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Hedonists hold that pleasure is the only thing of intrinsic value and, thus, that a personÕs well-being is reducible to the amount of pleasure she experiences. 1 One way to challenge hedonism is to contest the claim that only pleasure is intrinsically valuable; a well-known argument of this form is found in Robert NozickÕs experience machine thought experiment, which suggests that other things matter to us in addition to ''how things feel on the inside.'' 2 A plausible reading of the notion of other things mattering to us is to understand this as a way of saying that other things besides pleasure, or how things feel, have intrinsic value. If this is correct, then hedonism is mistaken. What goes unchallenged with this kind of argument is the assumption that pleasure has intrinsic value. However, the view that pleasure is intrinsically valuable can be challenged by considering the evolutionary role of pleasure as an experiential signal that both tracks individual well-being enhancing activity and motivates an individual to pursue things which contribute to his or her well-being. These ideas should hold, mutatis mutandis, for pain. Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson have argued that evolutionary psychology provides grounds for rejecting psychological hedonism. 3 However, the argument we will consider is that reflecting upon an evolutionary account of the emergence of the capacity for pleasurable experiences provides a reminder of the important relationship pleasures, as a kind, have to other goods, and thus cannot have their value intrinsically. This is an argument against normative hedonism. If it is correct, then pleasure has value, but not intrinsic value, and thus is not the summum bonum. As a result, hedonism, in its normative sense, fails to provide a plausible conception of well-being.Let us consider two ways in which we might define ''intrinsic value.'' The first way, following Moore, is to claim that something is intrinsically valuable if and only if it is valuable for its own sake, or in itself, in virtue of its intrinsic properties, rather than because of its usefulness in attaining some other good. 4 On this conception, something has intrinsic value if its

We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself -taken as a mode of beliefhas any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from its relationship to integrity and courage. On the second question, I articulate the roles that reflection, discourse (engagement with others), and humility must play in the dialectical process of maintaining responsible convictions.'People in those old times had convictions; we moderns have only opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.' -Heinrich Heine, The French Stage (1837) 1.If Heinrich Heine is correct, then a world in which people have 'only opinions' is a world in which nothing great can be achieved. We often praise people of integrity, who honour their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach.We admire people who have the courage to take a stand. Of course, this praise must surely also be based upon respect for, if not approval of, that for which such people stand. The conviction of suicide bombers, for example, is surely as much a factor in our condemnation as are the horrific consequences of their actions. Given a long historical catalogue (as well as contemporary instances) of catastrophic, vicious, and insane convictions, is there anything about moral conviction qua moral conviction which, at least sometimes, makes it valuable? It might seem that all the value can be located in the content of one's convictions. If that's right, then there is nothing 'value-added' in belief with conviction. Since convictions qua convictions can be good or bad, that any particular moral belief attains the status of a conviction might simply be, at best, a point of moral indifference.A more severe view on conviction would hold that moral convictions are a bad thing to have -that there is something irrational about elevating any moral belief (however respectable) to the status of a conviction. In doing so, one risks succumbing to vices of moral blindness: fanaticism, dogmatism and self-righteousness (or what Bernard Gert has recently called moral arrogance). 1 Nietzsche warned, 'Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.' 2 Convictions can blind us. Thus, it might be thought, better not to have them.I will argue -against both ambivalence toward and outright dismissal of moral conviction -that moral conviction has instrumental value because of the shaping and motivational roles it plays within the individual. However, the value of conviction, from the epistemic perspective, must also depend upon its being responsible. The latter half of this essa...

In several posthumously published writings about the differences between humans and animals, Rush Rhees criticises the view that human lives are more important than (or superior to) animal lives. Rhees' views may seem to be in sympathy with more recent critiques of “speciesism.” However, the most commonly discussed anti‐speciesist moral frameworks – which take the capacity of sentience as the criterion of moral considerability – are inadequate. Rhees' remark that both humans and animals can be loved points towards a different way of accounting for the moral considerability of humans and animals that avoid the problems of the capacity‐based approaches.