A number of philosophers analyse value in terms of fitting attitudes. On such views, very roughly, something is valuable just when it is a fitting object of certain favourable responses. However, these views face a problem about partiality. Suppose that either my friend or a stranger can be rescued from drowning, but not both, and that the two rescue outcomes are equal in intrinsic value. It still seems fitting for me to prefer my friend’s rescue. This creates a difficulty for fitting-attitude analyses: if the two outcomes are equal in value, why is it fitting for me to prefer one to the other?
The main aim of this paper is to offer a Brentanian solution to this problem. I argue that the difficulty arises because we fail to distinguish two different roles that preference can play. In one role, preference is a way of assessing which object is better. In another, it is a practical response involved in deciding what to do. Once this distinction is made, we can say that my friend’s rescue and the stranger’s rescue are equal in value, while also allowing that it is fitting for me to choose my friend’s rescue. This preserves the intuition that partiality can be fitting without implying that my friend’s rescue is intrinsically better.
