Abstract

This chapter develops a promising reduction of value to desire. The guiding principle is not the simple idea that the valuable is what we happen to desire in fact, but the more sophisticated and plausible idea that the valuable is what we would desire were we to refine our actual desires into a completely coherent set. It is shown that the map of value which this refinement account delivers is surprisingly close to the realist's map over large stretches of the terrain — much closer than realists would have believed possible, or their antirealist rivals could have reasonably hoped for.