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  1. The Rejection of Epistemic Consequentialism.Selim Berker - 2013 - Philosophical Issues 23 (1):363-387.
    A quasi-sequel to "Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions." Covers some of the same ground, but also extends the basic argument in an important way.
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  • (1 other version)The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.Philippa Foot - 1967 - Oxford Review 5:5-15.
    One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus we (...)
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  • Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions.Selim Berker - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (3):337-393.
    When it comes to epistemic normativity, should we take the good to be prior to the right? That is, should we ground facts about what we ought and ought not believe on a given occasion in facts about the value of being in certain cognitive states (such as, for example, the value of having true beliefs)? The overwhelming answer among contemporary epistemologists is “Yes, we should.” This essay argues to the contrary. Just as taking the good to be prior to (...)
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  • Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem.Judith Jarvis Thomson - 1976 - The Monist 59 (2):204-217.
    Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.
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  • (3 other versions)What is Justified Belief?Alvin I. Goldman - 1979 - In George Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology. Boston: D. Reidel. pp. 1-25.
    The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, (...)
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  • Moral thinking: its levels, method, and point.R. M. Hare (ed.) - 1981 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In this work, the author has fashioned out of the logical and linguistic theses of his earlier books a full-scale but readily intelligible account of moral argument.
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  • (2 other versions)An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.Jeremy Bentham - 1780 - New York: Dover Publications. Edited by J. H. Burns & H. L. A. Hart.
    Bentham's best-known book stands as a classic of both philosophy and jurisprudence. The 1789 work articulates an important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy — it also represents a pioneering study of crime and punishment. Bentham's reasoning remains central to contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory.
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  • Deontic vs. nondeontic conceptions of epistemic justification.H. Vahid - 1998 - Erkenntnis 49 (3):285-301.
    Theories of epistemic justification are usually described as belonging to either deontological or nondeontological categories of justification with the former construing the concept of justification as involving the fulfillment of epistemic duty. Despite being the dominant view among traditional epistemologists, the deontological conception has been subjected to severe criticisms in the current literature for failing, among others, to do justice to the (alleged) truth-conducive character of epistemic justification. In this paper I set out to show that there is something deeply (...)
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  • Consequentialism and commitment.Alastair Norcross - 1997 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4):380–403.
    It is sometimes claimed that a consequentialist theory such as utilitarianism has problems accommodating the importance of personal commitments to other people. However, by emphasizing the distinction between criteria of rightness and decision procedures, a consequentialist can allow for non-consequentialist decision procedures, such as acting directly on the promptings of natural affection. Furthermore, such non-consequentialist motivational structures can co-exist happily with a commitment to consequentialism. It is possible to be a self-reflective consequentialist who has genuine commitments to individuals and to (...)
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  • (1 other version)How truth governs belief.Nishi Shah - 2003 - Philosophical Review 112 (4):447-482.
    Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality.Peter Railton - 1984 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (2):134-171.
    The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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  • (1 other version)A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.
    The pragmatic character of the Dutch book argument makes it unsuitable as an "epistemic" justification for the fundamental probabilist dogma that rational partial beliefs must conform to the axioms of probability. To secure an appropriately epistemic justification for this conclusion, one must explain what it means for a system of partial beliefs to accurately represent the state of the world, and then show that partial beliefs that violate the laws of probability are invariably less accurate than they could be otherwise. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rule-consequentialism.Brad Hooker - 1990 - Mind 99 (393):67-77.
    The theory of morality we can call full rule - consequentialism selects rules solely in terms of the goodness of their consequences and then claims that these rules determine which kinds of acts are morally wrong. George Berkeley was arguably the first rule -consequentialist. He wrote, “In framing the general laws of nature, it is granted we must be entirely guided by the public good of mankind, but not in the ordinary moral actions of our lives. … The rule is (...)
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  • Justifying conditionalization: Conditionalization maximizes expected epistemic utility.Hilary Greaves & David Wallace - 2006 - Mind 115 (459):607-632.
    According to Bayesian epistemology, the epistemically rational agent updates her beliefs by conditionalization: that is, her posterior subjective probability after taking account of evidence X, pnew, is to be set equal to her prior conditional probability pold(·|X). Bayesians can be challenged to provide a justification for their claim that conditionalization is recommended by rationality—whence the normative force of the injunction to conditionalize? There are several existing justifications for conditionalization, but none directly addresses the idea that conditionalization will be epistemically rational (...)
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  • The deontological conception of epistemic justification.William P. Alston - 1988 - Philosophical Perspectives 2:257-299.
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  • The aim of belief.Ralph Wedgwood - 2002 - Philosophical Perspectives 16:267-97.
    It is often said, metaphorically, that belief "aims" at the truth. This paper proposes a normative interpretation of this metaphor. First, the notion of "epistemic norms" is clarified, and reasons are given for the view that epistemic norms articulate essential features of the beliefs that are subject to them. Then it is argued that all epistemic norms--including those that specify when beliefs count as rational, and when they count as knowledge--are explained by a fundamental norm of correct belief, which requires (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.Peter Railton - 1998 - In James Rachels (ed.), Ethical Theory 2: Theories About How We Should Live. Oxford University Press UK.
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  • (1 other version)A defence of Epistemic Consequentialism.Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeffrey Dunn - unknown
    Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good. Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a?rejection? of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown that reliabilism—the most prominent form of epistemic (...)
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  • (5 other versions)An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.J. H. Burns, H. L. A. Hart & Jeremy Bentham - 1972 - Philosophy 47 (179):74-79.
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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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  • (5 other versions)An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.Jeremy Bentham - 1789/2007 - Philosophical Review 45:527.
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  • Deontology and Descartes’s Demon.Brian Weatherson - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy 105 (9):540-569.
    In his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes says, Finally, it is so manifest that we possess a free will, capable of giving or withholding its assent, that this truth must be reckoned among the first and most common notions which are born with us.
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  • Do non-philosophers think epistemic consequentialism is counterintuitive?James Andow - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2631-2643.
    Direct epistemic consequentialism is the idea that X is epistemically permissible iff X maximizes epistemic value. It has received lots of attention in recent years and is widely accepted by philosophers to have counterintuitive implications. There are various reasons one might suspect that the relevant intuitions will not be widely shared among non-philosophers. This paper presents an initial empirical study of ordinary intuitions. The results of two experiments demonstrate that the counterintuitiveness of epistemic consequentialism is more than a philosophers' worry---the (...)
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  • Justification and the Truth-Connection.Clayton Littlejohn - 2012 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    The internalism-externalism debate is one of the oldest debates in epistemology. Internalists assert that the justification of our beliefs can only depend on facts internal to us, while externalists insist that justification can depend on additional, for example environmental, factors. Clayton Littlejohn proposes and defends a new strategy for resolving this debate. Focussing on the connections between practical and theoretical reason, he explores the question of whether the priority of the good to the right might be used to defend an (...)
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  • (8 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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  • Consequentialism.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Epistemic Decision Theory.Hilary Greaves - 2013 - Mind 122 (488):915-952.
    I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent’s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and (...)
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  • Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-Making Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure?R. Eugene Bales - 1971 - American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (3):257 - 265.
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  • Do Judgments Screen Evidence?Brian Weatherson - manuscript
    Suppose a rational agent S has some evidence E that bears on p, and on that basis makes a judgment about p. For simplicity, we’ll normally assume that she judges that p, though we’re also interested in cases where the agent makes other judgments, such as that p is probable, or that p is well-supported by the evidence. We’ll also assume, again for simplicity, that the agent knows that E is the basis for her judgment. Finally, we’ll assume that the (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 1.John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff & Dugald Murdoch (eds.) - 1629 - Cambridge University Press.
    A completely new translation of the works of Descartes is intended to replace the Haldane and Ross edition, first published in 1911. All material from that edition is translated here, with a number of other texts crucial for understanding Cartesian philosophy.
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  • (5 other versions)From an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation.Jeremy Bentham - 1987 - In John Stuart Mill (ed.), Utilitarianism and other essays. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books.
    The following sheets were, as the note on the opposite page expresses, printed so long ago as the year 1780. The design, in pursuance of which they were written, was not so extensive as that announced by the present title. They had at that time no other destination than that of serving as an introduction to a plan of a penal code in terminus, designed to follow them, in the same volume.
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  • (2 other versions)Consequentialism and feminist ethics.Julia Driver - 2000 - Hypatia 20 (4):183-199.
    : This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rational Credence and the Value of Truth.Allan Gibbard - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 2:143-164.
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  • (5 other versions)An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.Jeremy Bentham, J. H. Burns & H. L. A. Hart - 1984 - Ethics 94 (2):355-356.
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  • (2 other versions)Consequentialism and Feminist Ethics.Julia Driver - 2000 - Hypatia 20 (4):183-199.
    This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental terms.
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  • Blame.D. Justin Coates & Neal A. Tognazzini - 2014 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    In this entry we provide a critical review of recent work on the nature and ethics of blame, including issues of moral standing.
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  • The Separateness of Persons, Distributive Norms, and Moral Theory.David Brink - 1993 - In Raymond Gillespie Frey & Christopher W. Morris (eds.), Value, Welfare, and Morality. Cambridge University Press. pp. 252-289.
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  • Concepts of Epistemic Justification.William P. Alston - 1985 - The Monist 68 (1):57-89.
    Justification, or at least ‘justification’, bulks large in recent epistemology. The view that knowledge consists of true-justified-belief has been prominent in this century, and the justification of belief has attracted considerable attention in its own right. But it is usually not at all clear just what an epistemologist means by ‘justified’, just what concept the term is used to express. An enormous amount of energy has gone into the attempt to specify conditions under which beliefs of one or another sort (...)
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  • Higher‐Order Evidence and the Limits of Defeat.Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):314-345.
    Recent authors have drawn attention to a new kind of defeating evidence commonly referred to as higher-order evidence. Such evidence works by inducing doubts that one’s doxastic state is the result of a flawed process – for instance, a process brought about by a reason-distorting drug. I argue that accommodating defeat by higher-order evidence requires a two-tiered theory of justification, and that the phenomenon gives rise to a puzzle. The puzzle is that at least in some situations involving higher-order defeaters (...)
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  • (6 other versions)The Will To Believe.William James - 1997 - The Philosophers' Magazine 1 (1):52-57.
    IN the recently published Life by I.eslie Stephen of his brother, Fitz- James, there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy. The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse with his pupils in this wise: "Gurney, what is the difference between justification and sanctification?- Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God " etc. In the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at your good (...)
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  • Why responsible belief is blameless belief.Anthony Robert Booth & Rik Peels - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (5):257-265.
    What, according to proponents of doxastic deontologism, is responsible belief? In this paper, we examine two proposals. Firstly, that responsible belief is blameless belief (a position we call DDB) and, secondly, that responsible belief is praiseworthy belief (a position we call DDP). We consider whether recent arguments in favor of DDP, mostly those recently offered by Brian Weatherson, stand up to scrutiny and argue that they do not. Given other considerations in favor of DDP, we conclude that the deontologist should (...)
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  • An outline of a system of utilitarian ethics.John Jamieson Carswell Smart - 1961 - [Carlton]: Melbourne University Press on behalf of the University of Adelaide.
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  • Blameworthiness without wrongdoing.Justin Capes - 2012 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3):417-437.
    In this article I argue that it is possible to be blameworthy for doing something that was not objectively morally wrong. If I am right, this would have implications for several debates at the intersection of metaphysics and moral philosophy. I also float a view about which actions can serve as legitimate bases for blame that allows for the possibility of blameworthiness without objective wrongdoing and also suggests an explanation for the appeal of the commonly held view that blameworthiness requires (...)
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  • Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point.David Zimmerman - 1984 - Philosophical Review 93 (2):293.
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  • (2 other versions)Consequentialism and Feminist Ethics.Julia Driver - 2005 - Hypatia 20 (4):183-199.
    This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental terms.
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  • (6 other versions)The Will to Believe.W. James - 1896 - Philosophical Review 6:88.
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  • (1 other version)A Defence of Epistemic Consequentialism.Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeffrey Dunn - 2014 - Philosophical Quarterly 64 (257):541-551.
    Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right (e.g., the justified) is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good (e.g., true belief). Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a ‘rejection’ of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown (...)
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  • Permissible Epistemic Trade-Offs.Daniel J. Singer - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):281-293.
    ABSTRACTRecent rejections of epistemic consequentialism, like those from Firth, Jenkins, Berker, and Greaves, have argued that consequentialism is committed to objectionable trade-offs and suggest...
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  • (2 other versions)Metaepistemology and Skepticism.Richard Fumerton - 1997 - Mind 106 (424):782-787.
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  • (1 other version)How Truth Governs Belief.Nishi Shah - 2003 - Philosophical Review 112 (4):447-482.
    Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...)
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