Existence Value has become an increasingly important concept as the use of cost benefit analysis has spread from traditional applications to attempts to place monetary value on, for instance, a rare wetland habitat. Environmental economists have generally accepted the tensions arising in the existence value concept from the range of recent applications, but it is argued here that their various attempts to resolve the difficulties have largely failed. Critics from outside economics, on the other hand, (...) typically claim that the very notion of existence value as understood in economics is flawed, and urge its abandonment altogether. This paper suggests instead a fundamental redefinition of existence value, which, it is argued, (i) explains a number of diverse problems posed by the usual meaning of the term in economics; (ii) does not strain the intentions of respondents to ' willingness-to-pay' surveys; (iii) is consistent with a more realistic model of rational choice in environmental decision-making; and (iv) is sensitive to criticisms from environmental ethics.2. (shrink)

Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regard­less of whether it is or will be of any particular use to them. This existence value based on preference satisfaction should be taken into account in evaluating activities that come with a risk of species extinction. There are two main objections. The first is that on the preference satisfaction interpretation, the concept lacks moral importance because satisfying people’s preferences may involve (...) no good or well-being for them. However, existence value can be based on a restricted version of the preference satisfaction theory, which is not vulnerable to the skeptical arguments about the link between preference satisfaction and well-being. The second objection is that even if preference satisfaction can be linked to well-being, understanding existence value in terms of individual preference satisfaction is incoherent, because existence value reflects disinterested preferences that involve no benefits to the individual. However, the fact that existence value may involve disinterested preferences does not threaten the coherence of the concept, but suggests that it does not fit smoothly into the “utilitarian” or “welfarist” framework it is commonly considered within. A pluralistic normative approach based on prima facie duties can be an alternative to standard utilitarian-style approaches for considering existence value in concrete cases involving a risk of species extinction, such as through deep sea mining. (shrink)

In “Rescuing Conservatism: A Defense of Existing Value,” G. A. Cohen offers an anticapitalist philosophy of valuing that takes as given the existence itself of particular valuable and valued things, and commitment through time to cherishing relationships to them. In this article, I argue that “being placed,” in precolonial senses, and decolonial “being in” and “seeking place,” are the givens of being valuing, living creatures among valuing, living creatures. Valuing as placed and valuing being placed are intrinsic to (...) decolonial feminist resistance to the gendered, racialized, and denatured ideological warfare on the terms of life. Place is not one among other values; place and placed temporality must be accepted as given. In place, the past is living in the present. Placed decolonial valuing is the only resistance to solipsistic destruction of all that has value, to a coloniality that would fragment the past to destroy the life force of the capacity to value present existing and living. Thus I bring Cohen's rescuing valuable things, and the capacity to value them, to intergenerational, interspecies, temporally located placedness shared across diverse peoples prior to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century conquests and nineteenth-century imperialism, and in perpetual resistance to contemporary settler societies and coloniality. (shrink)

У статті здійснено критичний розгляд концепції функціонального існування цінностей Манфреда Фрінґса, яка є спробою прояснення способу буття цінностей у феноменологічній аксіології Макса Шелера. У центрі уваги перебуває завдання дослідження онтологічних передумов інтерпретації Фрінґса, експлікації її внутрішніх суперечностей та проблематичних концептуальних наслідків. Показано, що інтерпретація Фрінґса не враховує принципове для феноменологічної аксіології розрізнення реального та ідеального аксіологічного вимірів; це неврахування й визначає дві основні тези Фрінґсової концепції – тезу про буття цінностей як досвідну даність і тезу про функціональне існування цінностей. Показано, (...) що послідовне відстоювання обох тез породжує неусувні суперечності. Редукція буття цінностей до даності в досвіді, а відтак заперечення ідеального виміру цінностей, унеможливлює леґітимну апеляцію до автономного морального принципу, руйнуючи таким чином ідею ціннісного абсолютизму, визначальну для етичного проекту Шелера; крім того, онтологічна іманентизація цінностей підважує статус сутностей, ставлячи під сумнів правомірність феноменологічних претензій на строге ейдетичне пізнання. Своєю чергою, інша теза Фрінґсової концепції – про функціональне існування цінностей – містить латентне припущення поза-досвідного буття цінностей, вступаючи у суперечність із попередньою тезою про їхнє суто досвідне буття. При цьому ідея функціонального існування має своїм наслідком змістове ототожнення «трансцендентних» та іманентних цінностей, що усуває ідею критеріологічної автономії, можливої лише за матеріальної та онтологічної нетотожності нормативного та фактичного. Стаття включає вступ, шість тематичних розділів і висновок. (shrink)

This collection of essays is about some of the most fundamental issues connected with metaphysics, theory of values and philosophy of man. What is particularly intriguing about this collection is its unique and fruitful combination of different methodologies and traditions in one rich and persuasive picture of the most basic philosophical problems.

In his book, Andreas Urs Sommer reflects on the question of what it really means when everybody’s appealing to values, all the time – the question, fundamentally, of what values actually are. Values explores both of these points, arriving at two intriguing suggestions: Maybe what we call values are just a set of elaborate fictions. And maybe those fictions serve some very important purposes.

Can it be better or worse for a person to exist than not to exist at all? This old and challenging existential question has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy, mainly for two reasons. First, traditional “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counterintuitive implications in population ethics, for example, the repugnant conclusion. Second, it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can be better than another only if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories (...) that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person-Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. The negative answer, which we argue against, would make the restriction quite untenable. Hence, many of the problems regarding our moral duties to future generations turn around the issue at hand. (shrink)

The stock of Albania buildings dating between 1955 and 1985 during the communist period is a very powerful and important footprint not only in the city of Tirana, Albania, but all over the country. This category of buildings is positioned mostly in the center of the city, within the inner historical ring of the city of Tirana. They are designed considering the mottos: standardization and typification representing the standards of the time. In the city of Tirana almost in every neighborhood (...) are located underground anti-bomb tunnels. Since the majority of them nowadays are out of functions, they are destroyed. Despite this fact, the specific neighborhood taken into consideration includes in the inner block area these shelters. The socialist regime and professionals of the time do not consider the orientation of the building toward sun in order to benefit from the solar radiation. Furthermore, the buildings are placed randomly in the urban structure of the city. Regardless to that fact the analysis of the WWR and WFR showed relatively good results compared to the international case studies. Building thermography and U-value measurements of the building showed poor results compared to international and national standards. Taking into consideration this fact, immediate improvements are needed in order to include the buildings within the comfort zone, enhancing its thermal potential category. The analysis of the existing building structures and their construction materials is crucial in order to have a better understanding of the thermal potential of them. The structures are measured and designed according to their actual physical conditions. The buildings require an immediate energetic requalification, avoiding at the maximum the thermal bridges as part of them. (shrink)

According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to (...) the idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that coming into existence can benefit (or harm) aperson. My argument incorporates the comparative claim that existence canbe better (or worse) for a person than never existing. Since these claimsare highly controversial, I consider and reject a number of objectionswhich threaten them. These objections raise various semantic, logical,metaphysical and value-theoretical issues. I then suggest that there is animportant sense in which it can harm (or benefit) a person not to comeinto existence. (...) Again, I consider and reject some objections. Finally, Ibriefly consider what the conclusions reached in this paper imply for ourmoral obligations to possible future people. (shrink)

The article deals with finding finite total equivalence systems for formulas based on an arbitrary closed class of functions of several variables defined on the set {0, 1, 2} and taking values in the set {0,1} with the property that the restrictions of its functions to the set {0, 1} constitutes a closed class of Boolean functions. We consider all classes whose restriction closure is either the set of all functions of two-valued logic or the set T a of functions (...) preserving \. In each of these cases, we find a finite total equivalence system, construct a canonical type for formulas, and present a complete algorithm for determining whether any two formulas are equivalent. (shrink)

In this article, I review The Ethics of Killing Animals, discussing its relevance in the contemporary debate and critiquing its authors’ discussion of time. The book covers a multitude of topics, including value theory, identity, the replaceability argument, a Kantian deontological approach to animal rights, and the political rights of nonhuman animals. In particular, the work focuses on three debates: Whether or not happiness and suffering should be symmetrically or asymmetrically weighted in moral considerations; whether or not nonhuman animals (...) conceive of themselves as existing through time; and whether or not existence may be legitimately compared with nonexistence. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The main purpose of the article is to study the anthropological and socio-philosophical dimensions of human existence in the context of hostilities by highlighting the aspects of transformation of anthropological legal values of human existence during the war. _Theoretical basis._ The methodological tools are presented in the interaction of axiological, synergetic, socio-legal and comparative methods. The survey method is used to obtain quantitative data on the self-assessment of Ukrainian citizens in relation to the war, changes in their (...) internal intentions as a result of the crisis of social reality. _Originality._ Military actions can act both as a catalyst for the formation of new anthropological legal values, in accordance with the specifics of martial law and the need to adapt legal systems to the challenges arising in wartime, and as a destructor of certain value attributes of society. _Conclusions._ The nature of paradigmatic changes in wartime is represented by the metamorphosis of anthropological legal values, which manifests itself in profound changes in the philosophical understanding of man, the transformation of legal principles and the revision of moral norms in society. Reflections on the legal paradox appear in attempts to balance the need to keep within the law with the requirement to ensure security and defence in the first place. The article highlights the following aspects of changes: revision of the concept of individual rights and freedoms by recognising that individual rights may be subject to restrictions for the sake of the common good or national security; new legal values arise which are related to the protection of human rights in war conditions. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne’s argument in The Existence of God discusses many probabilities, ultimately concluding that God probably exists. Swinburne gives exact values to almost none of these probabilities. I attempted to assign values to the probabilities that met that weak condition that they could be correct. In this paper, I first present a brief outline of Swinburne’s argument in The Existence of God. I then present the problems I encountered in Swinburne’s argument, specifically problems that interfered with my attempt (...) to arrive at values for the probabilities discussed by Swinburne. Finally, I suggest that Swinburne’s argument would be more persuasive if he assigned exact values to his probabilities. (shrink)

An original and constructive African though system with universal reach. Existence and consolation transcends the ethno-philosophies the dominated in the post-colonial period. While the African experience might lead one to say human life is pointless, the author argues that meaning comes in the form of consolation and is rooted in mood.

This chapter compares Lotze’s, Lipps’, and Voigtländer’s notion of feelings of self-worth in order to carve out the specific and genuine aspects of Voigtländer’s understanding of self-feeling, as developed in her dissertation. Three lines of thinking important to her approach to the constitution of self-feeling are identified. While primarily sitting on an axis that stretches from the post-romantic Lotze via the descriptive psychologist Lipps to what is later understood as phenomenological philosophy, traces of two other major traditions can be discovered (...) in her proposal: (a) romantic psychology of the unconscious as found, for instance, in C. G. Carus, and (b), Nietzsche’s genealogical psychology of value. Both these traditions would later inspire biologistic versions of German Lebensphilosophie. By relying on them, it is argued, Voigtländer’s notion of self-feeling shows affinities with those vitalist approaches that fueled racist and eugenic ideologies in National Socialism. Given this, her theory of self-feeling in her dissertation from 1910 turns out to be fairly compatible with her later engagement in the fields of eugenics and membership in the NSDAP. Although her account of self-feeling is unique and interesting, therefore, it is finally suggested that Voigtländer’s proposal should be read with due caution. (shrink)

In mathematics, when we want to introduce classes which fulfill certain conditions, we usually prove beforehand that classes fulfilling such conditions do exist, and that such classes are uniquely determined by the conditions. The statements which state such unicity and existence of classes are in mathematical logic consequences of the principles of extensionality and class existence. In order to illustrate how these principles enable us to introduce classes into systems of mathematical logic, let us consider the manner in (...) which Gödel introduces classes in his book on set theory.For instance, before introducing the definition of the non-ordered pair of two classesGödel puts down as its justification the following two axioms:By A4, for every two classesyandzthere exists at least one non-ordered pairwof them; and by A3,wis uniquely determined in A4. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

The article characterizes the substantial level of sacralization of values in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai. The main emphasis is placed on identifying the grounds for the sacralization of values. It is established that the world order is one of the bases of sacralization and simultaneously performs the function of consolidating cultural carriers. The key thesis of the research is the thesis that spiritual culture cannot be fully comprehended without reference to sacred values. In addition, the sacralization of (...) values is considered as a condition for ensuring spiritual security and continuity of values and norms between generations of cultural carriers. The assessment of the spiritual potential of the culture of the Greater Altai is of great importance. The main conclusions of the study are the following provisions: 1) the sacralization of key values is carried out at the essential or substantial level, while the stages of sacralization are mainly "tied" to the religious and mythological development of culture and its value-normative system; 2) sacralization encompasses those value structures that acquire importance in human existence and are a factor in the integration of cultural carriers and their generations; 3 sacralization is the process of identifying specific value-semantic structures – they are attributed symbolic meaning, and they are also correlated with certain cultural codes, signs and texts. (shrink)

Legislated Rights is a welcome contribution to constitutional theory. The book’s overall aim is to rehabilitate the role of legislation and legislatures in ‘securing human rights’. 1 A major...