This paper analyzes the inconsistency of Mill’s utilitarianism in moral philosophy and his liberalism in political philosophy, the efforts of Ten and Dworkin for their consistency and the distinction that Leob and Driver use for reconciling them‌. The distinction is between decision-procedure and criterion of evaluation or the metaphysics and epistemology of right‌. In the next step, it shows a new inconsistency between Mill’s moral and political philosophy‌. It seems that Mill cannot accept the non-consequentialist ‘doing/allowing harm’ distinction in moral (...) philosophy because he himself is a consequentialist‌. The rejection of this distinction makes it inconsistent with his harm principle and his main distinction in political philosophy: the distinction between ‘self-regarding’ and ‘other-regarding’ actions‌. These criticisms show the difficulty of reconciling Mill’s utilitarianism with his liberalism and his moral philosophy with his political philosophy in the framework of the classic triple in normative ethics‌. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, I combined the classic triple with the modern triple in normative ethics. In this way, we can regard Mill as a consistent utilitarian who regards liberty as the essential condition for personal development and maximization of the good, and tries to raise a moderate and sophisticated version of utilitarianism by decreasing its pervasiveness‌‌. (shrink)

This thesis in an invistigation into the concept of "harm" and its moral relevance. A common view is that an analysis of harm should include a counterfactual condition: an act harms a person iff it makes that person worse off. A common objection to the moral relevance of harm, thus understood, is the non-identity problem. -/- This thesis criticises the counterfactual condition, argues for an alternative analysis and that harm plays two important normative roles. -/- The main ground for rejecting (...) the counterfactual condition is that it has unacceptable consequences in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Several modifications to the condition are considered but all fail to solve this problem. -/- According to the alternative analysis to do harm is to perform an act which is responsible for the obtaining of a state of affairs which makes a person’s life go worse. It is argued that should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependence. This claim is defended against counterexamples based on redundant causation. An analysis of is also provided using the notion of a well-being function. It is argued that by introducing this notion it is possible to analyse contributive value without making use of counterfactual comparisons and to solve the non-identity problem. -/- Regarding the normative importance of harm, a popular intuition is that there is an asymmetry in our obligations to future people: that a person would have a life worth living were she to exist is not a reason in favour of creating that person while that a person would have a life not worth living is a reason against creating that person. It is argued that the asymmetry can be classified as a moral option grounded in autonomy. Central to this defence is the suggestion that harm is relevant to understanding autonomy. Autonomy involves partly the freedom to pursue one’s own aims as long as one does no harm. (shrink)

The performance of one option can entail the performance of another. For instance, I have the option of baking a pumpkin pie as well as the option of baking a pie, and the former entails the latter. Now, suppose that I have both reason to bake a pie and reason to bake a pumpkin pie. This raises the question: Which, if either, is more fundamental than the other? Do I have reason to bake a pie because I have reason to (...) perform some instance of pie-baking—perhaps, pumpkin-pie baking? Or do I have reason to bake a pumpkin pie because I have reason to bake a pie? Or are they equally fundamental, as they would be if, say, I had reason to do each because each would have optimal consequences? The aim of this paper is to compare two possible answers to this question—omnism and maximalism—and to argue that the latter is preferable. Roughly speaking, maximalism is the view that only those options that are not entailed by any other option are to be assessed in terms of whether they have some feature (such as that of having optimal consequences), whereas omnism is the view that all options are to be assessed in terms of whether they have this feature. I argue that there are at least two reasons to prefer maximalism, for it is able to overcome two critical problems with omnism. (shrink)

Dealing with ethical issues is a central aspect of many professions. Consequently, ethics is taught to diverse student groups in universities and colleges, alongside philosophy students. In this paper, we address the question of how ethics is best taught to such “non-philosophy” student groups. The standard way of introducing ethics to non-philosophy students is to present them with a set of moral theories. We refer to this approach as the “smorgasbord approach”, due to the impression it is likely to make (...) on non-philosophy students approaching ethics as an academic discipline for the first time. This approach invites the assumption that adopting an ethical position is mainly a matter of choosing from this smorgasbord of different theories. We argue that this approach is problematic for several reasons, both theoretical and practical, and we suggest a methodsbased approach – focusing on methods for moral reasoning – as a more fruitful alternative. The main purpose of this paper is to explain and defend this methods-based approach to teaching ethics to non-philosophy students. In so doing, we also consider and meet some expected objections to this approach. (shrink)

Authorized Polish translation of Rabinowicz, Wlodek "Preference utilitarianism by way of preference change?" In: Grüne-Yanoff, Till and Hansson, Sven Ove, 'Preference change: approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology.' Theory and decision library A. Springer, Dordrecht, Netherlands, pp. 185-206. ISBN 9789048125920. Translated by Krzysztof Saja.

In their recent book, Sherry Colb and Michael Dorf defend the following ethical theses: sentience is sufficient for possessing the right not to be harmed and the right not to be killed; killing sentient animals for food is almost always seriously wrong; aborting pre-sentient fetuses raises no moral concerns at all; and aborting sentient fetuses is wrong absent a reason weighty enough to justify killing the fetus. They also discuss strategies and tactics for activists: They oppose the use of graphic (...) images by activists on tactical grounds, and they categorically oppose the use of violence by activists in either movement. In the present review article, I provide additional support for theses and ; I raise concerns for their defense of thesis ; and I argue that their discussion of thesis is incomplete in important ways. Finally, I defend the judicious use of graphic images and videos on epistemic, psychological, and pedagogical grounds. (shrink)