James Griffin
Griffin, James Reference library
Roger Crisp
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2 ed.)
...James ( 1933– ). Moral philosopher best known for work on well-being , interpersonal comparison of well-being, and consequentialism. His first book was Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism (Oxford, 1964 ). In Well-Being (Oxford, 1986 ), Griffin argues for an ‘informed-desire theory’: well-being consists in the possession of those objects one would desire if rational and informed. These are accomplishment, the components of human existence (autonomy, basic capabilities to act, etc.), understanding, enjoyment, and deep personal relations. The...
Pareto optimality Reference library
D. W. Haslett
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2 ed.)
...for purposes of this criterion, a person is ‘better off’ with some alternative A rather than B if and only if this person prefers A to B . An advantage of this criterion is that it provides a way of evaluating alternative social states that does not require interpersonal utility comparisons. Prof. D. W. Haslett Allen Buchanan , Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market (Totowa, NJ,...
Pareto principle Quick reference
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
...better. The principle can also be stated in terms of wellbeing rather than preferences. Whether the Pareto principle delivers a social welfare function clearly depends on how unanimous the members of the society are. The great advantage of Pareto optimality is that no interpersonal comparisons of utility are needed in the application of the principle; it therefore avoids problems connected with the strength of preferences. The weakness of basing policy on the principle is that it tends to favour the status quo , since only one dissent is sufficient to prevent...
Harsanyi, John Charles (1920–2000) Reference library
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
...approach. This paper also reiterates his famous solution for the problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility. He holds that the best solution rests with the “similarity postulate.” The view is that if we adequately can imagine ourselves into the shoes of another, with her tastes, background, education, and such, then it is reasonable to assume that the preferences I would myself have are and their intensity would be the same. This would give us a point of comparison between the utility scale of myself and another. Harsanyi’s work in philosophy will...
pluralism Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...them. However, beyond a parsimonious list of shared basic values pluralists admit a legitimate difference between equally permissible moral codes. Therefore, there is not always a single solution to moral questions, nor a simple way of adjudicating interpersonal conflicts, or making interpersonal welfare comparisons. In political philosophy, some theorists see a privileged relationship between pluralism and liberalism , insofar as liberalism provides a framework within which individuals can freely choose among competing goods, and which hence is hospitable to...
utilitarianism Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...in economic value theory. Interpersonal comparisons, and with them the tendency to conceive utility or welfare as cardinal and aggregative across individuals, were now generally shunned in favour of ordinal-value theory based on the ranking of states of affairs. This way of looking at the world originated with the Manuale di economia politica ( 1927 ) by Vilfredo Pareto ( 1848–1923 ). In principle, aggregative utility calculations allow us to rank and compare all states of affairs, but where interpersonal comparisons or aggregative calculations are...
Gauthier, David Peter (1932–) Reference library
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
...and minimal claims to the cooperative surplus. The principle says that no one may receive a relative benefit smaller than necessary. Under certain conditions, it requires equal relative concessions. The principle does not require interpersonal comparisons of utility; rather, it would have us look at an interpersonal comparison of the proportion of each person’s potential gain from cooperation that must be conceded. Gauthier’s principle is similar to the solution to the two-person bargaining problem, axiomatized by Ehud Kalai and Meir Smorodinsky. Most game...
Sen, Amartya Kumar (1931) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...of elementary capabilities. Sen's capability approach also leads to important criticisms of John Rawls 's concept of ‘justice as fairness’, although by Sen's own admission he owes a substantial intellectual debt to Rawls's theory. In contrast with Rawls, who makes interpersonal comparisons in terms of bundles of primary goods, Sen argues that the ranking of Rawlsian primary goods bundles must be ultimately related to the individuals' evaluation of these bundles in terms of their usefulness in promoting the diverse objectives of different persons. Thus the...
Taylor, Charles Margrave (1931) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...theories take the capacity of language to bring something to expression as basic. This can be done well, or ‘got right’, in a variety of ways – such as by articulating a feeling properly, or by evoking the right mood, or by establishing an appropriate interpersonal relation – and so will often not be a matter of forming an accurate representation. Indeed, bringing something to expression is not in the first instance a matter of describing an independent object at all. Emotions , moods and social relations, for instance, can be...
Personification of Art Reference library
Brian Soucek
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...to that of the original) by invoking our intuitions about the inadequacy of a cloned or ghostly substitute for a person we love ( Danto, 1993 , 1999 ; Sagoff, 1978 ). Putting aside the vexed questions of personal identity that these comparisons ignore, it may seem surprising that our intuitions about interpersonal love should tell us anything at all about the aesthetic value of works of art. As it turns out, these thought experiments are built upon the (possibly question-begging) analogy that artworks, like persons, are loved in part for their...
Punishment Reference library
Jože Krašovec
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics
...this sense it is justifiable to speak of collective retribution. This is not a pathway to forgiveness, nor does it touch on interpersonal relationships. No wonder, then, that most ancient cultures and religions tend to fatalism and collectivistic views of humankind. The depth dimensions of human beings remain essentially untouched. Hebrew religion holds the belief that punishment of wrongdoers is an attribute of divine justice. Comparisons of laws in the ancient Near East with the Bible show that biblical law is not the product of secular jurisprudence....
Relational Aesthetics Reference library
Beata Hock
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...their respective “canon” of relational artists. This is how an insightful blog entry at hyperallergic.com presented the British-German artist Tino Seghal as another pertinent name. Instead of physical objects, Seghal too presents constructed situations where the material is interpersonal exchange: one or more people carry out instructions conceived by the artist, at times deliberately interacting with the audience. These pieces, however, have tight scripts even as they leave ample space for chance operated sequences, and the occurring conversations are...
Everyday Aesthetics Reference library
Yuriko Saito
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...of the object experienced within the flow of daily life. Of special note among the diverse ways in which we manage our everyday life is interactions with other people. Sometimes referred to as “social aesthetics,” everyday aesthetics illuminates how the character of interpersonal relationships and social environments is affected by aesthetic factors, ranging from facial expressions, tone of voice, and bodily gestures to the way in which we handle objects. The moral character of an action, such as respectful and thoughtful or uncaring and spiteful, is...
Philippians and Philemon Reference library
Jae Won Lee
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics
... 7 , Paul introduces the topos of friendship, an appeal to the love between Philemon and himself as followers of Jesus. He reiterates this topos in verse 17 where he evokes a relationship of mutuality ( koinos ) with Philemon. Paul appeals to Philemon on the basis of their interpersonal friendship. But he also draws the circle around their friendship to include Onesimus. The strength of this last relationship is reflected in kinship language—father and child. What is more, Paul twice refers to Onesimus as his very “heart” ( splanchna , vv. 12 , 10 ),...
Animism Reference library
Spyros Papapetros
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...those of tomorrow. ( Durkheim, 1965 , p. 217) Perhaps the diachronic appeal of animism from archaic to modern societies lies precisely in its hidden collective dimension that contrary to fetishist practices extends the notions of sociability and group correspondence from interpersonal relations to reciprocal exchanges with and among things based on a greater equanimity of being. To be sure animist ideas have been repudiated and defended, or even vanished and then again revived, more than once over the course of the twentieth century; their trajectory...
Monotheism Reference library
James McGrath
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics
...that did not mean that such a practice could not be pleasing to another deity. It is arguable that the move in the direction of monotheism in the religion of the people of Judah led naturally to the expectation that certain practices—whether cultic ones or matters of human interpersonal interaction—could be defined in stark terms as either pleasing or abhorrent to the one God. We see the challenges this created for those involved in reimagining God and ethics in this framework in the contrasting statements about child sacrifice offered by the prophets...
Genesis Reference library
Andreas Schuele
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics
...materialize. What they do, where they go, how they interact with each other and with foreigners is presented as a consequence of this walking with and before God. Although not entirely accurate, one could call this a virtue ethics, although the virtues are not so much interpersonal forms of behavior as, for example, Aristotle defines it, but flow from a particular religious experience, namely the encounter with God. One might even say that Genesis is, at least to some extent, quite critical of any reliance on the character (or character formation) of...
Sermon on the Mount Reference library
Ruben Zimmermann
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics
...discourses concerning God. However, the principle of the reciprocal consequences of action is breached in particular with regard to one’s neighbors. One should not love simply with the intention of being loved in return. Love of one’s enemy has no motivation on the level of interpersonal barter. It can expect no reward. Instead, one can hope for reward in heaven ( 5:46 ). This reward of a behavior by God is expressed explicitly in 6:4 and 6:18 (your Father…will reward you), but it goes beyond a normal consequentialist reflection. I call this intertwined...
Creativity Reference library
Carl R. Hausman, I. C. Jarvie, and Albert Rothenberg
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...possessing such assumed capacities have been motivated to be creative because of both positive and negative factors and experiences, that the subject matter and style of creative works, especially artworks, often derive from particular constellations of intrapsychic or interpersonal events, that various types of pathology are overcome in producing creative work, and that having inborn creative capacities influences overall psychological development. Both the endowment and the individual differences perspectives are concerned with qualities of the creative...
