Do facts about what an agent would freely do in certain circumstances at least partly determine any of her moral obligations? Actualists answer ‘yes’, while possibilists answer ‘no’. We defend two novel hybrid accounts that are alternatives to actualism and possibilism: Dual Obligations Hybridism and Single Obligation Hybridism. By positing two moral ‘oughts’, each account retains the benefits of actualism and possibilism, yet is immune from the prima facie problems that face actualism and possibilism. We conclude by highlighting one substantive (...) difference between our two hybrid accounts. (shrink)

There are two distinct views on how to formulate an objective consequentialist account of the deontic status of actions, actualism and possibilism. On an actualist account, what matters to the deontic status of actions is only the value of the outcome an action would have, if performed. By contrast, a possibilist account also takes into account the value of the outcomes that an action could have. These two views come apart in their deontic verdicts when an agent is imperfect in (...) an avoidable way, viz., when agent brings about less good than she could. In this paper, I offer an argument against actualism that draws on the connection between moral obligation and practical reasons. (shrink)

Many philosophers think the distinctive function of deontic evaluation is to guide action. This idea is used in arguments for a range of substantive claims. In this paper, we entirely do one completely destructive thing and partly do one not entirely constructive thing. The first thing: we argue that there is an unrecognized gap between the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action and attempts to put that claim to use. We consider and reject four arguments (...) intended to bridge this gap. The interim conclusion is thus that arguments starting with the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action have a lacuna. The second thing: we consider a different tack for making arguments of this sort work. We sketch a methodology one could accept that would do the trick. Unfortunately, as we’ll explain, although this methodology would bridge the gap in arguments that put claims about the function of deontic evaluation to work, it would do so in a way that vitiates any interest we might have in such arguments. As an aside, we’ll also point out how epistemologists, who have recently become interested in the function of epistemic evaluation, appear to already recognize this fact. The conclusion is hence a dilemma: either arguments from deontic function to substance have a lacuna or such arguments lack teeth. (shrink)

Roughly speaking, maximalism is the view that only certain options are to be assessed in terms of whether they have some right‐making property (such as that of producing optimal consequences), whereas omnism is the view that all options are to be assessed in terms of whether they have this property. I argue that maximalism is preferable to omnism because it provides a more plausible solution to what's known as the problem of act versions and is not subject to any significant (...) problems of its own. If I'm right, then most moral theories, which are versions of omnism, need revision. (shrink)

In the 1960’s, Lars Bergström and Hector-Neri Castañeda noticed a problem with alternative acts and consequentialism. The source of the problem is that some performable acts are versions of other performable acts and the versions need not have the same consequences as the originals. Therefore, if all performable acts are among the agent’s alternatives, act consequentialism yields deontic paradoxes. A standard response is to restrict the application of act consequentialism to certain relevant alternative sets. Many proposals are based on some (...) variation of maximalism, that is, the view that act consequentialism should only be applied to maximally specific acts. In this paper, I argue that maximalism cannot yield the right prescriptions in some cases where one can either (i) form at once the intention to do an immediate act and form at a later time the intention to do a succeeding act or (ii) form at once the intention to do both acts and where the consequences of (i) and (ii) differ in value. Maximalism also violates normative invariance, that is, the condition that if an act is performable in a situation, then the normative status of the act does not depend on what acts are performed in the situation. Instead of maximalism, I propose that the relevant alternatives should be the exhaustive combinations of acts the agent can jointly perform without performing any other act in the situation. In this way, one avoids the problem of act versions without violating normative invariance. Another advantage is that one can adequately differentiate between possibilities like (i) and (ii). (shrink)

The way individual actions enter into larger courses of action often has an effect on the utility of those individual actions. This simple fact has motivated recent discussions about the intelligibility of act-utilitarianism. It has become clear that act-utilitarianism is incomplete, if not intelligible, without an account of the utility-making properties of courses of action taken as a whole. In this paper I offer a brief discussion of the difficulties of a simple act-utilitarianism and then offer three complementary principles in (...) which the utility of an action is made to depend upon the courses of action of which it may be a constituent. I hope that the discussion will be of interest not only to committed act-utilitarians but to its sympathetic critics as well. (shrink)

Suppose we believe that a property F is coextensive with moral permissibility. F may be, for example, the property of having the best consequences, if we are Consequentialists, or that of conforming to a universalisable maxim, if we are Kantians, and so on. This may raise the following problem. It is plausible that permissibility is “closed under implication”: any act that is implied by a permissible act must itself be permissible. Yet, in some cases, F might not be closed under (...) implication. If that is so, then F cannot be coextensive with permissibility. Maximalism has been proposed as a solution to this problem. A “maximal” act is one not implied by any other act. Maximalism restricts the claim that F is coextensive with permissibility to maximal acts only. A non-maximal act may be permissible without being F if it is implied by a maximal act that is F. The general aim of this paper is to investigate these issues by considering the formal structure of acts, or the “act-implication” relation. Discussions of Maximalism have tended to assume implicitly that acts have structure of some sort, but there has been little careful attention given to this structure. I aim to show that, by thinking about structure, we can provide a stronger defence of Maximalism. (shrink)

In Goodness and Justice, Joseph Mendola defends three related views in normative ethics: a novel form of consequentialism, a Bentham-style hedonism about “basic” value, and a maximin principle about the value of a world. In defending these views he draws on his views in metaethics, action theory, and the philosophy of mind. It is an ambitious and wide-ranging book. I begin with a quick explanation of Mendola’s views, and then raise some problems.

This paper sets out a novel challenge to consequentialism as a theory in normative ethics. The challenge is rooted in the ontological claim that consequences of actions do not exist at the time required to be that in virtue of which actions are right or wrong, and so consequences cannot play the role attributed to them by consequentialists. The challenge takes the form of a dilemma. The consequentialist is confronted with a set of propositions she will find individually plausible but (...) incompossible if taken in conjunction with consequentialism. The task is to restore consistency. There are ways of maintaining the view that consequences are right-makers, but they come at the cost of endorsing highly implausible and unattractive theses. Versions of what might be called quasi-consequentialism can be rendered metaphysically coherent, but these are consequentialisms in name only, and they are best seen as components of an account of practical rationality that has strong echoes of traditional Natural Law theory. Since this is unlikely to appeal to contemporary consequentialists, their best bet is to reject consequentialism altogether. (shrink)