Workshop on Value Judgment

On the 29th of November there will be a small workshop on value judgment, partly connected with Francesco Orsi's research grant on "The Unity of Normative Discourse (2013-16)". Everyone is welcome to attend, including and especially students at any level. Below you can find the program and abstracts. For any further info, please write to Francesco Orsi at orsi [ät] ut.ee

29th of November
Workshop on Value Judgment
Jakobi 2 - room 336

10:30 Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund University) "Aggregation of Value Judgments Differs from Aggregation of Preferences"

12:00 lunch break

13:00 Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen (Lund University) "On Conditionalism--On the Verge of a New Metaethical Theory"

14:30 end

Wlodek Rabinowicz: Aggregation of Value Judgments Differs from Aggregation of Preferences
Abstract
This talk will focus on the contrast between aggregation of individual preference rankings to a collective preference ranking and aggregation of individual value judgments to a collective value judgment. The targeted case is one in which value judgments also have the form of rankings. Despite of this formal similarity, the kind of aggregation procedure that works fine for judgments - minimization of distance from individual inputs - turns out to be inappropriate for preferences. Whatever measure of distance is chosen, distance-based procedures violate the strong Pareto condition. Which seems alright as value judgment aggregation goes, but would not be acceptable for preference aggregation, on the most natural interpretation of the latter task. Distance-based aggregation of value judgments might also be approached from the epistemic perspective: questions might be raised about its advantages as a truth-tracker. From this perspective, what matters is not only the probability of the output being true, but also the expected verisimilitude of the output, i.e. its expected distance from truth.

Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen: On Conditionalism—On the Verge of a New Metaethical Theory
Abstract
This presentation explores a novel metaethical theory according to which value judgements express a certain kind of cognitive conditional attitude, viz., a belief that something is the case on condition that something else is the case. The aim is to reach a better understanding of this view. To this end, this work highlights some challenges that lie ahead. Certainly the most pressing one is to reach an understanding of the nature of these cognitive attitudes. It is suggested that the distinction between “dormant attitude” and “occurrent attitude” help us better understand these conditional beliefs.

Workshop is organised by the Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu and supported by the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies (European Union, European Regional Development Fund), research project IUT20-5 (Estonian Ministry of Education and Research) and by the Estonian Research Council grant PUT243.