What reasons for action do we have? What explains why we have these reasons? This paper articulates some of the basic structural features of a theory that would provide answers to these questions. According to this theory, reasons for action are all grounded in intrinsic values, but in a way that makes room for a thoroughly non-consequentialist view of the way in which intrinsic values generate reasons for aaction.

[Considers Bernard Williams on negative responsibility as exemplified by his well-known case of Jim and the Indians].

Consequentialist theories of virtue and vice, such as the theories of Jeremy Bentham and Julia Driver, characterize virtue and vice in terms of the consequential, or instrumental, properties of these character traits. There are two problems with theories of this sort. First they imply that, under the right circumstances, paradigmatic virtues, such as benevolence, are vices and paradigmatic vices, such as maliciousness, are virtues. This is conceptually problematic. Second, they say nothing about the intrinsic nature of the virtues and vices, (...) which is less than we could hope for from a theory of virtue and vice. Thus, we have reason to reject consequentialist theories in favour of theories that characterize virtue and vice in terms of the intrinsic properties of these character traits. Aristotle and Thomas Hurka have theories this sort. (shrink)

This chapter analyses making/allowing in terms of positive/negative: you allow something to happen if an explanation of its happening requires only a negative fact about your behaviour. A negative fact about your behaviour is a highly general or uninformative one; it corresponds to almost the whole of the logical space of your possible ways of moving. An objection to this analysis, based on giving a very special status to immobility, is described and countered. The possibility space might have a different (...) metric, i.e. be structured in terms of something other than possible ways of moving. One such alternative metric is discussed. (shrink)

Suppose we want to do the most good we can with a particular sum of money, but we cannot be certain of the consequences of different ways of making use of it. This article explores how our attitudes towards risk and ambiguity bear on what we should do. It shows that risk-avoidance and ambiguity-aversion can each provide good reason to divide our money between various charitable organizations rather than to give it all to the most promising one. It also shows (...) how different attitudes towards risk and ambiguity affect whether we should give to an organization which does a small amount of good for certain or to one which does a large amount of good with some small or unknown probability. (shrink)