Most people believe that there are limits to the sacrifices that morality can demand. Although it would often be meritorious, we are not, in fact, morally required to do all that we can to promote overall good. What's more, most people also believe that certain types of acts are simply forbidden, morally off limits, even when necessary for promoting the overall good. In this provocative analysis Kagan maintains that despite the intuitive appeal of these views, they cannot be adequately defended. (...) In criticizing arguments for limited moral requirements as well as those for unconditionally prohibited acts, Kagan offers a sustained attack on two of the most basic features of ordinary common sense morality. (shrink)

There is, on a given moral view, an agent-centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act-type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act-type. The fact that commonsense morality includes many such agent-centered restrictions has been seen by several philosophers as a decisive objection against consequentialism. Despite this, I argue that agent-centered restrictions are more plausibly accommodated within a (...) consequentialist framework than within the more standard side-constraint framework. For I argue that when we combine agent-relative consequentialism with a Kantian theory of value, we arrive at a version of consequentialism, which I call 'Kantsequentialism', that has several advantages over the standard side-constraint approach to accommodating constraints. What’s more, I argue that Kantsequentialism doesn’t have any of the disadvantages that critics of consequentializing have presumed that such a theory must have. (shrink)

Argues that rules should not be evaluated in terms of the numbers of acts of this or that kind that they allow. Then asks whether rules should be assessed in terms of whether they promote equality, fairness, and justice, or whether they give priority to the worst off. Finally, two sections discuss how rule‐consequentialism and contractualism differ as to whether morality contains prohibitions on how humans treat animals and the natural environment.

H. L. A. Hart; The Presidential Address: I—Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 60, Issue 1, 1 June 196.

This paper starts by juxtaposing the normative ethics in the final part of Parfit's final book, On What Matters, vol. 3, with the normative ethics in his earlier books, Reasons and Persons and On What Matters, vol. 1. The paper then addresses three questions. The first is, where does the reflective-equilibrium methodology that Parfit endorsed in the first volume of On What Matters lead? The second is, is the Act-involving Act Consequentialism that Parfit considers in the final volume of On (...) What Matters as plausible as Rossian deontology? The third is, how is the new argument that Parfit puts forward for Rule Consequentialism supposed to work? (shrink)

According to Brad Hooker's rule-consequentialism, as well as ordinary moral prohibitions against lying, stealing, killing, and harming others, the optimific code will include an over-riding “prevent disaster clause”. This paper explores two issues related to the disaster clause. The first issue is whether the disaster clause is vague—and whether this is a problem for rule-consequentialism. I argue that on Hooker's rule-consequentialism, there will be cases where it is indeterminate whether a given outcome counts as a disaster such that it is (...) permissible to infringe a given prohibition to avoid that outcome. I argue that it counts in favour of Hooker's rule-consequentialism that it makes this space for vagueness. The second issue is how to understand the disaster clause so that it does not make rule-consequentialism intolerably demanding—and more particularly whether avoiding over-demandingness requires the rule-consequentialist to place a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. I will argue that rule-consequentialism can avoid over-demandingness without placing a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. (shrink)

This paper employs (and defends where needed) a familiar four-part methodology for assessing moral theories. This methodology makes the most popular kind of moral pluralism--here called Ross-style pluralism--look extremely attractive. The paper contends, however, that, if rule-consequentialism's implications match our considered moral convictions as well as Ross-style pluralism's implications do, the methodology makes rule-consequentialism look even more attractive than Ross-style pluralism. The paper then attacks two arguments recently put forward in defence of Ross-style pluralism. One of these arguments is that (...) no moral theory containing some single normative principle to justify general pro tanto duties can do justice to the ineliminable role of judgment in moral thinking. The other argument is that no such theory is plausible in light of the fact that our moral ideas come from disparate historical sources. (shrink)

This chapter discusses vagueness in ethics.

Consequentialist theories often neglect reasons for action. They offer theories of the rightness or the goodness of actions, or of virtue, but they typically do not include theories of reasons. However, consequentialists can give plausible accounts of reasons. This chapter examines some different ways in which such accounts might be developed, focusing on Act Consequentialism and Rule Consequentialism and on the relationship between reasons and rightness. It notes that adding claims about reasons to consequentialist theories may introduce a welcome kind (...) of complexity, and in doing so may help to make consequentialist approaches to ethics more appealing. For example, it may help consequentialists to explain the ideas of moral constraints and moral options. (shrink)

This is a short review of Moral Particularism, ed. Brad Hooker and Margaret Little (Oxford University Press, 2002).

After preliminaries concerning different accounts of the good and the distinction between actual-consequence consequentialism and expected-value consequentialism, this paper explains why consequentialists should prescribe a moral decision procedure dominated by rules. But act-consequentialists deny rules have a role in the criterion of moral rightness. Prescribing a decision procedure dominated by rules and then denying rules a role in the criterion of rightness can be problematic. Rule-consequentialism gives rules roles first in the decision procedure agents should use and second in the (...) criterion of moral rightness. But giving rules this second role has attracted objections, some of which are outlined and answered here. The final section of the paper considers some recent developments. (shrink)