On neutral value and fitting indifference

Abstract

AbstractA standard approach to neutral value suggests that it can be understood in comparative terms by reference to value relations. I develop some objections to the standard approach based on assumptions about value facts being closely connected to fittingness facts. I then suggest that these objections give us reasons to amend the standard approach with a noncomparative understanding. The claim is that if an item has neutral value, then it is a fitting target of indifference, where this is understood not as an absence of attitudes but a discrete type of reaction or evaluation. By leaning on some general insights from philosophical psychology about the evaluative role of indifference, I then attempt to give some hints as to how we might understand its nature.