Most epistemologists maintain that true beliefs are of final epistemic value. However, Richard Feldman is a rare philosopher who is skeptical that true beliefs are of final epistemic value. The aim of this paper is to evaluate Feldman’s criticisms. I’ll argue that Feldman’s arguments ultimately turn on a view about the relation between epistemic duties and epistemic value that is implausible and underdeveloped.

This paper argues that Charlie Gard’s parents should have been the decision-makers about their son’s best interests and that determination of Charlie’s best interests depended on a moral decision about which horn of a profound moral dilemma to choose. Charlie’s parents chose one horn of that moral dilemma and the courts, like Charlie Gard’s doctors, chose the other horn. Contrary to the first UK court’s assertion, supported by all the higher courts that considered it, that its judgement was ‘objective’, this (...) paper argues that the judgement was not and could not be ‘objective’ in the sense of objectively correct but was instead a value judgement based on the judge’s choice of one horn of the moral dilemma. While that horn was morally justified so too was the horn chosen by the parents. The court could and should have avoided depriving the parents of their normal moral and legal right and responsibility to decide on their child’s best interests. Instead, this paper argues that the court should have acknowledged the lawfulness of both horns of the moral dilemma and added to its judgement that Charlie Gard’s doctors were not legally obliged to provide treatment that they believed to be against their patient’s best interests the additional judgement that Charlie’s parents could lawfully transfer his care to other doctors prepared to offer the infant a trial of the experimental treatment requested by his parents. (shrink)

An appealing ethical view is that there are a number of different characteristics that make acts obligatory and others that make acts wrong. Being an instance of promise-keeping makes an act obligatory, while being an instance of causing harm makes an act wrong. Another appealing view is that we can do what we are obligated to do. Accepting both of these views poses well-known problems. Imagine that a person makes two incompatible promises. Either the person is not obliged to keep (...) each promise, or the person cannot satisfy both obligations. One of these appealing views must be rejected or modified. ;W. D. Ross offered a theory with a modification of the first view as its centerpiece. He introduced the term "prima facie duty" to describe the moral status of acts having a characteristic such as being an instance of promise keeping. He claimed that a person having mutually exclusive prima facie duties can be morally obligated to satisfy at most one of them, the other being "overridden." Ross did not, however, make clear what is involved in one prima facie duty overriding others, or the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. ;I am sympathetic to Ross's approach, but realize that it needs closer examination. I begin by stating his view as carefully as possible and laying out the problems with it. Various attempts have been made to explicate the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. These range from arguing that principles expressing prima facie duties are analogous to physical laws with ceteris paribus caveats to defining both concepts by use of a third normative concept such as requirement. I examine some of these attempts and find them flawed. I conclude that it is a mistake to suppose that there is some principle expressing the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. I argue that the difficulties with Ross's view can be traced to Aristotelian elements in it. These elements cause Ross's theory to be an unfortunate mix of two approaches to ethics: an investigation of the ethical life and an investigation of ethical concepts. (shrink)