What is death? Do people survive death? What do we mean when we say that someone is "dying"? Presenting a clear and engaging discussion of the classic philosophical questions surrounding death, this book studies the great metaphysical and moral problems of death. In the first part, Feldman shows that a definition of life is necessary before death can be defined. After exploring several of the most plausible accounts of the nature of life and demonstrating their failure, he goes on to (...) propose his own conceptual scheme for death and related concepts. In the second part, Feldman turns to ethical and value-theoretical questions about death. Addressing the ancient Epicurean ethical problem about the evil of death, he argues that death can be a great evil for those who die, even if they do not exist after death, because it may deprive them of the goods they would have enjoyed if they had continued to live. Confrontations with the Reaper concludes with a novel consequentialist theory about the morality of killing, applying it to such thorny practical issues as abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. (shrink)

Consequentialism is a focal point of discussion and a driving force behind important developments in moral philosophy. Recently, the debate has shifted in focus and in style. By seeking to consequentialize rival moral theories, in particular those with agent-relative characteristics, and by framing accounts in terms of reasons rather than in terms of value, an emerging new wave consequentialism has presented - at much higher levels of abstraction - theories which proved extremely flexible and powerful in meeting long-standing and influential (...) objections. This volume of new essays on new wave consequentialism initiates and stimulates novel lines of discussions among proponents and their critics. The contributions explore new directions in new wave consequentialism and present refined conceptual frameworks (in Part I), raise challenging fundamental problems for these frameworks and the new wave's theoretical basis (in Part II), and give a balanced assessment of the new wave's limits and achievements in specific contexts of commonsense moral practice (in Part III). (shrink)

Behaviour norms are considered for decision trees which allow both objective probabilities and uncertain states of the world with unknown probabilities. Terminal nodes have consequences in a given domain. Behaviour is required to be consistent in subtrees. Consequentialist behaviour, by definition, reveals a consequence choice function independent of the structure of the decision tree. It implies that behaviour reveals a revealed preference ordering satisfying both the independence axiom and a novel form of sure-thing principle. Continuous consequentialist behaviour (...) must be expected utility maximizing. Other plausible assumptions then imply additive utilities, subjective probabilities, and Bayes' rule. (shrink)

Consequentialism, one of the major theories of normative ethics, maintains that the moral rightness of an act is determined solely by the act's consequences and its alternatives. The traditional form of consequentialism is one-dimensional, in that the rightness of an act is a function of a single moral aspect, such as the sum total of wellbeing it produces. In this book Martin Peterson introduces a new type of consequentialist theory: multidimensional consequentialism. According to this theory, an act's (...) moral rightness depends on several separate dimensions, including individual wellbeing, equality and risk. Peterson's novel approach shows that moral views about equality and risk that were previously thought to be mutually incompatible can be rendered compatible, and his precise theoretical discussion helps the reader to understand better the distinction between consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories. His book will interest a wide range of readers in ethics. (shrink)

As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism’s indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific code has suboptimal consequences in the (...) real world. After outlining the traditional objections and the cases used to support them, this paper first constructs a new hybrid version of consequentialism that combines elements of both act and rule consequentialism. It then argues that this novel view has sufficient resources for responding to the previous traditional objections to pure rule consequentialism. (shrink)

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter (...) to secure in a principled way. §2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. §3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in §1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. §4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (i) best explains the objective normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (ii) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (iii) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. §5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate. (shrink)

Rule consequentialism holds that an action's moral standing depends on its relation to the moral code whose general adoption would have the best consequences. Heretofore rule consequentialists have understood the notion of a code's being generally adopted in terms of its being generally obeyed or, more commonly, its being generally accepted. I argue that these ways of understanding general adoption lead to unacceptable formulations of the theory. For instance, Brad Hooker, Michael Ridge, and Holly Smith have recently offered different (...) answers to the question of what ‘acceptance rate’ we should build into our formulation of rule consequentialism, and all are unsatisfactory. I argue instead for a novel approach to formulating rule consequentialism, ‘uniform-moral-education’ rule consequentialism, on which what it means for a moral code to be generally adopted is not for it to be generally followed or generally accepted, but instead for it to be generally taught. (shrink)

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints (...) through the very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

The paper considers a hierarchical theory that combines concern for two values: individual well-being – as a fundamental, first-order value – and (distributive) fairness – as a high-order value that its exclusive function is to complete the value of individual well-being by resolving internal clashes within it that occur in interpersonal conflicts. The argument for this unique conception of high-order fairness is that fairness is morally significant in itself only regarding what matters – individual well-being – and when it (...) matters – in interpersonal conflicts in which constitutive aspects of individual well-being clash. Consequently, the proposed theory is not exposed to claim that fairness comes at the expense of welfare. This theory is considered within a consequential framework, based on the standard version and, alternatively, on a novel interpretation of consequentialism. Thus, it refutes the claim that consequentialism does not take the distinction between persons seriously. (shrink)

In Kantian Consequentialism, David Cummiskey proposes a novel solution to what he describes as “the central problem for normative ethics”: the tension between our belief that we should bring about the best possible consequences and our belief that we should respect individuals. Cummiskey argues that Kantian ethics, properly reconstructed, resolves this tension: central tenets of Kant’s theory ground a “Kantian consequentialism,” which satisfies our interests in respecting persons and doing as much good as we can.

This article introduces and explores a distinction between multi-dimensional and one-dimensional consequentialist moral theories. One-dimensional consequentialists believe that an act's deontic status depends on just one aspect of the act, such as the sum total of wellbeing it produces, or the sum total of priority- or equality-adjusted wellbeing. Multi-dimensional consequentialists believe that an act's deontic status depends on more than one aspect. They may, for instance, believe that the sum total of wellbeing produced by an act and the degree (...) to which the wellbeing is equally distributed in the population affect the act's deontic status independently of each other. These two aspects cannot be reduced into any single (composite) aspect. Wellbeing and equality are two separate considerations that cannot be merged into some novel entity that accurately reflects both intuitions. On the multi-dimensional view I defend, such clashes between separate aspects are irresolvable and are best accounted for by claiming that moral rightness and wrongness are non-binary concepts. Some acts are, literally speaking, a little bit right (because they maximise wellbeing) and a little bit wrong (because they do not maximise equality).1. (shrink)

Moore's Open Question Arguments are among the most influential arguments in 20th Century metaethical thought. But, surprisingly, there is a fair amount of confusion concerning what the Open Question Arguments actually are, how the Moorean passages should be interpreted, and what they are intended to show. Thus, the early chapters are devoted to clarificatory matters, including the exposing of a variety of contemporary attacks upon Moore's arguments as misguided by indicating where they rest upon faulty interpretations of Moorean passages. Providing (...) what I take to be accurate formulations of Moore's famous arguments, responding to historically important preliminary objections, and, finally, presenting various shortcomings of these arguments constitute the remaining themes of the early chapters. ;Next, I pursue an explanation of what I call the 'Open Question phenomenon': the inclination that many have to endorse Moore's "open question" premises. I survey a variety of popular noncognitivist explanations, arguing that each of them is unsatisfactory. I then present a novel semantic explanation of the phenomenon and use it to construct an augmented Moorean Open Question Argument, one capable of overcoming the shortcomings of Moore's originals. ;The latter chapters are dedicated to an investigation of Moore's preferred normative theory---a version of objective consequentialism. I argue that the standard semantic account of subjunctive conditionals fails to capture the nature of certain subjunctive conditionals relevant to the normative evaluation of alternatives from an objective consequentialist perspective. I then present a modified version of the standard account in an effort to remedy the problem. ;Next, I present a novel objection against all extant versions of objective consequentialism. I then introduce and utilize the concept of an "objective" subjunctive probability in the transformation of a subjective version of consequentialism into an objective version, one capable of dealing with the difficulties posed by the objection. ;I conclude the dissertation with a final chapter in which I defend possibilist versions of consequentialism from a contemporary objection. In doing so, I elucidate a theoretical advantage that possibilist theories have over their subjunctive counterparts. (shrink)

It is widely agreed upon that morality guides people with conflicting interests towards agreements of mutual benefit. We therefore might expect numerous proposals for organizing human moral cognition around the logic of bargaining, negotiation, and agreement. Yet, while “contractualist” ideas play an important role in moral philosophy, they are starkly underrepresented in the field of moral psychology. From a contractualist perspective, ideal moral judgments are those that would be agreed to by rational bargaining agents—an idea with wide-spread support in philosophy, (...) psychology, economics, biology, and cultural evolution. As a practical matter, however, investing time and effort in negotiating every interpersonal interaction is unfeasible. Instead, we propose, people use abstractions and heuristics to efficiently identify mutually beneficial arrangements. We argue that many well-studied elements of our moral minds, such as reasoning about others’ utilities (“consequentialist” reasoning) or evaluating intrinsic ethical properties of certain actions (“deontological” reasoning), can be naturally understood as resource-rational approximations of a contractualist ideal. Moreover, this view explains the flexibility of our moral minds—how our moral rules and standards get created, updated and overridden and how we deal with novel cases we have never seen before. Thus, the apparently fragmentary nature of our moral psychology—commonly described in terms of systems in conflict—can be largely unified around the principle of finding mutually beneficial agreements under resource constraint. Our resulting “triple theory” of moral cognition naturally integrates contractualist, consequentialist and deontological concerns. (shrink)

Transitional justice addresses legacies of social and political wrongdoing by coming to terms in some sense with the past and charting a path forward. In my dissertation, I introduce the complementary notion of ‘transitional ethics.’ Whereas transitional justice asks how we can dispense justice in the aftermath of widespread violence, transitional ethics asks how we can meet wider demands of morality in the aftermath of widespread violence. Although the formulation of the concept of transitional ethics is novel, its deployment (...) is not. In fact, nearly all transitional projects of the past several decades have included an implicit appeal to consequentialist transitional ethics. In my dissertation I make the case instead for a contractualist model of transitional ethics, one that both acknowledges the shared nature of the transitional project and affirms the agency of previously silenced individuals. (shrink)

I present the mismatch problem for Act Consequentialism, and I critically evaluate some popular solutions before offering my own solution to a specific version of the problem. The mismatch problem arises for Act Consequentialism when a group could have done better, but no individual in the group had an alternative with a better outcome. In such cases, the theory delivers mismatched verdicts: it condemns what the group does, but it cannot condemn any of the individual acts. In the first (...) chapter of the dissertation, I explain exactly how this problem works. In the next four chapters, I identify a variety of cases that give rise to the mismatch problem, and I explain why the most popular strategies for modifying Act Consequentialism do not get around it. In the final chapter, I introduce a novel taxonomy of problem cases, and I introduce a 'cautious' version of Act Consequentialism that doesn't encounter the mismatch problem for a certain class of case. (shrink)

This book argues that moral philosophy should be based on seven scientific principles of theory selection. It then argues that a new moral theory—Rightness as Fairness—satisfies those principles more successfully than existing theories. Chapter 1 explicates the seven principles of theory-selection, arguing that moral philosophy must conform to them to be truth-apt. Chapter 2 argues those principles jointly support founding moral philosophy in known facts of empirical moral psychology: specifically, our capacities for mental time-travel and modal imagination. (...) Chapter 2 then shows that these capacities present human decisionmakers with a problem of diachronic rationality that includes but generalizes beyond, L.A. Paul’s problem of transformative experience: a problem that I call “the problem of possible future selves.” Chapter 3 then argues that a new principle of rationality—the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative—is the only rational solution to this problem, as it requires our present and future selves to forge and uphold a recursive, bi-directional contract with each another given mutual recognition of the problem. Chapter 4 then shows that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three identical formulations analogous but superior to Immanuel Kant’s various formulations of his ‘categorical imperative.’ Chapter 5 shows that these unified formulas jointly entail a particular test of moral principles: a Moral Original Position similar to John Rawls’ famous ‘original position’, but which avoids a variety of problems with Rawls' model. Chapter 6 then shows that the Moral Original Position generates Four Principles of Fairness, which can then be combined into a single principle of moral rightness: Rightness as Fairness. This new conception of rightness is shown to reconcile four dominant moral frameworks (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and contractualism), as well as entail a new method of moral decisionmaking for applied ethics: a method of “principled fair negotiation” according to which applied ethical issues cannot be wholly resolved through principled debate, but must instead be resolved by actual negotiation and compromise. This method is then argued to generate novel, nuanced analyses of a variety of applied moral issues, including trolley cases, torture, and the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals. Chapter 7 then shows that Rightness as Fairness reconciles three leading political frameworks—libertarianism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism—showing how all three embody legitimate moral ideals that can, and should, be fairly negotiated against each other to settle the scope, and nature, of domestic, international, and global justice on an ongoing, iterated basis. Finally, Chapter 8 argues that Rightness as Fairness satisfies all seven of the principles of theory-selected defended in Chapter 1 more successfully than rival theories. (shrink)

I propose a new kind of meta-ethical theory, grounded in a theory of interests and of the modifications required in order to render interests compatible with each other. The theory hence is called "Interest Compatibilism" (IC). A basic account of the nature of interests, and of possible relations between them, is also included. Ethical values turn out to be those involved in optimally desirable forms of harmonization and control of interests and their associated values. The theory (...) is presented and developed with the aid of specific comparisons to more standard deontological and consequentialist ethical theories and views. Utilitarian consequentialist views are particularly criticised, and suggestions for an improved consequentialist view incorporating aspects of the IC approach are developed. Whether or not the IC theory is acceptable as a whole, I argue that some such alternative consequentialist theory is desperately needed. My account of interests should be independently acceptable also. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories of virtue and vice, such as the theories of Jeremy Bentham and Julia Driver, characterize virtue and vice in terms of the consequential, or instrumental, properties of these character traits. There are two problems with theories of this sort. First they imply that, under the right circumstances, paradigmatic virtues, such as benevolence, are vices and paradigmatic vices, such as maliciousness, are virtues. This is conceptually problematic. Second, they say nothing about the intrinsic nature of the virtues and (...) vices, which is less than we could hope for from a theory of virtue and vice. Thus, we have reason to reject consequentialist theories in favour of theories that characterize virtue and vice in terms of the intrinsic properties of these character traits. Aristotle and Thomas Hurka have theories this sort. (shrink)

I argue that the evolutionary history of anger has substantive implications for normative ethics. In the process, I develop an evolutionary account of anger and its influence on action. First, I consider a prominent argument by Peter Singer and Joshua Greene. They conclude that evolutionary explanations of human cooperation debunk – or undercut the evidential value of – the moral intuitions supporting duty ethics (as opposed to utilitarian or consequentialist ethics). With this argument they aim to defend consequentialist (...) theories. However, their argument also threatens to debunk intuitions that support consequentialist theories. I give a novel argument that overcomes this difficulty. Specifically, I offer an evolutionary story about anger that can explain retributive, duty-oriented intuitions concerning punishment. This explanation debunks these intuitions (and not others) by showing that they were selected for their biological consequences rather than their accuracy (concerning duties to punish). I develop this explanation by raising and resolving three additional problems. First, prominent evolutionary explanations of retributive motives fail because they appeal to models that apply only to organisms with strategic insight. To mitigate this problem, I explain the existence of a retributive-like motive in rodents by appealing to an economic model of resource competition, which applies to organisms without strategic insight. Second, I show that human anger was shaped by resource competition of this kind. To do so, I develop evidential criteria to determine when psychological systems in different species share common evolutionary origins. I deploy these criteria to argue that human anger and the retributive motive in rodents derive from the same ancestral trait. Finally, the continuity of anger across human and nonhuman animals stands in tension with the idea that anger causes purposive behavior like retribution or retaliation. I argue that differences between the angry behaviors of human and nonhuman animals are differences in degree and not in kind. In the end, this evolutionary story both explains and undermines retributive intuitions, but not in the straightforward way that Singer and Greene suppose. (shrink)

A theory is agent neutral if it gives every agent the same set of aims and agent relative otherwise. Most philosophers take act-consequentialism to be agent-neutral, but I argue that at the heart of consequentialism is the idea that all acts are morally permissible in virtue of their propensity to promote value and that, given this, it is possible to have a theory that is both agent-relative and act-consequentialist. Furthermore, I demonstrate that agent-relative act-consequentialism can avoid the (...) counterintuitive implications associated with utilitarianism while maintaining the compelling idea that it is never wrong to bring about the best outcome. (shrink)

A novel approach to the crucial role emotion plays in virtuous action What must a person be like to possess a virtue in full measure? What sort of psychological constitution does one need to be an exemplar of compassion, say, or of courage? Focusing on these two examples, Emotion and Virtue ingeniously argues that certain emotion traits play an indispensable role in virtue. With exemplars of compassion, for instance, this role is played by a modified sympathy trait, which is (...) central to enabling these exemplars to be reliably correct judges of the compassionate thing to do in various practical situations. Indeed, according to Gopal Sreenivasan, the virtue of compassion is, in a sense, a modified sympathy trait, just as courage is a modified fear trait. While he upholds the traditional definition of virtue as a species of character trait, Sreenivasan discards other traditional precepts. For example, he rejects the unity of the virtues and raises new questions about when virtue should be taught. Unlike orthodox virtue ethics, moreover, his account does not aspire to rival consequentialism and deontology. Instead Sreenivasan repudiates the ambitions of virtue imperialism. Emotion and Virtue makes significant contributions to moral psychology and the theory of virtue alike. (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider contemporary consequentialist theories of punishment. Consequentialist theories of punishment look to the consequences of punishment to justify the institution of punishment. Two types of theories fall into this category—teleology and aggregationism. I argue that teleology is implausible as it is based on a problematic assumption about the fundamental value of criminal punishment, and that aggregationism provides a more reasonable alternative. Aggregationism holds that punishment is morally justified because it is an institution that helps (...) society to aggregate important moral values. Several theories fall into this category, including general deterrence theories, specific deterrence theories, and preventionism. I critically evaluate these theories and argue that only one specific deterrence theory, namely, my rights-protection theory, provides the most reasonable consequentialist account of punishment. (shrink)

In this chapter, Lee considers contemporary consequentialist theories of punishment. Consequentialist theories look to the consequences of punishment to justify the institution of punishment. Two types of theories fall into this category—teleology and aggregationism. Lee argues that teleology is implausible because it is based on a problematic assumption about the fundamental value of criminal punishment. Aggregationism is a more reasonable alternative. It holds that punishment is morally justified because it is an institution that helps society to aggregate important (...) moral values. Several theories fall into this category, including general deterrence theories, specific deterrence theories, and preventionism. Lee critically evaluates these theories and argues that only one specific deterrence theory, namely, her rights-protection theory, provides the most reasonable consequentialist account of punishment. (shrink)

What are appropriate criteria for assessing a theory of morality? In Ideal Code, Real World, Brad Hooker begins by answering this question, and then argues for a rule-consequentialist theory. According to rule-consequentialism, acts should be assessed morally in terms of impartially justified rules, and rules are impartially justified if and only if the expected overall value of their general internalization is at least as great as for any alternative rules. In the course of developing his rule-consequentialism, Hooker (...) discusses impartiality, well-being, fairness, equality, the question of how the 'general internalization' of rules is to be interpreted by rule-consequentialism, and the main objections to rule-consequentialism. He also discusses the social contract theory of morality, act-consequentialism, and the question of which moral prohibitions and which duties to help others rule-consequentialism endorses. The last part of the book considers the implications of rule-consequentialism for some current controversies in practical ethics. (shrink)

Bennett focuses on four interconnected criticisms of consequentialist theories of punishment. The first criticism says that consequentialist theories wrongfully treat it as permissible to punish an innocent person if doing so will lead to optimal consequences. The second criticism says that consequentialist theories allow the treatment of offenders (and others) as mere means. The third criticism says that consequentialist theories fail to respect offenders as moral agents. The fourth criticism says that consequentialist theories recommend responses (...) to wrongdoing that ignore or displace other valuable forms of human relation. Bennett argues that such criticisms are better thought of as criticisms of a specific form of consequentialism rather than consequentialism as such. The question of whether the whole consequentialist approach is problematic is much more complex. While Bennett does not try in this chapter to resolve that latter question, he looks at some of the considerations that bear on it. (shrink)

A theory of what we should believe should include a theory of what we should believe when we are uncertain about what we should believe and/or uncertain about the factors that determine what we should believe. In this paper, I present a novel theory of what we should believe that gives normative externalists a way of responding to a suite of objections having to do with various kinds of error, ignorance, and uncertainty. This theory is (...) inspired by recent work in ethical theory in which non-consequentialists 'consequentialize' their theories and then use the tools of decision-theory to give us an account of what we ought (in some sense) to do when we're uncertain about what we ought (in some primary sense) to do. On my proposal, because what we ought to do is acquire knowledge and avoid ignorance, we ought to believe iff the probability of coming to know is sufficiently high. This view has a number of important virtues. Among them, it gives us a unified story about how defeaters defeat (a theory developed with Julien Dutant), explains puzzling intuitions about the differences between lottery cases, preface cases, and cases of perceptual knowledge, and provides externalists (and internalists!) with a general framework for thinking about subjective normativity. It's also relatively brief. (shrink)

In A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics , Daniel Doviak develops a novel agent-based theory of right action that treats the rightness (or deontic status) of an action as a matter of the action’s net intrinsic virtue value (net-IVV)—that is, its balance of virtue over vice. This view is designed to accommodate three basic tenets of commonsense morality: (i) the maxim that “ought” implies “can,” (ii) the idea that a person can do the right thing for the (...) wrong reason, and (iii) the idea that a virtuous person can have “mixed motives.” In this paper, I argue that Doviak’s account makes an important contribution to agent-based virtue ethics, but it needs to be supplemented with a consequentialist account of the efficacy of well-motivated actions—that is, it should be transformed into a mixed (motives-consequences) account, while retaining its net-IVV calculus. This is because I believe that there are right-making properties external to an agent’s psychology which it is important to take into account, especially when an agent’s actions negatively affect other people. To incorporate this intuition, I add to Doviak’s net-IVV calculus a scale for outcomes . The result is a mixed view which accommodates tenets (ii) and (iii) above, but allows for (i) to fail in certain cases. I argue that, rather than being a defect, this allowance is an asset because our intuitions about ought-implies-can break down in cases where an agent is grossly misguided, and our theory should track these intuitions. (shrink)

Book Information Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality. By Brad Hooker. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2000. Pp. xiii + 213. Hardback, 25.

The main aim of the paper is critical reflection of the ethics of social consequences. The reflection is based on two partially related positions. Ethics of social consequences is, on the one hand, characterized as a contemporary ethical theory and, on the other, as a specific form of consequentialism. Methodology of criticism is based on the works of a homogenous group of modern-day consequentialist authors (though these are of diverse platforms): Pettit, Singer, Sen, Shaw. The purpose of this (...) paper is to provide objective reflection on the ethics of social consequences which may possibly become the base for further development and / or improvement of this original Slovak ethical theory. (shrink)

In this essay, we explore an issue of moral uncertainty: what we are permitted to do when we are unsure about which moral principles are correct. We develop a novel approach to this issue that incorporates important insights from previous work on moral uncertainty, while avoiding some of the difficulties that beset existing alternative approaches. Our approach is based on evaluating and choosing between option sets rather than particular conduct options. We show how our approach is particularly well-suited to (...) address this issue of moral uncertainty with respect to agents that have credence in moral theories that are not fully consequentialist. (shrink)

Agent-relative reasons are an important feature of any nonconsequentialist moral theory. Many authors think that they cannot be accommodated within a value-first theory that understands all value as agent-neutral. In this paper, I offer a novel explanation of agent-relative reasons that accommodates them fully within an agent-neutral value-first view. I argue that agent-relative reasons are to be understood in terms of second-order value responses: when an agent acts on an agent-relative reason, she responds appropriately to the agent-neutral (...) value of her own appropriate response to some agent-neutral value. This view helps reconcile important elements of deontology and consequentialism. (shrink)

This book is about fundamental questions in normative ethics. It begins with the idea that we often respond to ethical theories according to how principled or pragmatic they are. It clarifies this contrast and then uses it to shed light on old debates in ethics, such as debates about the rival merits of consequentialist and deontological views. Using the idea that principled views seem most appealing in dilemmas of acquiescence, it goes on to develop a novel theory (...) of pattern-based reasons. These are reasons to play one’s part in some larger pattern of action because of the goodness or rightness of that pattern. Existing accounts of pattern-based reasons usually assume that such reasons can exist only in cooperative contexts. This book rejects that assumption, and claims instead that we can have pattern-based reasons even when the other agents involved in the pattern are wholly unwilling to cooperate. The result is a pluralist teleological structure for ethics, with similarities to some forms of Rule Consequentialism. Woodard claims that this structure achieves an attractive balance between the two virtues of being pragmatic and being principled. (shrink)

The expiration of intellectual property rights has been seen to amount to a problem for non-consequentialist theories of intellectual property. In this article, I assess whether the difficulty is real. I maintain that, as things are at least, there is no sufficient reason to believe that the termination of intellectual property rights is an insurmountable problem for non-consequentialist theories of intellectual property rights.

What is the nature and scope of morality's authority? How seriously ought we to take its demands? What would it be like to grant its requirements supreme importance in one's life? This dissertation addresses such questions by considering the nature and extent of morality's authority from several vantage points. ;The first two chapters discuss a charge made by Bernard Williams and others. According to this charge, commitment to modern moral theories would force us to devalue or suppress our personal projects (...) and concerns, leaving life bereft of shape and meaning. This charge poses a serious threat to morality's authority: if it is justified, we have good reason, it seems, not to comply with morality's demands. ;It is argued in response, in Chapter II, that moral commitment need not have such psychologically destructive effects. Drawing on the work of both consequentialist and broadly Kantian moral theorists, the chapter presents a model of moral commitment which can defuse Williams' concerns. The conclusion drawn is that moral commitment as such does not preclude the personal attachments and concerns which make lives worth living. However, it is doubtful whether the benefits of such a model are available to the consequentialist. ;The last two chapters discuss whether morality might be overriding. Does morality supply us with decisive or compelling reasons for action, as many theorists have hoped or assumed? Chapter III articulates a version of the overridingness thesis and considers its implications. The main conclusions of the chapter are that this version of the thesis requires the rejection of a purely instrumental or prudential conception of reasons for action, and that it fits best with an "absorptive" conception of morality. ;Richard Miller's views on these matters are the topic of Chapter IV. While Miller seeks to uphold some versions of the thesis in tandem with his novel theory of rationality, it is argued in Chapter IV that his "internal" conception of reasons cannot secure such claims of morality's rational force. If all reasons stem from the agent's desires and needs, then we will not be able to sustain any very strong position on morality's authority. (shrink)

The ethics of care has regularly been described via contrast with deontological, consequentialist, and virtue theories of ethics. Often, such descriptions play care and justice against one another as potentially congruent but frequently competing social goods. This articulation of the field, which moves across major perspectives within moral and political philosophy, does not fully describe how ethics appears in some areas of humanities, particularly literary studies, where an ‘ethics of alterity’ has predominated for several decades. This ethics emphasizes a (...) scene of encounter across difference, and an ethical responsibility to the other which has been narrativized via the scene of hospitality. This essay proposes that the ethics of care and the ethics of alterity share much—more than care ethics shares with other kinds of moral philosophy. But it also identifies differences which have made it easier to position alterity, rather than care, as a guiding ethos for literature, literary criticism, and literature education. Why is this so, and what would it mean for the ethics of care to be more central in literary study and literature education? Taking as an occasion a novel explicitly concerned with care-taking and care-giving, J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), the essay explores the prospects for a care-focused practice of literary studies. (shrink)

This article focuses on the following three novel and original philosophical approaches to classical liberalism: Den Uyl and Rasmussen’s perfectionist argument from meta-norms, Gaus’s justificatory model, and Kukathas’s conscience-based theory of authority. None of these three approaches are utilitarian or consequentialist in character. Neither do they appeal to the notion of a rational bargain as it is typical within contractarianism. Furthermore, each of these theory rejects the idea that classical liberalism should be grounded on considerations of (...) interpersonal justice such as those that are central to the Lockean tradition. It is argued that these three theories, despite their many attractive features, fail to articulate in a convincing manner some central classical liberal concerns. (shrink)

Producing food on a large scale without killing any animals seems currently impossible. This poses a challenge for deontological positions that involve a prohibition against killing sentient creatures: it seems that according to these positions omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan diets all rely on food produced in impermissible ways. In order to meet this challenge, deontologists might introduce consequentialist considerations into their theories, for example some principles that effectively require to kill as few animals as possible. This is the kind (...) of strategy Tom Regan has pursued. However, we argue that the challenge for deontological positions on the ethics of food production can also be met by invoking a prominent deontological principle. The doctrine of double effect, with its distinction between bringing about harm intentionally and bringing about harm as a merely foreseen consequence of one’s action, enables us to see a morally significant difference between the various ways to produce food other than the number of animals killed. In this paper we will review some of these ways using Warren S. Quinn’s version of the DDE and show that a more thoroughgoing deontological ethics of food production than Regan’s classic theory is possible. We thereby present a novel way of evaluating modes of food production. (shrink)

This chapter derives and refines a novel normative moral theory and descriptive theory of moral psychology--Rightness as Fairness--from the theory of prudence defended in Chapter 2. It briefly summarizes Chapter 2’s finding that prudent agents typically internalize ‘moral risk-aversion’. It then outlines how this prudential psychology leads prudent agents to want to know how to act in ways they will not regret in morally salient cases, as well as to regard moral actions as the only types (...) of actions that satisfy this prudential interest. It then uses these findings to defend a new derivation of my (2016) theory of morality, Rightness as Fairness, showing how the derivation successfully defends Rightness as Fairness against a variety of objections. The chapter also details how this book’s theory helps to substantiate the claim that Rightness as Fairness unifies a variety of competing moral frameworks: deontology, consequentialism, contractualism, and virtue ethics. Finally, the chapter shows how Chapter 2’s theory of prudence entails some revisions to Rightness as Fairness, including the adoption of a series of Rawlsian original positions to settle moral and social-political issues under ideal and nonideal circumstances—thus entailing a unified normative and descriptive psychological framework for prudence, morality, and justice. (shrink)

A promising strategy to make progress in the debate between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral theories is to unravel the background assumptions of the respective views and discuss their plausibility. This paper discusses a background assumption of consequentialism that has not been noticed so far. Consequentialists claim that morality is about maximizing the impersonal good, and the background assumption is that an appropriate response to the impersonal good is necessarily a response to the impersonal good as a whole. In (...) this paper, I argue that we should understand the impersonal good as a complex good, and that an appropriate responses to a complex good need not be a response to that good as whole. This constitutes a novel objection against consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper surveys the current philosophical discussion of the ethics of risk imposition, placing it in the context of relevant work in psychology, economics and social theory. The central philosophical problem starts from the observation that it is not practically possible to assign people individual rights not to be exposed to risk, as virtually all activity imposes some risk on others. This is the ‘problem of paralysis’. However, the obvious alternative theory that exposure to risk is justified when (...) its total benefits exceed its total costs faces the standard distributional challenges of consequentialism. Forms of contractualism have been proposed as a solution, but how exactly such theories can be formulated remains problematic, especially when confronted with the difficult cases of mass, novel, risk such as climate change. (shrink)

Ethics is of vital importance to the Swedish educational system, as in many other educational systems around the world.Yet, it is unclear how ethics should be dealt with in school, and prior research and evaluations have found serious problems regarding ethics in education.The field of moral education lacks clear and widely accepted definitions of key concepts, and these ambiguities negatively impact both research and educational practice. This thesis draws a distinction between three approaches to ethics in school – the descriptive (...) ethics approach, the value transmission approach, and the inquiry ethics approach – and studies in what way (if at all) they are prescribed by the national curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school, how they relate to students’ moral reasoning about technology choices and online behaviour, and what pedagogical merits and disadvantages they have. Hopefully, this both contributes to reducing the ambiguities of the field, and to answering the question of how ethics should be dealt with in education. The descriptive ethics approach asserts that school should teach students empirical facts about ethics, such as what views and opinions people have. The value transmission approach holds that school should mediate some set of predefined values to the students and make sure the students come to accept these values.The inquiry ethics approach is the view that school should teach students to reason and think critically about ethics and to engage in ethical inquiry. The role of ethics in the curriculum has not been studied in light of the above distinction, in prior research,and such an investigation is undertaken here.The results suggest that ethics has a prominent, but complicated, role in the Swedish national curriculum. Although no explicit distinction is drawn or acknowledged in the curriculum, all three approaches are prescribed throughout the curriculum, albeit to different degrees. In the general section of the curriculum, the value transmission and inquiry ethics approaches are more extensively prescribed than the descriptive ethics approach. It was found that most of the syllabi contained explicit references to ethics, while some only contained implicit references to ethics, and two syllabi lacked references to ethics altogether. In the syllabi, the inquiry ethics approach is the most dominant, both in the sense of being present in the most syllabi, and in the sense of being more strongly prescribed in many of the syllabi where several approaches occur.The value transmission approach has the weakest role in the syllabi. In total, the inquiry ethics approach is the approach most strongly prescribed by the curriculum. But prior research has shown that inquiry ethics is very rarely implemented in the classroom. In this thesis, it is found that the inquiry ethics and the value transmission approaches are incompatible, given certain reasonable interpretations, which makes the finding that inquiry ethics is rarely implemented less surprising, since value transmission is practiced in schools. Some possible causes, and some consequences, of this is discussed. The students, in their moral reasoning about technology choices, reasoned in accordance with several classical normative theories – including consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics – and in doing so, they expressed reasoning that in the discussion is found to be in conflict with the values of the value foundation in the curriculum. These findings complement earlier findings, for example that students in their actions contradict the value foundation, by adding that such conflicts also exist in their reasoning. The existence of these conflicts is found to be problematic for a value transmission approach. Many of the students defended very restrictive views on disclosing personal information online, and prior research as well as the present data has shown that adults typically hold views that are very similar to these, concerning how they think that young people ought to act online. On the other hand, youths’ actual online behaviour, as reported in earlier studies, differs considerably from this. In line with this, the students also seemed to endorse a form of private morals view, according to which moral choices are simply up to one’s own taste, which would yield an escape exit from the restrictive views mentioned above, and permit any behaviour. In the discussion, it is argued that this is the result of an attempt at value transmission from the grown-up community, probably including teachers, which might seem to work, since the students claim to hold certain views, but which likely instead constitutes a false security, since these values are not actually accepted, but only paid lip service to, and the adults are therefore wrong in their belief that the students are protected by a certain set of values (that they think the students are upholding), since the students in fact do not uphold, and therefore do not act based upon, these values. This situation risks making the students more vulnerable than had no value transmission attempt been taken in the first place. Hence, the attempted value transmission runs the risk of counteracting its purpose of helping the students acquire a safe online behaviour. Throughout the moral reasoning mentioned above, extensive variations in the students’ reasoning were found, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, both in the decision method and in the rightness criterion dimensions, as well as in between the dimensions.The existence of such variations is a novel finding, and while possible applications in future research are discussed, it is also noted that this existence constitutes a reason to question the successfulness of both the value transmission and the inquiry ethics endeavours of the educational system. The results and discussions described above highlight the importance of investigating the merits of the different approaches. Several arguments that arise from the material of this thesis are presented, evaluated and discussed. The ability of each approach to fulfil some alleged key aims of ethics education is scrutinised; their abilities to educate for good citizenship, to educate for quality of life of the individual, and to facilitate better educational results in other subjects are all investigated, as well as the ability of each approach to help counteract the influence from online extremist propaganda aimed at young people and to promote safe online behaviour in general. It is concluded that the inquiry ethics approach has the strongest support from the material of this thesis. Some consequences for school practice are discussed, and it is concluded that changing the role of ethics in the curriculum would be beneficial, downplaying the role of value transmission and further increasing, and making more explicit and clear, the role of inquiry ethics. It is also shown that there are strong reasons for the inclusion of a new subject in the Swedish compulsory education with special focus on ethics. 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After the cessation of conflict the majority of those involved in violations of international law will not be held criminally accountable. Rather, it is frequently the case that the bulk of perpetrators receive amnesty. Often, consequentialist considerations weigh heavily on the decision to grant amnesty. For instance, amnesties may be offered in order to generate aggregate security benefits in volatile post-conflict settings. My contention is that states cannot morally justify amnesties by appealing solely to the aggregate benefits they are (...) expected to deliver. The moral objection concerns the distribution of associated costs, where such costs include the risk of re-offense that amnesty generates. Importantly, these costs may be unevenly imposed onto the society. This means that certain citizens will expect to bear individual losses greater than any gains the amnesty can deliver to them. Those placed at a net-disadvantage can object that amnesties are morally unjustifiable: they impose unreasonable burdens on them in order to secure benefits for others. However, as amnesties are often vital to achieve peace there remain strong pragmatic reasons to favour limited prosecutions. Given these concerns it is necessary to justify the differential imposition of cost associated with amnesties. I argue that ex ante contractualism, as a theory of moral justification, is well-suited to this task. According to this framework amnesties are justified only if no individual could reasonably reject the associated burdens. By developing a non-aggregative justification of amnesty this account offers a novel approach to the design and implementation of post-conflict prosecutorial strategies. (shrink)

How compelling is radical normative pluralism, i.e. the view that contrary moral positions (deontological, consequentialist and so on) are all morally acceptable even in one given case? In ‘A Hostage Situation’ (2019), Saul Smilansky presents a thought experiment about moral decisions in life-and-death situations. According to Smilansky, the Hostage Situation (HS) reveals a rather puzzling and radical normative pluralistic picture, according to which even in life-and-death decisions, many moral choices that sometimes contradict each other are more or less equitable (...) or at least morally acceptable simultaneously. He argues that there is a paradigmatic difference between HS and Trolley-Problem-type cases (TP); according to him, the decision in TP is always single-valued, so one cannot be pluralistic in a plausible way—that is, one cannot rationally accept both options at the same time. TP, he claims, has been a misleading paradigmatic example; the radically pluralistic result of HS may be a better paradigm for much of morality. I argue that Smilansky should have gone further, and that a proper understanding of HS and TP reveals that, far from being in conflict, both thought experiments support a radical normative pluralism. Thus, building upon Smilansky’s work but offering a very different position, I present in this paper a radical, novel interpretation of Trolley-Problem-type cases, which, if convincing, should significantly affect the way we think about normative moral theory. (shrink)

While Yoga (also called Bhakti, “devotion”) is a comprehensive philosophy, it is importantly an ancient and basic ethical theory, unique to South Asia (what is commonly called the Indian tradition). It is not a variant of virtue ethics, consequentialism and deontology, but is an additional kind of moral theory. And in its literary articulation, in dialog and story (such as the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads), it has a long history of criticizing teleological ethical theories, including – and especially (...) – consequentialism. It is a radically procedural ethical theory, does not require the Good to elucidate the Right, and provides a critical response to all three alternatives. -/- The main obstacle to understanding Yoga is methodological. It pertains to how we can understand philosophical options that we do not necessarily agree with, and which are novel relative to our background assumptions and beliefs. Without methodological clarity, we will be doomed to understand alternatives in terms of familiar options. Yoga's metaethics provides us the tools necessary to engage in this research. In addition, it also sets out a unique normative (ideal) ethical theory and a non-ideal practice that is now the foundation of decolonial practices of direct action. (shrink)

The primary aim of this work on Hobbes is to present a new construction of his moral and political views. I argue for a reading of the text which dramatically recasts his theory as a deontological contractarianism rather than a consequentialist contractarianism. This reading of the text pays serious attention to Hobbes's usually neglected rejection of prudential calculation and his commitment to the method of Reason which he explains as what we would now call analytical deduction from the (...) meaning of words. ;I argue for the centrality of three theses: that obligation arises from assent, that there is always an obligation to obey the Laws of Nature, and that one is obliged to obey one's sovereign. In explicating Hobbes's theory I present a more complex picture of the authorization of the sovereign than is standardly given in the accounts that characterize the sovereign as the third party beneficiary of a contract between individuals in the State of Nature. Instead, my complex account depicts the sovereign as a duty bound contractor with obligations to the commonwealth. Furthermore, I contend that Hobbes's distinction between the natural and the artificial can be seen to organize and explain important elements in his view. ;Parts 3 and 4 of Leviathan, where Hobbes discusses the obligation of Christian citizens to their civil sovereign and the supposed powers of the Kingdom of Darkness, are then used as a test for verifying the coherence and validity of my novel interpretation. Because my reading of the first two parts of Leviathan conforms with the ideas and method presented in parts 3 and 4, I conclude that the deontic reading, and not the egoist reading, best captures Hobbes's intended meaning. I then go on to defend my interpretation against today's most prominant advocates of the egoist readings, Gauthier, Hampton and Kavka. ;In the final chapter of this work I present three arguments on currently important moral questions: benevolence, infidelity, and abortion. These arguments, which all employ what I have shown to be the Hobbesian approach, show the usefulness of Hobbes's theory in addressing contemporary questions of ethics. (shrink)

There is no question Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom is an engaging and powerful book which will inform legal philosophy, particularly Kantian theories, for years to come. The text explores with care Kant’s legal and political philosophy, distinguishing it from his better known moral theory. Nor is Ripstein’s book simply a recounting of Kant’s legal and political theory. Ripstein develops Kant’s views in his own unique vision illustrating fresh ways of viewing the entire Kantian project. But the same (...) strength and coherence which ties the book to Kant’s important values of independence blinds the work to our shared moral ties grounded in other political values. Ripstein’s thoughts on punishment are novel in that he embeds criminal law, both in its retributivist and consequentialist facets, into Kant’s overarching political philosophy to show how criminal law can be seen as one aspect of the supremacy of public law. But a criminal law solely focused on the preservation of freedom takes little notice of the ways criminal law need expand its view to account for how a polity can restore the victim of a crime back to civic equality, reincorporate offenders after they have been punished and cannot leave past offenders isolated and likely to reoffend, resulting in the rotating door prison system and communities of innocents who remain preyed upon by career criminals. Lastly, a political theory that does not prize our civic bonds will ignore the startling balkanization of our criminal punishment practices, where policing, arresting and imprisonment become tools of racial and social oppression. In illustrating the benefits in viewing criminal law as a coherent part of Kant’s political theory of freedom, Ripstein also highlights what is absent. It then becomes clear that though Kant presents one important facet of punishment, only a republican political theory can meet the most pressing moral demands of punishment by reminding us that criminal law must be used to preserve and strengthen civic society. (shrink)