Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:57:19.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE SMALL IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENT, EPISTEMICISM AND INCOMPARABILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2018

Edmund Tweedy Flanigan  and
John Halstead
Edmund Tweedy Flanigan
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02143USA. Email: [email protected]. URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/eflanigan.
John Halstead
Affiliation:
Researcher, Founders Pledge. 58 Geldeston Road, Cazenove, London E5 8SB, UK. Email: [email protected]. URL: www.johnhalstead.org
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The Small Improvement Argument (SIA) is the leading argument for value incomparability. All vagueness-based accounts of the SIA have hitherto assumed the truth of supervaluationism, but supervaluationism has some well-known problems. This paper explores the implications of epistemicism, a leading rival theory. We argue that if epistemicism is true, then options are comparable in small improvement cases. Moreover, even if SIAs do not exploit vagueness, if epistemicism is true, then options cannot be on a par. The epistemicist account of the SIA has an advantage over leading existing rival accounts of the SIA because it accounts for higher-order hard cases.

Keywords

small improvement argumentcompletenesscomparabilityvaguenessepistemicismsupervaluationism
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 199 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors are ordered alphabetically to denote ‘roughly equal’ contribution.

References

REFERENCES

Broome, J. 1997. Is incommensurability vagueness? In Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reasoning, ed. Chang, R., 67–89. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 1999. Ethics out of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 2004. Weighing Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bueno, O. and Colyvan, M.. 2012. Just what is vagueness? Ratio 25: 19–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2011.00513.x.Google Scholar
Chang, R. (ed.) 1997. Introduction. In Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason, 1–34. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chang, R. 2002. The possibility of parity. Ethics 112: 659–688.Google Scholar
Dunaway, B. 2016. Ethical vagueness and practical reasoning. Philosophical Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqw038.Google Scholar
Elson, L. 2014. Heaps and chains: is the chaining argument for parity a sorites? Ethics 124: 557–571.Google Scholar
Espinoza, N. 2008. The small improvement argument. Synthese 165: 127–139.Google Scholar
Greenough, P. 2003. Vagueness: a minimal theory. Mind 112: 235–281. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/112.446.235.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, J. E. 2013. Indeterminacy and the small-improvement argument. Utilitas 25: 433–445.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, J. E. 2014. Neither ‘good’ in terms of ‘better’ nor ‘better’ in terms of ‘good’. Noûs 48: 466–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12038.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, J. E. 2017. Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value. Unpublished ms.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. and McGonigal, A.. 2008. The many minds account of vagueness. Philosophical Studies 138: 435–440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9110-3.Google Scholar
Huemer, M. 2013. Transitivity, comparative value, and the methods of ethics. Ethics 123: 318–345. https://doi.org/10.1086/668905.Google Scholar
Hyde, D. 1997. From heaps and gaps to heaps of gluts. Mind 106: 641–660.Google Scholar
Keefe, R. and Smith, P.. 1997. Introduction: theories of vagueness. In Vagueness: A Reader, 1–57. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Messerli, M. and Reuter, K.. 2016. Hard cases of comparison. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0796-y.Google Scholar
Raz, J. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rescher, N. 2009. Unknowability: An Inquiry into the Limits of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Sorensen, R. 1988. Vagueness, measurement, and blurriness. Synthese 75: 45–82.Google Scholar
Sorensen, R. 2001. Vagueness and Contradiction. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sorensen, R. 2013. Vagueness. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, E. N., Winter 2013. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/vagueness/.Google Scholar
Sousa, R. B. de. 1974. The good and the true. Mind 83: 534–551.Google Scholar
Wasserman, R. 2004. Indeterminacy, ignorance and the possibility of parity. Philosophical Perspectives 18: 391–403. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2004.00034.x.Google Scholar
Williams, J. R. G. 2016. Indeterminacy, angst and conflicting values. Ratio 29: 412–433. https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12141.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 1994. Vagueness. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 1997. Précis of vagueness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57: 921–928. https://doi.org/10.2307/2953810.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 1999. On the structure of higher-order vagueness. Mind 108: 127–143.Google Scholar
Wright, C. 2010. The illusion of higher-order vagueness. In Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, Its Nature and Its Logic, ed. Dietz, R. and Moruzzi, S., 523–549. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar