@rkubala.bsky.social, @adamlovett.bsky.social, and I have a new paper forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophy. It’s called “On the value of irreplaceable objects” – Here’s a thread! philpapers.org/rec/KUBOTV 1/n - ThreadSky

harveylederman.bsky.social • 8 days ago

@rkubala.bsky.social, @adamlovett.bsky.social, and I have a new paper forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophy. It’s called “On the value of irreplaceable objects” – Here’s a thread!

https://philpapers.org/rec/KUBOTV 1/n

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harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

There’s a puzzle about the value of irreplaceable works of art. There are only so many Hokusai prints, and we can’t make more of them. As there are fewer of these prints, it seems we have stronger reason to preserve each of the remaining ones. But why should this be? 2/n

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

The intrinsic properties of the remaining works of art haven’t changed. Why should each work now count for more, just because there are fewer of them? 3/n

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

Our paper responds to an important paper by Gwen Bradford (and Gwen personally helped us a lot!). She poses the above problem clearly, and argues that the best resolution of it involves a technical notion of degree of irreplaceable value. 4/n

https://philpapers.org/rec/BRAUIV

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

Roughly, her idea is that, as there are fewer of the irreplaceable objects, their degree of irreplaceable value (not the amount) increases, and this underwrites stronger reason to preserve the objects. We think this view is *very* interesting, but we present an alternative. 5/n

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

Our account involves two ideas. The first is that typically if there are fewer objects in a class, destroying one of them leads to a larger loss of rational confidence that there will still be objects of this type than destroying one of them would lead to, if there were more. 6/n

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

If there’s value in there being objects of this kind at all, then the expected cost of the loss of each object will also increase as the total number decreases. So, these facts about uncertainty naturally predict stronger reason to preserve each object as there are fewer! 7/n

evaschmidt.bsky.social•8 days ago

Sounds really cool! I thought at first of objects that I attach great personal value to, so that my life would be much worse without them, like the hiking backpack I've had vor 25 years or my copy of Hume's inquiry... but that seems to be a different issue.

harveylederman.bsky.social•8 days ago

Yes this sort of object which is irreplaceable because of personal attachment or experience raises somewhat different issues!

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