Incomparable Values

Download or read book Incomparable Values written by John Nolt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People tend to rank values of all kinds linearly from good to bad, but there is little reason to think that this is reasonable or correct. This book argues, to the contrary, that values are often partially ordered and hence frequently incomparable. Proceeding logically from a small set of axioms, John Nolt examines the great variety of partially ordered value structures, exposing fallacies that arise from overlooking them. He reveals various ways in which incomparability is obscured: using linear indices to summarize partially ordered data, relying on an inadequately defined concept of parity, or conflating incomparability with vagueness. Incomparability can enrich and clarify a range of topics including the paradoxes of Derek Parfit, rational decision theory, and the infinite values of theology. Finally, Nolt shows how to generalize many of the concepts introduced earlier, explores the intricate depths of certain noteworthy partially ordered value structures, and argues for the finitude of value. Incomparable Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, value theory, rational decision theory, and logic.

Download or read book Making Comparisons Count written by Ruth Chang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book attempts to answer two questions: Are alternatives for choice ever incomparable? and In what ways can items be compared? The arguments offered suggest that alternatives for choice no matter how different are never incomparable, and that the ways in which items can be compared are richer and more varied than commonly supposed.

Download or read book Public Value and Social Development written by Bing Wang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-26 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to seek for the truth which connects public value and social development as basis to build a harmony community for individuals as well as society. The book tries to bridge science, technology, economics, politics, history, ethics, and environment under the concept of public values, and reveals the essentials of public policy for individual and social development. The potential audience of the book are officials and policy makers in the public sectors, as well as managers in the private sectors.

Download or read book Ethics at 3:AM written by Richard Marshall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 3AM magazine follows up their 2014 publication Philosophy at 3AM: Questions and Answers with a new collection interviews, this time focused on ethics. Interviewer Richard Marhsall presents 26 interviews, balanced both in terms of specialty, gender, and seniority, so that the result is a balanced and engaging portrait of the state of the art in ethics today

Download or read book Computers and Games written by Jonathan Schaeffer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-11-20 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Computers and Games (CG) series began in 1998 with the objective of showcasing new developments in arti?cial intelligence (AI) research that used games as the experimental test-bed. The ?rst two CG conferences were held at Hamamatsu,Japan(1998,2000).ComputersandGames2002(CG2002)wasthe third event in this biennial series. The conference was held at the University of Alberta(Edmonton,Alberta,Canada),July25–27,2002.Theprogramconsisted of the main conference featuring refereed papers and keynote speakers, as well as several side events including the Games Informatics Workshop, the Agents in Computer Games Workshop, the Trading Agents Competition, and the North American Computer Go Championship. CG 2002 attracted 110 participants from over a dozen countries. Part of the successoftheconferencewasthatitwasco-locatedwiththeNationalConference of the American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence (AAAI), which began in Edmonton just as CG 2002 ended. The CG 2002 program had 27 refereed paper presentations. The papers ranged over a wide variety of AI-related topics including search, knowledge, learning, planning, and combinatorial game theory. Research test-beds included one-player games (blackjack, sliding-tile puzzles, Sokoban), two-player games (Amazons, awari, chess, Chinese chess, clobber, Go, Hex, Lines of Action, O- ello, shogi), multi-player games (Chinese checkers, cribbage, Diplomacy, hearts, spades), commercial games (role-playing games, real-time strategy games), and novel applications (Post’s Correspondence Problem).

Download or read book Environmental Ethics for the Long Term written by John Nolt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broad in scope, this introduction to environmental ethics considers both contemporary issues and the extent of humanity’s responsibility for distant future life. John Nolt, a logician and environmental ethicist, interweaves contemporary science, logical analysis, and ethical theory into the story of the expansion of ethics beyond the human species and into the far future. Informed by contemporary environmental science, the book deduces concrete policy recommendations from carefully justified ethical principles and ends with speculations concerning the deepest problems of environmental ethics. Pedagogical features include chapter outlines, annotated suggestions for further readings, the explanations of key terms when first mentioned, and an extensive glossary.

Download or read book Moral Strata written by John R. Welch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume recreates the received notion of reflective equilibrium. It reconfigures reflective equilibrium as both a cognitive ideal and a method for approximating this ideal. The ideal of reflective equilibrium is restructured using the concept of discursive strata, which are formed by sentences and differentiated by function. Sentences that perform the same kind of linguistic function constitute a stratum. The book shows how moral discourse can be analyzed into phenomenal, instrumental, and teleological strata, and the ideal of reflective equilibrium reworked in these terms. In addition, the work strengthens the method of reflective equilibrium by harnessing the resources of decision theory and inductive logic. It launches a comparative version of decision theory and employs this framework as a guide to moral theory choice. It also recruits quantitative inductive logic to inform a standard of inductive cogency. When used in tandem with comparative decision theory, this standard can aid in the effort to turn the undesirable condition of reflective disequilibrium into reflective equilibrium.