Abstract:John Broome has argued that alleged cases of value incomparability are really examples of vagueness in the betterness relation. The main premiss of his argument is ‘the collapsing principle’. I argue that this principle is dubious, and that Broome's argument is therefore unconvincing.
“…16 The argument presented above would be disarmed if we could make it plausible that Symmetry of Indeterminacy for Betterness is not a universally valid principle. And, as a matter of fact, this has already been done by Carlson (2004). Here is one of his counterexamples to the symmetry principle.…”
Section: Symmetry Of Indeterminacymentioning
confidence: 82%
“…This, however, again contradicts (i). 14 The proof of this entailment is given in Carlson (2004). Suppose, for reductio, that Collapsing Principle is false, i.e.…”
This paper casts doubts on John Broome's view that vagueness in value comparisons crowds out incommensurability in value. It shows how vagueness can be imposed on a formal model of value relations that has room for different types of incommensurability. The model implements some basic insights of the ‘fitting attitudes’ analysis of value.
“…16 The argument presented above would be disarmed if we could make it plausible that Symmetry of Indeterminacy for Betterness is not a universally valid principle. And, as a matter of fact, this has already been done by Carlson (2004). Here is one of his counterexamples to the symmetry principle.…”
Section: Symmetry Of Indeterminacymentioning
confidence: 82%
“…This, however, again contradicts (i). 14 The proof of this entailment is given in Carlson (2004). Suppose, for reductio, that Collapsing Principle is false, i.e.…”
This paper casts doubts on John Broome's view that vagueness in value comparisons crowds out incommensurability in value. It shows how vagueness can be imposed on a formal model of value relations that has room for different types of incommensurability. The model implements some basic insights of the ‘fitting attitudes’ analysis of value.
“…First, that principle is vulnerable to a number of – to my mind – decisive counterexamples. Erik Carlson (, p. 223) published the first:Suppose that we are considering who of Alf and Beth is the better philosopher. Concerning every property that indubitably contributes to goodness as a philosopher, we find that they possess it to an equal degree.…”
Section: The Vagueness Viewmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…See Carlson () and Elson (2014a) for counterexamples; Broome (), Andersson () and Constantinescu () offer responses.…”
Two options are “incommensurate” when neither is better than the other, but they are not equally good. Typically, we will say that one option is better in some ways, and the other in others, but neither is better “all things considered”. It is tempting to think that incommensurability is vagueness – that it is (perhaps) indeterminate which is better – but this “vagueness view” of incommensurability has not proven popular. I set out the vagueness view and its implications in more detail, and argue that it can explain most of the puzzling features of incommensurability. This argument proceeds without appeal to John Broome's “collapsing principle”.
“…This objection, or rather the counterexamples to the principle, has been embraced by various value theorists and it has been developed in several steps. Ruth Chang () first presented the structure of the counterexample, and Erik Carlson (, ) then argued more forcefully for the point. Wlodek Rabinowicz () presented the objection in a different setting, and both Johan E. Gustafsson () and Luke Elson () then developed it further.…”
In 1997 John Broome presented the Collapsing Argument that was meant to establish that non‐conventional comparative relations (e.g., “parity,” “imprecise equality,” “incommensurability”) cannot exist. Broome's argument has faced a lot of scrutiny and a certain type of counterexample has been used to undermine it. Most of the counterexamples focus on the Collapsing Principle which plays a central role in Broome's argument. In this article we will take a closer look at the most common type of counterexample and propose how to adjust the Collapsing Principle in order to avoid objections based on these counterexamples. We argue that a weaker version of the Collapsing Principle is not susceptible to the classical counterexamples. Furthermore, after an explorative discussion about the intuitions behind the original principle, we show that this weaker formulation is at least as intuitive as the principle suggested by Broome.
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