Evil Achievements and the Principle of Recursion
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper looks at the value of achievements by examining the implications of a highly plausible axiological principle, the principle of Recursion, as developed by Thomas Hurka. According to Recursion, the pursuit of a good is itself good, and the pursuit of a bad is bad. I consider three possible ways of understanding how Recursion works, and the implications of these construals for the value of achievements. Doing so reveals not only a good way to account for the value of achievements, but also the best way to understand the principle of Recursion as an axiological principle. Ultimately, I conclude that Recursion is best construed as an instance of genuine organic unity. Achievements, many people think, play a central role in the best kind of human life. Indeed, many people think that achievements are of such importance that they are worth pursuing at the expense of serious sacrifices. But just what makes achievements valuable? What makes running a marathon, writing a book, climbing Mount Everest, or decoding the human genome worth doing? There’s a great deal to be investigated about these questions. In this paper, I look at one particular aspect of the value of achievements by examining the implications of a highly plausible axiological principle: the principle of Recursion. Doing so not only sheds light on the value of achievements, but also on how best to construe Recursion. Let’s suppose that an achievement has (among other features) the following structure: a process that culminates in a product. Writing a novel, for example, consists of a process of writing, which culminates in a product, the novel. One question that we might have about the value of achievements is this: which of these two components of achievements, the process or the product, is the
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تاریخ انتشار 2012