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  1. On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.
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  • (1 other version)Reasons for Action and Desires.Michael Woods & Philippa Foot - 1972 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 46 (1):189 - 210.
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  • Well-Being and the Priority of Values.Jason Raibley - 2010 - Social Theory and Practice 36 (4):593-620.
    Leading versions of hedonism generate implausible results about the welfare value of very intense or unwanted pleasures, while recent versions of desire satisfactionism overvalue the fulfillment of desires associated with compulsions and addictions. Consequently, both these theories fail to satisfy a plausible condition of adequacy for theories of well-being proposed by L.W. Sumner: they do not make one’s well-being depend on one’s own cares or concerns. But Sumner’s own life-satisfaction theory cannot easily be extended to explain welfare over time, and (...)
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  • What is this thing called happiness?Fred Feldman - 2010 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Some puzzles about happiness -- Pt. I. Some things that happiness isn't. Sensory hedonism about happiness -- Kahneman's "objective happiness" -- Subjective local preferentism about happiness -- Whole life satisfaction concepts of happiness -- Pt. II. What happiness is. What is this thing called happiness? -- Attitudinal hedonism about happiness -- Eudaimonism -- The problem of inauthentic happiness -- Disgusting happiness -- Our authority over our own happiness -- Pt. III. Implications for the empirical study of happiness. Measuring happiness -- (...)
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  • (1 other version)Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure and Welfare.Chris Heathwood - 2011 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6:79-106.
    One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about either pleasure or welfare (...)
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  • (1 other version)Desire.Tim Schroeder - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 (6):631-639.
    To desire is to be in a particular state of mind. It is a state of mind familiar to everyone who has ever wanted to drink water or desired to know what has happened to an old friend, but its familiarity does not make it easy to give a theory of desire. Controversy immediately breaks out when asking whether wanting water and desiring knowledge are, at bottom, the same state of mind as others that seem somewhat similar: wishing never to (...)
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  • The possibility of altruism.Thomas Nagel - 1970 - Oxford,: Clarendon P..
    Just as there are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action. This book defends a conception of ethics, and a related conception of human nature, according to which altruism is included among the basic rational requirements on desire and action. Altruism itself depends on the recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
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  • Taking rights seriously.Ronald Dworkin (ed.) - 1977 - London: Duckworth.
    This is the first publication of these ideas in book form. 'It is a rare treat--important, original philosophy that is also a pleasure to read.
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  • (1 other version)Intention.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1957 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.
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  • (1 other version)Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Renowned scholar Robert Adams explores the relation between religion and ethics through a comprehensive philosophical account of a theistically-based framework for ethics. Adams' framework begins with the good rather than the right, and with excellence rather than usefulness. He argues that loving the excellent, of which adoring God is a clear example, is the most fundamental aspect of a life well lived. Developing his original and detailed theory, Adams contends that devotion, the sacred, grace, martyrdom, worship, vocation, faith, and other (...)
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  • The moral problem.Michael R. Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
    What is the Moral Problem? NORMATIVE ETHICS VS. META-ETHICS It is a common fact of everyday life that we appraise each others' behaviour and attitudes from ...
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  • (1 other version)Desire and the Human Good.Richard Kraut - 1994 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 68 (2):315.
    When we compare contemporary moral philosophy with the well-known moral systems of earlier centuries, we should be struck by the fact that a certain assumption about human well being that is now widely taken for granted was universally rejected in the past. The contemporary moral climate predisposes us to be pluralistic about the human good, whereas earlier systems of ethics embraced a conception of well being that we would now call narrow and restrictive. One way to convey the sort of (...)
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  • Facts and Values.Peter Railton - 1986 - Philosophical Topics 14 (2):5-31.
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  • Adaptive Preference.H. E. Baber - 2007 - Social Theory and Practice 33 (1):105-126.
    I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that (...)
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  • Full information accounts of well-being.David Sobel - 1994 - Ethics 104 (4):784-810.
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  • Internalism and the good for a person.Connie S. Rosati - 1996 - Ethics 106 (2):297-326.
    Proponents of numerous recent theories of a person's good hold that a plausible account of the good for a person must satisfy existence internalism. Yet little direct defense has been given for this position. I argue that the principal intuition behind internalism supports a stronger version of the thesis than it might appear--one that effects a "double link" to motivation. I then identify and develop the main arguments that have been or might be given in support of internalism about a (...)
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  • A theory of happiness.Wayne A. Davis - 1981 - American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (2):111-20.
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  • Pleasure And Desire: The Case For Hedonism Reviewed.Justin Cyril Bertrand Gosling - 1969 - Oxford, GB: Oxford,: Clarendon Press.
    Pleasure and Desire The Case of Hedonism Reviewed.
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  • The reduction of sensory pleasure to desire.Chris Heathwood - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 133 (1):23-44.
    One of the leading approaches to the nature of sensory pleasure reduces it to desire: roughly, a sensation qualifies as a sensation of pleasure just in case its subject wants to be feeling it. This approach is, in my view, correct, but it has never been formulated quite right; and it needs to be defended against some compelling arguments. Thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the most defensible formulation of this rough idea, and to defend it against (...)
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  • Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...)
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  • Affective and nonaffective desire.Melinda Vadas - 1984 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (December):273-80.
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  • Desire: Its Role in Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action.G. F. Schueler - 1995 - MIT Press.
    Does action always arise out of desire? G. F. Schueler examines this hotly debated topic in philosophy of action and moral philosophy, arguing that once two senses of "desire" are distinguished - roughly, genuine desires and pro attitudes - apparently plausible explanations of action in terms of the agent's desires can be seen to be mistaken. Desire probes a fundamental issue in philosophy of mind, the nature of desires and how, if at all, they motivate and justify our actions. At (...)
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  • Three Faces of Desire.Timothy Schroeder - 2004 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    To desire something is a condition familiar to everyone. It is uncontroversial that desiring has something to do with motivation, something to do with pleasure, and something to do with reward. Call these "the three faces of desire." The standard philosophical theory at present holds that the motivational face of desire presents its unique essence--to desire a state of affairs is to be disposed to act so as to bring it about. A familiar but less standard account holds the hedonic (...)
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  • Desire satisfactionism and hedonism.Chris Heathwood - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 128 (3):539-563.
    Hedonism and the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare are typically seen as archrivals in the contest over identifying what makes one's life go best. It is surprising, then, that the most plausible form of hedonism just is the most plausible form of desire satisfactionism. How can a single theory of welfare be a version of both hedonism and desire satisfactionism? The answer lies in what pleasure is: pleasure is, in my view, the subjective satisfaction of desire. This thesis about pleasure is (...)
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  • (1 other version)Desire as belief.David Lewis - 1988 - Mind 97 (418):323-32.
    Argues for the humean theory of motivation on the grounds that rejecting it requires rejecting decision theory.
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  • (1 other version)Mental Reality.Galen Strawson - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
    Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism -- The linguistic argument (...)
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  • (1 other version)Well-Being.Roger Crisp - 2014 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab.
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  • Why Subjectivists About Welfare Needn't Idealize.Eden Lin - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1):2-23.
    It is commonly thought that subjectivists about welfare must claim that the favorable attitudes whose satisfaction is relevant to your well-being are those that you would have in idealized conditions (e.g. ones in which you are fully informed and rational). I argue that this is false. I introduce a non-idealizing subjectivist view, Same World Subjectivism, that accommodates the two main rationales for idealizing: those given by Peter Railton and David Sobel. I also explain why a recent argument from Dale Dorsey (...)
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  • Unconscious Pleasures and Attitudinal Theories of Pleasure.Chris Heathwood - 2018 - Utilitas 30 (2):219-227.
    This paper responds to a new objection, due to Ben Bramble, against attitudinal theories of sensory pleasure and pain: the objection from unconscious pleasures and pains. According to the objection, attitudinal theories are unable to accommodate the fact that sometimes we experience pleasures and pains of which we are, at the time, unaware. In response, I distinguish two kinds of unawareness and argue that the subjects in the examples that support the objection are unaware of their sensations in only a (...)
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  • Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
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  • Motivation by Ideal.J. David Velleman - 2002 - Philosophical Explorations 5 (2):89-103.
    I offer an account of how ideals motivate us. My account suggests that although emulating an ideal is often rational, it can lead us to do irrational things. * This is the third in a series of four papers on narrative self-conceptions and their role in moral motivation. In the first paper, “The Self as Narrator” (to appear in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, ed. Joel Anderson and John Christman), I explore the motivational role of narrative self-conceptions, (...)
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  • The Moral Problem.Stephen Darwall - 1996 - Philosophical Quarterly 46 (185):508-515.
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  • (2 other versions)A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.
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  • (3 other versions)The Methods of Ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1890 - International Journal of Ethics 1 (1):120-121.
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  • (3 other versions)The Methods of Ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1903 - International Journal of Ethics 13 (2):251-254.
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  • (1 other version)Michael Smith: The Moral Problem. [REVIEW]James Lenman - 1994 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (1):125-126.
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  • Mental Reality.Galen Strawson - 1994 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 58 (2):433-435.
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  • Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction.Richard J. Arneson - 1999 - Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1):113-142.
    What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent (...)
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  • (3 other versions)The Methods of Ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1907 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 30 (4):401-401.
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  • Review of G. F. Schueler: Desire: Its Role in Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action[REVIEW]Robert Noggle - 1996 - Ethics 106 (4):848-850.
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  • (2 other versions)A Theory of Justice.John Rawls - unknown
    Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...)
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  • Review of Sumner, *Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics*. [REVIEW]Bruce Brower - 1998 - Philosophical Review 107 (2):309.
    Despite being co-opted by economists and politicians for their own purposes, ‘welfare’ traditionally refers to well-being, and it is in this sense that L. W. Sumner understands the term. His book is a clear, careful, and well-crafted investigation into major theories of welfare, accompanied by a one-chapter defense of “welfarism,” the view that welfare is the only foundational value necessary for ethics. Sumner himself is attracted to utilitarianism, but he makes no commitment to it in this work, which will be (...)
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  • Senses and Kinds.Gareth B. Matthews - 1972 - Journal of Philosophy 69 (6):149-157.
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  • (7 other versions)Utilitarianism.J. S. Mill - 1861 - Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Roger Crisp.
    Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.
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  • Desire-Fulfillment Theory.Chris Heathwood - 2015 - In Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being. New York,: Routledge. pp. 135-147.
    Explains the desire-fulfillment theory of well-being, its history, its development, its varieties, its advantages, and its challenges.
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  • What are Theories of Desire Theories of?Tamar Schapiro - 2014 - Analytic Philosophy 55 (2):131-150.
    In this paper I try to undermine complacency with a predominant conception of desire, for the sake of refocusing attention on a philosophical problem. The predominant conception holds that to have a desire is to occupy an evaluative outlook, a perspective from which the agent 'sees' the world in practically salient terms. I argue that it is not clear what this theory is a theory of, because the concept of desire at its center is deeply ambiguous. Understood as a theory (...)
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  • Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior.John Harsanyi - 1977 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 44 (4):623-656.
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  • Pleasure.Justin Gosling - 1992 - In Lawrence C. Becker & Charlotte B. Becker (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ethics. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 978--981.
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  • Can Desires Provide Reasons for Action.Ruth Chang - 2004 - In R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler & Michael Smith (eds.), Reason and Value: Themes From the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. New York: Clarendon Press. pp. 56--90.
    What sorts of consideration can be normative reasons for action? If we systematize the wide variety of considerations that can be cited as normative reasons, do we find that there is a single kind of consideration that can always be a reason? Desire-based theorists think that the fact that you want something or would want it under certain evaluatively neutral conditions can always be your normative reason for action. Value-based theorists, by contrast, think that what plays that role are evaluative (...)
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  • An Analysis of Prudential Value.Stephen M. Campbell - 2013 - Utilitas 25 (3):334-54.
    This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of the related concepts of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice, and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of (...)
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