Rethinking Hare's Analysis of Moral Thinking

Utilitas 32 (2):181-198 (2020)
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Abstract

R. M. Hare has an ambitious project of arguing from a limited set of premises about the nature of moral thought and language all the way to substantive utilitarian conclusions. I reconstruct Hare's argument, identify an important problem for Hare, and then develop and endorse a restricted Hare-like argument. This argument is less ambitious than Hare's, and does not substantiate utilitarian conclusions on its own, but I demonstrate that it nonetheless imposes important constraints on moral judgements and I indicate how it can play a role in a larger argument for utilitarian conclusions.

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Steven Daskal
Northern Illinois University

Citations of this work

The Rawls–Harsanyi Dispute: A Moral Point of View.Michael Moehler - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (1):82-99.

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References found in this work

What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Why We Should Reject S.Derek Parfit - 1984 - In Reasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior.John Harsanyi - 1977 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 44 (4):623-656.

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