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BIOUNCERTAINTY - ERC Starting Grant no. 805498

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16th of March 2023 roku – Vilius Dranseika – The Duality of Value: A Corpus Study

16th of March 2023 roku – Vilius Dranseika – The Duality of Value: A Corpus Study

We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar in the ‘BIOUNCERTAINTY’ research project. This week Vilius Dranseika will give a talk: "The Duality of Value: A Corpus Study". The seminar will take place on Thursday 16th of March at 5:30 p.m. in the room 25 on Grodzka Street and via MS Teams.

Abstract

A distinction between ‘good’ and ‘good for’ (and ‘bad’ and ‘bad for’) is commonly drawn in the philosophical literature. ‘Good for’ often refers to a relational value, typically in relation to a person, therefore sometimes called ‘personal value’, which is contrasted with the non-relational ‘good’. Both the notion of ‘good for’ and the notion of ‘good’ have come under heavy fire from philosophers who have argued that either one or the other of these two value notions is fundamentally flawed. Three different main positions can be distinguished with respect to this debate. Those who hold that only the relational ‘good for’ makes sense we will refer to as relational monists, while those holding that only the non-relational ‘good’ makes sense we will call non-relational monists. In opposition to both kinds of monism are dualists, who recognize both ‘good’ and ‘good for’ as coherent and intelligible. Dualists hold further that none of these notions can be eliminated in favour of or reduced to the other. In this paper, we provide English language corpus-based evidence that our everyday discourse really does include the language of both good and good for. Establishing dualism as the default position places the burden of proof on the shoulders of the monists. If the challenges that the two kinds of monism have posed to ‘good’ and ‘good for’ respectively are not strong enough to overthrow the default position, then monism should be rejected in favour of dualism.

​(joint research with Fritz-Anton Fritzson)

Link to the MS Teams meeting