Hume, the Bad Paradox and Value Realism
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چکیده
One plausible interpretation of Hume’s famous claim that “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions” holds that desires are necessary to motivation, that beliefs alone cannot motivate. Now some have held, against Hume, that there are in fact beliefs which could motivate all by themselves—namely, beliefs about what is good. For there to be such beliefs then cognitivism about value—the thesis that there are truth-bearing propositions about value—would have to be a live option. A recent slew of arguments, if sound, would demonstrate that such a cognitivism about value is in in conflict with fundamental principles of practical rationality. While these proofs started life as an an attack on a particular brand of anti-Humeanism in fact they have much broader application. Indeed, they threaten absolutely any cognitivist theory of value. They seem to force the cognitivist to deny core tenets of our best theory of rational decision making—decision theory—itself an articulation of the broadly Humean thesis that a rational action is one which serves one’s desires according to one’s beliefs. That would indeed be bad news for those who wish to locate their value realism within a broadly naturalistic understanding of the universe. Fortunately for value realists, the bad news turns out to be good news after all.
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تاریخ انتشار 2008