This chapter presents a new argument for thinking of traditional ethical theories as methods that can be used in first-order ethics - as a kind of deliberation procedures rather than as criteria of right and wrong. It begins from outlining how ethical theories, such as consequentialism and contractualism, are flexible frameworks in which different versions of these theories can be formulated to correspond to different first-order ethical views. The chapter then argues that, as a result, the traditional ethical theories cannot (...) be evaluated in terms of their truth or correctness. Instead, I will suggest that these theories should be understood as providing different kind of ways of thinking about difficult moral problems. I then recommend a certain form of pragmatic pluralism - it may well be that different moral problems are better approached through different ethical theories. (shrink)

This essay begins by describing T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism according to which an action is right when it is authorised by the moral principles no one could reasonably reject. This view has argued to have implausible consequences with regards to how different-sized groups, non-human animals, and cognitively limited human beings should be treated. It has also been accused of being theoretically redundant and unable to vindicate the so-called deontic distinctions. I then distinguish between the general contractualist framework and Scanlon’s version of (...) contractualism. I explain how the general framework enables us to formulate many other versions of contractualism some of which can already be found in the literature. Understanding contractualism in this new way enables us both to understand the structural similarities and differences between different versions of contractualism and also to see the different objections to contractualism as internal debates about which version of contractualism is correct. (shrink)

Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls’ theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls’ theory, the (...) centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon’s. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality. (shrink)

In this thesis, I discuss the aggregation problem for T. M. Scanlon’s “contractualism”. I argue that Scanlonian contractualists have the following two options when it comes to the aggregation problem. First, they can choose to limit aggregation directly via a specific version of the Relevance View, “Sequential Claims-Matching”. Second, Scanlonian contractualists can adopt a so-called “mixed solution” of which I propose a specific version. My mixed solution does not limit aggregation. Rather, it either avoids some of the counterintuitive results in (...) certain cases, or at least makes these same results look a lot less counterintuitive by putting them into perspective thanks to a plausible plurality of precisely specified values. The stakes between these two options are as follows. The first option justifies Scanlon’s intuition in one vs. many cases of which his “World Cup Case” is one example, but it comes at the cost of a seemingly quite limited range of application: any version of the Relevance View only works in cases in which we have no more than two groups of competing claimants. The second option has the exact opposite implications: my mixed solution cannot justify Scanlon’s intuition in one vs. many cases, but it could be applied to any case with any number of groups of competing claimants. In this choice between pre-theoretical intuition and feasibility, I would urge Scanlonian contractualists to choose feasibility. (shrink)