There is a very plausible principle of the transitivity of justifying reasons. It says that if "p" is better justified than "q" (all things considered) and "q" better than "r", then "p" is better justified than "r" (all things considered). There is a corresponding principle of rational theory choice. Call one theory "a better theory than" another theory if all criteria of theory choice considered (explanatory power, simplicity, empirical adequacy, etc.), the first theory meets the criteria better than the second (...) theory. The corresponding transitivity principle says that if theory A is a better theory than theory B and if theory B is a better theory than theory C, then A is a better theory than theory C. I argue against this principle. It turns out that whenever there are 2 or more relevant and independent criteria of theory evaluation, and whenever at least of one the criteria is "non-linear" in a certain sense, there may be violations of transitivity which do not violate any standards of rationality (of theory choice). This shows, again, that theory choice cannot be seen as merely the application of given rules of rational theory choice. (shrink)

Although the thesis that the moral better than relation is transitive seems obviously true, there is a growing literature according to which Parfit’s repugnant conclusion and related puzzles reveal that this thesis is false or problematic. This paper begins by presenting several such puzzles and explaining how they can be used in arguments for the intransitivity of better than. It then proposes and defends a plausible alternative picture of the behavior of better than that both resolves the repugnant conclusion (...) and preserves transitivity. On the threshold-based model of lexicality defended here, hedonic episodes whose intensity is above a certain point are lexically greater than those whose intensity is below it. The final sections argue that this model is independently plausible and can be defended from several important objections. (shrink)

Ethicists and economists commonly assume that if A is all things considered better than B, and B is all things considered better than C, then A is all things considered better than C. Call this principle Transitivity. Although it has great conceptual, intuitive, and empirical appeal, I argue against it. Larry S. Temkin explains how three types of ethical principle, which cannot be dismissed a priori, threaten Transitivity: (a) principles implying that in some cases different factors are relevant to comparing (...) A to C than to comparing A to B or B to C; (b) principles of limited scope; (c) principles implying that morally relevant differences in degree can amount to differences in kind. My counterexamples employ a principle of type (c): pleasures and pains enormously different in intensity differ in kind. Temkin has also endorsed this type of counterexample, using arguments based on earlier drafts of this paper. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.

Duties to future persons contribute critically to many important contemporaneous ethical dilemmas, such as environmental protection, contraception, abortion, and population policy. Yet this area of ethics is mired in paradoxes. It appeared that any principle for dealing with future persons encountered Kavka's paradox of future individuals, Parfit's repugnant conclusion, or an indefensible asymmetry. In 1976, Singer proposed a utilitarian solution that seemed to avoid the above trio of obstacles, but Parfit so successfully demonstrated the unacceptability of this position that Singer (...) abandoned it. Indeed, the apparently intransitivity of Singer's solution contributed to Temkin's argument that the notion of "all things considered better than" may be intransitive. In this paper, I demonstrate that a time-extended view of Singer's solution avoids the intransitivity that allows Parfit's mere addition paradox to lead to the repugnant conclusion. However, the heart of the mere addition paradox remains: the time-extended view still yields intransitive judgments. I discuss a general theory for dealing with intransitivity that was inspired by Temkin's sports analogy, and demonstrate that such a solution is more palatable than Temkin suspected. When a pair-wise comparison also requires consideration of a small number of relevant external alternatives, we can avoid intransitivity and the mere addition paradox without infinite comparisons or rejecting the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Principle. (shrink)

Pluralism is an appealing and now orthodox view of the sources of value. But pluralism has led to well-known difficulties for social-choice theory. Moreover, as Susan Hurley has argued, the difficulties of pluralism go even deeper. In 1954, Kenneth May suggested an intrapersonal analogue to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. In brief, May showed that an individual's response to a plurality of values will, given certain additional assumptions, lead to intransitive preference orderings. (Daniel Kahneman and others have shown that intransitivity is (...) an empirical feature of preferences.) Hurley challenged May's additional assumptions as implausibly strong; but her work did not exclude the possibility that values may disobey the canon of rationality that insists on transitivity. John Broome has recently extended these canons to the "betterness" relation. This chapter argues that there is no good reason to be confident that values, understood as real features of the world, behave consistently with those canons. (shrink)

Philosophy journals and conferences have recently seen several attempts to argue that ‘all-things-considered better than’ does not obey strict transitivity. This paper focuses on Larry Temkin’s argument in “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox.” Although his argument is not aimed just at utilitarians or even consequentialists in general, it is of particular significance to consequentialists. If ‘all-things-considered better than’ does not obey transitivity, there may be choice situations in which there is no optimal choice, which would seem to open (...) the door to a consequentialist account of moral dilemmas. Temkin’s argument crucially appeals to what he calls “the Person-Affecting Principle (PAP)”. which he roughly characterizes as follows, “On PAP, one outcome is worse than another only if it affects people for the worse” This paper argues that PAP, although plausible, does not hold in precisely those situations in which it would have to hold in order for Temkin’s argument against transitivity to work. (shrink)

Building on Goldman 2008 and 2009, which argue that objective values would be strange in coming in degrees but in no determinate number of degrees, this paper argues that related properties having to do with degrees of value make a further case against objective values. The properties of giving rise to intransitive orderings and being essentially comparative are explained by Larry Temkin in Rethinking the Good. He shows that “better than” is intransitively ordered. Many subjective states are too. But similar (...) arguments for the intransitive orderings of intrinsic objective properties fail. Furthermore, subjective properties and states can change without these changes being explained by changes in their objects. This is similar to the essentially comparative nature of goodness. Given the analogies to subjective states and lack of analogies to objective properties that the present article points out, it argues that we should infer, as Temkin does not, that values are subjective. (shrink)

Philosophy journals and conferences have recently seen several attempts to argue that 'all-things-considered better than' does not obey strict transitivity. This paper focuses on Larry Temkin's argument in "Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox." Although his argument is not aimed just at utilitarians or even consequentialists in general, it is of prticular significance to consequentialists. If 'all-things-considered better than' does not obey transitivity, there may be choice situations in which there is no optimal choice, which would seem to open (...) the door to a consequentialist account of moral dilemmas. Temkin's argument crucially appeals to what he calls "the Person-Affecting Principle (PAP)", which he roughly characterizes as follows, "On PAP, one outcome is worse than another only if it affects people for the worse" This paper argues that PAP, although plausible, does not hold in precisely those situations in which it would have to hold in order for Temkin's argument against transitivity to work. (shrink)

According to Transitivity, if A is better than B, and B is better than C, then A is better than C. We may understand “better than” as short for any of the following: “intrinsically better than,” “all things considered better than,” “hedonically better than,” and “better for a person than.” The same puzzle arises on each interpretation. Transitivity seems entrenched in our conceptual scheme, if not analytically true; its failure implies, implausibly, that some possibilities cannot be ranked in terms of (...) value; scads of three-member sets inductively confirm it; and hypothetical money-pumpers coax its detractors out of house and home by proffering a series of trades—C for A, B for C and A for B (and then repeating the cycle)—for an endlessly accumulating price. Nevertheless, two highly plausible principles entail that Transitivity is false. (shrink)

A set of arguments shows that either the Repugnant Conclusion and its variants are true or the better-than relation isn't transitive. Which is it? This is the most important question in population ethics. The answer will point the way to Parfit's elusive Theory X.

It is a basic and intuitive assumption that the relation of moral preference must be transitive—if A is overall morally preferable to B; and B is overall morally preferably to C; then, if our views are coherent, it better be the case that A is overall morally preferable to C. However, recent work by Temkin and Rachels has undermined that assumption by showing that common-sense ethical distributive principles that we are unlikely to give up generate intransitive sets of moral preferences. (...) The consequences of this for resource allocation are profound—how can we come up with a just way of rationing limited resources if whatever course of action we adopt, there will be other alternatives that are morally preferable to it? However, regardless of the theoretical challenges, practical resource allocation decisions must be made every day! We explore an approach to dealing with some of the pragmatic aspects of the problem, even though the theoretical problem of intransitivity remains unsolved. We begin by considering whether the ways in which counterexamples to transitivity have (of necessity) been oversimplified actually contribute to the intractability of the problem by taking the possibilities of cost sharing, benefit splitting, and compensation (which are often available in real-life tradeoff situations) off the table. The proposal we end up suggesting does not rely on any assumptions or judgments about interpersonal aggregation, and so has a chance of allowing us to work around the most troubling kind of intransitivity. (shrink)

It is a basic and intuitive assumption that the relation of moral preference must be transitive—if A is overall morally preferable to B; and B is overall morally preferably to C; then, if our views are coherent, it better be the case that A is overall morally preferable to C. However, recent work by Temkin and Rachels has undermined that assumption by showing that common-sense ethical distributive principles that we are unlikely to give up generate intransitive sets of moral preferences. (...) The consequences of this for resource allocation are profound—how can we come up with a just way of rationing limited resources if whatever course of action we adopt, there will be other alternatives that are morally preferable to it? However, regardless of the theoretical challenges, practical resource allocation decisions must be made every day! We explore an approach to dealing with some of the pragmatic aspects of the problem, even though the theoretical problem of intransitivity remains unsolved. We begin by considering whether the ways in which counterexamples to transitivity have (of necessity) been oversimplified actually contribute to the intractability of the problem by taking the possibilities of cost sharing, benefit splitting, and compensation (which are often available in real-life tradeoff situations) off the table. The proposal we end up suggesting does not rely on any assumptions or judgments about interpersonal aggregation, and so has a chance of allowing us to work around the most troubling kind of intransitivity. (shrink)

It is commonly held that rational preferences must be acyclic. There have, however, been cases that have been put forward as counterexamples to this view. This paper focuses on the following question: If the counterexamples are compelling and rational preferences can be cyclic, what should we conclude about the presumed acyclicity of the “better than” relation? Building on some revisionary suggestions concerning acyclicity and betterness, I make a case for hanging on to the presumption that “better than” is acyclic (...) even if “is rationally preferred to” is not. As I explain, the divergence my view makes room for does not threaten to make “better than” judgments less relevant to choice than judgments about rational preference. To the contrary, it makes them more relevant. Toward the end of the paper, I extend my results to the relation “is morally better than” in light of the possibility that there might be moral preferability cycles. (shrink)

This article responds to Ingmar Persson’s article “Internal or External Grounds for the Nontransitivity of ‘Better/Worse than’”. In his article, Persson argues in favor of an account of supervenience that would be compatible with both an Internal Aspects View, and the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations. This article points out that the Internal Aspects View that Persson favors would fail to capture many features of practical reasoning that most advocates of an Internal Aspects View favor, and that (...) the version of the Internal Aspects View that I discuss in Rethinking the Good does capture. I note, however, that Persson’s view would not only be compatible with my book’s main claims and arguments, it would substantially buttress my results. Accordingly, I would welcome it if Persson could successfully develop and defend his view. Unfortunately, however, my article raises a number of worries about Persson’s view. I consider various different ways of understanding Persson’s position, and argue that none of them ultimately succeed in establishing a plausible version of a genuinely Internal Aspects View that would be compatible with the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations. I acknowledge that if Persson can ultimately make good on his claims, he will have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the good and the nature of ideals. However, as matters now stand, I am not moved by his arguments to revise the claims I made in Rethinking the Good, correlating the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations with the Essentially Comparative View, rather than the Internal Aspects View. (shrink)

This chapter considers and rejects three approaches to incorporating the neutrality intuition into a theory of value. The first is to suppose that betterness might be intransitive. The second is to suppose that betterness might be conditional in a particular sense. The third is to suppose that betterness can only be understood relative to a particular population.

Many accounts of online trust are based upon mechanisms for building reputation. Trust is portrayed as desirable, and handing off trust is easier if trust is modelled to be transitive. But in the analysis of cyber-security protocols, trust is usually used as a substitute for certain knowledge: it follows that if there is no residual risk, then there is no need for trust. On this grimmer understanding, the less that users are required to trust, the better. Involuntary transitivity of trust (...) becomes corrosive, because it prevents participants from having control—or even knowledge—of the risks to which their trust assumptions expose them. In this paper, we take the stance that controlling the transitivity of trust requires us to recognise trust as a non-referentially transparent modality, similar to but significantly weaker than the epistemic modalities, and to accept the corollary that imaginary (indeed—even impossible) threats can have real consequences that adversely affect online security. An apparently paradoxical outcome is that the desire of principals to keep their trust assumptions private can actually assist the design of systems to satisfy multiple security agendas. However, this approach requires agents to have the capability to predicate accurately about states of affairs that are logically inconsistent with their beliefs, and consequently, designing systems in this way becomes more akin to diplomacy than engineering. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that in a possible world there is a determinate ranking of teams. Our argument rests on the premise: In theory, nothing prevents a determinate better than ranking. This premise in turn rests on assumptions with regard to stipulations regarding ‘better than’ and nature of a competition as well as a right answer theory of interpretation. We then speculate that in some actual leagues in some years, there were determinate rankings. We consider objections that focus on (...) ties, noise, intransitivity, meaning of ‘better than’, and league recognition of the best team. We finish by noting that the issues involved in sport also apply to ranking candidates to occupy roles in our lives. (shrink)

Many accounts of informed consent in medical ethics claim that it is valuable because it supports individual autonomy. Unfortunately there are many distinct conceptions of individual autonomy, and their ethical importance varies. A better reason for taking informed consent seriously is that it provides assurance that patients and others are neither deceived nor coerced. Present debates about the relative importance of generic and specific consent do not address this issue squarely. Consent is a propositional attitude, so intransitive: complete, wholly specific (...) consent is an illusion. Since the point of consent procedures is to limit deception and coercion, they should be designed to give patients and others control over the amount of information they receive and opportunity to rescind consent already given. (shrink)

In hard cases of comparison, people are faced with two options neither of which is conceived of as better, worse, or equally good compared to the other. Most philosophers claim that hard cases can indeed be distinguished from cases in which two options are equally good, and can be characterized by a failure of transitive reasoning. It is a much more controversial matter and at the heart of an ongoing debate, whether the options in hard cases of comparison should be (...) interpreted as incomparable, on par, or roughly equal. So far, however, none of these claims and interpretations have been tested. This paper presents the first empirical investigation on hard cases, intransitive reasoning, and incomparability. Our results reveal that hard cases present real-world dilemmas in which a significant majority of people violate transitivity. After suggesting a way of operationalizing the notion of incomparability, we provide empirical evidence that the options in some hard cases are not considered to be incomparable. Theories of rough equality or parity seem to provide better interpretations of our results. (shrink)

In response to Hostettler, I clarify the intended meanings of ‘After Critical Realism?’ My point is not to abandon critical realism but to develop it further and make it more self-reflexively critical. Bhaskar's journey through different stories about our place in the cosmos is a dialectical learning process from Althusserian scientist existentialism, via an all-encompassing dialectical philosophy as a theory of moral good grounded in every expressively veracious action or remark, to a pluralist notion of God. Bhaskar's questions are deep (...) and his answers pertinent, but there are more hypothetical, scholarly and dialogical ways of telling ethico-political and cosmic stories. (shrink)

The essentially comparative conception of value entails that the value of a state of affairs does not depend solely upon features intrinsic to the state of affairs, but also upon extrinsic features, such as the set of feasible alternatives. It has been argued that this conception of value gives us reason to abandon the transitivity of the better than relation. This paper shows that the support for intransitivity derived from this conception of value is very limited. On its most (...) plausible interpretations, it merely provides a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for intransitivity. It is further argued that the essentially comparative conception of value appears to support a disjunctive conclusion: there is incommensurability of value or betterness is not transitive. Of these two alternatives, incommensurability is preferable, because it is far less threatening to our other axiological commitments. (shrink)

Measuring psychological attributes, such as motivation, typically involves rating scales, assuming that an attribute can be ordered, and that ratings represent this order. Previously, only the first assumption had been tested, albeit limited. First, we checked the ordinal structure of motivation, looking at whether people can establish transitive relations between motivation levels in pairwise comparisons; and we found different ordering patterns: strict transitive, weak transitive, changing order, and intransitivity. The rate of intransitivity was similar to that found previously (...) and was somewhat higher than we obtained when we asked participants to compare definitely quantitative attributes. Second, we checked if specific ordering patterns were related to individual interpretations of the statements that deviated from expected motivation types. Indeed, about a third of participants miscategorized statements, and these deviant interpretations were related to intransitivity as well as weak transitivity. Third, we checked whether Likert ratings represent the order of motives obtained from pairwise comparisons. We found rather homomorphic representation: ratings correlated with the order, but they did not differentiate between different ordering patterns and hierarchies of motives. We conclude that the Likert rating scale provides less information about respondents than pairwise ordering. The findings question the mainstream practice of using rating scales without testing underlying assumptions. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit cannot find a theory of well-being that solves the Non-Identity Problem, the Repugnant Conclusion, the Absurd Conclusion, and all forms of the Mere Addition Paradox. I describe a “Quasi-Maximizing” theory that solves them. This theory includes (i) the denial that being better than is transitive and (ii) the “Conflation Principle,” according to which alternative B is hedonically better than alternative C if it would be better for someone to have all the B-experiences. (i) entails (...) that Quasi-Maximization is not a maximizing theory, but (ii) ensures that its evaluations will often coincide with such theories. (shrink)

Perceptual-role theories of mental qualities hold that we can discover the nature of a being’s mental qualities by investigating that being’s capacity to make perceptual discriminations. Many advocates of perceptual-role theories hold that the best explanation of these capacities is that mental quality spaces are homomorphic to the spaces of the physical properties that they help to discriminate. This paper disputes this thesis on largely empirical grounds, and offers an alternative. The alternative explains interesting patterns in our perception of color (...) differences and similarities across edges, emphasizing the importance of visual discontinuities. Further, it provides a simple explanation of the intransitivity of indiscriminability. The homomorphism thesis can explain this intransitivity only with the addition of an independently unsupported empirical hypothesis. Also, in contrast to the homomorphism thesis, the alternative view is perfectly consistent with empirical data that suggest that the visual system uses the dynamic allocation of a limited range of responses in order to discriminate a wider range of physical stimuli and that we are much better at detecting changes in relative luminance than changes in absolute luminance. Moreover, it does all this while using a more efficient strategy for encoding sensory information. (shrink)

How can we resist the repugnant conclusion? James Griffin has plausibly suggested that part way through the sequence we may reach a world—let us call it “J”—in which the lives are lexically superior to those that follow. If it would be preferable to live a single life in J than through any number of lives in the next one, then it would be strange to judge K the better world. Instead, we may reasonably “suspend addition” and judge J superior, as (...) if aggregating the lives in the larger world intrapersonally. I argue that the addition of new people with separate preferences renders this inference illicit when comparing J+ and K. When one pairwise comparison suspends addition and the other does not, the result is an intransitive value judgement: J < J+ < K < J, producing the mere addition paradox. (shrink)

Larry Temkin has shown that Derek Parfit’s well-known Mere Addition Paradox suggests a powerful argument for the intransitivity of the relation “better than.” The crux of the argument is the view that equality is essentially comparative, according to which the same inequality can be evaluated differently depending on what it is being compared to. The comparative view of equality should be rejected, I argue, and hence so too this argument for intransitivity.

This article criticises one of Stuart Rachels' and Larry Temkin's arguments against the transitivity of 'better than'. This argument invokes our intuitions about our preferences of different bundles of pleasurable or painful experiences of varying intensity and duration, which, it is argued, will typically be intransitive. This article defends the transitivity of 'better than' by showing that Rachels and Temkin are mistaken to suppose that preferences satisfying their assumptions must be intransitive. It makes cler where the argument goes wrong by (...) showing that it is a version of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. (shrink)

Both behavioral and standard neoclassical economists place a heavy emphasis on the consistency of preferences. In particular, transitive preferences are considered a desideratum. This paper attempts to show that consistency at the level of individual choice may be pragmatically irrelevant. Consistently following an environmentally adapted rule can result in intransitive preferences without negative consequences for individual or social goals. I give three examples of this. Social scientists should look at intransitivity of choices as a challenge to offer better explanations (...) rather than as a normative defect. (shrink)

This paper is a pastiche of the Lacanian philosopher Renata Salecl, my fourth attempt, combined with a note. In it I present a response I anticipate from analytic philosophy to the thesis that the signifier has priority over the signified: that this thesis is either trivially true or obviously false.

It is known that evidential support, on the Bayesian definition of this notion, is intransitive. According to some, however, the Bayesian definition is too weak to be materially adequate. This paper investigates whether evidential support is transitive on some plausible probabilistic strengthening of that definition. It is shown that the answer is negative. In fact, it will appear that even under conditions under which the Bayesian notion of evidential support is transitive, the most plausible candidate strengthenings are not.

The better best system account, short BBSA, is a variation on Lewis’s theory of laws. The difference to the latter is that the BBSA suggests that best system analyses can be executed for any fixed set of properties. This affords the possibility to launch system analyses separately for the set of biological properties yielding the set of biological laws, chemical properties yielding chemical laws, and so on for the other special sciences. As such, the BBSA remains silent about possible interrelations (...) between these freestanding sets of laws. In this paper, I explicate an emergence relation between them which preserves the autonomy or novelty of each special science’s laws but also shows their dependence: the autonomy of each level’s generalisations is given because nomicity is conferred to them system intrinsic, their dependence is established via their supervenience on lower level laws. As will be shown, the autonomy of special science laws is further strengthened by their ceteris paribus character. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against defining either of ‘good’ and ‘better’ in terms of the other. According to definitions of ‘good’ in terms of ‘better’, something is good if and only if it is better than some indifference point. Against this approach, I argue that the indifference point cannot be defined in terms of ‘better’ without ruling out some reasonable axiologies. Against defining ‘better’ in terms of ‘good’, I argue that this approach either cannot allow for the incorruptibility of (...) intrinsic goodness or it breaks down in cases where both of the relata of ‘better’ are bad. (shrink)

In this paper we give a proof of the II12-completeness of the set of countable better quasi orderings . This result was conjectured by Clote in [2] and proved by the author in his Ph.d. thesis [6] . Here we prove it using Simpson's definition of better quasi ordering and as little bqo theory as possible.

Counterfactual thinking involves the imagination of non-factual alternatives to reality. We investigated the spontaneous generation of both upward counterfactuals, which improve on reality, and downward counterfactuals, which worsen reality. All subjects gained $5 playing a computer-simulated blackjack game. However, this outcome was framed to be perceived as either a win, a neutral event, or a loss. "Loss" frames produced more upward and fewer downward counterfactuals than did either "win" or "neutral" frames, but the overall prevalence of counterfactual thinking did not (...) vary with outcome valence. In addition, subjects who expected to play the game again made more upward counterfactuals and were less satisfied with the outcome than were subjects who did not expect to play again. However, once subjects saw the cards from which they could have selected had they "hit" again (two winning cards and two losing cards), all subjects generated primarily upward counterfactuals and showed a corresponding decrease in satisfaction. These results implicate both cognitive and motivational factors in the generation of counterfactuals and tell us something about the functional value of counterfactual thinking: downward counterfactuals provide comfort; upward counterfactuals prepare one for the future. (shrink)

This paper argues against Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence. It maintains that prospective parents have no obligation at all to choose the child, out of a range of possible children, who is likely to lead the best life. This is because a standpoint that the author labels "the internal perspective" is a perfectly appropriate one for parents to adopt when thinking about their own future children. It is only policy makers who are obliged to take up an opposing standpoint--"the (...) external perspective"--and to be motivated by the sorts of "better for" judgements that that perspective delivers. (shrink)

According to the mixed lexicographic/additive account of ‘better than’ and similar aggregative value comparatives like ‘healthier than’, values are multidimensional and different aspects of a value are aggregated into an overall assessment in a lexicographic way, based on an ordering of value aspects. It is argued that this theory can account for an acceptable definition of Chang’s notion of parity and that it also offers a solution to Temkin’s and Rachels’s Spectrum Cases without giving up the transitivity of overall (...) class='Hi'>betterness. Formal details and proofs are provided in an “Appendix”. (shrink)

David Benatar argues that creating someone always harms them. I argue that his master argument rests on a conceptual incoherence.

The Rachels–Temkin spectrum arguments against the transitivity of better than involve good or bad experiences, lives, or outcomes that vary along multiple dimensions—e.g., duration and intensity of pleasure or pain. This paper presents variations on these arguments involving combinations of good and bad experiences, which have even more radical implications than the violation of transitivity. These variations force opponents of transitivity to conclude that something good is worse than something that isn’t good, on pain of rejecting the good altogether. That (...) is impossible, so we must reject the spectrum arguments. (shrink)

When an agent that accepts transitivity of preferences as a principle of rationality finds himself expressing intransitive preferences, he has to change some of his expressed preferences so that transitivity will be restored. When such an agent also believes in the existence of some independent betterness relation among the alternatives over which he forms his preferences, it is reasonable to demand that the way he changes his intransitive expressed preferences will be sensitive to his beliefs regarding this betterness (...) relation. It is shown that under two natural conditions for such sensitivity, in case there are infinitely many alternatives, the agent must end up being indifferent between all alternatives except two. Some implications of this result for ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper deals with problems that vagueness raises for choices involving evaluative tradeoffs. I focus on a species of such choices, which I call ‘qualitative barrier cases.’ These are cases in which a qualitatively significant tradeoff in one evaluative dimension for a given improvement in another dimension could not make an option better all things considered, but a merely quantitative tradeoff for the given improvement might. Trouble arises, however, when one of the options constitutes a borderline case of an evaluative (...) kind. I argue that in such cases we can neither affirm nor deny that trading off losses in one evaluative dimension for gains in another yields a better outcome. Theoretically, this result provides a way to defuse an argument that has been presented by both Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels that purports to show that the ‘better than’ relation is intransitive. Practically, it allows us to undermine the claim that rational agents are better off withholding their contribution to a public good in certain instances of the free-rider problem, and thus to take an important step towards solving these problems. (shrink)

We humans and other animals continuously construct and main- tain our grasp of the world by using astonishingly small snippets of sensory information. Recent studies in nonlinear brain dynamics have shown how this occurs: brains imagine possible futures and seek and use sensory stimulation to select among them as guides for chosen actions. On the one hand the scientific explanation of the dynamics is inaccessible to most of us. On the other hand the philosophical foundation from which the sciences grew (...) is accessible through the work of one of its originators, Thomas Aquinas. The core concept of intention in Aquinas is the inviolable unity of mind, brain and body. All that we know we have constructed within ourselves from the unintelligible fragments of energy impacting our senses as we move our bodies through the world. This process of intention is transi- tive in the outward thrust of the body in search of desired future states; it is intransitive in the dynamic construction of predictions of the states in the sensory cortices by which we recognize suc- cess or failure in achievement. The process is phenomenologically experienced in the action-perception cycle. Enactment is through the serial creation of neurodynamic activity patterns in brains, by which the self of mind-brain-body comes to know the world first by shaping the self to an approximation of the sought-for input, and then by assimilating those shapes into knowledge and meaning. This conception of the self as closed, autonomous, and self- organizing, devised over 700 years ago and shelved by Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza 300 years ago, is now re-emerging in philos- ophy and re-establishes the meaning of intention in its original sense. The core Aquinian concept of the unity of brain, body and soul/mind, which had been abandoned by mechanists and replaced by Brentano and Husserl using the duality inherent in representa- tionalism, has been revived by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but in phenomenological terms that are opaque to neurscientists. In my experience there is no extant philosophical system than that of Aquinas that better fits with the new _ndings in nonlinear brain dynamics. Therefore, a detailed reading and transcription of basic terms is warranted, comparing in both directions the significance of key words across 700 years from medieval metaphysics to 21st century brain dynamics. (shrink)