This paper shows that our popular account of weakness of will is inconsistent with dilemmas. In dilemmas, agents judge that they ought to do one thing, that they ought to do something else, and that they cannot do both. They must act against either of their two judgments. But such action is commonly understood as weakness of will. An agent is weak-willed in doing something if she judges that she ought to and could do something else instead. Thus, it seems (...) that, in a dilemma, the agent is weak-willed by definition. But this is puzzling: clearly, the two are different phenomena. The puzzle may support scepticism about weakness of will or dilemmas. Here, I argue that the two are consistent on a revised understanding of weakness of will. To do so, I further distinguish the mental states of an agent in a dilemma from those of a weak-willed person. (shrink)

Some philosophers – notably Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum and Ruth Barcan Marcus – argue that agents in moral dilemmas are blameworthy whatever they do. I begin by uncovering the connection these philosophers are presupposing between the agent’s judgement of wrongdoing and her tendency to self-blame. Next, I argue that while dilemmatic choosers cannot help but see themselves as wrongdoers, they both can and should divorce this judgement from an ascription of self-blame. As I argue, dilemmatic choosers are morally sui generis (...) in that their actions result in a diminishment of their personal integrity with no corresponding failure of character. It is this that makes them non-blameworthy wrongdoers. This way of seeing the problem should provide dilemmatic choosers with a novel conception of their own moral psychology, one that allows them to view their actions in a manner that is given neither to moral insensitivity nor to pathological self-accusation. (shrink)

When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint and technological progress can create moral progress rather than just moral problems. We show this by (...) an analysis of how technology can contribute to the solution of so-called moral overload or moral dilemmas. Such dilemmas typically create a moral residue that is the basis of a second-order principle that tells us to reshape the world so that we can meet all our moral obligations. We can do so, among other things, through guided technological innovation. (shrink)

Bumped from a flight? Relax with this defense of the big business practice of deliberately promising more services than one will provide. On a small scale, over‐promising yields a toxic moral dilemma and a lie. At a large scale, the dilemma becomes dilute, and the lie completely disappears. Overbooking is honest because there is a sufficiently high probability of fulfilling each promise. Overbooking is socially beneficial because the promised resources are used more efficiently. There are fewer wasted seats on jumbo (...) jets and hence cheaper tickets with less pollution. Widespread disapproval of overbooking is a fallacious scaling error. Instead of there being too much overbooking, there is too little. (shrink)

In this thesis, the framework within which long-term goals are set and subsequently achieved or approached is analyzed. Sustainable development and climate change are areas in which goals have tobe set despite uncertainties. The analysis is divided into the normative motivations for setting such goals, what forms of goals could be set given the empirical and normative uncertainties, and how tomanage doubts regarding achievability or values after a goal has been set. Paper I discusses a set of questions that moral (...) theories intended to guide goal-setting should respond to. It is often claimed that existent normative theories provide only modest guidance regarding climate change, and consequently have to be revised or supplemented. Two such suggested revisions or supplements are analyzed in order to determine whether they provide such guidance. Paper II applies the deep ecological framework to survey the extent to which it can be utilized to discuss issues concerning the management of climate change. It is suggested that the deep ecological framework can provide guidance by establishing a normative framework and an analysis of how the overarching values and principles can be specified to be relevant for actions. Paper III is focused on normative political theory, and explicates the two dimensions of empirical and normative uncertainty. By applying recent discussions in normative political theory on ideal/non-ideal theory, political realism, and the relation between normative demands and empirical constraints,strategies for managing the proposed goals are suggested. Paper IV suggests a form of goal that incorporates uncertainties. Cautious utopias allow greater uncertainty than realistic goals,but not to the same extent as utopian goals. Such goals have a performance-enhancing function. A definition and quality criteria for such goals are proposed. Paper V considers whether a goal that is becoming all the more unlikely to be achievable should be reconsidered. The paper focuses on the two degrees Celsius target, and asks whether it could still be a sensible goal to aspire to. By applying the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, the role of such obligations is investigated. Paper VI surveys how to treat circumstances in which an already set goal should be reconsidered and possibly revised, and what would evoke doubt in the belief upon which those goals have been set.Two situations are analyzed: a problematic or surprising event occurs, upsetting confidence in one’s relevant beliefs, or respectable but dissenting views are voiced concerning one’s means and/or values. It is suggested that the validity of doubt has to be considered, in addition to the level in a goal-means hierarchy towards which doubt is raised. (shrink)

This paper argues that morality depends on prudence, or more specifically, that one cannot be a moral person without being prudent. Ethicists are unaware of this, ignore it, or imply it is wrong. Although this thesis is not obvious from the current perspective of ethics, I believe that its several implications for ethics make it worth examining. In this paper I argue for the prudence dependency thesis by isolating moral practice from all reliance on prudence. The result is that in (...) the actual world in which we live one cannot be moral unless one is prudent. In order to show that morality depends on prudence for the entire range of moral situations, we put prudence to the test against the most extraordinary of moral situations: moral dilemmas. Doing so shows that for all practical purposes moral dilemmas are prudential problems for agents, giving further support to the prudence dependency thesis. (shrink)

The overall aim of this thesis is to present a model for rational goal-setting and to illustrate how it can be applied in evaluations of public policies, in particular policies concerning sustainable development and environmental quality. The contents of the thesis are divided into two sections: a theoretical section and an empirical section. Paper I identifies a set of rationality criteria for single goals and discusses them in relation to the typical function of goals. It is argued that goals are (...) typically set to enhance goal achievement. A goal that successfully furthers its achievement is “achievement-inducing”. It holds for each of the identified criteria that, ceteris paribus, improved satisfaction of a criterion makes a goal better in the achievement-inducing sense.Paper II contains an analysis of the notion of goal system coherence. It is argued that the coherence of a goal system is determined by the relations that hold among the goals in the system, in particular the relations of operationalization, means and ends, support, and conflict. Paper III investigates the rationality of utopian goals. The paper analyzes four arguments that support the normative criterion of attainability: that utopian goals are too imprecise and too far-reaching to guide action effectively, counterproductive, and morally objectionable. A tentative defence of utopian goal-setting is built on counter-arguments that can be put forward to weaken each of the four objections. Paper IV investigates the nature of self-defeating goals. The paper identifies three types of situations in which self-defeating mechanisms obstruct goal achievement: situations in which the goal itself carries the seeds of its own non-fulfilment, situations in which the activity of goal-setting contributes to goal failure, and situations in which disclosure of the goal interferes with progress. Paper V provides a brief description of the Swedish system of environmental objectives and a preliminary inventory of the management difficulties that attach to this goal system.Paper VI contains an investigation into the rationality of five Swedish environmental objectives through an application of the rationality criteria identified in Papers I-II. The paper identifies and discusses some difficulties that are associated with management by objectives and the use of goals in environmental policy. Paper VII analyses the rationality of the Swedish environmental quality objective A good built environment. Among the conclusions drawn in the paper are that some of the sub-goals to the objective are formulated in terms that are unnecessarily vague from an action-guiding standpoint and that others are problematic from the viewpoint of evaluability. (shrink)