The Normative and the Evaluative: The Buck-Passing Account of Value

Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good there just have to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to this account, for pleasure to be good there need to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. Likewise for liberty and equality to be values there have to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. Extensive discussion has focussed on some of the problems that the buck-passing account faces, such as the 'wrong kind of reason' problem. Less attention, however, has been paid as to why we should accept the buck-passing account or what the theoretical pay-offs and other implications of accepting it are. The Normative and the Evaluative provides the first comprehensive motivation and defence of the buck-passing account of value. Richard Rowland argues that the buck-passing account explains several important features of the relationship between reasons and value, as well as the relationship between the different varieties of value, in a way that its competitors do not. He shows that alternatives to the buck-passing account are inconsistent with important views in normative ethics, uninformative, and at odds with the way in which we should see practical and epistemic normativity as related. In addition, he extends the buck-passing account to provide an account of moral properties as well as all other normative and deontic properties and concepts, such as fittingness and ought, in terms of reasons

Passing the buck in the garbage can model of organizational choice

We reconstruct Cohen, March and Olsen's Garbage Can model of organizational choice as an agent-based model. In the original model, the members of an organization can postpone decision-making. We add another means for avoiding making decisions, that of buck-passing difficult problems to colleagues. We find that selfish individual behavior, such as postponing decision-making and buck-passing, does not necessarily imply dysfunctional consequences for the organizational level. The simulation experiments confirm and extend some of the most interesting conclusions of the Garbage Can model: Most decisions are made without solving any problem, organization members face the same old problems again and again, and the few problems that are solved are generally handled at low hierarchical levels. These findings have an implication that was overseen in the original model, namely, that top executives need not be good problem-solvers.Organizational Decision Making; Garbage Can Model; Postponing Decisions; Buck-Passing

The right and the wrong kind of reasons

In a number of recent philosophical debates, it has become common to distinguish between two kinds of normative reasons, often called the right kind of reasons (henceforth: RKR) and the wrong kind of reasons (henceforth: WKR). The distinction was first introduced in discussions of the so-called buck-passing account of value, which aims to analyze value properties in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes and has been argued to face the wrong kind of reasons problem. But nowadays it also gets applied in other philosophical contexts and to reasons for other responses than pro-attitudes, for example in recent debates about evidentialism and pragmatism about reasons for belief. While there seems to be wide agreement that there is a general and uniform distinction that applies to reasons for different responses, there is little agreement about the scope, relevance and nature of this distinction. Our aim in this article is to shed some light on this issue by surveying the RKR/WKR distinction as it has been drawn with respect to different responses, and by examining how it can be understood as a uniform distinction across different contexts. We start by considering reasons for pro-attitudes and emotions in the context of the buck-passing account of value (§1). Subsequently we address the distinction that philosophers have drawn with respect to reasons for other attitudes, such as beliefs and intentions (§2), as well as with respect to reasons for action (§3). We discuss the similarities and differences between the ways in which philosophers have drawn the RKR/WKR distinction in these areas and offer different interpretations of the idea of a general, uniform distinction. The major upshot is that there is at least one interesting way of substantiating a general RKR/WKR distinction with respect to a broad range of attitudes as well as actions. We argue that this has important implications for the proper scope of buck-passing accounts and the status of the wrong kind of reasons problem (§4)

Assurance Views of Testimony

Assurance theories of testimony attempt to explain what is distinctive about testimony as a form of epistemic warrant or justification. The most characteristic assurance theories hold that a distinctive subclass of assertion (acts of “telling”) involves a real commitment given by the speaker to the listener, somewhat like a promise to the effect that what is asserted is true. This chapter sympathetically explains what is attractive about such theories: instead of treating testimony as essentially similar to any other kind of evidence, they instead make testimonial warrant depend on essential features of the speech act of testimony as a social practice. One such feature is “buck-passing,” the phenomenon that when I am challenged to defend a belief I acquired through testimony, I may respond by referring to the source of my testimony (and thereby “passing the buck”) rather than providing direct evidence for the truth of the content of the belief. The chapter concludes by posing a serious challenge to assurance theories, namely that the social practice of assurance insufficiently ensures the truth of beliefs formed on the basis of testimony, and thereby fails a crucial epistemological test as a legitimate source of beliefs

Passing the buck: impacts of commodity price shocks on local outcomes

AbstractThe extent to which exogenous international agricultural price fluctuations are internalised by rural communities is of major interest for policy-makers concerned with regional economic performance. So too is the link between rural sector performance and urban outcomes, especially in agriculturally-based economies. Through vector autoregressive (VAR) modelling we estimate the causal effect of exogenous commodity price innovations on both rural and urban community outcomes. Our analysis demonstrates that restricting the focus to national effects may lead to incorrect inference. We therefore extend the analysis to a VAR using panel data covering all New Zealand districts over 1991–2011. House prices and housing investment are used as quarterly indicators of regional economic and population outcomes. By exploiting the variation in production bundles across communities we find that an increase in commodity prices leads to a permanent increase in housing investment and house prices across the country. However, we find that rural communities are relatively insulated from commodity price shocks, whereas urban areas are most affected by commodity price shocks. We discuss the reasons why this paradoxical result may arise

The politics of blame

When things go wrong someone is blamed. Throughout the current crisis there have been several convenient scapegoats: the EU itself, southern European countries and Germany, among others. Passing the buck is an all too familiar rhetorical strategy, but it is not constructive. It is not conducive to the diplomacy that a collective response requires, nor does it elevate the public’s understanding of the challenges faced

ET By invite - investing crores but passing the buck

After decades of neglect, statuto ry bodies--municipalities or dedicated sewerage boards-are coming under pressure from citizens, central governments, pollution control boards and the courts to improve sewage treatment.Unfortunately , in the absence of knowledge-based and participatory decision-making, the responses of these bodies are often schizophrenic.The recent moves by Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) are a classic example