Erich Rast | Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa (original) (raw)

Books by Erich Rast

Lexington, 2022

ABOUT THIS BOOK The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of "better than" and "good," a... more ABOUT THIS BOOK The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of "better than" and "good," as well as the way in which values serve as a basis for rational decision making. Drawing methodologically from economics and theories of decision making, the aim of serious axiology in metaethics is to do justice to problems that have puzzled philosophers of value for centuries. Can value comparisons be cyclic? Are all values comparable with each other and can decision makers just add up different aspects of an evaluation to determine the best course of action? A Theory of Value Structure: From Values to Decisions starts with a thorough introduction to the modeling of "better than" comparisons from a normative perspective. In the philosophical part of the book, Erich H. Rast argues that aspects of "better than" comparisons can differ qualitatively so much that one aspect may outrank another. Consequently, the classical weighted sum aggregation model fails. Values cannot always be summed up and comparisons may be fundamentally noncompensatory, an indeterminacy that explains problems like the apparent nontransitivity of "better than" and hard cases in decision making. Using a lexicographic method of value comparisons, Rast develops a multidimensional theory of "better than" and shows how and to which extent it can be combined with standard methods of decision making under uncertainty by using rank-dependent utility theory.

ISBN 978-1-7936-1694-4
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793616951/Theory-of-Value-Structure-From-Values-to-Decisions

Introduction to Formal Philosophy, 2018

Published in: Hansson, Sven Ove & Hendricks, Vincent (eds.): Introduction to Formal Philosophy, ... more Published in: Hansson, Sven Ove & Hendricks, Vincent (eds.): Introduction to Formal Philosophy, Cham, Switzerland: Springer 2019, pp. 241-250.

An overview of concept theory from a logical perspective.

Contents: Luca Baptista/Erich Rast: Introduction - Manuel García-Carpintero: Norms of Presupposit... more Contents: Luca Baptista/Erich Rast: Introduction - Manuel García-Carpintero: Norms of Presupposition - Emma Borg: Minimalism and the Content of the Lexicon - Anne Bezuidenhout: Contextualism and Information Structure: Towards a Science of Pragmatics - Augustín Vicente/Fernando Martínez-Manrique: Lexical Concepts: From Contextualism to Concept Decompositionalism - Isidora Stojanovic: Referring with Proper Names: Towards a Pragmatic Account - Kepa Korta/John Perry: Intentions to Refer - Brian Ball: What Is Semantic Content? - Sandy Berkovski: Some Remarks on Mthat - Teresa Marques: Truth and the Ambiguity of Negation - Ana Falcato: The Contextualist Fight Against Minimalism - Salvatore Pistoia-Reda: Some Notes on Game Theory and the Pragmatics of Alternatives - Andrei Moldovan: Can Uses of Language in Thought Provide Linguistic Evidence?

Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely ... more Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the first part of this book, a description theory of reference is developed and contrasted with the prevailing direct reference view with the goal of laying out their advantages and disadvantages. The author defends his version of indirect reference against well-known objections raised by Kripke in Naming and Necessity and his successors, and also addresses linguistic aspects like compositionality. In the second part, a detailed survey on indexical expressions is given based on a variety of typological data. Topics addressed are, among others: Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, conversational versus utterance context, context-shifting indexicals, the deictic center, token-reflexivity, vagueness of spatial and temporal indexicals, reference rules, and the epistemic and cognitive role of indexicals. From a descriptivist perspective on reference, various examples of simple and complex indexicals are analyzed in first-order predicate logic with reified contexts. A critical discussion of essential indexicality, de se readings of attitudes and accompanying puzzles rounds up the investigation.

Papers by Erich Rast

European Journal of Philosophy, 2024

A light form of value realism is defended according to which objective properties of comparison o... more A light form of value realism is defended according to which objective properties of comparison objects make value comparisons true or false. If one object has such a better-making property and another lacks it, this is sufficient for the truth of a corresponding value comparison. However, better-making properties are only necessary and usually not sufficient parts of the justifications of value comparisons. The account is not reductionist; it remains consistent with error-theoretic positions and the view that there are normative facts.

The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2024

Ordinal, interval, and ratio scales are discussed and arguments for the thesis that "better than"... more Ordinal, interval, and ratio scales are discussed and arguments for the thesis that "better than" comparisons reside on interval or ratio scales are laid out. It is argued that linguistic arguments are not conclusive since alternative rank-based definitions can be given, and that in general "better than" comparisons do not have a common scale type. Some comparison dimensions reside on ratio scales, whereas others do not show any evidence of lying on a scale stronger than an ordinal scale.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2022

In componential analysis, word meanings are (partly) decomposed into other meanings, and semantic... more In componential analysis, word meanings are (partly) decomposed into other meanings, and semantic and syntactic markers. Although a theory of word meaning based on such semantic decompositions remains compatible with the linguistic labor division thesis, it is not compatible with Kripke/Putnamstyle indexical externalism. Instead of abandoning indexical externalism, a Separation Thesis is defended according to which lexical meaning need not enter the truth-conditional content of an utterance. Lexical meaning reflects beliefs about word meaning shared in a speaker community, and these may rest on possibly erroneous world-level theories. It is argued that this type of lexical meaning is indispensable for explaining word composition processes and the rationality of metalinguistic disputes.

Wuppuluri, S., Stewart, I. (eds) From Electrons to Elephants and Elections, 2022

An overview of linguistic context dependence is given and it is argued that an approach is needed... more An overview of linguistic context dependence is given and it is argued that an approach is needed that considers interpretation an inference from truthconditionally incomplete to more speci c contents. However, the theory dependence of idiolects and concepts is another context dependence that poses philosophical problems. It is argued that these are worst for global holism of idiolects and concepts. Since local holism is more tenable, and rational agents also need to have the ability to compartmentalize mutually incompatible theories, the theory dependence of meaning is less problematic than it might appear at rst glance.

ABSTRACT.Thought experiments about de se attitudes and Jackson's original Knowledge Argument ... more ABSTRACT.Thought experiments about de se attitudes and Jackson's original Knowledge Argument are compared with each other and discussed from the perspective of a computational theory of mind. It is argued that internal knowledge, i.e. knowledge formed on the basis of signals that encode aspects of their own processing rather than being intentionally directed towards external objects, suffices for explaining the seminal puzzles without resorting to acquaintance or phenomenal character as primitive notions. Since computationalism is ontologically neutral, the account also explains why neither Lewis's two gods nor Mary's surprise in the Knowledge Argument violate physicalism.Keywords: phenomenal character, computationalism, de se attitudes, physicalism, acquaintance, the Knowledge ArgumentYou could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. To those entering the same river, other and still other waters flow.- Heraclitus, Fragments 4 1 &...

Alice presupposes that Bob knows that in the given situation there is some coffee she’s refering ... more Alice presupposes that Bob knows that in the given situation there is some coffee she’s refering to. (Presumably, she holds a cup of brown liquid in her hand and refers to the content of the cup.) Alice herself, if she’s not trying to deceive Bob, must believe as well that there’s coffee in the cup, and she believes that the coffee is good. !Literature !A Dialog !Common Ground !Update ! Illustration !Problems !Mad Scientist !Belief Sets !Expansion !Formal Update ! Informativity !Other Dialogs !Pragmatic Presupposition !Notes on Belief Revision !Problems !Compositional Projection

All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation ou... more All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations ...

Mind & Language, 2020

According to the theory theory of metalinguistic disputes, disagreements in metalinguistic disput... more According to the theory theory of metalinguistic disputes, disagreements in metalinguistic disputes are based on diverging underlying theories, opinions, or world views. An adequate description of metalinguistic disagreement needs to consider the compatibility and topics of such theories. Although topic continuity can be spelled out in terms of measurement operations, it is argued that even metalinguistic disputes about a term used in different, mutually compatible theories can be substantive because the dispute is indirectly about the virtues of the underlying theories. The account is defended against externalist and holist objections.

Axiomathes, 2020

According to the mixed lexicographic/additive account of 'better than' and similar aggregative va... more According to the mixed lexicographic/additive account of 'better than' and similar aggregative value comparatives like 'healthier than', values are multidimensional and different aspects of a value are aggregated into an overall assessment in a lexicographic way, based on an ordering of value aspects. It is argued that this theory can account for an acceptable definition of Chang's notion of parity and that it also offers a solution to Temkin's and Rachels's Spectrum Cases without giving up the transitivity of overall betterness. Formal details and proofs are provided in an Appendix.

Studies in Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, 2018

Bipolar argument graphs represent the structure of complex pro and contra arguments for one or mo... more Bipolar argument graphs represent the structure of complex pro and
contra arguments for one or more standpoints. In this article, ampliative and exclusionary principles of evaluating argument strength in bipolar acyclic argumentation graphs are laid out and compared to each other. Argument chains, linked arguments, link attackers and supporters, and convergent arguments are discussed. The strength of conductive arguments is also addressed but it is argued that more work on this type of argument is needed to properly distinguish argument strength from more general value-based components of such arguments. The overall conclusion of the article is that there is no justifiably unique solution to the problem of argument strength outside of a particular epistemological framework.

A phenomenon called perspectival disagreement is laid out and modeled on the basis of modificatio... more A phenomenon called perspectival disagreement is laid out and modeled on the basis of modifications to known consensus measures for qualitative representations of preferences and transitive values by binary relations. Cases of perspectival disagreement are of general philosophical interest, because they allow for the possibility that two or more agents judge the value positions of other agents differently even when their assessments are based on the same evidence. Various examples of perspectival disagreement are given, generalizations are discussed, and it is argued that any representation by cardinal utilities also gives rise to some form of perspectivity. Although the examples strongly suggest that this phenomenon occurs in real life, it is concluded in the end that it does not pose any fundamental threat to representations of preferences and values as binary relations. Instead, position-sensitive measures of disagreement ought to be taken as a modeling option for cases in which the relative importance of preference changes matters to an agent.

In a series of publications Burgess, Plunkett and Sundell have developed a metalinguistic nego... more In a series of publications Burgess, Plunkett and Sundell have developed a metalinguistic negotiation view that they call ‘Conceptual Ethics.’ I argue that their position adequately captures our intuition that some cases of value disputes are metalinguistic, but that they reverse the direction of justification when they state that speakers ‘negotiate’ the best use of a term or concept on the basis of its prior social role. Borrowing ideas from Putnam (1975b), I instead suggest distinguishing two meanings of general terms and value predicates. Core meaning represents the lowest common denominator between speakers and is primarily based on our needs to coordinate behavior. In contrast to this, the noumenal meaning of a general term or value predicate is intended to capture an aspect of reality and represents what a term really means. Like many other disputes about theoretical terms, terms for abstract objects, and predicates, metalinguistic value disputes are about noumenal meaning on the basis of a shared core meaning. This direction towards reality is what sets the account apart from mere metalinguistic negotiation.

The problem of value disagreement and contextualist, relativist and metalinguistic attempts of so... more The problem of value disagreement and contextualist, relativist and metalinguistic attempts of solving it are laid out. Although the metalin-guistic account seems to be on the right track, it is argued that it does not suffi ciently explain why and how disagreements about the meaning of evaluative terms are based on and can be decided by appeal to existing social practices. As a remedy, it is argued that original suggestions from Putnam's " The Meaning of 'Meaning' " ought to be taken seriously. The resulting dual aspect theory of meaning can explain value disagreement in much the same way as it deals with disagreement about general terms. However, the account goes beyond Putnam's by not just defending a version of social externalism, but also defending the thesis that the truth conditional meaning of many evaluative terms is not fi xed by experts either and instead constantly contested as part of a normal function of language.

Decision Theory is often considered the foundational framework for analyzing possible courses of ... more Decision Theory is often considered the foundational framework for analyzing possible courses of action and making a rational decision, yet no particular role is given to the moral attributes of alternatives in multi-criteria decision making. In this article, I lay out several ways of defining a decision as moral on the basis of attributes that have already been identified as morally relevant, while at the same time allowing the application of moral rules to be permeable or ‘soft’. Among these, the bipolar threshold view seems to be the most promising. It may be taken as one way among many to relax moral rules and may also be useful for group decision making.

Principles are investigated that allow one to establish a preference ordering between possible ac... more Principles are investigated that allow one to establish a preference ordering between possible actions based on the question of whether the acting agent himself or other agents will benefit or be harmed by the consequences of an action. It is shown that a combination of utility maximization, an altruist principle, and weak negative utilitarianism yields an ordering that seems to be intuitively appealing, although it does not necessarily reflect common everyday evaluations of actions.

Lexington, 2022

ISBN 978-1-7936-1694-4
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793616951/Theory-of-Value-Structure-From-Values-to-Decisions

Introduction to Formal Philosophy, 2018

An overview of concept theory from a logical perspective.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2024

The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2024

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2022

Wuppuluri, S., Stewart, I. (eds) From Electrons to Elephants and Elections, 2022

Mind & Language, 2020

Axiomathes, 2020

Studies in Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, 2018

In this article, monist values are expressed as preferences like in economics and decision making... more In this article, monist values are expressed as preferences like in economics and decision making. On the basis of this formalization, various ways of defining value disagreement of agents within a group are investigated. Twelve notions of categorical value disagreement are laid out. Since these are too coarse-grained for many purposes, known distance-based approaches like Kendall's Tau and Spearman's footrule are generalized from linear orders to preorders and position-sensitive variants are developed. The account is further generalized to allow for agents with incomplete information. The article ends with a discussion of known limitations of preference-based accounts of values and how these might be overcome by accounting for parity and essential incompleteness. It is also shown that one intuitively compelling notion of disagreement does not give rise to a proper distance measure.

In In Lihoreau, F. & Rebuschi, M. (eds.): Epistemology, Context, and Formalism. Springer 2014, pp. 9-39, 2014

The article provides an overview of linguistic context dependence and seeks to lay out some adequ... more The article provides an overview of linguistic context dependence and seeks to lay out some adequacy criteria that a theory of linguistic context dependence has to fulfill. Indexicals in the narrow sense are distinguished from the much more common contextuals. While indexicals proper semantically depend on a possibly shifted deictic center given by the context of a possible utterance, the broader class of contextuals are marked for and subject to additional interpretation depending on the doxastic context of a discourse participant. The interpretation of contextuals is sometimes mandatory and sometimes optional and using parametrized modal logics for these expressions as if they were pure indexicals is of limited use only. Instead, it is suggested to stipulate open argument places in the lexicon entries of contextuals and consider their interpretation a form of abductive inference to a narrowed down semantic content that is most plausible to an agent in a given context.Such a representation is desirable, because it hooks up the notion of interpretation with representations of graded belief from Formal Epistemology. An example of how to implement such an inference mechanism in a type theory with inner negation is given.

Review of Fenstad's "Mind, Grammar, and Brain", Studia Logica Vol. 101 No. 5 (Oct. 2013), DOI 10.1007/s11225-013-9521-4, Oct 2013

Synthese

Quantifier domain restriction (QDR) and two versions of nominal restriction (NR) are implemented ... more Quantifier domain restriction (QDR) and two versions of nominal restriction (NR) are implemented as restrictions that depend on a previously introduced interpreter and interpretation time in a two-dimensional semantic framework on the basis of simple type theory and categorial grammar. Against Stanley (2002) it is argued that a suitable version of QDR can deal with superlatives like tallest. However, it is shown that NR is needed to account for utterances when the speaker intends to convey different restrictions for multiple uses of the same quantifying determiner. We argue that NR generally fares better with such examples but also observe that examples like Every sailor waves at every sailor might be pragmatically anomalous. An account of contextual domain restriction is proposed that (i) excludes these anomalous readings (but it is shown how they could be included), (ii) makes it possible to express different contextual domain restrictions as long-range dependencies on an interpreter and an interpretation time, and (iii) additionally models restrictions based on locative constructions as general mereological constraints introduced by shifting the index.

Discussing Word Meaning: The Question of Internalism vs. Externalism was a talk given on May 20, ... more Discussing Word Meaning: The Question of Internalism vs. Externalism was a talk given on May 20, 2022, at the conference Metalinguistic Disagreement and Semantic Externalism, May 19-20, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon. It is based on Rast, Erich H. (forthcoming). Metalinguistic Disputes, Semantic Decomposition, and Externalism. Linguistics & Philosophy 2022.

IFILNOVA Open Seminar Series, 2022

Talk given at Open Seminar on 2022-3-11

ANTIDOTE Reading Group IFILNOVA UNL, 2021

Talk given in the ANTIDOTE project on Explainable AI (XAI) reading group at the Universidade Nova... more Talk given in the ANTIDOTE project on Explainable AI (XAI) reading group at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa on 2021-9-22. It briefly summarizes Harman's influential paper and mentions some criticisms and food for thought (some of it might be hard to follow without the talk).

IFILNOVA Ethics and Political Philosophy Reading Group, 2020

This is a talk about Hansson's overview article on "better than" and "good" in Hendricks/Hansson ... more This is a talk about Hansson's overview article on "better than" and "good" in Hendricks/Hansson (eds.): Introduction to Formal Philosophy. Springer 2018. The talk was given on March 4, 2020 in the IFILNOVA Ethics and Political Philosophy Reading Group of the Institute of Philosophy of the New University of Lisbon, organized by Susana Cadilha.

In Mohammed, D. & Lewinski, M.: Argumentation and Reasoned Action. Proceedings of the 1 st Europe... more In Mohammed, D. & Lewinski, M.: Argumentation and Reasoned Action. Proceedings of the 1 st European Conference on Argumentation, Lisbon 2015. College Publications 2016, pp. 181-186.

In this talk, I lay out existing work on categorical and graded value disagreement between agents... more In this talk, I lay out existing work on categorical and graded value disagreement between agents (consensus measures in Social Choice) in a qualitative setting, and indicate how to adjust it to nontraditional base relations.

MERELY Workshop IFILNOVA 2019, 2019

When the circumstances are good, people can follow other people's theories and world views with a... more When the circumstances are good, people can follow other people's theories and world views with an almost uncanny precision and are able to adapt their own world views and the meaning of terms they use with ease. How is this possible? Some authors have suggested topic continuity as a way of (partly) explaining why terminological disagreements remain substantive and not merely about words when different theories and world views are changing or are changed. In this talk, I lay out the ‘Tracking View’ of topic continuity and argue that it fares better than other accounts. However, I also argue that topic continuity is not needed for a philosophical justification of the potential fruitfulness of particular endeavours of Conceptual Engineering (Cappelen 2018) and Conceptual Ethics (Burgess & Plunkett 2013ab). Metalinguistic disagreements about a term can - and usually will - be substantive even when there is a good case to be made that the underlying background theories or world views are about different topics. If that is true, then a lack of topic continuity cannot be used as an argument against ameliorative projects.

If two speakers disagree about an evaluative term like ‘torture’ in a sentence like ‘Waterboardin... more If two speakers disagree about an evaluative term like ‘torture’ in a sentence like ‘Waterboarding is torture’, do they only talk past each other? On the basis of work by Plunkett&Sundell (2011, 2013, 2014), I lay out why existing contextualist and relativist proposals, which were originally developed for predicates of personal taste, fail to explain such value disagreement, but also criticize their own metalinguistic negotiation view. According to P&S, speakers negotiate the best use of a notion on the basis ‘. . . sociological facts about its sociological role’ (P&S 2013: p. 25), and the value disagreement can be substantial because there is something ‘. . . substantive at stake in how the relevant terms are used in the context [. . . ] and the speakers recognize this fact.’ (ibid.)
I argue that P&S are right in claiming that some of their own examples have a metalinguistic flavor, as they implicitly concern the question of what a given term really means. However, it can be shown that speakers do not negotiate the ‘best use’ of a term in value disputes and that despite their efforts P&S fail to argue convincingly that under the negotiation view the disagreement in question remains substantial. Instead, I propose a dual aspect theory of meaning that is based on a suggestion that Putnam (1975ab) made in the context of arguing for semantic externalism. Speakers agree about a truth-conditionally incomplete core meaning, a stereotype in Putnam’s parlance, of a value term while disagreeing about the noumenal meaning or what it really means. I show that once it is elaborated such a dual aspect theory of meaning can solve the puzzles raised by (supposedly) metalinguistic negotiation examples and that the same type of disagreement also occurs with other theoretical general terms like ‘atom’.

References
Plunket&Sundell (2014): Antipositivist Arguments from Legal Thought and Talk: The Metalinguistic Response. In Hubb, G. & Lind, D. (Eds.): Pragmatism, Law, and Language, Routledge, 2014, 56-75.
– (2013): Disagreement and the Semantics of Normative and Evaluative Terms. Philosophers' Imprint, 13, 1-37.
Putnam, H. (1975a): The Meaning of ‘Meaning’. In H. Putnam: Mind, Language and Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1975, 215-271.
– (1975b): Is Semantics Possible? In H. Putnam: Mind,Language and Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1975, 187-201.
Sundell, T. (2011): Disagreements about taste. Philosophical Studies, Vol. 155, 267-288.

Keywords: value disagreement, contextualism, relativism, truth-conditional semantics, dual aspect theories

Talk at the 3rd International Conference on Economic Philosophy (PhilEco2016), GREQAM, Aix-en-Pro... more Talk at the 3rd International Conference on Economic Philosophy (PhilEco2016), GREQAM, Aix-en-Provence, France

This talk was given at the 2014 Congress of the Portuguese Society of Philosophy at the Gulbenkia... more This talk was given at the 2014 Congress of the Portuguese Society of Philosophy at the Gulbenkian Foundation and UNL. It is based on a paper that is currently 'floating around for an indefinite time' in the inbox of some journal.

Many thanks and credits go to Toby Ord who maintains an excellent web page on NU (which should be published)!

Moderate possibilism can be used to talk about all kinds of nonexistent objects -- see my IFL tal... more Moderate possibilism can be used to talk about all kinds of nonexistent objects -- see my IFL talk for more details. The logic used is closely related to the system of Priest's (who also was there) but bivalent and much less powerful. You may find it in my contribution to Lihoreau (2010).

Value Seminar Series, IFILNOVA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2019

Problem discussion in FCT project "Values in Argumentative Discourse" @ IFILNOVA, meeting of the... more Problem discussion in FCT project "Values in Argumentative Discourse" @ IFILNOVA, meeting of the Value Seminar on Friday 12.4. at 16 o'clock, Sala 0.06, Piso 0 of the ID building

IFILNOVA ArgLab Colloqium, 2019

In this talk, I lay out a multidimensional theory of the structure of ‘better than’ comparisons a... more In this talk, I lay out a multidimensional theory of the structure of
‘better than’ comparisons and uses of similar gradable evaluative
adjectives and show how such an approach can adequately explain
Spectrum Cases by Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin without giving up the
transitivity of overall ‘better than’ comparisons between comparable
items. The theory also allows for a definition of parity that has (most
of) the properties laid out by Ruth Chang while at the meantime doing
justice to the idea that parity is a relation between evaluatively
different aspects. Multiple aspects of value comparisons are aggregated
as ordinal utilities based on a variant of the Borda Count method. Ways
of modifying the approach to allow for cardinal utilities and some
remaining hard problems are also briefly addressed.

Eplab, IFILNOVA, 2019

Talk given on Wednesday 23. 1. 2019 about Justin Klocksiem's outstanding paper: How to accept the... more Talk given on Wednesday 23. 1. 2019 about Justin Klocksiem's outstanding paper: How to accept the transitivity of "better than", Philosophical Studies, Vol. 173:1309-1334 at the IFILNOVA Ethics & Political Philosophy Reading Group of the EpLab section.

Erich Rast: "Lexicographic Principles in the Theory of Value Structure", talk given at the Value ... more Erich Rast: "Lexicographic Principles in the Theory of Value Structure", talk given at the Value Research Seminar of the project "Values in Argumentative Discourse" of the IFILNOVA Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, March 16, 2018.

Erich Rast: "Passing the Buck the Right Way", talk given at the Value Seminar of the project "Val... more Erich Rast: "Passing the Buck the Right Way", talk given at the Value Seminar of the project "Values in Argumentative Discourse" at IFILNOVA Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, December 2017.

A non-ampliative model of argument strength for bipolar acyclic argumentation graphs is proposed ... more A non-ampliative model of argument strength for bipolar acyclic
argumentation graphs is proposed in which the strength of argument
chains, linked arguments, link attackers and supporters, and convergent
arguments is characterized on the basis of a small number of
rationality postulates from which concrete modes of combination are
derived. The model is justified and contrasted with ampliative
approaches. The strength of conductive arguments is also addressed, but
it is argued that more work on this type of argument is needed to
properly distinguish argument strength from a more general criteria- or
value-based component.

DICIONÁRIO DE FILOSOFIA MORAL E POLÍTICA, 2019

This is the English version of an entry ‘Valores’ in António Marques & André Santos Campos (eds.... more This is the English version of an entry ‘Valores’ in António Marques & André Santos Campos (eds.): DICIONÁRIO DE FILOSOFIA MORAL E POLÍTICA, URL http://www.ifilnova.pt/pages/dictionary-of-moral-and political-philosophy; translated into Portuguese by Susana Cadilha; forthcoming 2019. I’m putting this English version online in case someone might find it informative.

The article gives an overview of value representations in economics and decision making and discu... more The article gives an overview of value representations in economics and decision making and discusses ways in which these might be relevant to the philosophy of value. In economics values are based on preferences and, more broadly, ordering relations which are connected to value functions (viz., utility) via representation theorems. Standard models with additive value aggregation are laid out, and then non-standard approaches in which the underlying ordering relations may be incomplete or fail to be transitive are discussed in the context of their suitability for a general theory of value (axiology).

This is a short primer on indexical expressions from a seminar in 2008. It doesn't take into acco... more This is a short primer on indexical expressions from a seminar in 2008. It doesn't take into account more recent literature but perhaps someone finds it useful.

Slides for a talk given 2021-3-3 at the Ethics and Political Philosophy reading group at the EPLa... more Slides for a talk given 2021-3-3 at the Ethics and Political Philosophy reading group at the EPLab of the Nova Institute of Philosophy, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Uppsala Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy, 2019

Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels have devised Spectrum Cases as a challenge to the traditional tra... more Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels have devised Spectrum Cases
as a challenge to the traditional transitive model of 'better than'
comparisons and corresponding principles of rational choice. Moreover,
Ruth Chang has argued that besides 'better than', 'equally good', and
'worse than' there is a fourth value relation 'being on a par'. In this
talk, I lay out the beginnings of a multidimensional theory of ordinal
'better than' comparisons with an accompanying lexicographic value
aggregation method. The theory does justice to the intuitions behind
Spectrum Cases and parity without forcing us to give up the
transitivity of overall betterness for comparable items. However,
the increased expressiveness of a multidimensional account leads to
(known) problems with the aggregation of value aspects.

Decision making under risk and uncertainty is a well-explored topic but many of the philosophical... more Decision making under risk and uncertainty is a well-explored topic but many of the philosophical problems in the area have been discussed on the basis of single preference relations or corresponding monist utility representations or on the basis of overall betterness without taking into account the fine structure of values, multiple criteria, different value dimensions, and their aggregation. The purpose of this conference is to bring together experts in decision making and practical reasoning and experts in value theory from (meta-)ethics to take a fresh look at the interplay between values and uncertainty in decision making and the normative problems that may arise from uncertainty during the evaluation of policies and possible courses of action.

Conference Homepage: https://sites.google.com/view/lvu18lisbon

Call for Abstracts: Please send a 2-page abstract (1000 words) of your paper that is suitable for a 30 minute talk to LVU18Conference@gmail.com with LVU18 in the subject header until 1st September 2018. Suggestions for topics (non-exhaustive list):-epistemic versus moral uncertainty and their role in decision making-methods of value aggregation and their interplay with risk and uncertainty-the failure of the trichotomy thesis and uncertainty-inductive risk-nontransitive betterness relations and their role in decision making under uncertainty-moral peer disagreement-hypothetical retrospection and other evaluative heuristics-weighing versus outranking of reasons about future actions-value-based argument and practical reasoning about uncertain events-essential comparability and the evaluation of uncertain events-nonconsenquentialist criteria in expected utility theory-normative arguments for and against decision principles (e.g. Expected Utility, Maximin, Minimax with Regret) and their connection to uncertainty-possible relations between stakes, uncertainty, and moral flexibility-lexicographic theories of value structure and their combination with risk and uncertainty-qualitative decision making under uncertainty and Arrow's Theorem-value conflicts and moral dilemmas in the context of decision making under uncertainty-the normative role of temporal discounting in population ethics and medical decision making-normative problems of cataclysms, high stakes, and very low probability events-value pluralism and policy making in the light of an uncertain future