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THE SMALL IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENT, EPISTEMICISM AND INCOMPARABILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2018

Edmund Tweedy Flanigan  and
John Halstead
Edmund Tweedy Flanigan
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02143USA. Email: eflanigan@g.harvard.edu. URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/eflanigan.
John Halstead
Affiliation:
Researcher, Founders Pledge. 58 Geldeston Road, Cazenove, London E5 8SB, UK. Email: john.halstead309@gmail.com. URL: www.johnhalstead.org
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Abstract:

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.

Keywords

small improvement argumentcompletenesscomparabilityvaguenessepistemicismsupervaluationism
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 199 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

The authors are ordered alphabetically to denote ‘roughly equal’ contribution.

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