Problems of Choice

This volume features new, cutting-edge research on problems of choice in connection with four different fields of inquiry: normativity, rationality, axiology, and morality. It addresses a wide range of pressing issues to which problems of choice and practical conflicts give rise, and the various ways in which philosophical theories are used to represent them.

Philosophers often think about making choices in terms of trying to determine what we have most reason to do, what is the best choice overall, what is most rational, or what we ought to do all things considered. Such models of choice appear theoretically neat, but quickly run into another problem that we experience in our everyday lives: that the reasons, values, considerations, and normative perspectives that we take as our input are diverse and sometimes of a conflicting nature. In addition to familiar debates about value pluralism, recent philosophical work has argued that normativity is pluralistic and fragmented: it consists of competing standpoints among which adjudication is not possible when they conflict. The chapters in this volume extend the problem of commensurability into the wider domains of reasons and normativity. Part 1 on normativity focuses on whether we can find an authoritative normative standpoint that can determine how we ought to act. Part 2 on rationality examines decision-theoretic models and how we make rational choices in the face of conflicting identities and desires. Part 3 on axiology addresses questions concerning value commensurability and comparability as well as their relation to fittingness and deontic status. Finally, Part 4 on morality look at the relationship between morality and prudence as providing two potentially different types of reasons, and the extent to which these reasons conflict.

Problems of Choice will appeal to researchers and graduate students working in normative ethics, metaethics, political philosophy, and decision theory.