Too Little Value?

According to the Buck-Passing Account (BPA), for X to be good is for there to be reasons for everyone to have pro-attitudes in response to X. Suppose that there are birds that are in a great amount of pleasure in a world where there are no past, present, or future rational agents. There are no reasons for any agents to have pro-attitudes towards the birds’ pleasure, so BPA entails that their pleasure is not valuable, but it is valuable. So, BPA produces too little value. This is a problem for BPA and fitting-attitude accounts of value that has been raised and discussed by Krister Bykvist, Jonathan Dancy, and Andrew Reisner. This chapter motivates and defends two responses to this too little value problem: 1. The trans-world reasons response, according to which the birds’ pleasure is valuable because there are reasons for beings in other worlds to have pro-attitudes towards it; 2. The counterfactual response, according to which the birds’ pleasure is valuable because there would be reasons for agents to have pro-attitudes towards it if they were around.