This article is an attempt to develop a practical politico-jurisprudential account of the corporate person, which it does by building on contemporary ideas about collective and shared intentions. It argues for a model of shared intentions, which posits a set of interlocking preferences, and other supporting attitudes. It examines the work of Bratman, Gilbert, Hurley, and Sugden and addresses issues of choice, coercion and will.

This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse. Instead, I am concerned with the less frequently posed concept-centered question of where in human experience moral terms or concepts are grounded — that is, where in experience the moral becomes salient to us. (...) This question was central to moral epistemology in the form it took among thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Kant, and it remains of the first importance today. (shrink)

Hume is rightly credited with giving a brilliant, and perhaps the best, account of justice as convention. Hume's importance as a forerunner of modern economics has also long been recognized. However, most of Hume's readers have not fully appreciated how closely Hume's analysis of convention foreshadows a particular branch of economic theory, namely, game theory. Starting with the work of Barry, Runciman and Sen and Lewis, there has been a flowering of literature on the informal game-theoretic insights to be found (...) in classics of political philosophy such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau. A number of authors in this tradition, including Lewis, Gauthier, Mackie, and Postema, have identified passages in Hume which they interpret as giving informal examples of specific games. Yet, unlike his predecessors, Hobbes and Locke, Hume does much more than present examples which have a game-theoretic structure. In his account of convention, Hume gives general conditions which characterize the resolution of social interaction problems, and in the examples he uses to illustrate this account, Hume outlines several different methods by which agents can arrive at such a resolution. Hume's general account of convention and his explanations of the origins of particular conventions together constitute a theory of strategic interaction, which is precisely what game theory aspires to be. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that social conventions of the kind Lewis modeled are generated and maintained by a form of practical reasoning which is essentially common. This thesis is defended indirectly by arguing for an interpretation of the role of salience in Lewis’s account of conventions. The remarkable ability of people to identify salient options and appreciate their practical significance in contexts of social interaction, it is argued, is best explained in terms of their exercise of what I (...) call “salience reasoning,” a form of common practical reasoning. The more widely accepted understanding of salience competence, the “natural salience” understanding, fails as an interpretation of the notion at work in Lewis and Schelling (on whom Lewis relied) and is inadequate as an explanation of salience competence. (shrink)

The paper argues for viewing legal validity as a doxastic obligation, i.e. as the obligation to accept a rule in legal reasoning. This notion of legal validity is shown to be both sufficient for the laywers' needs and neutral in regard to various theories of the grounds of validity, i.e. theories intended to identify what rules are legally valid, by proposing different grounds for attributing validity. All of these theories, rather then being alternative definitions of validity, presuppose the notion here (...) provided.This notion is purely normative, but it allows for the construction of theories of the grounds of validity which give due importance to social expectations and institutions. As an example of how this may happen, one such theory is also provided. This theory, which is presented through a detailed example of a judicial debate, is based upon the recognition of the (instrumental) value of co-ordination, as the necessary way to achieve the most valuable purposes of the law. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have defended utilitarianism as a philosophy peculiarly well suited to the conduct of public affairs, on grounds of the peculiar tasks and instruments confronting public officials. Here I add another plank to that defence of ‘utilitarianism as a public philosophy’, focusing on the peculiar role responsibilities of people serving in public capacities. Such ‘public service utilitarianism’ is incumbent not only upon public officials but also upon individuals in their capacities as citizens and voters. I close with reflections on (...) how best to evoke appreciation of these utilitarian role responsibilities from officials and electors alike. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 Collectivities can have obligations beyond the aggregate of pre-existing obligations of their members. Certain such collective obligations _distribute_, i.e., become members’ obligations to do their fair share. In _incremental good_ cases, i.e., those in which a member’s fair share would go part way toward fulfilling the collectivity’s obligation, each member has an unconditional obligation to contribute.States are involuntary collectivities that bear moral obligations. Certain states, _democratic legal states_, are collectivities whose obligations can distribute. Many existing (...) states are democratic legal states, but none satisfies more rigorous requirements of distributive justice. There, citizens who hold assets, in excess of what is just, bear a distributed duty to dedicate that excess toward correcting the injustice. It is an incremental good case not conditioned on the conformity of others who are also wealthier than justice allows, nor on the diligence of the state in meeting its obligations. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 Collectivities can have obligations beyond the aggregate of pre-existing obligations of their members. Certain such collective obligations _distribute_, i.e., become members’ obligations to do their fair share. In _incremental good_ cases, i.e., those in which a member’s fair share would go part way toward fulfilling the collectivity’s obligation, each member has an unconditional obligation to contribute.States are involuntary collectivities that bear moral obligations. Certain states, _democratic legal states_, are collectivities whose obligations can distribute. Many existing (...) states are democratic legal states, but none satisfies more rigorous requirements of distributive justice. There, citizens who hold assets, in excess of what is just, bear a distributed duty to dedicate that excess toward correcting the injustice. It is an incremental good case not conditioned on the conformity of others who are also wealthier than justice allows, nor on the diligence of the state in meeting its obligations. (shrink)

We propose a new account of collective moral obligation. We argue that several agents have a moral obligation together only if they each have (i) a context-specific capacity to view their situation from the group’s perspective, and (ii) at least a general capacity to deliberate about what they ought to do together. Such an obligation is irreducibly collective, in that it does not imply that the individuals have any obligations to contribute to what is required of the group. We highlight (...) various distinctive features of our account. One such feature is that moral obligations are always relative to an agential perspective. (shrink)

The basic assumption present in these articles is that naturalism is highly compatible with a wide range of relevant philosophical questions and that, regardless of the classical problems faced by the naturalist, the price paid in endorsing naturalism is lower than that paid by essentialist or supernaturalist theories. Yet, the reader will find a variety of approaches, from naturalism in Moral Philosophy and Epistemology to naturalism in the Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and of the Aesthetics.

This chapter presents arguments for two slightly different versions of the thesis that the value of persons is incomparable. Both arguments allege an incompatibility between the demands of a certain kind of practical reasoning and the presuppositions of value comparisons. The significance of these claims is assessed in the context of the “Numbers problem”—the question of whether one morally ought to benefit one group of potential aid recipients rather than another simply because they are greater in number. It is argued (...) that many of the popular approaches to this problem—even ones that avoid the aggregation of personal value—are imperiled by the incomparability theses. -/- . (shrink)