This dissertation addresses the question of whether act-utilitarianism (AU) can provide practical action-guidance. Traditionally, when approaching this question, utilitarians invoke the distinction between criteria of rightness and methods of decision-making. The utilitarian criterion of rightness states, roughly, that an action is right if and only if there is nothing else that the agent can do that has a better outcome. However, this criterion needs to be supplemented, it is said, with some description of a strategy that allows an agent to (...) reach decisions that approximate the utilitarian idea – a method of decision-making. The main question in the essay is if any such method can indeed be justified on the basis of AU. I argue that the justification of a method of decision-making depends on the extent to which it has two different features: practicability and validity. Roughly a method of decision-making is practicable if an agent trying to adhere to the method will succeed in doing so. A method of decision-making is valid if adhering to the method makes the agent approximate the overall goal of AU. I then proceed by examining whether it is possible to justify a belief to the effect that any of the various candidates of methods of decision-making that have been proposed in the literature have these features. My main conclusion is negative. No proposed method of decision-making can be shown to satisfy these desiderata to a sufficient degree. In the final chapter the implications of this conclusion are examined. Does this mean that we cannot justify a belief in AU? Does it mean that AU is false? My conclusion is that whether or not this shows that AU is false depends on what meta-ethical view is the most plausible one. I also present a tentative way of justifying a belief in AU. (shrink)

Ethical extensionism generally involves drawing one or more lines of moral standing. I argue for all living organisms, there is a non- zero probability of sentience and consciousness, and we cannot justify excluding beings from consideration on the basis of uncertainty of their sentience, etc., and rather we should incorporate this uncertainty into the strength of our moral responsibilities. This use of probabilities differs critically from multi-criteria theories of moral standing and those that assign benefit of the doubt, which involve (...) unjustified exclusions and dilutions of duties. From uncertainty rises certainty : we have duties to non-human organisms, although they may often be minor. This modification of extensionist ethics provides foundation for an environmental ethic that parallels interpersonal and animal welfare ethics, and it suggests that we owe much greater concern to 'lower' organisms than they are typically given. (shrink)

Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.

When is it morally acceptable to expose others to risk? Most moral philosophers have had very little to say in answer to that question, but here is a moral philosopher who puts it at the centre of his investigations.

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

Scholars in philosophy, law, economics and other fields have widely debated how science, environmental precaution, and economic interests should be balanced in urgent contemporary problems, such as climate change. One controversial focus of these discussions is the precautionary principle, according to which scientific uncertainty should not be a reason for delay in the face of serious threats to the environment or health. While the precautionary principle has been very influential, no generally accepted definition of it exists and critics charge that (...) it is incoherent or hopelessly vague. This book presents and defends an interpretation of the precautionary principle from the perspective of philosophy of science, looking particularly at how it connects to decisions, scientific procedures, and evidence. Through careful analysis of numerous case studies, it shows how this interpretation leads to important insights on scientific uncertainty, intergenerational justice, and the relationship between values and policy-relevant science. (shrink)

In this book, Slote offers the first full-scale foundational account of virtue ethics to have appeared since the recent revival of interest in the ethics of virtue. Slote advocates a particular form of such ethics for its intuitive and structural advantages over Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality, and he argues that the problems of other views can be avoided and a contemporary plausible version of virtue ethics achieved only by abandoning specifically moral concepts for general aretaic notions like admirability and (...) virtue. Although this study is not bound by particular Aristotelian doctrines, it places an Aristotelian emphasis on both self-benefiting and other-benefiting virtues. Slote criticizes Kantian and common-sense morality for internal incoherencies and for downgrading the moral individual and her well-being in some previously unnoticed ways. By contrast, this book defends a distinctive, intuitive, and symmetric ethical principle according to which we should balance self-concern with concern for others, but it also concludes that there is, contrary to utilitarianism, no single basis for status as a virtue nor any simple relation between the virtues and human well-being. (shrink)

Can material Egalitarianism (requiring, for example, the significant promotion of fortune) include animals in the domain of the equality requirement? The problem can be illustrated as follows: If equality of wellbeing is what matters, and normal mice are included in this egalitarian requirement, then normal mice have a much stronger claim to resources than almost any human. This is because normal mice have a much stronger claim to resources than almost any human. This is because their wellbeing is much lower (...) than that of normal humans. Thus, equality of wellbeing requires a massive shift of resources away from most humans to mice. This view, however, seems crazy. I explore this problem and propose a solution. (shrink)

Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticised by scientists, (...) scholars and policy activists, and been accused of almost every intellectual sin imaginable: unclarity, impracticality, arbitrariness and moral as well as political unsoundness. In that light, the very idea of precaution as an ideal for policy making rather comes out as a dead end. On the basis of these contrasting starting points, Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching consequences for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) has been criticised for almost every intellectual sin one may imagine: unclarity, impracticability, rigidity, implausibility etc. Recognising the rather obvious fact that there is no such thing as one PP, this paper attempts to address this criticism on a more constructive note than merely view it as forcing us to be "for or against" precaution. This is done by connecting an underlying ethical ideal regarding the imposition of risks present in most formulations of PP to the (...) criticism and use the latter for discussing how such an idea may be plausibly designed and used for underpinning policies that may plausibly be said to express the spirit of PP. It is argued that the most important issue regarding this is to recognise that there is something to the idea that imposing risks on people has a morally significant price, but that we must also acknowledge that taking precautionary measures to avoid or decrease such risks has such a price. The critical issue in the ethics of risk of relevance for PP thus becomes what constitutes a proper price of precaution. It is demonstrated how two simple constraints on this amkes it easy to meet many typical arguments against PP, but also how this issue must be further attacked by means transcending the traditional tools of normative ethics and decision theory, as well as how further reflection along such lines connects PP to issues of international.. (shrink)