In this paper I criticize the way Sumner marks the subjective/objective divide and the way he argues for subjective views of well-being.

Can we adequately account for our reasons of mere taste without holding that our desires ground such reasons? Recently, Scanlon and Parfit have argued that we can, pointing to pleasure and pain as the grounds of such reasons. In this paper I take issue with each of their accounts. I conclude that we do not yet have a plausible rival to a desire-based understanding of the grounds of such reasons.

These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive reason-giving power of desires. As we will see, (...) however, while these debates overlap, the new debate is importantly different from the old debate. (shrink)

The rhetoric of Principia Ethica, as of not a few philosophy books, is that of the clean break. Moore claims that the vast majority of previous writing on ethics has been misguided and that an entirely new start is needed. In its time, however, the book’s claims to novelty were widely disputed. Reviews in Mind, Ethics, and The Journal of Philosophy applauded the clarity of Moore’s criticisms of Mill, Spencer, and others, but said they were “not altogether original,” had for (...) the most part “already been brought out by other critics,” and were even “the standard criticisms.”1 To the Mind reviewer, “The book indicates throughout how strongly the author has been affected by Sidgwick’s views.”2 Hastings Rashdall rejected as historically inaccurate Moore’s claim that only Sidgwick before him had recognized that “good” is indefinable: “To say nothing of writers who (like Mr. Moore and myself) learned the doctrine largely from Sidgwick, I should contend that it was taught with sufficient distinctness by Plato ..., Aristotle, and a host of other writers who have studied in their school.”3 Rashdall also described Moore’s principle of organic unities as just “a new and striking way of stating a very old truth.”4 Some recent commentators have taken a similar line. Bernard Williams has said that much of Principia Ethica comes from Sidgwick,5 while Thomas Baldwin, discussing the book’s substantive values, has said the principle of organic unities “was expressly stated by Bradley,” while “McTaggart had for some years extolled the value of love, and the value of art is a central theme of romanticism.”. (shrink)

I argue for the existence of a category of practical reasons which I call "Deliberation-Volatile Reasons" or "DVRs". DVRs have the distinguishing feature that their status as reasons for action is diminished when they are weighed in deliberation by the agent. I argue that DVRs are evidence of "deliberative blind spots". I submit that an agent manifests a peculiar kind of practical irrationality in so far as she endeavours to find a deliberative path to what she has reason to do, (...) when the discovery of such a path renders the destination inaccessible. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that all extant theories of prudential value are either a) enumeratively deficient, in that they are unable to accommodate everything that, intuitively, is a basic constituent of prudential value, b) explanatorily deficient, in that they are at least sometimes unable to offer a plausible story about what makes a given thing prudentially valuable, or c) both. In response to the unsatisfactory state of the literature, I present my own account, the Disjunctive Hybrid Theory or DHT. (...) DHT answers to and remedies each of the above inadequacies in a way that no other approach can. This account has the following general structure:Disjunctive Hybrid Theory (DHT): Thing x is basically good for person P if and only if x is either a) cared about (sufficiently and in the right way) by P, b) a bearer of (the right kind of) attitude-independent value, or c) both.Although it follows other recent accounts in combining elements from objective and subjective theories, DHT is a hybrid theory of a quite new kind. This is because it denies both subjective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, P must have some pro-attitude toward x) and objective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, x must have some attitude-independent value). I argue that the rejection of both necessity claims is called for if we are to move beyond the enumerative and explanatory limitations of existing accounts.I begin by outlining the general structure of DHT. I then argue, against various recent authors, that desire-satisfactionism remains the most appealing subjectivist approach to prudential value, in that it is best able to capture the central subjectivist insight. This insight is that a person can confer prudential value upon things by caring about them (sufficiently and in the right way). The subjectivist strand of DHT will thus be a version of desire-satisfactionism, which must be interpreted in line with what I call the object, as opposed to the combo, view. I move on to further motivate and develop the second, objectivist strand of DHT. This part of the theory involves a commitment to robustly attitude-independent prudential goods. I close by addressing some puzzles for the theory, and considering some of its more specific applications. (shrink)

We have noted some fundamental distinctions between types of goodness or value. There is usefulness, or merely instrumental goodness, the value that something may have as a means to something else that is good or that is valued. Usefulness has an obvious importance, and connects with significant philosophical issues about instrumentality and probability; but more fundamental issues for ethical theory are posed by the goods or ends that the useful is to serve. Within the realm of what is good for (...) its own sake, and not just instrumentally good, most contemporary ethical thought focuses mainly on well-being or welfare-that is, on the nature of human flourishing or what is good for a person. The theory developed here, however, gives a primary place to excellence-the type of goodness exemplified by the beauty of a sunset, a painting, or a mathematical proof, or by the greatness of a novel, the nobility of an unselfish deed, or the quality of an athletic or a philosophical performance. It is the goodness of that which is worthy of love or admiration, honor or worship, rather than the good (for herself) that is possessed by one who is fortunate or happy, as such (though happiness may also be excellent, and worthy of admiration). (shrink)