Analysing value

Toby Handfield (Monash University)

Abstract:  This paper is part of a broader project: to identify the methodological benefits of relatively orthodox claims about the nature of value. The paper is in part a critical response to recent unorthodox claims due to Larry Temkin. Temkin notoriously claims that it is problematic to assume that better-than is a transitive relation. He also claims that the nature of value is "essentially comparative", and that this undermines a number of common assumptions about value, including the assumption of transitivity.

  Two principal claims are defended. The first, positive claim, is that there is a non-trivial methodological benefit involved in upholding the orthodox assumption that better-than is a transitive relation. The second claim is purely negative: I show that, even if value is essentially comparative, that gives us no reason to think transitivity fails.