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Is it important to our quality of life that the preferences we satisfy are rational and well-informed? Standard preferentialist theories allege that a person's preferences and their satisfaction are the correct measure of well-being. In preference-sensitive theories, preferences are important but do not count for everything. This raises the question of whether we ought to make demands on these preferences. In this book Egonsson presents a critical analysis of the 'Full Information Account of the Good', which claims that only the satisfaction of rational and fully informed preferences has value for a person. The problems he deals with include: how is an information requirement to be formulated and shaped? Is it possible to design a requirement that is both neutral to the agent's epistemic situation and reasonable? Is the requirement reasonable? Does it make sense to claim that some are better off if we satisfy the preferences they would have had in some merely hypothetical circumstances? This is an important new book on preference rationality which will be of great interest to academics and students of ethics, quality of life, and rationality. Contents: Preface; Introduction; Analysing disappointment; The quantitative element; The qualitative element; The qualitative element criticized; Comparing examples; Truth and deliberation; Intrinsic and final preferences; Strongly intrinsic preferences; A problem of hypothetical approval; Hypothetical approval in medicine; Summary and conclusions; Bibliography; Index. Dan Egonsson is Reader in the Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden.

Provocation is an integral part of Socrates’ philosophical method. Does provocation have a similar methodological function in art? My tentative answer is no. In the Socratic method, provocation of feeling is used both on an individual level to force a person to think better (preferably in ethical matters) and on a general level in order that a society should never rest but “be stirred into life.” Philosophy is a teleological practice with truth or enlightenment as its telos. Art has no longer a well-defined telos, and the place and use of provocation in art is therefore debatable. But for art to be something rather than anything, I argue that a provocative work of art has to provide for the aesthetic qualities of how the provocation is performed. Provocation without instrumental qualities is atypical in philosophy, whereas provocation without intrinsic qualities is atypical in art. Using this as a normative guide, we may claim that instrumental success is more important than intrinsic success in philosophy and that the opposite holds for art, as far as provocation is concerned. I conclude by commenting on two Swedish examples of provocation in art from this perspective.

On a traditional interpretation of the substituted judgement standard (SJS) a person who makes treatment decisions on behalf of a non-competent patient (e.g. concerning euthanasia) ought to decide as the patient would have decided had she been competent. I propose an alternative interpretation of SJS in which the surrogate is required to infer what the patient actually thought about these end-of-life decisions. In clarifying SJS it is also important to differentiate the patient’s consent and preference . If SJS is part of an autonomy ideal of the sort found in Kantian ethics, consent seems more important than preference. From a utilitarian perspective a preference-based reading of SJS seems natural. I argue that the justification of SJS within a utilitarian framework will boil down to the question whether a non-competent patient can be said to have any surviving preferences. If we give a virtue-ethical justification of SJS the relative importance of consent and preferences depends on which virtue one stresses—respect or care. I argue that SJS might be an independent normative method for extending the patient’s autonomy, both from a Kantian and a virtue ethical perspective.

We often assume that hypothetical approval--either in the form of preferences or consent--under ideal conditions adds to the legitimacy of an arrangement or act. I want to show that this assumption, reasonable as it may seem, will also give rise to ethical problems. I focus on three problem areas: prudence, euthanasia and coercive psychiatric treatment. If we are to count as prudentially or morally relevant those preferences you would have if you were informed and rational, we will run into difficulties in all these areas if your actual and rational preferences are at variance with each other. In the prudential sphere we may question the personal value of satisfying preferences that a person does not actually have. In this case our problem concerns the point of satisfying a rational preference in conflict with an actual one. In the cases of euthanasia and coercive care it concerns instead whether it would be morally right to do such a thing. I doubt there is a simple solution to our problem. In this paper at most I prepare the way for a solution or for wiser decisions in the hard cases, by pointing out what they will have to deal with.

In this article I am particularly interested in the question of solidarity within the boundaries of one's own country. I discuss a qualified beneficence requirement, which claims that we ought to prevent something very bad from happening if it is in our power and if we can do it without sacrificing anything morally significant. I also discuss a fair-share principle, according to which, in Liam B. Murphy's version, \"the sacrifice each agent is required to make is limited to the level of sacrifice that would be optimal if the situation were one of full compliance\". I argue that the qualified beneficence requirement is reasonable only in the proximity of the one who needs help. When there is no proximity we ought to be guided by a fair-share principle. I also that there is an intimate relation between the fair-share principle and the welfare-state ideology.

In this article I discuss the relationship between the victim’s and the perpetrator’s guilt in a rape situation. Does recognition of the victim’s guilt automatically remove (any) responsibility from the perpetrator? One way of arguing that is does is to lean on an expanded version of the principle that “ought implies can”, which implies that the magnitude of the difficulty involved in abstaining from a certain action will affect the agent’s responsibility for it. This idea is firmly established in both common sense and moral practice, but I believe that it rests on the mistaken view that can is a gradable concept. Can is, I think, vague but categorical. This means that even if (and I say if) the perpetrator were provoked to some degree by his victim, this would not annul his responsibility so far as the expanded version of the principle is concerned.

In the last decades, Ingvar Johansson has made a formidable contribution to the development of philosophy and particularly that of metaphysics. This volume consists of original papers written by 50 philosophers from all over the world to celebrate his 70th birthday. The papers cover traditional issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, applied ethics, applied metaphysics, the nature of human rights, the philosophy of economics and sports.