The Independent Value of Conscious Individuals

Jon Garthoff (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

When: Tuesday June 3, at 11am in Houston and Nashville

Where: https://riceuniversity.zoom.us/j/95097231463?pwd=MJPessWBzOphk7kDax5u6D2NpiB6In.1

Who: Jon Garthoff

What: "The Independent Value of Conscious Individuals"

Abstract

In this presentation I both explain the value of conscious individuals and motivate the centrality of that value in ethical theory. In so doing I sketch important sections of a more general account of value. This includes clarifying distinctions often not marked with care, including the distinction between value in general and goodness in particular. I also indicate how this account of value illuminates other important topics, such as moral obligation and meaningfulness. In all these domains, the view developed here steers a middle course between deflating the objectivity of the domain and grounding its objectivity in a speculative posit. The presentation thus proposes a ground for ethics that is both objective and mundane. Given the scope of these ambitions they cannot be carried through completely. But I aim to motivate interest in the approach, one that differs from more familiar Neo-Aristotelian and Neo-Kantian views while synthesizing important insights drawn from those traditions. I aim also to reorient thinking about moral status, extending this idea beyond morality and advancing our understanding of the value of individuals beyond the decades-old insights of Christine Korsgaard and Tom Regan. Lastly, I aim to help liberate objective ethical theory from premodern vestiges that identify the foundation of what matters with the highest or most perfect value.