Value Pluralism versus Value Monism

Monism, Dualism, Pluralism

1. Consider the basic outlines of the mind-body debate as it is found in contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The central question is “whether mental phenomena are physical phenomena, and if not, how they relate to physical phenomena.” Over the centuries, a wide range of possible solutions to this problem have emerged. These are the various “isms” familiar to any student of the deba...

Horacio Spector Value Pluralism and the Two Concepts of Rights

Philosophers and legal theorists still disagree about the correct analysis of ‘rights’, both moral and legal. The ‘Will Theory’ and the ‘Interest Theory’—the two main views—can each account for various features of rights, but neither of them is totally satisfactory. The controversy has now been running for decades and seems irresolvable. I will contend in this paper that the discussion of ‘valu...

Value pluralism and economic valuation – defendable if well done

Scientists talk of “ecosystem services” and their economic value when arguing for the conservation of biodiversity. The limits to this line of argumentation are analysed based on the philosophy of values (axiology), exploring different kinds of values and discussing which of them can be adequately described with economic methods. The three promises of economic valuation, raising awareness in po...

Causal Pluralism versus Epistemic Causality

It is tempting to analyse causality in terms of just one of the indicators of causal relationships, e.g., mechanisms, probabilistic dependencies or independencies, counterfactual conditionals or agency considerations. While such an analysis will surely shed light on some aspect of our concept of cause, it will fail to capture the whole, rather multifarious, notion. So one might instead plump fo...

Monism and Pluralism: The History of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Architecture - Part I