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  1. Consequentialism.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Does morality demand our very best? On moral prescriptions and the line of duty.Michael Ferry - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (2):573-589.
    It is widely accepted that morality does not demand that we do our very best, but our most significant moral traditions do not easily accommodate this intuition. I will argue that the underlying problem is not specific to any particular tradition. Rather, it will be difficult for any moral theory to account for binary moral concepts like permissible/impermissible while also accounting for scalar moral concepts like better/worse. If only the best is considered permissible, morality will seem either unreasonably demanding or (...)
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  • Is government supererogation possible?Justin Weinberg - 2011 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2):263-281.
    Governments are subject to the requirements of justice, yet often seem to go above and beyond what justice requires in order to act in ways many people think are good. These kinds of acts – examples of which include putting on celebrations, providing grants to poets, and preserving historic architecture – appear to be acts of government supererogation. In this paper, I argue that a common view about the relationship between government, coercion, and justice implies that most such acts are (...)
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  • Virtue theory, ideal observers, and the supererogatory.Jason Kawall - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 146 (2):179-96.
    I argue that recent virtue theories (including those of Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton) face important initial difficulties in accommodating the supererogatory. In particular, I consider several potential characterizations of the supererogatory modeled upon these familiar virtue theories (and their accounts of rightness) and argue that they fail to provide an adequate account of supererogation. In the second half of the paper I sketch an alternative virtue-based characterization of supererogation, one that is grounded in the attitudes of virtuous ideal observers, and (...)
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  • Imperfect Reasons and Rational Options.Douglas W. Portmore - 2012 - Noûs 46 (1):24 - 60.
    Agents often face a choice of what to do. And it seems that, in most of these choice situations, the relevant reasons do not require performing some particular act, but instead permit performing any of numerous act alternatives. This is known as the basic belief. Below, I argue that the best explanation for the basic belief is not that the relevant reasons are incommensurable (Raz) or that their justifying strength exceeds the requiring strength of opposing reasons (Gert), but that they (...)
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  • Dual-ranking act-consequentialism.Douglas W. Portmore - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (3):409 - 427.
    Dual-ranking act-consequentialism (DRAC) is a rather peculiar version of act-consequentialism. Unlike more traditional forms of act-consequentialism, DRAC doesn’t take the deontic status of an action to be a function of some evaluative ranking of outcomes. Rather, it takes the deontic status of an action to be a function of some non-evaluative ranking that is in turn a function of two auxiliary rankings that are evaluative. I argue that DRAC is promising in that it can accommodate certain features of commonsense morality (...)
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  • Can the Reasonable Doubt Standard be Justified? A Reconstructed Dialogue.Federico Picinali - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 31 (2):365-402.
    The justification of the reasonable doubt standard has been hotly debated in recent years. Deontologists—including retributivists—have generally defended the standard, whilst consequentialists have generally argued for a lower standard of proof. Captivating arguments have been produced from both sides. The paper narrates this debate through a dialogue between ideal representatives of these different camps. In doing so, it recasts—and, hopefully, improves—some of the arguments presented thus far. Then, the paper introduces a new participant in the debate, the Intermediary. The Intermediary (...)
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  • An Instrumentalist Theory of Political Legitimacy.Matthias Brinkmann - 2024 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    What justifies political power? Most philosophers argue that consent or democracy are important, in other words, it matters how power is exercised. But this book argues that outcomes primarily matter to justifying power.
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  • Act and Rule Consequentialism: A Synthesis.Jussi Suikkanen - forthcoming - Moral Philosophy and Politics.
    As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism’s indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific code has suboptimal consequences in the real (...)
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  • Doing Less Than Best.Emma J. Curran - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Cambridge
    This thesis is about the moral reasons we have to do less than best. It consists of six chapters. Part I of the thesis proposes, extends, and defends reasons to do less than best. In Chapter One (“The Conditional Obligation”) I outline and reject two recent arguments from Joe Horton and Theron Pummer for the claim that we have a conditional obligation to bring about the most good. In Chapter Two (“Agglomeration and Agent-Relative Costs”) I argue that agent-relative costs can (...)
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  • Partiality, Asymmetries, and Morality's Harmonious Propensity.Benjamin Lange & Joshua Brandt - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):1-42.
    We argue for asymmetries between positive and negative partiality. Specifically, we defend four claims: i) there are forms of negative partiality that do not have positive counterparts; ii) the directionality of personal relationships has distinct effects on positive and negative partiality; iii) the extent of the interactions within a relationship affects positive and negative partiality differently; and iv) positive and negative partiality have different scope restrictions. We argue that these asymmetries point to a more fundamental moral principle, which we call (...)
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  • Blameless Moral Criticism – the Case of Moral Disappointment.Julius Schönherr - 2023 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26:53-71.
    In discussing the ways in which we hold each other accountable for immoral conduct, philosophers have often focused on blame, aiming to specify adequate responses to wrongdoing. In contrast, theorizing about the ways we can appropriately respond to minor moral mistakes – i.e., criticizable conduct that is bad but not wrong – has largely been neglected. My first goal in this paper is, thus, to draw attention to this blind spot and argue that a separate account of blameless moral criticism (...)
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  • Wronging Oneself.Daniel Muñoz & Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (4):181-207.
    When, if ever, do we wrong ourselves? The Self-Other Symmetric answer is: when we do to ourselves what would wrong a consenting other. The standard objection, which has gone unchallenged for decades, is that Symmetry seems to imply that we wrong ourselves in too many cases—where rights are unwaivable, or “self-consent” is lacking. We argue that Symmetry not only survives these would-be counterexamples; it explains and unifies them. The key to Symmetry is not, as critics have supposed, the bizarre claim (...)
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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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  • 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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  • Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, by Brian Leiter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 224 pp., ISBN: 9780199696505, Hardcover $65.00. [REVIEW]Alexander Prescott-Couch - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):260-265.
    European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • Other‐Sacrificing Options.Benjamin Lange - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):612-629.
    I argue that you can be permitted to discount the interests of your adversaries even though doing so would be impartially suboptimal. This means that, in addition to the kinds of moral options that the literature traditionally recognises, there exist what I call other-sacrificing options. I explore the idea that you cannot discount the interests of your adversaries as much as you can favour the interests of your intimates; if this is correct, then there is an asymmetry between negative partiality (...)
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  • What We Owe to Ourselves: Essays on Rights and Supererogation.Daniel Muñoz - 2019 - Dissertation, MIT
    Some sacrifices—like giving a kidney or heroically dashing into a burning building—are supererogatory: they are good deeds beyond the call of duty. But if such deeds are really so good, philosophers ask, why shouldn’t morality just require them? The standard answer is that morality recognizes a special role for the pursuit of self-interest, so that everyone may treat themselves as if they were uniquely important. This idea, however, cannot be reconciled with the compelling picture of morality as impartial—the view that (...)
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  • Supererogation, optionality and cost.Claire Benn - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (10):2399-2417.
    A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all accounts (...)
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  • Are moral reasons morally overriding?Douglas Portmore - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (4):369–88.
    In this paper, I argue that those moral theorists who wish to accommodate agent-centered options and supererogatory acts must accept both that the reason an agent has to promote her own interests is a nonmoral reason and that this nonmoral reason can prevent the moral reason she has to sacrifice those interests for the sake of doing more to promote the interests of others from generating a moral requirement to do so. These theorists must, then, deny that moral reasons morally (...)
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  • Beyond Obligation: Reasons and Supererogation.Michael Ferry - 2015 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:49-65.
    I argue that supererogation poses a serious problem for theories of moral reasoning and that this problem results, at least in part, from our taking too narrow a view of the reasons that can influence an act’s deontic status. We tend to focus primarily on those reasons that count directly for and against an act’s performance. To adequately account for supererogation, we need to consider also a different class of moral reasons. Aside from those reasons that contribute, for instance, to (...)
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  • 'Along an imperfectly-lighted path': practical rationality and normative uncertainty.Andrew Sepielli - unknown
    Nobody's going to object to the advice "Do the right thing", but that doesn't mean everyone's always going to follow it. Sometimes this is because of our volitional limitations; we cannot always bring ourselves to make the sacrifices that right action requires. But sometimes this is because of our cognitive limitations; we cannot always be sure of what is right. Sometimes we can't be sure of what's right because we don't know the non-normative facts. But sometimes, even if we were (...)
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  • Consequentialist Options.Jussi Suikkanen - 2014 - Utilitas 26 (3):276-302.
    According to traditional forms of act-consequentialism, an action is right if and only if no other action in the given circumstances would have better consequences. It has been argued that this view does not leave us enough freedom to choose between actions which we intuitively think are morally permissible but not required options. In the first half of this article, I will explain why the previous consequentialist responses to this objection are less than satisfactory. I will then attempt to show (...)
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  • Satisficers Still Get Away with Murder!Joe Slater - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.
    Recently, a few attempts have been made to rehabilitate satisficing consequentialism. One strategy, initially shunned by Tim Mulgan, is to suggest that agents must produce an outcome at least as good as they could at a particular level of effort. The effort-satisficer is able to avoid some of the problem cases usually deemed fatal to the view. Richard Yetter Chappell has proposed a version of effort-satisficing that not only avoids those problem cases, but has some independent plausibility. In this paper, (...)
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  • Reasons and Normativity.Jakob Green Werkmäster - 2019 - Dissertation, Lund University
    Normative reasons are of constant importance to us as agents trying to navigate through life. For this reason it is natural and vital to ask philosophical questions about reasons and the normative realm. This thesis explores various issues concerning reasons and normativity. The thesis consists of five free-standingpapers and an extended introduction. The aim of the extended introduction is not merely to situate the papers within a wider philosophical context but also to provide an overview of some of the central (...)
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  • The Moral Murderer. A (More) Effective Counterexample to Consequentialism.Eduardo Rivera-López - 2012 - Ratio 25 (3):307-325.
    My aim in this paper is to provide an effective counterexample to consequentialism. I assume that traditional counterexamples, such as Transplant (A doctor should kill one person and transplant her organs to five terminal patients, thereby saving their lives) and Judge (A judge should sentence to death an innocent person if he knows that an outraged mob will otherwise kill many innocent persons), are not effective, for two reasons: first, they make unrealistic assumptions and, second, they do not pass the (...)
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  • Up and Down with Aggregation.Bradford Hooker - 2009 - Social Philosophy and Policy 26 (1):126-147.
    This paper starts by addressing some objections to the very idea of aggregate social good. The paper goes on to review the case for letting aggregate social good be not only morally relevant but also sometimes morally decisive. Then the paper surveys objections to letting aggregate social good determine personal or political decisions. The paper goes on to argue against the idea that aggregate good is sensitive to desert and the idea that aggregate good should be construed as incorporating agent-relativity.
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  • A Royal Road to Consequentialism?Martin Peterson - 2010 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (2):153-169.
    To consequentialise a moral theory means to account for moral phenomena usually described in nonconsequentialist terms, such as rights, duties, and virtues, in a consequentialist framework. This paper seeks to show that all moral theories can be consequentialised. The paper distinguishes between different interpretations of the consequentialiser’s thesis, and emphasises the need for a cardinal ranking of acts. The paper also offers a new answer as to why consequentialising moral theories is important: This yields crucial methodological insights about how to (...)
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  • The Authority Account of Prudential Options.Keith Horton - 2015 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (1):17-35.
    The Authority Account provides a new explanation why commonsense morality contains prudential options—options that permit agents to perform actions that promote their own wellbeing more than the action they have most reason to do, from the moral point of view. At the core of that explanation are two claims. The first is that moral requirements are traditionally widely taken to have an authoritative status; that is, to be rules that morality imposes by right. The second is that in order for (...)
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  • Is procreative beneficence obligatory?Ben Saunders - 2015 - Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (2):175-178.
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  • Supererogation and the Case Against an 'Overall Ought'.Elizabeth Ventham - 2020 - American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2):181-192.
    This paper argues against a kind of 'overall ought'. The main argument is a version of the paradox of supererogation. The problem is this: obligating an agent to do what’s overall best will, when that differs from what’s morally best, obligate the agent not to do what’s morally best. This, the paper will argue, is implausible. For each of four possible interpretations of this overall ought concept, it will either come across a form of this paradox or no longer look (...)
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  • Love in the Time of Consequentialism.Barry Maguire - 2017 - Noûs 51 (4):686-712.
    There are several powerful motivations for neutral value‐based deontic theories such as Act Consequentialism. Traditionally, such theories have had great difficulty accounting for partiality towards one's personal relationships and projects. This paper presents a neutral value‐based theory that preserves the motivations for Act Consequentialism while vindicating some crucial intuitions about reasons to be partial. There are two central ideas. The first is that when it comes to working out what you ought to do, your friends’ interests, the needs of your (...)
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  • Assimilating Supererogation.D. K. Levy - 2015 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:227-242.
    The interest in supererogation and supererogatory actions derives from the perception that there is something problematic about them. I shall argue that there is nothing problematic about them. The perception to the contrary arises from preconceptions common in ethical theory. When these are relaxed or dismissed, supererogatory actions are easily assimilated as well-motivated, responses to moral situations. Assimilating, rather than denying, them is important for a sound moral philosophy.
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  • Beyond the Call of Duty: The Structure of a Moral Region.Ulla Wessels - 2015 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:87-104.
    A woman risks her life to save someone else's child from a house that is on fire. While in his prime, a man donates one of his kidneys to a dialysis patient whom he does not know. In Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe sacrifices his life for the life of another prisoner.
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  • The Rationally Supererogatory.Claire Benn & Adam Bales - 2020 - Mind 129 (515):917-938.
    The notion of supererogation—going above and beyond the call of duty—is typically discussed in a moral context. However, in this paper we argue for the existence of rationally supererogatory actions: that is, actions that go above and beyond the call of rational duty. In order to establish the existence of such actions, we first need to overcome the so-called paradox of supererogation: we need to provide some explanation for why, if some act is rationally optimal, it is not the case (...)
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  • Why Maximize Expected Choice‐Worthiness?1.William MacAskill & Toby Ord - 2018 - Noûs 54 (2):327-353.
    This paper argues in favor of a particular account of decision‐making under normative uncertainty: that, when it is possible to do so, one should maximize expected choice‐worthiness. Though this position has been often suggested in the literature and is often taken to be the ‘default’ view, it has so far received little in the way of positive argument in its favor. After dealing with some preliminaries and giving the basic motivation for taking normative uncertainty into account in our decision‐making, we (...)
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  • Standards and values.Matthew Kotzen - 2021 - Philosophical Issues 31 (1):167-187.
    Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 167-187, October 2021.
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  • Trusting our own minds.Dennis Kalde - 2019 - Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
    When it comes to the metaethical task of explaining and making sense of what it is that we are doing while doing ethics, the subject of moral objectivity occupies an important and special place within that task. Thus, it is often agreed that being able to explain and justify the objective features of common moral practice is one of if not the most important task for any metaethical theory to undertake. In this dissertation, I tackle the issue of ethical objectivity (...)
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  • Supererogation again.B. C. Postow - 2005 - Journal of Value Inquiry 39 (2):245-253.
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  • (1 other version)Up and down with aggregation.Brad Hooker - 2009 - Social Philosophy and Policy 26 (1):126-147.
    This paper starts by addressing some objections to the very idea of aggregate social good. The paper goes on to review the case for letting aggregate social good be not only morally relevant but also sometimes morally decisive. Then the paper surveys objections to letting aggregate social good determine personal or political decisions. The paper goes on to argue against the idea that aggregate good is sensitive to desert and the idea that aggregate good should be construed as incorporating agent-relativity.
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