Intrinsic Value
Intrinsic Value
This book addresses some basic questions about intrinsic value: What is it? What has it? What justifies our beliefs about it? The author defends the existence of a plurality of intrinsic goods, the thesis of organic unities, the view that some goods are "higher" than others, and the view that intrinsic value can be explicated in terms of "fitting" emotional attitudes. The final three chapters explore the justification of our beliefs about intrinsic value, including coherence theories and the idea that some value beliefs are warranted on the basis of emotional experience. Professor Lemos also contends that some value beliefs enjoy "modest" a priori justification.
- Important area of philosophy - ethical theory
- Very little published on this
Reviews & endorsements
"...the discussions of higher goods and moral epistemology are quite useful, and the book as a whole is valuable in offering an unusually systematic treatment of a central concept of ethical theory." Ethics
"In each case the discussion is controlled and acute and the conclusions provide significant challenges." Canadian Philosophical Reviews
"Despite its rather slender size, Professor Lemos's book is philosophically very rich." Paul Eisenberg, International Philosophical Quarterly
Product details
March 2009Paperback
9780521103022
236 pages
216 × 140 × 14 mm
0.31kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part I. Value, Plurality, Parts and Wholes:
- 1. The Concept of Intrinsic Value
- 2. The Bearers of Intrinsic Value
- 3. Organic Unities and the Principle of Universality
- 4. Higher goods and the myth of Tithonus
- 5. Pleasure and its intrinsic value
- 6. Consciousness, knowledge and the consciousness thesis
- Part II. Naturalism, Nonnaturalism and Warrant:
- 7. The distinctiveness of intrinsic value
- 8. Intrinsic value and modest a priori justification
- 9. Coherence and experience
- Appendices
- Selected bibliography
- Index.
