Prudential Value Research Articles

Competing Conceptions of Animal Welfare and Their Ethical Implications for the Treatment of Non-Human Animals

Animal welfare has been conceptualized in such a way that the use of animals in science and for food seems justified. I argue that those who have done this have appropriated the concept of animal welfare, claiming to give a scientific account that is more objective than the "sentimental" account given by animal liberationists. This strategy seems to play a major role in supporting merely limited reform in the use of animals and seems to support the assumption that there are conditions under which animals may be raised and slaughtered for food that are ethically acceptable. Reformists do not need to make this assumption, but they tend to conceptualize animal welfare is such a way that death does not count as harmful to the interests of animals, nor prolonged life a benefit. In addition to this prudential value assumption, some members of this community have developed strategies for defending suitably reformed farming practices as ethical even granting that death and some other forms of constraints are harms. One such strategy is the fiction of a domestic contract. However, if one accepts the conceptualization of human welfare give by L. W. Sumner, and applies it to animals in the way that I think is justified, an accurate conceptualization of animal welfare has different implications for which uses of animals should be regarded as ethically acceptable. In this paper I give an historical and philosophical account of animal welfare conceptulization and use this account to argue that animal breeders, as custodians of the animals they breed, have the ethical responsibility to help their animal wards achieve as much autonomy as possible in choosing the form of life made available to them and to provide that life. Attempts to avoid these implications by alluding to a contract model of the relationship between custodians and their wards fail to relieve custodians of their ethical responsibilities of care.

The Individual and the Social: A Comparative Study of Quality of Life, Social Quality and Human Development Approaches

The overall aim of this paper is to compare the human development (HD) and social quality (SQ) approaches in the context of quality of life in general and in relation to development in particular. It commences with a broad overview of several perspectives including: prudential values; Sen's capability approach; Berger-Schmitt and Noll's overarching quality of life construct; Phillips' quality of life construct; and Doyal and Gough's theory of Human Needs. en HD and SQ are introduced. HD emphasises well-being, enlarging people's choices, living a long and healthy life, being educated and enjoying a decent standard of living. All this is predicated on the UNDP's insistence that it is people who comprise the real wealth of nations: HD emphasises the well-being of individuals. Two sets of tensions are then discussed: first between the ability to exercise individual freedom and the constraints upon freedom imposed by the provision of compulsory education of children which facilitates that freedom (an institutional threshold to 'the social'); and secondly, the relationship between personhood, social relationships and collective capabilities (an interactive threshold to the social). This is followed by an exploration of whether HD's individualistic orientation is a weakness or whether its explicit incompleteness is a strength. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible ways forward in developing the HD construct, either by incorporating the notion of 'the social' within its framework or else via strategies of using it in partnership with the social quality theory that can both extend it and provide it with a richer theoretical justification.

The Prudential Value of Education for Autonomy

A popular justification of education for autonomy is that autonomy possession has intrinsic prudential value. Communitarians have argued, however, that although autonomy may be a core element of a well-lived life in liberal societies, it cannot claim such a prudential pedigree in traditional societies in which the conception of a good life is intimately tied to the acceptance of a pre-established worldview. In this paper I examine a recent attempt made by Ishtiyaque Haji and Stefaan Cuypers to respond to this challenge by reestablishing the intrinsic prudential value of autonomy, and I argue that although their work has merit in some respects, it suffers from a notable theoretical deficiency as well as a practical deficiency. Like Haji and Cuypers, I wish to argue that autonomy has intrinsic prudential value; but my argument is not grounded on the claim that autonomy is a necessary part of well-being. I argue, rather, that it stands to reason—and that liberals and traditionalists alike have reason to accept—that autonomous assent to a conception of the good life is an intrinsically prudentially better state of affairs than nonautonomous assent to the same. My goal in this essay, then, is to clarify the prudential significance of (and to provide a justification for) education for autonomy in a manner that will be appealing to liberals and traditionalists alike.

Resisting buck-passing accounts of prudential value

This paper aims to cast doubt upon a certain way of analysing prudential value (or good for), namely in the manner of a ‘buck-passing’ analysis. It begins by explaining why we should be interested in analyses of good for and the nature of buck-passing analyses generally (§I). It moves on to considering and rejecting two sets of buck-passing analyses. The first are analyses that are likely to be suggested by those attracted to the idea of analysing good for in a buck-passing fashion (§II). The second are the buck-passing analyses of good for proposed by John Skorupski (§III), Henry Sidgwick (§IV), and Stephen Darwall (§V). Along the way the paper shows that Michael Smith’s and Peter Railton’s analyses of other concepts—analyses that could be (and have been) taken to be analyses of good for—are similarly unsuitable as analyses of it. The paper concludes by suggesting that the fact that none of the buck-passing accounts of good for considered here is satisfactory, coupled with an appreciation of the various problems that a buck-passing analysis of good for would have to avoid, suggests that we should be sceptical about the prospects of finding such an analysis and should look for one of a different type.

A Difference that Makes a Difference: Welfare and the Equality of Consideration

In Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, L.W. Sumner defends two significant constraints on one’s theory of welfare: formality and generality. An adequate theory of welfare, claims Sumner, must give a constitutive account of the “good-for” relation. This constitutive account must be sufficiently general that any entity whose status as a welfare subject is uncontroversial falls within its scope. This paper will argue that Sumner’s proposed constraints are particularly significant to utilitarian arguments for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals. In the absence of these constraints, the inconsistency that is alleged to follow from denying moral considerability to non-human animals, while affirming it for humans, fails to obtain. I will focus on Peter Singer’s argument for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals, in order to support the conclusion that questions about the formality and generality of welfare are significant areas of further research for philosophers of animal welfare. Introduction: Welfare and Animal Ethics Welfare is about how well an individual is faring, relative to the circumstances of their life. Well-being and prudential value are both synonymous with welfare, such that talk about an individual’s wellbeing, or the prudential value of some aspect of their lives, is taken to be about their welfare. There are many different accounts of what welfare is, but all largely agree that welfare concerns how individuals are faring, and that welfare matters for ethics. Thus, questions about animal welfare are properly questions about how non-human animals are faring, and what sorts of things would make their lives better for them. In Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, L.W. Sumner proposes two requirements for an adequate theory of welfare. One of these is the requirement of generality. This requirement states that an adequate theory of welfare should accommodate the wide variety of types of welfare subjects to which our welfare vocabulary is applied (Sumner

What Good Is Commitment?

That human beings make commitments of various sorts might seem so obviously a good thing that the question “What good is commitment?” might be thought to ask merely after the kind or kinds of good that commitment affords. To that question, one might respond that commitment is good in a variety of ways. Promises and contracts, two prominent types of commitment, have obvious utility as social coordination devices. The affirmation of one’s commitment to another or to bringing about some feature of her welfare promotes trust, something that has both social and moral value. Even personal commitments, such as a commitment to learning or to doing one’s job well, may enhance both the moral good of trust and the social goods of reliance and coordinated planning. Many commitments are good because they are morally required, strongly morally recommended, or constitutive of good moral character—for example, commitment to one’s children’s education or to acting with integrity. Finally, the social world is often so arranged as to quasi-force locking in one’s future via making commitments even when one would not otherwise have chosen to so firmly commit one’s future: others may be unwilling to embark on joint ventures with us on the basis of anything less than a promissory or contractual commitment, and the penalties for a change of plans may be sufficiently steep as to make lack of commitment to a plan unwise, as is the case when costly airline tickets are nonrefundable. In short, commitment has social, moral, and prudential value. In asking, “What good is commitment?” I do not aim to deny that commitment can be good in these ways. My interest is in a particular range of commitments that are often thought to be good because they

Capability and Deliberation

This paper explores the role of deliberation in the context of the capability approach to human well-being from the standpoint of the individual doing the reflecting. The concept of a ‘strong evaluator’ is used develop a concept of the agent of capability. The role of values is discussed in the process of deliberating, particularly the nature of and difference between prudential values and intrinsic values. Some consideration is given to the limits and constraints on deliberation and finally a brief example of deliberation is considered—that of occupational choice.

Piper on Respect for Personal Autonomy and Prudential Value

Piper on Respect for Personal Autonomy and Prudential Value

Practicing What We Teach: A Former President’s Take on His Own Discipline

While the prudential value of sociology is often ignored (or dismissed), there are evident benefits to those occupying administrative positions, particularly in adjudicating truth claims and making difficult judgments with limited data. Another attendant benefit might be self-awareness, especially regarding one's limitations; however, such awareness seems to be employed more sparingly, both within and outside of the discipline.

Substance and procedure in theories of prudential value

In this paper I argue that the debate between subjective and objective theories of prudential value obscures the way in which elements of both are needed for a comprehensive theory of prudential value. I suggest that we characterize these two types of theory in terms of their different aims: procedural (or subjective) theories give an account of the necessary conditions for something to count as good for a person, while substantive (or objective) theories give an account of what is good for a person, given some set of necessary conditions. Characterizing the theories in this way allows us to see their mutual compatibility. To make this case, I assume that a theory of prudential value ought to be descriptively and normatively adequate. The criterion of descriptive adequacy requires that our theory explain the subject relativity of prudential value. I characterize subject relativity in terms of justifiability to subjects and I argue that certain procedural theories are well suited to meet this criterion. The criterion of normative adequacy requires that our theory be capable of guiding action and I argue that a certain kind of substantive theory is needed to meet this requirement.

Ranking policy options for sustainable development

Sustainable development calls for choices among alternative policy options. It is a common view that such choices can be justified by appealing to an evaluative ranking of the options with respect to how their consequences affect a broad range of prudential and moral values. Three philosophically motivated proposals for analysing evaluative rankings are discussed: the measured merits model (e.g. Chang), the ordered values model (e.g. Griffin), and the permissible preference orderings model (Rabinowicz). The analysis focuses on the models’ potential for making transparent how an evaluative ranking can contribute to a justified choice among options, particularly in situations that involve diverse values as typically found in debates on sustainable development. Such transparency plays a crucial role when policy rankings are going to be used as arguments in political decision processes. The measured merits model is found to have questionable consequences for the concept of sustainability, while the ordered values model calls for an axiological framework that cannot plausibly be spelled out for sustainability. The permissible preference orderings model is more promising. Its formal structure and its ability to deal with value-pluralism provide an interesting re-structuring of the problem of justifying choices in sustainability issues.

Practical wisdom in medicine and health care

Practical wisdom in medicine and health care

The limits of hedonism: Feldman on the value of attitudinal pleasure

1. Among theories of the good life, hedonism is often regarded as both the simplest and the least plausible. It is a simple theory in that it identifies one good only pleasure as having prudential value.1 But it is implausible because of this simplicity, as a result of which it is accused of supporting unduly narrow judgements about prudential value, holding that only a life of sensual contentment is valuable, and overlooking the fact that our lives go better or worse for us if we acquire other things we desire, or if we obtain intrinsic goods such as knowledge and friendship. Fred Feldman's Pleasure and the Good Life sets out to demolish both these widely held theses about hedonism.2 Hedonism, Feldman shows, is not the simple theory its critics claim it is, nor is it implausibly restrictive in its range of judgements about the good life. When properly understood, it is a malleable, or, as he puts it, a "plastic" theory that allows of different interpretations, some of which accommodate claims about the good life that have traditionally been seen as paradigmatically non-hedonist, and indeed, anti-hedonist. His argument unfolds in two main steps. The first step consists in arguing that what has prudential value,3 according to the hedonist, is not, as is often thought, sensory pleasure, that is, pleasure as a feeling or tingle or a sensation, but attitudinal pleasure, that is, favourable attitudes towards some state of affairs such as enjoying it, being pleased about it, being glad it is happening, being delighted by it, and so on (p. 56). Sensory and attitudinal pleasures are distinct phenomena, although they can be related. It is possible for someone to experience attitudinal pleasure in having sensory pleasures we often enjoy having

Precis of pleasure and the good life: concerning the nature, varieties, and plausiblity of hedonism

My central aim in Pleasure and the Good Life (hereafter "P&GL") was to show that when carefully formulated and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of the prudential value of lives. The forms of hedonism in question are all versions of attitudinal hedonism. These theories are based on the idea that the ultimate sources of prudential value in a person's life are episodes in which the person takes intrinsic attitudinal pleasure in some state of affairs. I use the term 'sensory hedonism' to indicate views according to which pleasurable sensations or feelings make for a good life. None of the forms of hedonism that I tried to defend in P&GL is a form of sensory hedonism. I started by formulating a clear version of sensory hedonism. On this theory which I called 'Default Hedonism' the ultimate bearers of prudential value are episodes in which a person feels some sensory pleasure or pain. I said that the value for the one who experiences it of such an episode is equal to the amount of pleasure or pain it contains. The prudential value of a life the value that the life has in itself for the one who lives it is just the sum of the values, positive or negative, of the episodes of sensory pleasure and pain in that life. As I was developing Default Hedonism I pursued one of my secondary aims. I tried to show that many of the standard ways of formulating hedonism are incoherent, self-contradictory, or incomplete. I think there's little point in discussing a theory if we don't understand what the theory is supposed to say. Thus, I devoted quite a few pages to a discussion of defective formulations of allegedly hedonistic views and tried to show that my Default Hedonism is not defective in those formal ways (though I did not endorse Default Hedonism as the truth about prudential value). With a coherent version of sensory hedonism in place I turned to the presentation of some classic objections. One objection presented by G. E. Moore among others turns on the idea that some pleasures are so base and degrading that a life full of them would simply be a

FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN IN VICTORIAN IMPERIAL THOUGHT

This article argues that during the closing decades of the nineteenth century a significant group of British imperial thinkers broke with the long-standing conventions of political thought by deliberately eschewing the inspiration and intellectual authority provided by the examples of the ancient empires. While the early Victorian colonial reformers had looked to the template of Greece, and while many later Victorians compared the empire in India with the Roman empire, numerous proponents of Greater Britain (focusing on the settler colonies, and associated in particular with the movement for imperial federation) looked instead to the United States. I argue that the reason for this innovation, risky in a culture obsessed with the moral and prudential value of precedent and tradition, lies in contemporary understandings of history. Both Rome and Greece, despite their differences, were thought to demonstrate that empires were ultimately self-dissolving; as such, empires modelled on their templates were doomed to eventual failure, whether through internal decay or the peaceful independence of the colonies. Since the advocates of Greater Britain were determined to construct an enduring political community, a global Anglo-Saxon polity, they needed to escape the fate of previous empires. They tried instead to insert Greater Britain into a progressive narrative, one that did not doom them to repeat the failures of the past.

Voluntary Euthanasia, Physician-Assisted Suicide, and the Goals of Medicine

It is plausible that what possible courses of action patients may legitimately expect their physicians to take is ultimately determined by what medicine as a profession is supposed to do and, consequently, that we can determine the moral acceptability of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on the basis of identifying the proper goals of medicine. This article examines the main ways of defining the proper goals of medicine found in the recent bioethics literature and argues that they cannot provide a clear answer to the question of whether or not voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are morally acceptable. It is suggested that to find a plausible answer to this question and to complete the task of defining the proper goals of medicine, we must determine what is the best philosophical theory about the nature of prudential value.

Why Idealize?

Why Idealize?

The Attractions and Delights of Goodness

What makes something good for me? Most contemporary philosophers argue that something cannot count as good for me unless I am in some way attracted to it, or take delight in it. However, subjectivist theories of prudential value face difficulties, and there is no consensus about how these difficulties should be resolved. Whether one opts for a hedonist or a desire-satisfaction account of prudential value, certain fundamental assumptions about human well-being must be abandoned. I argue that we should reconsider Plato's objectivist theory of goodness as unity, or the One. This view is both consistent with and explains our most basic views both about goodness in general and human well-being in particular.

Progress Towards Wise Decision Making

The management literature is not short of tools for helping people to make wiser decisions. This paper outlines another tool so it must be asked how can it justify itself given the substantial work that is already done. We suggest that many tools either fail to properly integrate, or simply lack an analysis of (i) showing how emotions help or hinder solving the problem, (ii) the role of creative and critical thinking and (iii), working out what values are at issue in the problem. These three categories can be integrated into a decision-making procedure through an analysis of the stages of decision making. While the emphasis that is laid on these stages will differ depending upon the problem, we suggest that wise decision making requires (i) gaining an adequate understanding of the situation, (ii) working out what matters, (iii) generating options, (iv) selecting an option on the basis of what matters and (v) carrying out the option. As practical philosophers we must ask how each of these stages can be adequately carried out, and here we seek to show how philosophy, and other disciplines, can help for the three areas we identify above as lacunae. In looking at the role of emotions we base our analysis on the Aristotelian and Stoic notion that the core of emotions is that they are judgements. This analysis allows us to make sense of both the rationalist view that emotions are a hindrance, and the romantic notion that emotions are a help. Wise decision making involves unpacking emotions to see what they can reliably tell us about the situation, our values, potential options and how they can motivate us. We suggest ways this task can be achieved. Critical thinking needs to be employed throughout the decision-making procedure so that we fairly and adequately understand the situation and assess potential values and options. We outline some key skills and interventions that can be employed. Critical thinking needs material to work on so we suggest how creative thinking can be used to reframe the situation, and generate potential values and options. The driving force of making a decision is, or at least should be, the values we wish to realise with our decision; what we think matters. Some decisions are purely prudential and here we draw upon ideas of Nozick, Griffin, Aristotle and Epicurus to suggest ways the decision maker can evaluate their prudential values. For ethical decisions ideas from Mill, Kant and others can help us think through what we wish to achieve. We end with a case study to illustrate how the procedure works in practice.

Development, Common Foes and Shared Values

There is considerable common ground among various positions--involving needs, capabilities, prudential values and basic goods--in the literature about advantage and development. The well-known debate about the relative merits of various spaces relating to advantage, associated with Amartya Sen, has tended to obscure this point. Differences among the relevant positions often have to do with the context in which they are developed, or strategies involved in dealing with common foes, rather than any fundamental divergence in values. The various lists of the components of advantage that these positions offer can, to some degree, be seen as relating to different levels in our concern about the quality of life. To this degree, they can be reconciled, and Sen's capability approach simply highlights an important level. Furthermore, both differences, as well as convergence, in the various lists, may be consistent with shared values.