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Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Moral struggle -- 1.1 Two kinds of struggle -- 1.2 Withholding judgement -- 1.3 For the best, all things considered -- 1.4 The plan of this book -- Dilemmas -- 2.1 Conflict and deontic logic -- 2.2 Guilt -- 2.3 Choosing without resolving conflict -- 2.4 Unresolved conflict generalized -- Values in scientific inquiry -- 3.1 Cognitive values -- 3.2 Cognitive and practical values -- 3.3 Pluralism and conflict -- Choice and foreknowledge -- 4.1 Ability and possibility -- 4.2 Choice -- 4.3 Foreknowledge and freedom -- 4.4 The argument thus far -- Value structures -- 5.1 Value commitments, value structures and ways of evaluation -- 5.2 Ways of evaluation -- 5.3 The mixture property -- 5.4 Potential resolutions -- 5.5 Cardinal and ordinal conflict -- 5.6 V-admissibility -- 5.7 Lexicographically ordered value structures -- Values revealed by choices -- 6.1 Choice and preference -- 6.2 Value preference -- 6.3 Robust preference -- 6.4 Optimality -- 6.5 Categorical preference -- 6.6 Revealing preference -- 6.7 Normality -- 6.8 Revealed preference according to V-admissibility -- 6.9 Lexicographical V-admissibility -- 6.10 Conclusion -- Uncertainty as a source of conflict -- 7.1 Uncertainty -- 7.2 Extended value structures -- 7.3 Lexicography -- 7.4 Expected value -- 7.5 Credal indeterminacy -- 7.6 Upper and lower betting quotients -- 7.7 Ellsberg's problem -- 7.8 The Allais problem -- 7.9 Consistency of choice -- 7.10 Conclusion -- Conflict and social agency -- 8.1 What is an agent? -- 8.2 Benevolence and conflict -- Distributing benefits -- 9.1 Benevolence for each and benevolence for all -- 9.2 Benefit comparison structures -- 9.3 The average benefit principle -- 9.4 Benefit level dictatorship -- 9.5 Admissibility -- 9.6 Fair distribution -- Utilitarianism and conflict.

It is a commonplace that in making decisions agents often have to juggle competing values, and that no choice will maximise satisfaction of them all. However, the prevailing account of these cases assumes that there is always a single ranking of the agent's values, and therefore no unresolvable conflict between them. Isaac Levi denies this assumption, arguing that agents often must choose without having balanced their different values and that to be rational, an act does not have to be optimal, only what Levi terms 'admissible'. This book explores the consequences of denying the assumption and develops a general approach to decision-making under unresolved conflict. Professor Levi discusses conflicts of value in several domains - those arising in moral dilemmas, the drawing of scientific inferences, decisions taken under uncertainty, and in social choice. In each of these he adapts his theoretical framework, showing how conflict may often be reduced though not always altogether eliminated