Plural and Conflicting Values

by Stocker, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780198240556
• ISBN10: 0198240554
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-11-19
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Plural values and conflicting values are often held to be conceptually problematic, threatening the very possibility of ethics, or at least of rational ethics. This book rejects this view. The author first demonstrates why it is so important to understand the issues raised by plural and conflicting values. This includes a full discussion of Aristotle's treatment of the issues. He then goes on to show that plurality and conflict are commonplace and generally unproblematic features ofour everyday choice and action, and that they do allow for a sound and rational ethic.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
PART I: CONFLICT
Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life	9	(28)
Some structures of overall, action-guiding evaluations	10	(3)
Some foundational features of choice and action	13	(2)
How are these costs taken up?	15	(1)
The special moral nature of dirty features	16	(3)
Some features of dirty hands and similar acts	19	(7)
Strange theories of value and the denial of dirty hands	26	(2)
Moral emotions and dirty hands	28	(4)
Dirty hands and acceptable moral theories	32	(5)
Moral Immorality	37	(14)
Admirable immorality, an introduction	37	(1)
Overridingness and admirable immorality	38	(3)
Overvaluing and admirability	41	(1)
The unavoidable evils in admirable immorality	42	(7)
Conclusion	49	(2)
Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotle's Ethics	51	(34)
Dirty hands: A brief characterization	51	(2)
That Aristotle allows for dirty hands	53	(6)
Eudaimonia: The implications of mixed actions	59	(8)
Acting for eudaimonia and for eudaimonia	67	(5)
Conflicts of values and of desires, and Aristotle	72	(2)
Conflicts of desire in Aristotle	74	(2)
Some comments on Aristotelian pleasures and conflicts	76	(4)
Courage and pleasure	80	(4)
Conclusion	84	(1)
Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show	85	(44)
The incompossibility account and modifications	86	(2)
Conflicts of prima facie duties and of overall duties	88	(2)
The shared assumption that ethics is action-guiding	90	(5)
Non-action-guiding act evaluations	95	(7)
Why there are non-action-guiding act evaluations	102	(8)
Non-action-guiding act evaluations and ethics	110	(11)
Conflicts and non-action-guiding act evaluations	121	(2)
Other conflicts	123	(1)
The real importance of conflicts for ethical theory	124	(5)
PART II: PLURALITY AND JUDGEMENT
Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence	129	(36)
Courage and the Doctrine	130	(2)
The mean---of courage and more generally	132	(6)
One value, many values	138	(2)
The mean of courage	140	(2)
Real unities	142	(4)
Real unities and the usefulness of the Doctrine	146	(5)
Complex unities	151	(14)
Appendix 1: Pears's solution	156	(1)
Appendix 2: The object of tharsos	157	(8)
Plurality and Choice	165	(46)
Three marks of plurality	168	(6)
Obvious plurality and its denial	174	(1)
A confusion of commensurability and comparability	175	(3)
Choice and plurality	178	(2)
Against these being evaluative differences	180	(4)
Pluralism and an aesthetic of pleasure	184	(4)
Pluralism and pleasure as more usually considered	188	(6)
No special theory of judgement for plurality	194	(1)
Simplicity	195	(4)
Other understandings of monism	199	(1)
Difficulties with sortal comparisons	200	(6)
Conclusion	206	(5)
PART III: PLURALITY AND CONFLICT
Akrasia: The Unity of the Good, Commensurability, and Comparability	211	(30)
The Protagorean Predicament	211	(2)
The Protagorean argument	213	(1)
Commensurability and comparability	214	(1)
Comparability, affectivity, and fragmentation	215	(3)
Hedonism allows for akrasia	218	(4)
Hedonistic incommensurability reconsidered	222	(2)
Single and plural values and objects of attraction	224	(7)
Are there any unitary values or attractions?	231	(2)
Value finality	233	(1)
Value maximization	234	(3)
Hedonism as a pure intellectual idea	237	(4)
Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict	241	(40)
Instances and sorts of values and conflicts	242	(8)
Time and conflict	250	(10)
People, contemporaneous conflict, and plurality	260	(2)
Differential care and rational conflict	262	(19)
PART IV: MAXIMIZATION
Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems	281	(29)
That maximization is not conceptually true	281	(10)
Betterness is the moreness of the good: Some conceptual problems of evaluative maximization	291	(11)
A suggestion about false pleasures	302	(8)
Maximization: Some Evaluative Problems	310	(33)
That the best is not morally required	311	(5)
Maximization, moral psychology, and levels of goods	316	(9)
Goods are not simply good enough	325	(6)
A familiar example which seems maximizing but is not	331	(7)
Aristotle on maximization	338	(4)
Conclusion	342	(1)
Bibliography	343	(8)
Index Locorum	351	(1)
Index of Names	352	(3)
General Index	355