This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate and related issues concerning the relationship between normative reasons and moral principles.

Many philosophers think that given the choice between saving the life of an innocent person and averting any number of minor ailments or inconveniences, it would be better to save the life. How, then, should one compare the risk of an innocent person’s life to such minor ailments and inconveniences? If lives are infinitely more important than insignificant factors then any risk cannot be outweighed, and that is untenable. An alternative approach seems more promising: let the values of such insignificant (...) factors be bounded, as then there will be well-behaved tradeoffs between insignificant things and the risk to an innocent life. We argue, however, that bounding the values of insignificant factors poses myriad problems. (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. I call this the "Difference Intuition." I define lying in terms of asserting, but remain open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. I define implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. I narrow down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether (...) there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, I set out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and survey a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. I finish by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill's discussion of lying. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the second of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the moral status of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I look at objections to the doctrine such as James’ Rachels’ Wicked Uncle Case and Jonathan (...) Bennett’s argument that any acceptable analysis of the distinction leaves it implausible that the distinction is morally relevant. I consider putative defences of the Doctrine from Philippa Foot and Warren Quinn. I argue that neither Foot not Quinn provides a satisfactory justification of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, but that the idea of self-ownership discussed by Quinn can be developed to provide a justification of the doctrine. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of rigour in the use of thought experiments in ethics. I argue that there are two separate challenges to be faced. The first is internal validity: is the thought experiment designed in a way that allows its readers to make judgements that are confident and free of bias about the hypothesis or point of principle that it aims to test? The second is external validity: to what extent do ethical judgements that are correct of the (...) world of the thought experiment generalize to a wide variety of other contexts, including ethical decision-making in the actual world? Ensuring external validity is the harder and more important problem of rigour, yet it is one that few philosophers have even noticed, let alone begun to solve. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in bioethics, by using various concepts drawn from debates on innovation in healthcare research—in particular debates around how best to connect up blue skies ‘basic’ research with practical innovations that can improve human lives. It argues that it is a mistake to assume that the most difficult and important questions in bioethics are the most abstract ones, and also a mistake to assume that getting clear about abstract cases will automatically (...) be of much help in getting clear about more complex cases. It replaces this implicitly linear model with a more complex one that draws on the idea of translational research in healthcare. On the translational model, there is a continuum of cases from the most simple and abstract to the most concrete and complex. Insights need to travel in both directions along this continuum—from the more abstract to the more concrete and from the more concrete to the more abstract. The paper maps out some difficulties in moving from simpler to more complex cases, and in doing so makes recommendations about the future of bioethics. (shrink)

I defend moral generalism against particularism. Particularism, as I understand it, is the negation of the generalist view that particular moral facts depend on the existence of a comprehensive set of true moral principles. Particularists typically present "the holism of reasons" as powerful support for their view. While many generalists accept that holism supports particularism but dispute holism, I argue that generalism accommodates holism. The centerpiece of my strategy is a novel model of moral principles as a kind of "hedged" (...) principles that incorporate an independently plausible "basis thesis" concerning the explanation of moral reasons. The model implies that moral reasons requires the existence of a comprehensive set of true hedged principles, and so it captures generalism. But the model also offers an alternative explanation of holism, and so it undercuts much of the motivation for particularism. I defend this moderate (because holism-tolerating) form of generalism against a number of objections, and show how it can be used to defeat three distinct arguments from holism to particularism. (shrink)

In this dialogue, I illustrate why moral arguments from analogy are a valuable part of moral reasoning by considering how texting while driving is, morally speaking, no different than drunk driving.

This paper examines accounts of the moral wrongness of killing persons in addition to determining what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from the morality of killing persons about the equality of persons, and vice versa. I will argue that a plausible way of thinking about the moral wrongness of killing implies that the permissibility of killing innocent, nonthreatening persons depends on a person’s age. I address objections to this conclusion and discuss some potential implications of the view.

We often act in ways that create duties for ourselves: we adopt a child and become obligated to raise and educate her. We also sometimes act in ways that eliminate duties: we get divorced, and no longer have a duty to support our now ex-spouse. When is it morally permissible to create or to eliminate a duty? These questions have almost wholly evaded philosophical attention. In this paper we develop answers to these questions by arguing in favor of the asymmetric (...) approach to deontic value. This approach holds that we must assign zero deontic value to fulfilling a duty, while assigning negative deontic value to violating that duty. Taking the opposing more natural symmetric approach, which holds that fulfilling duties has positive deontic value, leads to perverse recommendations about when to create or eliminate duties. A formal proof supporting the asymmetric approach is offered. We further show that moral theories require a consequentialist component to explain why we sometimes have duties to create or maintain duties. (shrink)

A desert-sensitive moral theory says that whether people get what they deserve, whether they are treated as they deserve to be treated, plays a role in determining what we ought to do. Some popular forms of consequentialism are desert-sensitive. But where do facts about what people deserve come from? If someone deserves a raise, or a kiss, in virtue of what does he deserve those things? One plausible answer is that what someone deserves depends, at least in part, on how (...) well he meets his moral requirements. The wicked deserve to suffer and the decent do not. Shelly Kagan (2006) has argued that this plausible answer is wrong. But his argument for that conclusion does not succeed. I will show how to formulate a desert-sensitive moral theory (and also a desert-sensitive version of consequentialism) on which this answer is correct. (shrink)

Many think that equality is an intrinsic value. However, this view, especially when based on a consequential foundation, faces familiar objections related to the claim that equality is sometimes good for none and bad for some: most notably the levelling down objection. This article explores a unique (consequential) conception of equality, as part of a more general conception of fairness concerning the resolution of interpersonal conflicts, which is not exposed to these objections.

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)

Moral principles play important roles in diverse areas of moral thought, practice, and theory. Many who think of themselves as ‘moral generalists’ believe that moral principles can play these roles—that they are capable of doing so. Moral generalism maintains that moral principles can and do play these roles because true moral principles are statements of general moral fact (i.e. statements of facts about the moral attributes of kinds of actions, kinds of states of affairs, etc.) and because general moral facts (...) explain particular moral facts (i.e. facts about the moral attributes of particulars). Moral holism maintains that what is a moral reason to φ in one case may not be one in another, and may even be a moral reason not to φ given suitable circumstances. Some ‘moral particularists’ maintain that moral holism motivates scepticism about the existence of and need for moral principles, along with scepticism about the viability of principle-based approaches to ethics and moral theory. But I argue that moral holism is itself a form of moral generalism, one that takes facts about the right- and wrong-making powers of (generic) moral factors to explain certain particular moral facts—namely, the rightness and wrongness of particular actions. I also argue that a moral-theoretic version of dispositionalism—the view that dispositions, powers, or capacities are the fundamental units of explanation—explains both why moral holism is true and why moral generalism is true. (shrink)

Just as we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of objects composes a single object, we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of actions composes a single action. In the material objects literature, this question is known as the "special composition question," and I take it that there is a similar question to be asked of collections of actions. I will call that question the "special composition question in action," and argue that the correct (...) answer to this question depends on a particular kind of consequence produced by the individual constituent actions. (shrink)

I defend these claims: (1) 'Pleasure' has exactly one English antonym: 'unpleasure.' (2) Pleasure is the most convincing example of an organic unity. (3) The hedonic calculus is a joke. (4) An important type of pleasure is background pleasure. (5) Pleasures in bad company are still good. (6) Higher pleasures aren't pleasures (and if they were, they wouldn't be higher). Thesis (1) merely concerns terminology, but theses (2)-(6) are substantive, evaluative claims.

This paper takes a novel approach to the active bioethical debate over whether advance medical directives have moral authority in dementia cases. Many have assumed that advance directives would lack moral authority if dementia truly produced a complete discontinuity in personal identity, such that the predementia individual is a separate individual from the postdementia individual. I argue that even if dementia were to undermine personal identity, the continuity of the body and the predementia individual’s rights over that body can support (...) the moral authority of advance directives. I propose that the predementia individual retains posthumous rights over her body that she acquired through historical embodiment in that body, and further argue that claims grounded in historical embodiment can sometimes override or exclude moral claims grounded in current embodiment. I close by considering how advance directives grounded in historical embodiment might be employed in practice and what they would and would not justify. (shrink)

Many contemporary ethicists use case-based reasoning to reach consistent beliefs about ethical matters. The idea is that particular cases elicit moral intuitions, which provide defeasible reasons to believe in their content. However, most proponents of case-based moral reasoning are not very explicit about how they resolve inconsistencies and how they abstract principles from judgments about particular cases. The aim of this article is to outline a methodology—called Consistency Reasoning Casuistry—for case-based reasoning in ethics. This methodology draws on Richmond Campbell and (...) Victor Kumar’s naturalistic model for the resolution of inconsistencies between the content of intuitions about particular cases. I argue that reasons similar to those that motivate their model also support a more abstract form of moral reasoning that goes beyond mere resolutions of inconsistencies between case judgments and demands the formulation of more abstract moral norms. Consistency Reasoning Casuistry, it is argued, is a good candidate for a methodology for case-based moral reasoning that is in harmony with paradigms of contemporary moral psychology and that can accommodate the methodology implicit in the work of many contemporary ethicists. (shrink)

The idea of using biomedical means to make people more likely to behave morally may have a certain appeal. However, it is very hard to find two persons – let alone two moral philosophers – who agree on what it means to be moral or to act morally. After discussing some of the proposals for moral enhancements that all ethicists could agree on, I engage more closely with the recent idea of “procedural moral enhancement” that aims at improving deliberative processes (...) instead of particular moral views, motivations, or dispositions. I argue that it is better understood as a contribution to moral epistemology and should thus be labeled “moral-epistemic enhancement”. I then defend perspective-taking as a moral epistemic capacity which can be enhanced by both traditional and non-traditional biomedical means; a capacity which almost always contributes to the epistemic value of moral decision-making. Perspective-taking seems to be an uncontroversial non-trivial capacity for moral decision-making reasonably widely shared by proponents of ethical beliefs within the academic community. The enhancement of this capacity is thus a good candidate for an uncontroversial non-trivial moral enhancement. (shrink)

Value is either additive or else it is subject to organic unity. In general we have organic unity where a complex whole is not simply the sum of its parts. Value exhibits organic unity if the value of a complex, whether a complex state or complex quality, is greater or less than the sum of the values of its components or parts. Whether or not value is additive might be thought to be of purely metaphysical interest, but it is also (...) connected with important aspects of evaluative reasoning. Additivity is closely connected with principles of bare difference and separability which are often tacitly assumed in value theory. The author spells out these principles and trace their connections with additivity and organic unity. The author then develops an unpleasant paradox of additivity. Additivity apparently entails nihilism: that nothing is more valuable than anything else. Additivity involves a kind of axiological atomism -- that complexes decompose into components or factors; that these factors possess value independently of their role in valuable complexes; and that the factors do not interact in their production of overall value. In order to avoid the paradox it seems as though the factors have to be akin to the metaphysically privileged states of logical atomism -- a doctrine that does not enjoy widespread support. The paradox poses a problem not only for the notions of organic unity and additivity, but also for the closely related bare-difference principles which lie at the heart of value theory and of its application. The author proposes a way of eliminating the paradox, and thereby saving additivity and separability, without presupposing an unpalatable variant of logical atomism. The author closes with the proposal to treat principles of additivity as regulative ideals in our search for intrinsic values. (shrink)

In this paper, we raise and discuss a puzzle about the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status. Suppose you have it within your power to give someone something they would enjoy. The following claims seem platitudinous: you can use this power to reward whatever kind of option you want, thereby making that option better and generating a reason for that person to perform it; this reason is then weighed alongside and against the other reasons at play; and altogether, the (...) reasons determine the deontic statuses of that person’s options. We show, however, that in a certain class of cases at least one of these apparent platitudes must be false. In particular, we show that in a certain kind of case wrongfulness cannot be rewarded. In some cases, if one tries to reward wrongfulness, something surprising must go awry: either what you attempt to give as a reward would not, in fact, be good, or it would not generate a reason, or it would have a surprising effect on the deontic status of the relevant options. The upshot is that the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status are complicated in ways that have not previously been remarked. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen has argued that there is a surprising truth in conservatism—namely, that there is a reason for some valuable things to be preserved, even if they could be replaced with other, more valuable things. This conservative thesis is motivated, Cohen suggests, by our judgments about a range of hypothetical cases. After reconstructing Cohen's conservative thesis, I argue that the relevant judgments about these cases do not favor the conservative thesis over standard, nonconservative axiological views. But I then argue (...) that there is a Mirrored Histories case that is such that, if one shares Cohen's conservative attitude, judgments about this case favor Cohen's conservative thesis over a wide range of non-conservative axiological views. Reflection on this case also suggests a different explanation of apparently conservative judgments that merits consideration in its own right. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to show conclusively that the apparent intrinsic difference between causing collateral damage and directly attacking innocents is an illusion. I show how eleven morally irrelevant alterations can transform an apparently permissible case of harming as a side-effect into an apparently impermissible case of harming as a means. The alterations are as obviously irrelevant as the victims’ skin colour, and consistently treating them as relevant would have unacceptable implications for choices between more and less harmful ways (...) of securing greater goods. This shows not only how the principles philosophers have proposed for distinguishing between these cases cannot withstand scrutiny, but how we can be sure that there are no relevant differences yet to be discovered. I conclude by considering reasons to think that there are deontological constraints against harming, but that they apply just as forcefully against collateral harms as they do against intended harms. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the role of culpability in determining the degree of liability to defensive harm, and asks whether there are any restrictions on when culpability is relevant to liability. A natural first suggestion is that it is only relevant when combined with an actual threat of harm in the situation in which defensive harm becomes salient as a means of protection. The paper begins by considering the question of whether two people are equally liable to defensive harm in (...) a situation if both culpably intend to harm another, but due to circumstances outside the control of the two people only one has a chance of succeeding in causing harm. I argue that there is no difference in liability between the two. I then turn to a kind of slippery slope challenge that accepting this conclusion would lead to a vast over-inclusiveness in those liable to defensive harm, and consider a recent attempt at meeting it that requires that a person’s culpability can only affect liability if it concerns the very situation in which defensive harm is relevant. Finally, I put forward and assess a new way of meeting the challenge that appeals to a particular conception of culpability together with auxiliary theses concerning how culpability can decrease over time, among others. (shrink)

Justification depends on context: even if E on its own justifies H, still it might fail to justify in the context of D. This sort of effect, epistemologists think, is due to defeaters, which undermine or rebut a would-be justifier. I argue that there is another fundamental sort of contextual feature, disqualification, which doesn't involve rebuttal or undercutting, and which cannot be reduced to any notion of screening-off. A disqualifier makes some would-be justifier otiose, as direct testimony sometimes does to (...) distal testimony, and as manifestly decisive evidence might do to gratuitous evidence on the same team. Basing a belief on disqualified evidence, moreover, is distinctively irrational. One is not necessarily irresponsible. Instead one is turning down a free upgrade to a sleeker, stabler basis for one's beliefs. Such an upgrade would prevent wastes of epistemic effort, since someone who bases her belief on a disqualified proposition E will need to remember E and rethink her belief should E ever be defeated. The upgrade might also reduce reliance on unwieldy evidence, if E is relevant only thanks to some labyrinthine argument; and if even ideal agents should doubt their ability to follow such arguments, even they should care about disqualifiers. (shrink)

This paper is about the idea of a moral distinction between doing harm and allowing harm to occurr. It discusses, and developes a general argument against, the version of the distinction often described as counterfactual, which I characterize in terms of making a moral difference between different ways of causing harm (in contrast to, e.g., the version famously discussed by Jonathan Bennett). The gist of the argument is that all variants of this version of the doing-allowing idea would have to (...) make factors out of the agent's control into wrong-making characteristics and that, therefore, this version violates a plausible extension of the principle that 'ought' implies 'can'. (shrink)

Throw: Harry throws a stone at Dick, hitting him. Intuitively, there is a moral difference between the first and the second case of each of these pairs.1 In the second case, the agent’s behavior is morally worse than his behavior in the first case. But in each pair, the agent’s behavior has the same outcome: in No Check and Shoot, the outcome is that a child dies, and Jim saves $40; in No Catch and Throw, the outcome is that Dick (...) is hit by a stone. Let us call these pairs of cases “the paradigm pairs.” The paradigm pairs, and others like them, provide evidence that common sense morality is not consequentialist: common sense morality does not judge the moral worth of actions just in terms of their consequences. But it has proved extremely difficult to provide an account of a morally relevant difference between the members of pairs like the ones above. One hypothesis about the difference that has received a lot of attention in the literature is that in the first kind of case the agent allows the outcome to occur, while in the second the agent makes the.. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a conception of moral coherence that is suitable for use in contexts of principle pluralism. I argue that, as they are traditionally understood, coherence methods stack the deck against pluralist theories, by incorporating norms such as systematicity—that the principles of a theory should be as few and as simple as possible. I develop and defend an alternative, minimal, conception of coherence that focuses instead on consistency. It has been suggested that consistency in this context should (...) aim at the avoidance of conflict, but I argue against this: what matters is “case consistency,” or judging consistently from one case to another. This means judging in accordance with morally relevant similarities and differences. I defend my proposal of minimal coherence from objections having to do with complexity and arbitrariness. (shrink)

Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning child from a pond at the expense of ruining your shoes and that you ought to aid the world’s poor if you thereby do not sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance. Taking the latter principle seriously would lead you to let the child in front of you drown whenever you could thereby (...) save more children in the developing world. Though Singer can defend the duty to aid the world’s poor starting from consequentialist principles requiring you to make things go best in the impartial sense, he cannot have it invoking the commonsense judgment about what you ought to do in the pond case. There is no sound path from commonsense morality to Singer’s principles of beneficence. (shrink)

This paper develops the Value-Based Theory of Reasons in some detail. The central part of the paper introduces a number of theoretically puzzling features of normative reasons. These include weight, transmission, overlap, and the promiscuity of reasons. It is argued that the Value-Based Theory of Reasons elegantly accounts for these features. This paper is programmatic. Its goal is to put the promising but surprisingly overlooked Value-Based Theory of Reasons on the table in discussions of normative reasons, and to draw attention (...) to a number of areas for fruitful further research. (shrink)

We use normative reasons in a bewildering variety of different ways. And yet, as many recent theorists have shown, one can discern systematic distinctions underlying this complexity. This paper is a contribution to this project of constructive normative metaphysics. We aim to bring a black sheep back into the flock: the balancing model of weighing reasons. This model is threatened by a variety of cases in which distinct reasons overlap, in the sense that they do not contribute separate weight for (...) or against an option. Our response is to distinguish between derivative reasons and load-bearing reasons, only the latter of which contribute non-overlapping weight to an option. This distinction is close at hand for analyses of reasons in terms of the promotion of significant outcomes. But we also develop an account of this distinction for fundamentalist theories of normative reasons. (shrink)

In The Ends of Harm Victor Tadros develops an alternative to consequentialist, and non-consequentialist retributivist, accounts of the justifiability of punishment: the duty view. Crucial to this view is the claim that wrongdoers incur an enforceable duty to remedy their wrongs. They cannot undo them, but they can do something that is almost as good—namely, by submitting to appropriate punishment, which will deter potential wrongdoers in the future, reduce their victim’s risk of suffering similar wrongs again. Admittedly, this involves harming (...) wrongdoers as a means to an end, but according to Tadros the ‘means principle’ that we should not harm others as a means, properly construed, does not apply to cases where the victim has an enforceable duty to bear the kind of harm that he or she is being made to suffer. In this article, I shall express reservations about Tadros’ defense and interpretation of the means principle. In presenting his position, Tadros also sets out some interesting anti-retributivist considerations casting doubt on the idea that wrongdoers’ suffering is non-instrumentally good. I shall challenge these. Finally, I shall suggest that the duty view may have counterintuitive implications in relation to wrongs where the offender helps to lower the risk that victims will be subjected to similar wrongs in ways other than by being punished. (shrink)

According to Thomas Pogge, rich people do not simply violate a positive duty of assistance to help the global poor; rather, they violate a negative duty not to harm them. They do so by imposing an unjust global economic structure on poor people. Assuming that these claims are correct, it follows that, ceteris paribus, wars waged by the poor against the rich to resist this imposition are morally equivalent to wars waged in self-defense against military aggression. Hence, if self-defense against (...) military aggression is just, then, ceteris paribus, so are defensive wars against the imposition of economic injustice. While I do not think Pogge’s analysis of the causes of global poverty is correct, I defend these inferences against various challenges. (shrink)

With regard to intrinsically morally relevant factors it is natural to suppose that if a variation in a given factor makes a moral difference anywhere, then it makes the same moral difference everywhere (henceforth: the constancy assumption). Jonathan Dancy (and other moral particularists) reject the constancy assumption. Partly on the basis thereof, they infer that ethical decisions should be made “case by case, without the comforting support of moral principles”. In this article, I challenge Dancy's defence and use of a (...) denial of the constancy assumption on three points. First, Dancy's appeal to moral intuitions do not justify denying a significant version of the constancy assumption. Second, if we reject the constancy assumption, surprisingly, it may in one crucial respect be very hard to defend moral particularism as commonly articulated. Third, rejecting the constancy assumption does not motivate seeing moral reasoning as essentially a case‐by‐case matter. (shrink)

Moral cognitivism, internalism about moral judgements, and Humeanism about motivating reasons all possess attractions.Yet they cannot all be true.This is the so–called moral problem. Dancy offers an interesting particularist response to the moral problem. However, we argue that this response, first, provides an inadequate basis for the distinction between motivating states and states necessary for motivation although not themselves motivators; second, draws no support from considerations about weakness of the will; and third, involves an implausible account of desire.We conclude that (...) particularism ú whatever other attractions it may have ú does not solve the moral problem. 1We would like to thank Jonathan Dancy, Paul Robinson, and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. (shrink)

It is sometimes asserted that enabling harm is morally equivalent to allowing harm. In this article, I criticize this view. Positively, I show that cases involving self-defence and cases involving people acting on the basis of a reasonable belief to the effect that certain obstacles to harm will remain in place, or will be put in place, show that enabling harm is harder to justify than allowing it. Negatively, I argue that certain cases offered in defence of the moral equivalence (...) thesis fail, because either their similarity with the archetypal trolley case limits their relevance to an assessment of this thesis, or they are compromised by their reliance on the elusive notion of a situation being completely stable. (shrink)

Many assume that the best, and perhaps only, way to address the so-called Problem of Evil is to claim that God does not do evil, but that God merely allows evil. This assumption depends on two claims: the doing-allowing distinction exists and the doing-allowing distinction is morally significant. In this paper I try to undermine both of these claims. Against I argue that some of the most influential analyses of the doing-allowing distinction face grave difficulties and that these difficulties are (...) only exacerbated when applied to God. Against I argue that broadly Kantian considerations give a better explanation of the moral differences in paradigm cases than the doing-allowing distinction and, when applied to God, effectively dissolve the moral significance of the doing-allowing distinction. The upshot of this is that those who claim God does evil are no worse off than those who claim God allows evil regarding the PoE. (shrink)

Non-Consequentialist moral theories posit the existence of moral constraints: prohibitions on performing particular kinds of wrongful acts, regardless of the good those acts could produce. Many believe that such theories cannot give satisfactory verdicts about what we morally ought to do when there is some probability that we will violate a moral constraint. In this article, I defend Non-Consequentialist theories from this critique. Using a general choice-theoretic framework, I identify various types of Non-Consequentialism that have otherwise been conflated in the (...) debate. I then prove a number of formal possibility and impossibility results establishing which types of Non-Consequentialism can -- and which cannot -- give us adequate guidance through through a risky world. (shrink)

Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. However, what (...) does it require of you when deciding under risk? What ought you to do when there is a chance that, say, you will not succeed in saving the life? In recent years, various critics have argued that moral absolutism cannot satisfactorily deal with risk and should, therefore, be abandoned. In this paper, we show that moral absolutism can answer its critics by drawing on—of all things—orthodox expected utility theory. (shrink)

The bare‐difference methodology is considered to be a powerful tool in ethical reasoning. The underlying idea is that we can identify the intrinsic evaluative significance of some feature by constructing contrast cases or bare‐difference cases, i.e., two cases that hold everything constant but for the feature of interest. While this popular methodology has been challenged by prominent philosophers such as Kagan, Thomson, and Kamm, it is intuitively appealing because, as Perrett identifies, the methodology appears to share the same logical structure (...) as a fruitful scientific procedure. In this paper, I argue that examining this ‘scientific analogy’ is crucial to understanding both the limitations and the prospects for ethical bare‐difference reasoning. I expand upon Perrett's discussion of the scientific analogy and examine another relevant similarity. I then highlight two relevant dissimilarities between ethical bare‐difference reasoning and its scientific analogue. Though these differences threaten to undermine the analogy, I show how the analogy might be mended to better bring the ethical methodology in line with its scientific counterpart and avoid challenges to ethical bare‐difference methodology raised by philosophers in the literature. (shrink)

According to a standard picture, for any two comparable objects and a basis for comparison, either one is greater than the other or they are equal with respect to the basis. This picture has been called the Trichotomy Thesis, and although it is intuitive and plausible, it has been called into question by such philosophers as Derek Parfit, James Griffin, Joseph Raz, and Ruth Chang. Chang’s discussion is particularly rich, for she proposes and provides a detailed account of a possible (...) fourth relation that, she argues, provides a satisfying explanation of hard cases of comparison. In this paper, I will examine a version of the main argument against the Trichotomy Thesis and attempt to show that it is unsound. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a particularist understanding of thick evaluative features, something that is rarely done and is fairly controversial. That is, I argue that sometimes that the fact that an act is just, say, could, in certain situations, provide one with a reason against performing the action. Similarly, selfishness could be right-making. To show this, I take on anti-particularist ideas from two much-cited pieces (by Crisp, and by McNaughton and Rawling), in the influential Moral Particularism anthology (eds.) (...) Hooker and Little (OUP). My paper has already been cited by other people working in the field. (shrink)