Aaron Wirt
Università della Svizzera italiana
One of the central themes in contemporary analytic philosophy is the concept of normativity. It has been widely noted that there is great heterogeneity in ordinary concepts that count as normative (G.H. von Wright 1963; J.J. Thomson 1992, 2008). Moreover, it is generally accepted that normative concepts split into two distinct conceptual families: the evaluative or axiological (good-bad), and the deontic (right-wrong). Within the evaluative group, most often it is thin value concepts such as good, bad, and indifferent that are examined (J.J. Thomson 2005; R. Wedgewood 2009). These thin values are contrasted with thick value concepts such as admirable, benevolent, gullible, and honest (K. Mulligan 1998; P. Väyrynen 2021).
This is the framework in which the following question is addressed: What is the thick value of being enjoyable? There is no consensus as to whether “affective” terms are truly thick value concepts; nevertheless, it is assumed herein that they are thick. By means of this assumption, the present work explores the thick value concept of being enjoyable, which has received very little attention from philosophers. It is argued that the value of being enjoyable is ascribed by instances of: “An object or activity, x, is worthy of enjoyment by an agent, p, if and only if there are reasons for x to be appropriately enjoyed for p’s sake.” The foregoing raises four questions: What distinguishes being enjoyable from other similar states? What are the reasons for being enjoyable? What is appropriate enjoyment? What does “for p’s sake” mean?
The paper proceeds in six additional sections: the aforesaid four questions are addressed sequentially in Sections 2–5. M. Csikszentmihalyi (1990), M. Kawabata et al. (2022), and others are employed as support. Section 6 addresses objections related to claims made by B. Williams (1973) and T. Rønnow-Rasmussen (2007). Section 7 concludes that if there are justified and appropriate reasons to be enjoyable, then it is valuable.
Chair: Fabio Tollon
Time: September 8th, 10:40-11:10
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 