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The limits of morality

New York: Oxford University Press (1989)

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  1. Faits mooréens et révision des croyances, ou le sceptique peut-il gagner?Thomas Kelly & Benoit Guilielmo - 2024 - Klesis 57. Translated by Benoit Guilielmo.
    Un fait Mooréen, selon l'expression de David Lewis, est « l'une des choses que nous savons mieux que toute prémisse d'une argumentation philosophique visant à é tablir le contraire. » Le sujet des faits Mooréens soulève des questions profondes, à la fois de méthode philosophique et d'épistémologie de premier ordre. Comment devrions-nous répondre aux arguments qui remettent en question des croyances dont nous sommes extrêmement confiants ? Dans quelle mesure ces arguments – ou plutôt ceux qui les avancent – peuvent-ils (...)
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  • A Fission Problem for Person-Affecting Views.Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - Ergo.
    On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission analogues of the problems (...)
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  • Moral Uncertainty, Pure Justifiers, and Agent-Centred Options.Patrick Kaczmarek & Harry R. Lloyd - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Moral latitude is only ever a matter of coincidence on the most popular decision procedure in the literature on moral uncertainty. In all possible choice situations other than those in which two or more options happen to be tied for maximal expected choiceworthiness, Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness implies that only one possible option is uniquely appropriate. A better theory of appropriateness would be more sensitive to the decision maker’s credence in theories that endorse agent-centred prerogatives. In this paper, we will develop (...)
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  • Moral Demandingness and Modal Demandingness.Kyle York - 2024 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 28 (2).
    My aim is to propose a better way to understand moral demandingness: a counterfactual view that requires us to consider the demands that moral theories make across other possible worlds. Seemingly, the demandingness of any moral theory or principle should be evaluated in terms of that theory’s general demandingness. This, in turn, implies that we ought to be concerned about the possible demandingness of moral theories and not just about how demanding they actually are. This counterfactual view might also have (...)
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  • The weight of reasons: a framework for ethics.Chris Tucker - 2024 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The book develops, defends, and applies a "Dual Scale" model of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn't want to know too. It addresses, among other things, what the general issue of weighing reasons is; what it is to weigh reasons correctly; whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and/or commending weight); whether weight values are (...)
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  • The Ethics of Conceptualization: Tailoring Thought and Language to Need.Matthieu Queloz - forthcoming - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...)
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  • Secrets vs. Lies: Is There A Moral Asymmetry?Mahon James - 2018 - In Eliot Michaelson & Andreas Stokke (eds.), Lying: Language, Knowledge, Ethics, and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 161-182.
    In this chapter I argue that the traditional interpretation of the commonly accepted moral asymmetry between secrets and lies is incorrect. On the standard interpretation of the commonly accepted view, lies are prima facie or pro tango morally wrong, whereas secrets are morally permissible. I argue that, when secrets are distinguished from mere acts of reticence and non-acknowledgement, as well as from acts of deception, so that they are defined as acts of not sharing believed-information while believing that the believed-information (...)
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  • (1 other version)Moral demands and the far future.Andreas Mogensen - manuscript
    I argue that moral philosophers have either misunderstood the problem of moral demandingness or at least failed to recognize important dimensions of the problem that undermine many standard assumptions. It has been assumed that utilitarianism concretely directs us to maximize welfare within a generation by transferring resources to people currently living in extreme poverty. In fact, utilitarianism seems to imply that any obligation to help people who are currently badly off is trumped by obligations to undertake actions targeted at improving (...)
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  • Chance, consent, and COVID-19.Ryan Doody - 2023 - In Evandro Barbosa (ed.), Moral Challenges in a Pandemic Age. Routledge. pp. 204-224.
    Are mandatory lockdown measures, which place restrictions on one’s freedom to move and assemble, justifiable? Offhand, such measures appear to compromise important rights to secure goals of public health. Proponents of such measures think the trade-off is worth it; opponents think it isn’t. However, one might think that casting the debate in these terms concedes too much to the opponents. Mandatory lockdown measures don’t infringe important rights because no one has a right to impose a risk of grievous harm on (...)
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  • Even More Supererogatory.Holly Smith - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):1-20.
    Losing an arm to rescue a child from a burning building is supererogatory. But is losing an arm to save two children more supererogatory than losing two arms to save a single child? What factors make one act more supererogatory than another? I provide an innovative account of how to compare which of two acts is more supererogatory, and show the superiority of this account to its chief rival.
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  • Distributive justice, social cooperation, and the basis of equality.Emil Andersson - 2022 - Theoria 88 (6):1180-1195.
    This paper considers the view that the basis of equality is the range property of being a moral person. This view, suggested by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971), is commonly dismissed in the literature. By defending the view against the criticism levelled against it, I aim to show that this dismissal has been too quick. The critics have generally failed to fully appreciate the fact that Rawls's account is restricted to the domain of distributive justice. On (...)
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  • People in Suitcases.Kacper Kowalczyk - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 20 (1-2):3-30.
    Ex-ante deontology is an attempt to combine deontological constraints on doing or intending harm with the idea that one should act in everyone’s interest if possible. I argue that ex-ante deontology has serious problems in cases where multiple decisions are to be made over time. I then argue that these problems force us to choose between commonsense deontological morality and a more consequentialist morality. I suggest that we should choose the latter.
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  • Superiority Discounting Implies the Preposterous Conclusion.Mitchell Barrington - 2022 - Utilitas 34 (4):493-501.
    Many population axiologies avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by endorsing Superiority: some number of great lives is better than any number of mediocre lives. But as Nebel shows, RC follows from the Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion: a guaranteed mediocre life is better than a sufficiently small probability of a great life. This result is concerning because IRC is plausible. Recently, Kosonen has argued that IRC can be true while RC is false if small probabilities are discounted to zero. This article details the (...)
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  • Reasons for Rule Consequentialists.Christopher Woodard - 2022 - Ratio (4):1-10.
    This paper explores what a Rule Consequentialist of Brad Hooker's sort can and should say about normative rea- sons for action. I claim that they can provide a theory of reasons, but that doing so requires distinguishing dif- ferent roles of rules in the ideal code. Some rules in the ideal code specify reasons, while others perform differ- ent functions. The paper also discusses a choice that Rule Consequentialists face about how exactly to specify rea- sons. It ends by comparing (...)
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  • Aplicação da Teoria da Diferença ao Estado de Necessidade Excludente da Ilicitude Penal.Ricardo Tavares Da Silva - manuscript
    Começo por distinguir entre proibição em abstrato (tipicidade) e proibição em concreto (ilicitude), situando o estado de necessidade justificante ao nível das causas de exclusão da ilicitude. Relaciono a exclusão da ilicitude resultante do estado de necessidade com a noção de ‘bem’ em sentido integral ou agregado. Depois, passo ao ponto principal deste ensaio, aplicando a teoria da diferença, usada no cálculo da indemnização em sede de responsabilidade civil, para aferir se há ou não superioridade do interesse salvaguardado face ao (...)
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  • The Nonconsequentialist Argument from Evil.Justin Mooney - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (12):3599-3615.
    Stringent non-consequentialist constraints on permitting horrendous evils pose a formidable challenge to the project of theodicy by limiting the ways in which it is permissible for God to do or allow evil for the sake of bringing about a greater good. I formulate a general and potent argument against all greater-good theodicies from the existence of robust side constraints on permitting evil. Then I contend that the argument fails. I begin by distinguishing between side constraints on doing evil and side (...)
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  • A defence of the evolutionary debunking argument.Man Him Ip - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    In this thesis, I will explore the epistemological evolutionary debunking arguments in meta-ethics. I will defend these arguments by accomplishing two tasks: I will offer the best way to understand the EDA and I will also respond to two strongest objections to the EDA. Firstly, in Part I of this thesis, I will offer my account of how the EDA should be best formulated. I will start from how evolution has significantly influenced our moral beliefs. I will then explain why, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Unitarianism or Hierarchical Approach for Moral Status? A Very Subtle Difference.Francesco Allegri - 2021 - Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism 9 (1-2):91-107.
    The article is inspired by Shelly Kagan’s recent book “How to Count Animals”, which focuses on the alternative between a unitarian and a hierarchical conception of the moral status of beings in the animal ethics debate. The paper finds a way of compromise between the two perspectives in the principle of equal consideration of interests, but above all it lessens the role of such opposition – especially its practical relevance – by emphasizing that, regardless of the fact of conceiving moral (...)
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  • Supererogation and Optimisation.Christian Barry & Seth Lazar - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):21-36.
    This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the (...)
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  • The Philosophy of Online Manipulation.Michael Klenk & Fleur Jongepier (eds.) - 2022 - Routledge.
    Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...)
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  • Should We Take Up the Slack?: Reflections on Non-ideal Theory in Ethics.Satoshi Fukuma - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (4):1825-1844.
    This article asks whether our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of our income to eradicate world poverty because billionaires do not donate? If so, how much should we donate? In short, should we make up for others’ defaulting on their moral duties – and if so, how and to what extent? Such situations are called non-ideal circumstances in political philosophy. With the increasing (...)
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  • Pick the Sugar.Seamus Bradley - manuscript
    This paper presents a decision problem called the holiday puzzle. The decision problem is one that involves incommensurable goods and sequences of choices. This puzzle points to a tension between three prima facie plausible, but jointly incompatible claims. I present a way out of the trilemma which demonstrates that it is possible for agents to have incomplete preferences and to be dynamically rational. The solution also suggests that the relationship between preference and rational permission is more subtle than standardly assumed.
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  • What Is Punishment?Frej Klem Thomsen - manuscript
    Since the middle of the 20th century, philosophers and legal scholars have debated the precise definition of punishment. This chapter surveys the debate, identifies six potential conditions of punishment, and critically reviews each of them: 1) the response condition, which holds that punishment must be in response to wrongdoing, 2) the culpability condition, which holds that punishment must be of a person morally responsible for wrongdoing, 3) the authority condition, which holds that punishment must be imposed by a relevant authority, (...)
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  • Überforderungseinwände in der Ethik.Lukas Naegeli - 2022 - Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
    Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.
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  • Metafysiikka valistuksena.Jani Hakkarainen - 2022 - In Hemmo Laiho (ed.), Valistuksen perinnöt: Suomen Filosofisen Yhdistyksen kollokvion esitelmiä. University of Turku. pp. 37-48.
    Kirjoituksessa argumentoin, että metafysiikka on ollut valistusta, vaikka se edelleen kaipaa lisää valistumista, kun valistus ymmärretään avoimena prosessina, joka ei ole ajasta ja paikasta riippuvaista. Käsittelen ensin sitä, mitä metafysiikka ja valistus ovat. Sitten lausun länsimaisen metafysiikan historiasta hyvin lyhyesti. Päätän esseen argumentoimalla, että metafysiikka on valistunutta siinä mielessä, että klassisen substanssi-ominaisuus-skeeman sokeasta seuraamisesta on pitkälti päästy eroon. Metafysiikka kaipaa kuitenkin lisää valistusta ja kriittistä tarkastelua, jotta vapaudumme täysin kyseisen skeeman ja modernin predikaatti-logiikan johdatuksen aiheuttamasta kolmesta ongelmallisesta suositusta (tausta)oletuksesta: (1) (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Loving State.Adam Lovett - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1.
    I explore the idea that the state should love its citizens. It should not be indifferent towards them. Nor should it merely respect them. It should love them. We begin by looking at the bases of this idea. First, it can be grounded by a concern with state subordination. The state has enormous power over its citizens. This threatens them with subordination. Love ameliorates this threat. Second, it can be grounded by the state's lack of moral status. We all have (...)
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  • Parity, moral options, and the weights of reasons.Chris Tucker - 2022 - Noûs 57 (2):454-480.
    The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in at least two (...)
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  • Offsetting Harm.Michael Deigan - 2022 - In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 12.
    It is typically wrong to act in a way that foreseeably makes some impending harm worse. Sometimes it is permissible to do so, however, if one also offsets the harm increasing action by doing something that decreases the badness of the same harm by at least as much. This chapter argues that the standard deontological constraint against doing harm is not compatible with the permissibility of harm increases that have been offset. Offsetting neither prevents one's other actions from doing harm (...)
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  • The Dynamics of Responsibility Judgment: Joint Role of Dependence and Transference Causal Explanations.Sofia Bonicalzi, Eugenia Kulakova, Chiara Brozzo, Sam J. Gilbert & Patrick Haggard - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 35 (6):911-939.
    Reasoning about underlying causal relations drives responsibility judgments: agents are held responsible for the outcomes they cause through their behaviors. Two main causal reasoning approaches exist: dependence theories emphasize statistical relations between causes and effects, while transference theories emphasize mechanical transmission of energy. Recently, pluralistic or hybrid models, combining both approaches, have emerged as promising psychological frameworks. In this paper, we focus on causal reasoning as involved in third-party judgements of responsibility and on related judgments of intention and control. In (...)
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  • A dilemma for reasons additivity.Geoff Keeling - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (1):20-42.
    This paper presents a dilemma for the additive model of reasons. Either the model accommodates disjunctive cases in which one ought to perform some act $$\phi $$ just in case at least one of two factors obtains, or it accommodates conjunctive cases in which one ought to $$\phi $$ just in case both of two factors obtains. The dilemma also arises in a revised additive model that accommodates imprecisely weighted reasons. There exist disjunctive and conjunctive cases. Hence the additive model (...)
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  • How to Count Animals, More or Less. [REVIEW]Eliot Michaelson - 2021 - Philosophical Review 130 (4):601-605.
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  • Formalizing Reasons, Oughts, and Requirements.Robert Mullins - 2020 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7:568-599.
    Reasons-based accounts of our normative conclusions face difficulties in distinguishing between what ought to be done and what is required. This article addresses this problem from a formal perspective. I introduce a rudimentary formalization of a reasons-based account and demonstrate that that the model faces difficulties in accounting for the distinction between oughts and requirements. I briefly critique attempts to distinguish between oughts and requirements by appealing to a difference in strength or weight of reasons. I then present a formalized (...)
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  • The Ethics of Partiality.Benjamin Lange - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 1 (8):1-15.
    Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...)
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  • Practical Identity and Duties of Love.Berit Brogaard - 2021 - Disputatio 13 (60):27-50.
    This paper defends the view that we have special relationship duties that do not derive from our moral duties. Our special relationship duties, I argue, are grounded in what I call close relationships. Sharing a close relationship with another person, I suggest, requires that both people conceive of themselves as being motivated to promote the other’s interests. So, staying true to oneself demands being committed to promoting the interests of those with whom we share a close relationship. Finally, I show (...)
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  • Wie effizient sollen Altruisten handeln? [= How Efficiently Should Altruists Act?].Christoph Lumer - 2021 - In Johannes L. Brandl, Beatrice S. Kobow & Daniel Messelken (eds.), Analytische Explikationen & Interventionen / Analytical Explications & Interventions. Ein Salzburger Symposium für und mit Georg Meggle. Brill-mentis. pp. 226-249.
    The article develops a general theory of the goals of free moral commitment. The theoretical hook is the discussion of the strict efficiency striving as demanded by the movement and theory of effective altruism. A detailed example shows prima facie counterintuitive consequences of this efficiency striving, the analysis of which reveals various problems such as: merely point-like but not structural commitment; radical universalism; violation of established moral standards and institutions. The article takes these problems as an occasion to develop a (...)
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  • (1 other version)Consequentialism.Douglas W. Portmore - 2023 - In Christian B. Miller (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics. Bloomsbury Academic.
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  • Supererogation and Conditional Obligation.Daniel Muñoz & Theron Pummer - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1429–1443.
    There are plenty of classic paradoxes about conditional obligations, like the duty to be gentle if one is to murder, and about “supererogatory” deeds beyond the call of duty. But little has been said about the intersection of these topics. We develop the first general account of conditional supererogation, with the power to solve familiar puzzles as well as several that we introduce. Our account, moreover, flows from two familiar ideas: that conditionals restrict quantification and that supererogation emerges from a (...)
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  • Arguments from Need in Natural Resource Debates.Espen Dyrnes Stabell - 2023 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 26 (1):19-33.
    With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. For instance, we may ask whether we, as a society, should seek to obtain more minerals, or more oil. Furthermo...
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  • Confusion and the Role of Intuitions in the Debate on the Conception of the Right to Privacy.Björn Lundgren - 2021 - Res Publica 27 (4):669-674.
    Recently, Jakob Thraine Mainz and Rasmus Uhrenfeldt defended a control-based conception of a moral right to privacy —focusing on conceptualizing necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a privacy right violation. This reply comments on a number of mistakes they make, which have long reverberated through the debate on the conceptions of privacy and the right to privacy and therefore deserve to be corrected. Moreover, the reply provides a sketch of a general response for defending the limited access conception of the (...)
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  • Sex, Love, and Paternalism.David Birks - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1):257-270.
    Paternalistic behaviour directed towards a person’s informed and competent decisions is often thought to be morally impermissible. This view is supported by what we can call the Anti-Paternalism Principle. While APP might seem plausible when employed to show the wrongness of paternalism by the state, there are some cases of paternalistic behaviour between private, informed, and competent individuals where APP seems mistaken. This raises a difficulty for supporters of APP. Either they need to reject APP to accommodate our intuitions in (...)
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  • Exploitation and Effective Altruism.Daniel Muñoz - 2021 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 20 (4):409-423.
    How could it be wrong to exploit—say, by paying sweatshop wages—if the exploited party benefits? How could it be wrong to do something gratuitously bad—like giving to a wasteful charity—if that is better than permissibly doing nothing? Joe Horton argues that these puzzles, known as the Exploitation Problem and All or Nothing Problem, have no unified answer. I propose one and pose a challenge for Horton’s take on the Exploitation Problem.
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  • The dual scale model of weighing reasons.Chris Tucker - 2021 - Noûs 56 (2):366-392.
    The metaphor of weighing reasons brings to mind a single (double-pan balance) scale. The reasons for φ go in one pan and the reasons for ~φ go in the other. The relative weights, as indicated by the relative heights of the two pans of the scale, determine the deontic status of φ. This model is simple and intuitive, but it cannot capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly. A reason pushes the φ pan down toward permissibility (has justifying weight) (...)
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  • MAKING Metaphysics.Thomas Byrne - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (20).
    We can cause windows to break and we can break windows; we can cause villages to flood and we can flood villages; and we can cause chocolate to melt and we can melt chocolate. Each time these can come apart: if, for example, A merely instructs B to break the window, then A causes the window to break without breaking it herself. Each instance of A breaking/flooding/melting/burning/killing/etc. something, is an instance of what I call making. I argue that making is (...)
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  • Reasons, Competition, and Latitude.Justin Snedegar - 2021 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 16. Oxford University Press.
    The overall moral status of an option—whether it is required, permissible, forbidden, or something we really should do—is explained by competition between the contributory reasons bearing on that option and the alternatives. A familiar challenge for accounts of this competition is to explain the existence of latitude: there are usually multiple permissible options, rather than a single required option. One strategy is to appeal to distinctions between reasons that compete in different ways. Philosophers have introduced various kinds of non-requiring reasons (...)
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  • All Animals are Equal, but Some More than Others?Huub Brouwer & Willem van der Deijl - 2020 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (3):342-357.
    Does the moral badness of pain depend on who feels it? A common, but generally only implicitly stated view, is that it does not. This view, ‘unitarianism’, maintains that the same interests of different beings should count equally in our moral calculus. Shelly Kagan’s project in How to Count Animals, more or less is to reject this common view, and develop an alternative to it: a hierarchical view of moral status, on which the badness of pain does depend on who (...)
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  • Continuity in Morality and Law.Re’em Segev - 2021 - Theoretical Inquiries in Law 22 (1):45-85.
    According to an influential and intuitively appealing argument, morality is usually continuous, namely, a gradual change in one morally significant factor triggers a gradual change in another; the law should usually track morality; therefore, the law should often be continuous. This argument is illustrated by cases such as the following example: since the moral difference between a defensive action that is reasonable and one that is just short of being reasonable is small, the law should not impose a severe punishment (...)
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  • Morality and Practical Reasons.Douglas W. Portmore - 2021 - Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    As Socrates famously noted, there is no more important question than how we ought to live. The answer to this question depends on how the reasons that we have for living in various different ways combine and compete. To illustrate, suppose that I've just received a substantial raise. What should I do with the extra money? I have most moral reason to donate it to effective charities but most self-interested reason to spend it on luxuries for myself. So, whether I (...)
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  • From rights to prerogatives.Daniel Muñoz - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3):608-623.
    Deontologists believe in two key exceptions to the duty to promote the good: restrictions forbid us from harming others, and prerogatives permit us not to harm ourselves. How are restrictions and prerogatives related? A promising answer is that they share a source in rights. I argue that prerogatives cannot be grounded in familiar kinds of rights, only in something much stranger: waivable rights against oneself.
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  • An Axiological-Trajectory Theodicy.Thomas Metcalf - 2020 - Sophia 59 (3):577-592.
    I develop a new theodicy in defense of Anselmian theism, one that has several advantages over traditional and recent replies to the Problem of Evil. To make my case, I first explain the value of a positive trajectory: a forward-in-time decrease in ‘first-order-gratuitous’ evil: evil that is not necessary for any equal-or-greater first-order good, but may be necessary for a higher-order good, such as the good of strongly positive axiological trajectory. Positive trajectory arguably contributes goodness to a world in proportion (...)
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  • Morality, Uncertainty.Chad Lee-Stronach - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 71 (2):334-358.
    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 (...)
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