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 (...) interesse sacrificado. Por fim, defendo essa aplicação de algumas objeções que podem ser levantadas. (shrink)

What are the fundamental divisions in ethics? Which divisions capture the most important and basic options in moral theorizing? In this article, I reject the ‘Textbook View’ which takes the tripartite division between consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics to be fundamental. Instead, I suggest that moral theories are fundamentally divided into three independent divisions, which I call the neutral/relative division, the normative priority division, and the maximizing division. I argue that this account of the fundamental divisions of ethics better captures (...) the main concerns that normative ethicists have when assessing moral theories. It also helps us make progress in comparative ethics and makes visible theoretical possibilities obscured by the Textbook View. (shrink)

Against moral intuitionism, which holds that moral intuitions can be non-inferentially justified, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral intuitions are unreliable and must be confirmed to be justified because they are subject to cognitive biases. However, I suggest this is merely a renewed version of the argument from disagreement against intuitionism. As such, I attempt to show that the renewed argument is subject to an analogous objection as the old one; many cognitive biases of moral intuitions result from biases of non-moral (...) judgments. Thus, the unreliability of moral intuitions due to biases can be removed by clearing up the non-moral biases. Accordingly, biases of moral intuitions do not threaten a slightly qualified version intuitionism which posits non-inferential justification of intuitions when non-moral biases are not present. I also present an empirical study that lends initial support to my argument. (shrink)

Pluralist pragmatists claim that there are both practical and epistemic reasons for belief, but should they also claim that there are both kinds of reasons for action? I argue that the pluralist pragmatist faces a puzzle here. If she accepts that there are epistemic reasons for action, she must explain a striking asymmetry between action and belief: while epistemic reasons play a large role in determining which beliefs one all-things-considered ought to have, they don’t play much of a role in (...) determining which action one all-things-considered ought to perform. But if the pluralist pragmatist denies that there are epistemic reasons for action, she has trouble explaining why there are no such reasons. After motivating this puzzle, I propose a solution to it. I argue that the pluralist can accept that there are epistemic reasons for action while nonetheless explaining why they don’t matter much to how we all-things-considered ought to act because, if there are epistemic reasons for action, they are so ubiquitous that in most choice situations we have equally strong epistemic reasons for doing anything, which makes any action epistemically permitted, but not required. (shrink)

There is not agreement among moral intuitionists on the nature of moral intuitions: some favor a doxastic interpretation, others a non-doxastic interpretation. This paper argues that although both interpretations have legitimacy, the doxastic interpretation is preferable. The paper discusses three salient roles for moral intuitions:Role 1: To serve as a test for moral theories.Role 2: To provide a particularist grounding for moral judgment.Role 3: To stop a vicious infinite regress of justified moral belief.The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 1, given (...) the greater justificatory weight rationally accorded intuitive moral beliefs over intuitive moral “seemings,” upon which we may place little if any justificatory weight: intuitive beliefs provide firmer ground for judging moral theories to be correct or incorrect, adequate or inadequate, etc., than mere seemings. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 2, in that particularist intuitional belief warrants greater confidence in apparent moral truth than intuitive seemings; and given that moral particularists commonly allot great epistemic authority to intuitions about particular cases, this counts heavily in favor of intuitional belief. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 3 because (i) the greater agential justificatory burdens attendant to believing that p as opposed to merely being appeared to (or its seeming) that p, warrants that a higher degree of epistemic weight be given doxastic intuitions; and (ii) they are less vulnerable to doxastic ascent-type arguments, which would undermine their basicality as justification providers. (shrink)

Many morally significant outcomes can be brought about only if several individuals contribute to them. However, individual contributions to collective outcomes often fail to have morally significant effects on their own. Some have concluded from this that it is permissible to do nothing. What I call ‘the problem of insignificant hands’ is the challenge of determining whether and when people are obligated to contribute. For this to be the case, I argue, the prospect of helping to bring about the outcome (...) has to be good enough. Furthermore, the individual must be in a position to increase the probability of its being brought about to an appropriate extent. Finally, I argue that when too few are willing to contribute, people may have a duty to increase their number. Thus, someone can be obligated to contribute or to get others to contribute. This prospect account is consistent with Kantianism, contractualism and rule consequentialism but inconsistent with act consequentialism. (shrink)

"Meritocracy" has historically been understood in two ways. The first is as an approach to governance. On this understanding, we seek to put meritorious (somehow defined) people into public office to the benefit of society. This understanding has its roots in Confucius, its scope is political offices, and its justification is consequentialist. The second understanding of "meritocracy" is as a theory of justice. We distribute in accordance with merit in order to give people the things that they deserve, as justice (...) demands. This understanding has its roots in Aristotle, its scope is social goods broadly, and its justification is deontological. In this article, I discuss the differences--especially the conceptual differences--between these two, prima facie distinct, meritocratic traditions. I also argue that despite their differences Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are harmonious. In Section I of the article I introduce the two meritocratic traditions through, in part, a highly abbreviated history of talk about "merit" and "meritocracy" in Chinese and Western philosophy. In Section II, I discuss a number of conceptual issues and partition meritocratic theories in accordance with their scopes and normative justifications. I also discuss two scenarios. In one scenario, Eastern Meritocracy appears to deliver the right result and Western Meritocracy, the wrong result. In the other scenario, vice versa. Finally, in Section III, I argue that Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are each special cases of a single, compelling notion of "meritocracy.". (shrink)

Epistemic Utility Theory is often identified with the project of *axiology-first epistemology*—the project of vindicating norms of epistemic rationality purely in terms of epistemic value. One of the central goals of axiology-first epistemology is to provide a justification of the central norm of Bayesian epistemology, Probabilism. The first part of this paper presents a new challenge to axiology first epistemology: I argue that in order to justify Probabilism in purely axiological terms, proponents of axiology first epistemology need to justify a (...) claim about epistemic value—what I label ‘Downwards Propriety’—much stronger than any they have offered justification. The second part of this paper offers an argument that this challenge cannot be met: that there is no hope for providing a purely axiological justification of Downwards Propriety, at least given widely accepted assumptions about epistemic value. (shrink)

Evaluative theories of emotions purport to shed light on the nature of emotions by appealing to values. Three kinds of evaluative theories of emotions dominate the recent literature: the judgment theory equates emotions with value judgments; the perceptual theory equates emotions with perceptions of values, and the attitudinal theory equates emotions with evaluative attitudes. This paper defends a fourth kind of evaluative theory of emotions, mostly neglected so far: the reactive theory. Reactive theories claim that emotions are attitudes which arise (...) in reaction to perceptions of value. (shrink)

According to a recent survey by the HR Research Institute, as the presence of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly common in the workplace, HR professionals are worried that the use of recruitment algorithms will lead to a “dehumanization” of the hiring process. Our main goals in this paper are threefold: i) to bring attention to this neglected issue, ii) to clarify what exactly this concern about dehumanization might amount to, and iii) to sketch an argument for why dehumanizing the hiring (...) process is ethically suspect. After distinguishing the use of the term “dehumanization” in this context (i.e., removing the human presence) from its more common meaning in the interdisciplinary field of dehumanization studies (i.e., conceiving of other humans as subhuman), we argue that the use of hiring algorithms may negatively impact the employee-employer relationship. We argue that there are good independent reasons to accept a substantive employee-employer relationship, as well as an applicant-employer relationship, both of which are consistent with a stakeholder theory of corporate obligations. We further argue that dehumanizing the hiring process may negatively impact these relationships because of the difference between the values of human recruiters and the values embedded in recruitment algorithms. Drawing on Nguyen’s (2021) critique of how Twitter “gamifies communication”, we argue that replacing human recruiters with algorithms imports artificial values into the hiring process. We close by briefly considering some ways to potentially mitigate the problems posed by recruitment algorithms, along with the possibility that some difficult trade-offs will need to be made. (shrink)

This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the value ‘good for’ expresses is distinctively (...) ‘subject-relative’. One concerns the ground of this value, or the properties that make something good for you; it says these must involve some relation to you. The other concerns the resulting value itself, or what supervenes on this ground; it says that too involves a relation. Neither interpretation, the paper argues, yields a significantly distinct evaluative concept. The ethically fundamental evaluative concept is just ‘simply good’. (shrink)

Objectivism is the view that how an agent ought to act depends on all kinds of facts, regardless of the agent’s epistemic position with respect to them. One of the most important challenges to this view is constituted by certain cases involving specific conditions of uncertainty—so-called three-options cases. In these cases it seems overwhelmingly plausible that an agent ought to do what is recommendable given her limited perspective, even though the agent knows that this is not objectively the best course (...) of action. The standard objectivist response to this challenge relies on a distinction between what one ought to do and what would be blameworthy or unreasonable to do. This response is affected by several problems. In this paper I introduce and defend an alternative objectivist response to the challenge. My proposal admits that in the relevant cases the agent ought to do what is recommendable given her perspective, but maintains that this diagnosis of the cases is fully compatible with objectivism. I argue that this proposal has several advantages over alternative accounts of the cases. (shrink)

How should we think about apparent conflicts of moral rights? I defend a non-balancing and holistic specification model: non-balancing because moral rights have absolute deontic stringency regardless of any balance of independent values; holistic because the content of moral rights is limited only by that of other moral rights. Holistic Specification, as I call the model, offers a principled, non-consequentialist explanation of exceptions to moral rights. Moreover, Holistic Specification explains why moral rights matter to practical thought while rendering remedial duties (...) less mysterious. (shrink)

This essay reflects on 25 years since Christian Bioethics began publication and, in somewhat autobiographical fashion, engages two core concerns. First, although “non-ecumenism” may often appear a pretext for contention and division, I suggest that a respectful non-ecumenism may provide the opportunity for dialogue and the occasion for employing certain tools from religious studies. Second, although many are skeptical about the possibilities of identifying a “common morality,” a defense of that notion provides a plausible explanation for the development of limited (...) consensus on some issues in bioethics. (shrink)

Moral particularism is often conceived as the view that there are no moral principles. However, its most fêted accounts focus almost exclusively on rules regarding actions and their features. Such action-centred particularism is, I argue, compatible with generalism at the level of character traits. The resulting view is a form of particularist virtue ethics. This endorses directives of the form ‘Be X’ but rejects any implication that the relevant X-ness must therefore always count in favour of an action.

This book offers an overview of the ethical problems posed by Information Warfare, and of the different approaches and methods used to solve them, in order to provide the reader with a better grasp of the ethical conundrums posed by this new form of warfare. -/- The volume is divided into three parts, each comprising four chapters. The first part focuses on issues pertaining to the concept of Information Warfare and the clarifications that need to be made in order to (...) address its ethical implications. The second part collects contributions focusing on Just War Theory and its application to the case of Information Warfare. The third part adopts alternative approaches to Just War Theory for analysing the ethical implications of this phenomenon. Finally, an afterword by Neelie Kroes - Vice President of the European Commission and European Digital Agenda Commissioner - concludes the volume. Her contribution describes the interests and commitments of the European Digital Agenda with respect to research for the development and deployment of robots in various circumstances, including warfare. (shrink)

The idea that emotional experience is capable of lending immediate prima facie epistemic justification to evaluative belief has been amassing significant philosophical support in recent years. The proposal that it is my anger, say, that justifies my belief that I’ve been wronged putatively provides us with an intuitive and naturalised explanation as to how we receive immediate and defeasible justification for our evaluative beliefs. With many notable advocates in the literature, this justificatory thesis of emotion is fast becoming a central (...) facet in how we conceive of the emotions’ epistemic role with respect to our everyday lives. Interestingly, however, despite the fact that the justificatory thesis is fundamentally an epistemological proposal, comparatively little of the philosophical literature has been dedicated to exploring the epistemological avenues through which emotions might be capable of delivering such an epistemic yield. Accordingly, the central purpose of this thesis is to provide a novel and thorough analysis of how emotional experience might be capable of playing this justificatory role. Here, I present and evaluate three broad models of emotional justification: emotional dogmatism, emotional reliabilism, and agent-based views. Emotional dogmatist views, I argue, fail in virtue of being vulnerable to over-generalisation worries and problematic commitments to the contents of emotional awareness. Emotional reliabilism, while possessing the resources to avoid some objections, is vulnerable to worrisome clairvoyance-style challenges which establish the insufficiency of emotional reliability for epistemic justification. Finally, having learned our lessons from the shortcomings of these views, I argue that an agent-based theory grounded in the development of learned emotional competences provides the most plausible account of how emotional experience can epistemically justify evaluative belief. This discussion, I believe, will both illuminate contemporary discussions of the justificatory thesis of emotion found in the literature, and provide novel insight into the epistemic capacities of the emotions. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

How do multiple reasons combine to support a conclusion about what to do or believe? This question raises two challenges: How can we represent the strength of a reason? How do the strengths of multiple reasons combine? Analogous challenges about confirmation have been answered using probabilistic tools. Can reductive and nonreductive theories of reasons use these tools to answer their challenges? Yes, or more exactly: reductive theories can answer both challenges. Nonreductive theories, with the help of a result in confirmation (...) theory, can answer one, and there are grounds for optimism that they can answer the other. (shrink)

Theorists attending to the epistemic condition on responsibility are divided over whether moral ignorance is ever exculpatory. While those who argue that reasonable expectation is required for blameworthiness often maintain that moral ignorance can excuse, theorists who embrace a quality of will approach to blameworthiness are not sanguine about the prospect of excuses among morally ignorant wrongdoers. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that moral ignorance always reflects insufficient care for what matters morally, and therefore that moral ignorance never excuses. Furthermore, (...) quality of will theorists treat their skepticism about excuses for the morally ignorant as a natural implication of their approach. It is therefore unsurprising that, while many have argued for the blamelessness of certain morally ignorant agents on grounds concerning reasonable expectation, the possibility that morally ignorant agents might be blameless even according to quality of will views has not been adequately addressed. I illustrate and explain how it is possible for morally ignorant agents to display sufficient care for the morally relevant features of their wrong behavior. Thus, even if quality of will views are correct, moral ignorance sometimes excuses. (shrink)

I explore the debate about whether consequentialist theories can adequately accommodate the moral force of promissory obligation. I outline a straightforward act consequentialist account grounded in the value of satisfying expectations, and raise and assess three objections to this account: that it counterintuitively predicts that certain promises should be broken when commonsense morality insists that they should be kept, that the account is circular, and Michael Cholbi’s argument that this account problematically implies that promise-making is frequently obligatory. I then discuss (...) alternative act consequentialist accounts, including Philip Pettit’s suggestion that promise-keeping is an intrinsic good and Michael Smith’s agent-relative account. I outline Brad Hooker’s rule consequentialist account of promissory obligation and raise a challenge for it. I conclude that appeals to intuitions about cases will not settle the dispute, and that consequentialists and their critics must instead engage in substantive debate about the nature and stringency of promissory obligation. (shrink)

Though there have been productive interactions between moral philosophers and deontic logicians, there has also been a tradition of neglecting the insights that the fields can offer one another. The most sustained interactions between moral philosophers and deontic logicians have notbeen systematic but instead have been scattered across a number of distinct and often unrelated topics. This chapter primarily focuses on three topics. First, we discuss the “actualism/possibilism” debate which, very roughly, concerns the relevance of what one will do at (...) some future time to what one ought to do at present (§2). This topic is also used to introduce various modal deontic logics. Second we discuss the particularism debate which, very roughly, concerns whether there can be any systematic general theory of what we ought to do (§3). This topic is also used to introduce various non-modal deontic logics. Third, we discuss collective action problems which concern the connection between the obligations of individuals and the behavior and obligations of groups of individuals (§4).This topic is also used to discuss formal systems that allow us to study the relationship between individuals and groups. The chapter also contains a general discussion of the relation between ethical theory and deontic logic (§1) and a brief consideration of other miscellaneous topics (§5). (shrink)

This paper explores some ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to improve human moral judgments in bioethics by avoiding some of the most common sources of error in moral judgment, including ignorance, confusion, and bias. It surveys three existing proposals for building human morality into AI: Top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches. Then it proposes a multi-step, hybrid method, using the example of kidney allocations for transplants as a test case. The paper concludes with brief remarks about how (...) to handle several complications, respond to some objections, and extend this novel method to other important moral issues in bioethics and beyond. (shrink)

Quasi-realists aim to account for many of the trappings of metanormative realism within an expressivist framework. Chief among these is the realist way of responding to the Euthyphro dilemma: quasi-realists want to join realists in being able to say, "It’s not the case that kicking dogs is wrong because we disapprove of it. Rather, we disapprove of kicking dogs because it’s wrong." However, the standard quasi-realist way of explaining what we are up to when we assert the first of these (...) two sentences rests on a mistaken identification of metaphysical dependence (or grounding) with counterfactual covariation. This chapter proposes a better way for expressivists to understand such sentences, on which they serve to express complex states of mind in which an attitude bears a relation of psychological dependence (or basing) to another state of mind. It is argued that this proposal is a natural, versatile, and fruitful approach for expressivists to take that helps them secure the first half of the Euthyphro contrast—but at the cost of making it difficult to see how expressivists can make sense of that contrast’s second half. (shrink)

The wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem is a problem for attempts to analyze normative properties using only facts about the balance of normative reasons, a style of analysis on which the ‘Reasons First’ programme depends. I argue that this problem cannot be solved if the orthodox view of reasons is true --- that is, if each normative reason is numerically identical with some fact, proposition, or state-of-affairs. That’s because solving the WKR problem requires completely distinguishing between the right- and (...) wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. I argue that some facts give both right- and wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. Consequently, no such distinction between the two types of reasons is complete if reasons are facts or the like. I conclude by suggesting that reasons and facts are related by constitution, not identity. (shrink)

In this comment on Katherine Dormandy's paper «True Faith», I point out that the clash she describes between epistemic norms and faith-based norms of belief needs to be supplemented with a clear understanding of the pertinent norms of belief. I argue that conceiving of them as evaluative fails to explain the clash, and that understanding them as prescriptive is no better. I suggest an understanding of these norms along the lines of Ross’s (1930) prima facie duties, and show how this (...) picture can make sense of the clash. (shrink)

Not every speech act can be a lie. A good definition of lying should be able to draw the right distinctions between speech acts that can be lies and speech acts that under no circumstances are lies. This paper shows that no extant account of lying is able to draw the required distinctions. It argues that a definition of lying based on the notion of ‘assertoric commitment’ can succeed where other accounts have failed. Assertoric commitment is analysed in terms of (...) two normative components: ‘accountability’ and ‘discursive responsibility’. The resulting definition of lying draws all the desired distinctions, providing an intensionally adequate analysis of the concept of lying. (shrink)

Rights externalism, a view I defend in Rights, Race, and Recognition, takes social recognition to be a condition for being a rights bearer. I vindicate this view by answering two recent critics. I concede some ground, particularly with respect to their reservations about what we gain, but argue that claims about what we stand to lose are overblown. I conclude that rights externalism is not detrimental to the critique of racial injustice, and that embracing it has noteworthy virtues. The most (...) significant is that it affords us a conception of rights that takes the realities of lived experiences seriously. (shrink)

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 (...) that do not generate requirements, even if they win the competition. This paper rejects two familiar versions of this strategy, one appealing to merely justifying reasons and one appealing to merely commendatory reasons. It offers a new account of how reasons compete that instead appeals to a sharp distinction between the reasons against an option and the reasons for the alternatives to that option. (shrink)

This paper argues that there was considerably more philosophy of action in moral theory before 1958 (when Anscombe complained of its lack under the banner 'philosophy of psychology') than there has been since. This is in part because Anscombe influenced the formation of 'virtue theory' as yet another position within normative ethics, and her work contributed to the fashioning of 'moral psychology' as an altogether distinct (and now increasingly empirical) branch of moral philosophy.

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 180-186.

(See also the separate entry for the volume itself.) This introduction has three parts. The first providing an overview of some main lines of research in deontic logic: the emergence of SDL, Chisholm's paradox and the development of dyadic deontic logics, various other puzzles/challenges and areas of development, along with philosophical applications. The second part focus on some actual and potential fruitful interactions between deontic logic, computer science and artificial intelligence. These include applications of deontic logic to AI knowledge representation (...) in legal systems, to modelling computer systems where it is expected that sub-ideal states will emerge and require countermeasures, to norm-governed human interactions with computer systems, and to the representation of some features of multi-agent systems where different agent-like computer systems interact with one another. The third and final part briefly groups and previews the papers in the anthology. (shrink)

According to pluralistic intuitionist theories, some of our moral beliefs are non-inferentially justified, and these beliefs come in both an a priori and an a posteriori variety. In this paper I present new support for this pluralistic form of intuitionism by examining the deeply social nature of moral inquiry. This is something that intuitionists have tended to neglect. It does play an important role in an intuitionist theory offered by Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer-Landau (forth), but whilst they invoke the social (...) nature of moral inquiry in order to argue that ordinary moral intuitions are trustworthy, my argument focuses on what I will call the ‘frontiers’ of moral inquiry. I will show that inclusive and cooperative dialogue is necessary at moral inquiry’s frontiers, and that intuitionists can expect such dialogue to result in both a priori and a posteriori moral beliefs. (shrink)

A generic grounding claim is a grounding claim that isn’t about any particular entity or fact. For example, consider the claim: an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. One natural idea is that generic grounding claims state mere regularities of ground. So if an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness, then every possible right act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. The generic claim generalizes over particular grounding relations. In this essay, I argue that this (...) simple story is wrong. Generic grounding claims are not merely quantificational; rather, they express real definitions, where real definitions are (in part) claims about essence. My view has two major upshots: ('i') it makes better sense of debates where generic grounding claims are at issue (like debates about moral laws); ('ii') it clarifies the distinction between reductive and non-reductive metaphysical theories. (shrink)

Totalism is the view that one distribution of well-being is better than another just in case the one contains a greater sum of well-being than the other. Many philosophers, following Parfit, reject totalism on the grounds that it entails the repugnant conclusion: that, for any number of excellent lives, there is some number of lives that are barely worth living whose existence would be better. This paper develops a theory of welfare aggregation—the lexical-threshold view—that allows totalism to avoid the repugnant (...) conclusion, as well as its analogues involving suffering populations and the lengths of individual lives. The theory is grounded in some independently plausible views about the structure of well-being, identifies a new source of incommensurability in population ethics, and avoids some of the implausibly extreme consequences of other lexical views, without violating the intuitive separability of lives. (shrink)

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a social movement which encourages people to do as much good as they can when helping others, given limited money, time, effort, and other resources. This paper first identifies a minimal philosophical view that underpins this movement, and then argues that there is an analogous minimal philosophical view which might underpin Effective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our (...) non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to decrease injustice. This paper therefore not only furthers philosophical understanding of justice, but has potentially major practical implications. (shrink)

Foundationalism in moral epistemology is a core tenet of ethical intuitionism. According to foundationalism, some moral beliefs can be known without inferential justification; instead, all that is required is a proper understanding of the beliefs in question. In an influential criticism against this view, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has argued that certain psychological facts undermine the reliability of moral intuitions. He claims that foundationalists would have to show that non-inferentially justified beliefs are not subject to those defeaters, but this would already constitute (...) a form of inference and hence undermine the possibility of noninferential justification. The goal of my paper is to defend foundationalism against Sinnott-Armstrong’s criticism. After presenting his challenge, I first argue that the most promising objection to it fails. This objection makes the case that defeater-defeaters are not part of the justification, but merely preserve the justification which the original claim provides. I object to this argument by distinguishing between weak and robust defeaters; only weak defeaters, I argue, fall outside the scope of justification, and it is an open question whether Sinnott-Armstrong’s defeaters fall into that category. This leads the way to my own criticism of Sinnott-Armstrong’s challenge: foundationalists in moral epistemology are entitled to the use of defeater-defeaters as part of the justification for moral beliefs as long as those defeater-defeaters themselves do not entail moral claims. Therefore, Sinnott-Armstrong’s challenge does not undermine foundationalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we investigate three different ways of defending the claim that national football associations ought to pay their men’s and women’s football teams the same amount. First, we...

Jotta olisimme moraalisesti vastuussa teoistamme, meidän on kyettävä muodostamaan käsityksiä oikeasta ja väärästä ja toimimaan ainakin jossain määrin niiden mukaisesti. Jos olemme täysivaltaisia moraalitoimijoita, myös ymmärrämme miksi jotkin teot ovat väärin, ja kykenemme siten joustavasti mukauttamaan toimintaamme eri tilanteisiin. Esitän, ettei näköpiirissä ole tekoälyjärjestelmiä, jotka kykenisivät aidosti välittämään oikein tekemisestä tai ymmärtämään moraalin vaatimuksia, koska nämä kyvyt vaativat kokemustietoisuutta ja kokonaisvaltaista arvostelukykyä. Emme siten voi sysätä koneille vastuuta teoistaan. Meidän on sen sijaan pyrittävä rakentamaan keinotekoisia oikeintekijöitä - järjestelmiä, jotka eivät (...) ole moraalitoimijoita, mutta kuitenkin toimivat likipitäen siten kuin me itse parhaimmillamme tekisimme. (shrink)

In this article, we defend two claims about the precautionary principle. The first is that there is no ‘core’ precautionary principle that unifies all its different versions. It is more plausible to think of the different versions as being related to each other by way of family resemblances. So although precautionary principle x may have much in common with precautionary principle y, and y with z, there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that unify all versions of the (...) principle. Our second claim is that it is sometimes appropriate to think of the precautionary principle as a midlevel principle in the sense proposed by Beauchamp and Childress in their Principles of Biomedical Ethics, i.e. as a non-rigid moral principle. We argue that if the precautionary principle is conceived as a non-rigid principle that needs to be balanced against other principles before a moral verdict can be reached, then this enables us to address some standard objections to the principle. (shrink)

J. E. Grunig's seminal work on excellence theory and subsequent works by other scholars advance the two-way symmetrical model as a best-practice approach to public relations. In part, two-way symmetry is preferred because of an assertion that it is the most ethical form of practice. However, only within a means-based deontological framework do two-way symmetry and the principle of dialogue emerge as universally ethical. Taking an ends-based utilitarian standpoint makes the potential ethical flaws of two-way symmetry apparent. Issues of moral (...) luck, hegemony, and the limitations of dialogue also pose problems for the moral primacy claims surrounding two-way symmetry. The analysis that follows points toward a need for a more relative and contingent approach to PR ethics, and by extension to PR practice itself. (shrink)

It’s commonly held that particular moral facts are explained by ‘natural’ or ‘descriptive’ facts, though there’s disagreement over how such explanations work. We defend the view that general moral principles also play a role in explaining particular moral facts. More specifically, we argue that this view best makes sense of some intuitive data points, including the supervenience of the moral upon the natural. We consider two alternative accounts of the nature and structure of moral principles—’the nomic view’ and ‘moral platonism’—before (...) considering in what sense such principles obtain of necessity. (shrink)

Drawing on unpublished and published sources from 1926-1932, this chapter builds on John Dewey’s naturalistic pragmatic pluralism in ethical theory. A primary focus is “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” which analyzes good, duty, and virtue as distinct categories that in many cases express different experiential origins. The chapter suggests that a vital role for contemporary theorizing is to lay bare and analyze the sorts of conflicts that constantly underlie moral and political action. Instead of reinforcing moral fundamentalism via an outdated (...) quest for the central and basic source of normative justification, we should foster theories with a range of idioms and emphases which, while accommodating monistic insights, better inform decision-making by opening communication across diverse elements of moral and political life, placing these elements in a wider context in which norms gain practical traction in non-ideal conditions, and expanding prospects for social inquiry and convergence on policy and action. (shrink)

This paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.

Normative explanations, which specify why things have the normative features they do, are ubiquitous in normative theory and ordinary thought. But there is much less work on normative explanation than on scientific or metaphysical explanation. Skow (2016) argues that a complete answer to the question why some fact Q occurs consists in all of the reasons why Q occurs. This paper explores this theory as a case study of a general theory that promises to offer us a grip on normative (...) explanation which is independent of particular normative theories. I first argue that the theory doesn’t give an adequate account of certain enablers of reasons which are important in normative explanation. I then formulate and reject three responses on behalf of the theory. But I suggest that since theories of this general sort have the right kind of resources to illuminate how normative explanation might be similar to and different from explanations in other domains, they nonetheless merit further exploration by normative theorists. (shrink)

A powerful argument against the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it cannot distinguish harming from failing to benefit. In reply to this problem, I suggest a new account of harm. The account is a counterfactual comparative one, but it counts as harms only those events that make a person occupy his level of well-being at the world at which the event occurs. This account distinguishes harming from failing to benefit in a way that accommodates our intuitions about the (...) standard problem cases. In laying the groundwork for this account, I also demonstrate that rival accounts of harm are able to distinguish harming from failing to benefit only if, and because, they also appeal to the distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. One important implication of my discussion is that preserving the moral asymmetry between harming and failing to benefit requires a commitment to the existence of a metaphysical and moral distinction between making and allowing. (shrink)