THE SMALL IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENT, EPISTEMICISM AND INCOMPARABILITY

The Small Improvement Argument (SIA) is the leading argument for value incomparability. All vagueness-based accounts of the SIA have hitherto assumed the truth of supervaluationism, but supervaluationism has some well-known problems. This paper explores the implications of epistemicism, a leading rival theory. We argue that if epistemicism is true, then options are comparable in small improvement cases. Moreover, even if SIAs do not exploit vagueness, if epistemicism is true, then options cannot be on a par. The epistemicist account of the SIA has an advantage over leading existing rival accounts of the SIA because it accounts for higher-order hard cases.

Resolving the small improvement argument: a defense of the axiom of completeness

This paper defends the axiom of completeness against a particular incomparabilist objection, the small improvement argument (or SIA). In my view, a theory of choice must admit of a number of folk psychological assumptions, most importantly, that agents conceive of choice options as simplified possible worlds and have preferences between such worlds. In addition, this paper argues that an additional folk psychological assumption allows a trimodal theory of choice to satisfactorily address the concerns about preference-indifference intransitivity raised by the SIA. This additional claim is that agents resolve their consideration of choice options to varying degrees. In my view, the SIA can be answered without abandoning or modifying the axiom of completeness.

Indeterminacy and the Small-Improvement Argument

In this article, I argue that the small-improvement fails since some of the comparisons involved in the argument might be indeterminate. I defend this view from two objections by Ruth Chang, namely the argument from phenomenology and the argument from perplexity. There are some other objections to the small-improvement argument that also hinge on claims about indeterminacy. John Broome argues that alleged cases of value incomparability are merely examples of indeterminacy in the betterness relation. The main premise of his argument is the much-discussed collapsing principle. I offer a new counterexample to this principle and argue that Broome's defence of the principle is not cogent. On the other hand, Nicolas Espinoza argues that the small-improvement argument fails as a result of the mere possibility of evaluative indeterminacy. I argue that his objection is unsuccessful.