Why Care to Be Fair? An Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Value Theory
  1. Table of Contents
  2. Why Be Fair?
    1. You are fair and you are concerned that others do well
    2. People committed to fairness have tied a hand behind their back
    3. What makes a life go well?
    4. The point of being fair
    5. Being committed to fairness and having a reputation for fairness
    6. Not being fair beats being fair
    7. Two objections: we are not self-controlled or knowledgeable enough to prosper through being ready to be unfair; the best way to maintain a reputation for fairness is to be committed to fairness
    8. Being unfair will disturb one’s conscience
  3. Why Be Fair (2)?
    1. Valuing something instrumentally and valuing it for its own sake explained
    2. Fairness as an instrumental value
    3. No one values fairness for its own sake
    4. The implicit premise: love is not love which alters when it alteration finds
    5. Is the implicit premise true?
    6. Summing up: foolish to be committed to fairness as a tool; loving fairness for its own sake is possible
  4. Fairness and Friends
    1. Cheats and manipulators: To lack a commitment to fairness is not in itself to be a cheat or manipulator
    2. Fairness and personal relationships
    3. Friends are special
  5. Good and Right as Reasons for Action
    1. That fairness is good or right is a reason to be committed to fairness (introduction)
    2. Understanding the concept of good
    3. Fairness might be both good and bad
    4. Its goodness as a reason for acting; practical reasons are belief-desire pairs
    5. Its being right as a reason for acting
    6. Good and right as empty
  6. Ends and Means
    1. Two ways to honour a value
    2. Utilitarianism
    3. Deontology
    4. Consequences or intrinsic properties?
  7. Nothing Possesses Value Intrinsically
    1. Doing things with false sentences
    2. The evidence argument that values are tastes
    3. The psychological argument that values are tastes
    4. The normative-properties argument that values are tastes
    5. Summing up
  8. Relativism about Value
    1. The central thesis of relativism about value
    2. The thesis of intercultural value difference
    3. The cultural differences argument for relativism about value
    4. An inference-to-the-best-explanation argument for relativism about value
    5. The evaluation-requires-standards argument for relativism about value
  9. Implications of Relativism
    1. Reviewing the relativistic conception of value
    2. We all belong to many cultures
    3. The culture to which the agent belongs is not the only potentially relevant culture
    4. Reasons and evaluations
  10. Relativism about Value and Tolerance
    1. What relativism about value isn’t
    2. Cross-cultural judgement
    3. Relativism and tolerance
    4. A relativist defence of tolerance
    5. A critique of the relativist defence of tolerance
  11. Values Are Real
    1. Compare and contrast
    2. Realism about value
    3. Don’t make of yourself an exception
  12. Respect
    1. “Respect” disambiguated
    2. Respect for personhood or autonomy
    3. Manipulating, humiliating and burdening
    4. Burdening others disrespectfully
  13. Punishment, Freedom and the Golden Rule
    1. Respect in the context of penalties and punishment
    2. Respect for autonomy and the civil liberties
    3. Rules golden, silver and platinum
  14. Reasoning about What to Do
    1. Relativism about value
  15. Why Cultivate Virtue?
  16. The Wisdom of Loving Fairness

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