Speaker Series: David Sobel (Syracuse)

Abstract

If the role granted to our attitudes in grounding well-being is too broad, we get arbitrariness. If it is too narrow, we get alienation. These two thoughts seem to split the literature into objectivists, who prioritize avoiding arbitrariness, and subjectivists, who prioritize avoiding alienation. But, at least here, might we be able to get everything we want?  Perhaps we can find a way to give just enough scope to both the object of our attitudes and to the attitudes themselves so as to avoid both alienation and arbitrariness. This is the promise we explore in views of well-being that have come to be labelled “enjoying the good.” Such views maintain that the attitudes are relevant to value, but restrict this role to “warranted” attitudes.

In this paper we sympathetically develop a version of such a view with an eye to avoiding a role for arbitrary attitudes. We then go on to critique such a view. The upshot of this critique is further evidence that it may prove impossible to avoid allowing a direct normative role for attitudes that are not guided by the value of their object. Independently, we maintain that such a role for unwarranted attitudes is what makes a value “subjective”. Thus our paper advances an overarching thesis of ours: that there is subjective value.

Speaker Biography

David Sobel is the Guttag Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at Syracuse University. His most extensive research project involves trying to understand the role of attitudes in grounding value. He is also pretty fantastic at reliably walking Ellie, his dog.

You are also invited to the reception for the talk that will place directly after, from 5:30pm-6:30pm in South College E301.