Conflicts of Values and Practical Rationality (Does God Encounter Conflicts of Values?)

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of conflicts of values and in particular issues such as: (1) what is a conflict of values? (2) what grounds claims about the existence of such conflicts? (3) are these conflicts apparent or real? (4) how can empirical conflicts be resolved? The successive steps of the presented argumentation are a development of the following propositions: (1) a conflict of values consists in the mutual incompatibility of the realization of values of equal strength; (2) a conflict of values is in fact a conflict of duties; (3) a conflict in the first principles of duty (revealed in peculiar practical situations) comes from either (a) the adoption of different historical ethos into a normative theory, or (b) errors (inconsistencies) in the theory; (4) ways of removing conflicts of duty consist in correcting the normative theory by introducing necessary meta-principles to it. At the end of the article, the following thesis is presented: the statement about the existence of real (ontological) conflicts of duty is inconsistent with the postulate of applying practical rationality in practice.