Value, Fitting‐Attitude Account of

Abstract

According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro‐attitude – a fitting object of favoring. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then the object has final value. If it is fitting to favor it for the sake of its effects or for the sake of some whole of which it is a part, then its value is, respectively, instrumental or contributive. Analogously, dis value is connected to fitting disfavoring; that is, to fitting con‐attitudes. Apart from the linkage between value and attitudes, what is distinctive for this approach is its reduction of the evaluative to the deontic: an object's value is explicated in terms of the stance that ought to be taken toward the object. That it is fitting to have a pro‐attitude, that there are reasons to have it, or that the attitude is appropriate, required, or called for, are different ways of expressing the deontic component in fitting attitude (FA) analysis. On some versions, the FA‐account is meant to be a conceptual analysis; on other versions, it is a metaphysical account of the nature of value or goodness.