Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling

Abstract: This paper will focus on a specific problem in the somewhat boundless field of metaphor theory. Although this problem may sound merely psychological, insofar as it includes such terms as "image" and "feeling," I would rather characterize it as a problem arising on the boundary between a semantic theory of metaphor and a psychological theory of imagination and feeling. By a semantic theory, I mean an inquiry into the capacity of metaphor to provide untranslatable information and, accordingly, into metaphor's claim to yield some true insight about reality. The question to which I will address myself is whether such an inquiry may be completed without including as a necessary component a psychological moment of the kind usually described as "image" or "feeling." At first glance, it seems that it is only in theories in which metaphorical phrases have no informative value and consequently no truth claim that the so-called images or feelings are advocated as substitutive explanatory factors. By substitutive explanation I mean the attempt to derive the alleged significance of metaphorical phrases from their capacity to display streams of images and to elicit feelings that we mistakenly hold for genuine information and for fresh insight into reality. My thesis is that it is not only for theories which deny metaphors any informative value and any truth claim that images and feelings have a constitutive function. I want instead to show that the kind of theory of metaphor initiated by I. A. Richards in Philosophy of Rhetoric, Max Black in Models and Metaphors, Beardsley, Berggren, and others cannot achieve its own goal without including imagining and feeling, that is, without assigning a semantic function to what seems to be mere psychological features and

Campaign contributions and access

Abstract: An important and pervasive view of campaign contributions is that they are given to promote access to successful candidates under circumstances when such access would not ordinarily be given. In this story, access is valuable as it offers groups the opportunity to influence legislative decisions through the provision of policy-relevant information. Under complete information regarding donors' policy preferences, I argue that this model predicts a negative relationship between contributions and the extent to which the groups' and the recipient legislators' preferences are similar. However, one of the more robust empirical findings in the literature is that this relationship is positive. Relaxing the informational assumption on donors' preferences, I reexamine the access story with a model in which campaign contributions can act as signals of policy preference and the (informational) value of access to any agent is endogenous.

Morals and Markets

Abstract: The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously. In contrast, for morally neutral consumption choices, differences between institutions are small.

Risk and Rationality: Philosophical Foundations for Populist Reforms

Abstract: Only ten to twelve percent of Americans would voluntarily live within a mile of a nuclear plant or hazardous waste facility. But industry spokespersons claim that such risk aversion represents ignorance and paranoia, and they lament that citizen protests have delayed valuable projects and increased their costs. Who is right? In "Risk and Rationality", Kristin Shrader-Frechette argues that neither charges of irresponsible endangerment nor countercharges of scientific illiteracy frame the issues properly. She examines the debate over methodological norms for risk evaluation and finds analysts arrayed in a spectrum.Points of view extend from cultural relativists who believe that any risk can be justified (since no rational standards are ultimately possible) to naive positivists who believe that risk evaluation can be objective, neutral, and value free. Both camps, she argues, are wrong, because risk evaluation as a social process is rational and objective, even though all risk-evaluation rules are value-laden. Shrader-Frechette defends a middle position called "scientific proceduralism". She shows why extremist views are unreliable, reveals misconceptions underlying current risk-evaluation methods and strategies, and sketches the reforms needed to set hazard assessment and risk evaluation on a publicly defensible foundation. These reforms involve mathematical, economic, ethical, and legal procedures.They constitute a new paradigm for assessment when acceptance of public hazards is rational, recognizing that laypersons are often more rational in their evaluation of societal risks than either experts or governments have acknowledged. Such reforms would provide citizens with more influence in risk decisions and focus on mediating ethical conflicts, rather than seeking to impose the will of experts. Science, she argues, need not preclude democracy.