Cover -- Series Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface to the Routledge Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Incomparability and Comparisons -- 1. Incomparability: The Basic Notion -- 1.1. The covering value requirement -- 1.2. Covering values and contributory values -- 1.3. The covering value requirement and incomparability -- 2. The Structure of Values and Comparisons of Bearers -- 2.1. The structure of values -- 2.1.1. Comparisons and evaluative differences -- 2.1.2. The atomistic account -- 2.1.3. The organic account -- 2.2. Comparisons of bearers -- 2.3. Two conclusions -- 3. Numerical Representation: The Standard Model -- 3.1. The Standard Model and the Trichotomy Thesis -- 3.2. Mere ordinality -- 3.3. Precise cardinality -- 3.4. Imprecise cardinality -- Chapter 2: The Normativity of Comparisons -- 1. What Justifies Choice? -- 2. Setting the Stage for Comparativism -- 3. Optimizing -- 4. Alternatives to Optimizing -- 4.1. Satisficing -- 4.2. Maximalizing -- 4.3. Absolutizing -- 5. Comparisons and Justifying Force -- 6. A Challenge to Comparativism: Brute Desires -- Chapter 3: Is There Incomparability? -- 1. The Diversity of Values -- 2. Bidirectionality -- 3. Calculation -- 4. Rational Irresolvability of Conflict -- 5. The Incomparability of Values -- 5.1. Value incomparability -- 5.2. Bearer incomparability -- 6. The Lack of a Common Value -- 6.1. Noncomparability -- 6.2. Formal failures of comparison and practical reason -- Chapter 4: Against Constitutive Incomparability -- 1. Constitutive Incomparability -- 2. Mere Market Goods -- 3. Raz -- 3.1. Symbolic significance -- 3.2. The belief in incomparability -- 3.3. The incomparability of friendship and money -- 4. Critique -- 4.1. The belief in incomparability -- 4.2. The argument by elimination -- 5. Anderson -- 5.1. Comparisons as boring.

5.2. Comparisons as stultifying -- 5.3. Comparisons as incoherent -- 6. Emphatic Comparisons: A Sketch -- Chapter 5: The Possibility of Parity -- 1. The Small Improvement Argument: Particular Version -- 1.1. Rational attitudes -- 1.2. Rational judgments -- 1.3. Skepticism about particular judgments -- 2. The Small Improvement Argument: Abstract Version -- 3. Against Incomparability: The Pareto Argument -- 3.1. The Pareto Argument -- 3.2. Examples -- 4. The Small Improvement and Pareto Arguments Revisited: Is Parity Vagueness? -- 4.1. Why hard cases are not borderline cases -- 4.2. Objections -- 5. Parity -- 5.1. The intuitive notion: evaluative differences revisited -- 5.2. A metaphysical underpinning of parity -- 5.3. A nonstandard model of comparability -- 5.3.1. Interval representation -- 5.3.2. The Supervaluational Interval Model -- Chapter 6: Vagueness, Incomparability, and Parity -- 1. Incomparability as Vagueness -- 2. Determinate and Indeterminate Failure Revisited -- 2.1. Artificial and natural comparatives -- 2.2. The Collapsing Principle Argument -- 2.2.1. The collapsing principle - I -- 2.2.2. Application of the collapsing principle -- 2.2.3. The problem of sharp boundaries -- 2.2.4. The possibility of indeterminate equality -- 2.2.5. How sharp is too sharp? -- 2.2.6. The collapsing principle - II -- 3. Multiple Rankings and Parity -- 3.1. Essentially normative predicates -- 3.2. Resolving parity into choice: a suggestion -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book attempts to answer two questions: Are alternatives for choice ever incomparable? and In what ways can items be compared? The arguments offered suggest that alternatives for choice no matter how different are never incomparable, and that the ways in which items can be compared are richer and more varied than commonly supposed.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.