self
By Guy Kahane

1. I don’t especially mind death, but I’m scared of pain. As Epicurus reminds us, death doesn’t hurt. Epicurus may have been mistaken to think that this was enough to show that death isn’t bad, but it is good to know that death is at least not bad in this one important respect.

There are paradoxical sounding remarks by David Velleman that seem to imply that even pain itself, when it is as its worst, may not be bad in this one respect. In his paper ‘A Right to Self-Termination’, Velleman writes

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Posted on June 5, 2007 at 11:24 am in Normative Ethics, Applied Ethics, Guy Kahane's Posts, Value Theory | 7 Comments