Value in ethics and economics / Elizabeth Anderson.
1993
BD232 .A48 1993 (Map It)
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Details
Author
Title
Value in ethics and economics / Elizabeth Anderson.
Published
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, [1993]
Copyright
©1993
Call Number
BD232 .A48 1993
ISBN
0674931890
9780674931893
0674097327
9780674097322
0674931904 (pbk.)
9780674931909 (pbk.)
9780674931893
0674097327
9780674097322
0674931904 (pbk.)
9780674931909 (pbk.)
Description
xiv, 245 pages ; 24 cm
System Control No.
(OCoLC)27430064
Summary
Women as commercial baby factories, nature as an economic resource, life as one big shopping mall: This is what we get when we use the market as a common measure of value. Elizabeth Anderson offers an alternative - a new theory of value and rationality that rejects cost-benefit analysis in our social lives, and in our ethical theories. The market has invaded the realm of ethics, giving us a quantitative account of values that fails to do justice to the richness and variety of our ethical experience. But valuing, this book suggests, is not simply something we do more or less. It is something we do in different ways. By asking how we value something, instead of how much, Anderson's theory guides us to a deeper understanding of how and why the goods we value differ in kind - how and why, for instance, objects of love, respect, and admiration differ from objects of mere use. By understanding these differences, we should be able to determine which goods can properly be treated as commodities, and which cannot. This account of the plurality of values thus offers a new approach, beyond welfare economics and traditional theories of justice, to assessing the ethical limitations of the market. In this light, Anderson discusses several contemporary controversies involving the proper scope of the market, including commercial surrogate motherhood, privatization of public services, and the application of cost-benefit analysis to issues of workplace safety and environmental protection.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-240) and index.
Available in Other Form
Online version: Anderson, Elizabeth, 1959- Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993 (OCoLC)609187900
Online version: Anderson, Elizabeth, 1959- Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993 (OCoLC)624385897
Online version: Anderson, Elizabeth, 1959- Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993 (OCoLC)624385897
Record Appears in
Table of Contents
Preface
1
A Pluralist Theory of Value
1
1.1A Rational Attitude Theory of Value
1
1.2Ideals and Self-Assessment
5
1.3How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation
8
1.4How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization
11
2
An Expressive Theory of Rational Action
17
2.1Value and Rational Action
17
2.2The Framing of Decisions
22
2.3The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs
26
2.4Consequentialism
30
2.5Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self
38
3
Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods
44
3.1The Advantages of Consequentialism
44
3.2A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value Judgments
47
3.3Incommensurable Goods
55
3.4Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods
59
4
Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints
65
4.1The Test of Self-Understanding
65
4.2The Hierarchy of Values
66
4.3Agent-Centered Restrictions
73
4.4Hybrid Consequentialism
79
4.5A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason?
86
5
Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense
91
5.1A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity
91
5.2The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons
97
5.3How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical
104
5.4Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense
112
6
Monistic Theories of Value
117
6.1Monism
117
6.2Moore's Aesthetic Monism
119
6.3Hedonism
123
6.4Rational Desire Theory
129
7
The Ethical Limitations of the Market
141
7.1Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics
141
7.2The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market
143
7.3Civil Society and the Market
147
7.4Personal Relations and the Market
150
7.5Political Goods and the Market
153
7.6The Limitations of Market Ideologies
163
8
Is Women's Labor a Commodity?
168
8.1The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood
168
8.2Children as Commodities
170
8.3Women's Labor as a Commodity
175
8.4Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women
182
8.5Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law
185
9
Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environment Quality
190
9.1Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification
190
9.2Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life
195
9.3Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment
203
9.4Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis
210
Conclusion
217
Notes
223
References
231
Index
241