Value and Preference Relations: Are They Symmetric?

Utilitas 28 (3):239-253 (2016)
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Abstract

According to Wlodek Rabinowicz's fitting-attitude analysis of comparative value, it is possible to analyse both standard and non-standard value relations in terms of the standard preference relations and two levels of normativity. In a recent article, however, Johan Gustafsson has argued that Rabinowicz's analysis violates a principle of value–preference symmetry, according to which for any value relation, there is a corresponding preference relation. Gustafsson has proposed an alternative analysis which respects this principle and which allegedly accounts for the idea that originally motivated Rabinowicz's analysis, namely, that in some cases different preference relations between a pair of items are equally permissible. The goal of my article is to show that the arguments offered by Gustafsson in favour of his account do not succeed. In particular, I argue that Gustafsson faces a dilemma: either he abandons the principle of value–preference symmetry or he cannot make conceptual room for multiple permissible preferences.

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Mauro Rossi
Université du Québec à Montréal

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What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The possibility of parity.Ruth Chang - 2002 - Ethics 112 (4):659-688.
Brentano and the Buck-Passers.Sven Danielsson & Jonas Olson - 2007 - Mind 116 (463):511 - 522.

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