Consequentialism is seen by Philip Pettit mainly as a theory of the appropriate; in his conception of virtual consequentialism he is much less concerned with the theory of Good. Nevertheless, he pays attention to values such as rights, freedom, loyalty, confidence, dignity and love, although his analyses are isolated, and the connections with other values are not taken into account. He focuses especially on the values of freedom and rights. Contrary to Pettit, Amaryta Sen is much more concerned (...) with the latter, although there is no complex value framework to be find in his evaluator relative theory. He sees these values as the basis of the value system of any morais. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the differences between utilitarianism and non-utilitarian consequentialism.

Prominent critics of consequentialism hold that utilitarianism is not capable of accepting authentic human values, because the consequentialist viewpoint is impersonal. According to it consequentialist rationality has no axiological limits and it can think about doing the unthinkable. The main objective of the paper is to show that human dignity has a significant position in the author’s conception of ethics of social consequences arguing for a particular theory of the value of human dignity. The author argues that the ethics (...) of social consequences is capable of accepting human dignity as well as all authentic human moral values. He believes that ethical theory of social consequences can provide the element missing whose lack was unveiled by the critics of utilitarianism. (shrink)

The present article deals with specific normative concepts of Spinoza’s ethical system and compares them to certain aspects of the theory of ethics of social consequences. At first, a way to approach the problem of normativity in Spinoza is presented, concentrating on the obligatory character of rational - or intellectual - motives. Then, theoretical evidence is presented which links Spinoza to normative-ethical consequentialism. The basis for a consequentialist model of Spinoza’s ethics is the concept of perfection, and on this (...) basis it seems possible to consider its compatibility with non-utilitarian forms of consequentialism, such as ethics of social consequences. Conclusively, the paper’s aim is to present the possibility of considering Spinozian consequentialism as a non-utilitarian consequentialism, while considering ethics of social consequences as a contemporary form of Spinozian consequentialism. (shrink)

In his article, the author considers possible forms of relationship between Kant’s ethics and consequentialism. In this context, he analyses David Cummiskey’s views which are expressed in his book, Kantian Consequentialism (1996). He demonstrates the possibility of justifying the consequentialism on the basis of Kant’s ethics and its values. Likewise, several other authors (such as Scott Forschler, Philipp Stratton-Lake, Michael Ridge) are of the opinion of the possible compatibility of Kant’s ethics and consequentialism. On the other (...) hand, however, Christine M. Korsgaard is an example of a strict rejection of the similarity between Kant and the consequentialist ethics. The author based on the ethics of social consequences as a form of non-utilitarian consequentialism claims (like Cummiskey), that there are similarities between Kant’s ethics and consequentialism. Unlike Cummiskey, however, he sees similarity in the Kant’s formula of humanity and the understanding of humanity in ethics of social consequences, especially in the form of additional moral value. (shrink)

Prominent critics of consequentialism hold that utilitarianism is not capable of accepting authentic human values, because the consequentialist viewpoint is impersonal. According to it consequentialist rationality has no axiological limits and it can think about doing the unthinkable. The main objective of the paper is to show that human dignity has a significant position in the author's conception of ethics of social consequences (a non-utilitarian consequentialism) arguing for a particular theory of the value of human dignity. The (...) author argues that the ethics of social consequences is capable of accepting human dignity as well as all authentic human moral values. He believes that ethical theory of social consequences (as a form of non-utilitarian consequentialism) can provide the element missing whose lack was unveiled by the critics of utilitarianism. (shrink)

The paper develops the theory of right action in ethics of social consequences as a form of non-utilitarian consequentialism.

The paper explores the theory of right action in ethics of social consequences as a form of non-utilitarian consequentialism.

The author analyses Burrhus Frederick Skinner's book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).

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 folk seem to agree! (shrink)

Morality seems important, in the sense that there are practical reasons — at least for most of us, most of the time — to be moral. A central theoretical motivation for consequentialism is that it appears clear that there are practical reasons to promote good outcomes, but mysterious why we should care about non-consequentialist moral considerations or how they could be genuine reasons to act. In this paper we argue that this theoretical motivation is mistaken, and that because many (...) arguments for consequentialism rely upon it, the mistake substantially weakens the overall case for consequentialism. We argue that there is indeed a theoretical connection between good states and reasons to act, because good states are those it is fitting to desire and there is a conceptual connection between the fittingness of a motive and reasons to perform the acts it motivates. But while some of our motives are directed at states, others are directed at acts themselves. We contend that just as the fittingness of desires for states generates reasons to promote the good, the fittingness of these act-directed motives generates reasons to do other things. Moreover, we argue that an act’s moral status consists in the fittingness of act-directed feelings of obligation to perform or avoid performing it, so the connection between fitting motives and reasons to act explains reasons to be moral whether or not morality directs us to promote the good. This, we contend, de-mystifies how there could be non-consequentialist reasons that are both moral and practical. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique set of challenges for national governments regarding how to deal with a major international pandemic of almost unprecedented scope. As the pandemic consti...

It is a curious fact about mainstream discussions of animal rights that they are dominated by consequentialist defenses thereof, when consequentialism in general has been on the wane in other areas of moral philosophy. In this paper, I describe an alternative, non‐consequentialist ethical framework and argue that it grants animals more expansive rights than consequentialist proponents of animal rights typically grant. The cornerstone of this non‐consequentialist framework is the thought that the virtuous agent is s/he who has the stable (...) and dominating disposition to treat all conscious animals, including non‐human conscious animals, as ends and not mere means. (shrink)

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder (...) for the latter to secure in a principled way. §2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. §3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in §1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. §4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (i) best explains the objective normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (ii) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (iii) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. §5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate. (shrink)

You ought to save a larger group of people rather than a distinct smaller group of people, all else equal. A consequentialist may say that you ought to do so because this produces the most good. If a non-consequentialist rejects this explanation, what alternative can he or she give? This essay defends the following explanation, as a solution to the so-called numbers problem. Its two parts can be roughly summarised as follows. First, you are morally required to want the survival (...) of each stranger for its own sake. Secondly, you are rationally required to achieve as many of these ends as possible, if you have these ends. (shrink)

Interpersonal aggregation involves the combining and weighing of benefits and losses to multiple individuals in the course of determining what ought to be done. Most consequentialists embrace thoroughgoing interpersonal aggregation, the view that any large benefit to each of a few people can be morally outweighed by allocating any smaller benefit to each of many others, so long as this second group is sufficiently large. This would permit letting one person die in order to cure some number of mild headaches (...) instead. Most non-consequentialists reject thoroughgoing interpersonal aggregation despite also believing it is permissible to let one person die in order to prevent many cases of paraplegia instead. Non-consequentialists defend this asymmetry largely on the basis of intuition, and some rely on the notion of relevance to formalize the grounding intuitions. This article seeks to clarify and strengthen the non-consequentialist notion of relevance by engaging with three objections to it. (shrink)

There has been considerable discussion recently of consequentialist justifications of epistemic norms. In this paper, I shall argue that these justifications are not justifications. The consequentialist needs a value theory, a theory of the epistemic good. The standard theory treats accuracy as the fundamental epistemic good and assumes that it is a good that calls for promotion. Both claims are mistaken. The fundamental epistemic good involves accuracy, but it involves more than just that. The fundamental epistemic good is knowledge, not (...) mere true belief, because the goodness of an epistemic state is connected to that state's ability to give us reasons. If I'm right about the value theory, this has a number of significant implications for the consequentialist project. First, the good-making features that attach to valuable full beliefs are not features of partial belief. The resulting value theory does not give us the values we need to give consequentialist justifications of credal norms. Second, the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion. It is good to know, but the rational standing of a belief is not determined by the belief's location in a ranked set of options. In the paper's final section, I explain why the present view is a kind of teleological non-consequentialism. There is a kind of good that is prior to the right, but as the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion the value theory shows us what is wrong with the consequentialist project. (shrink)

As its title indicates, Philip Pettit’s “Three Mistakes about Doing Good (and Bad)” identifies and rejects three common claims restricting what can count as a good (or bad ) effect of action. The key question here is how do we work out how much good you have brought about by your action? The first common claim is that only causal effects or consequences of action can count as goods that are brought about by an action. The second, that we can (...) only count behavioural effects of action. The third, that we can only count consequences of “an all-or-nothing or on-off or discrete kind”. Pettit argues that all three of these claims are mistaken: the first claim is mistaken because our actions can bring about goods that are constitutive consequences of those actions; the second claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can depend upon the agent having acted out of certain dispositions; the third claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can include the extra effects of pursuing more basic good consequences (such as benefits to others) in a more deliberate or reliable manner. (shrink)

An ethical theory is alienating if accepting the theory inhibits the agent from fitting participation in some normative ideal, such as some ideal of integrity, friendship, or community. Many normative ideals involve non-consequentialist behavior of some form or another. If such ideals are normatively authoritative, they constitute counterexamples to consequentialism unless their authority can be explained or explained away. We address a range of attempts to avoid such counterexamples and argue that consequentialism cannot by itself account for the (...) normative authority of all plausible such ideals. At best, consequentialism can find a more modest place in an ethical theory that includes non-consequentialist principles with their own normative authority. (shrink)

Most plausible moral theories must address problems of partial acceptance or partial compliance. The aim of this paper is to examine some proposed ways of dealing with partial acceptance problems as well as to introduce a new Rule Utilitarian suggestion. Here I survey three forms of Rule Utilitarianism, each of which represents a distinct approach to solving partial acceptance issues. I examine Fixed Rate, Variable Rate, and Optimum Rate Rule Utilitarianism, and argue that a new approach, Maximizing Expectation Rate (...) Rule Utilitarianism, better solves partial acceptance problems. (shrink)

According to the moral standards most of us accept and live by, morality generally permits us to refrain from promoting the good of others and instead engage in non-harmful projects of our own choice. This aspect of so-called ‘ordinary morality’ has turned out to be very difficult to justify. Recently, though, various authors, including Bernard Williams and Samuel Scheffler, have proposed “Integrity Theories” that would vindicate this aspect of ordinary morality, at least in part. They are generated by treating as (...) a default some moral theory, like consequentialism, that demands that we do a great deal of good. The theory is then modified so as to make room for individuals to pursue the projects they value most deeply, and perhaps their trivial interests as well—i.e., so as to respect individual integrity. This paper presupposes that Integrity Theories are correct and that, for the reasons given by others, they can explain why morality should grant us agent-centered prerogatives to pursue our own projects and interests. The goal is to extend this work in two respects. First, it will be shown that previous authors have not paid sufficient attention to ordinary morality’s conflicting pronouncements about agent-centered prerogatives. Second, it is argued that Integrity Theories can vindicate those conflicting intuitions by positing a special kind of obligations, relievable obligations. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that commonsense morality is best understood as an agent-relative consequentialist theory, that is, as a theory according to which agents ought always to bring about what is, from their own individual perspective, the best available state of affairs. I argue that the agent-relative consequentialist can provide the most plausible explanation for why it is wrong to commit a rights violation even in order to prevent a number of other agents from committing comparable rights violations: agents (...) bear a special responsibility for their own actions and consequently a state of affairs where an agent has herself committed a rights violation is worse, from her perspective, than a state of affairs where a number of other agents have committed comparable rights violations. I also argue that agent-relative consequentialism can accommodate moral options despite being a theory which requires agents always to do the best they can. (shrink)

Impartially Optimizing Consequentialism requires agents to act so as to bring about the best outcome, as judged by a preference ordering which is impartial among the needs and interests of all persons. IOC may seem to be only rational response to the recognition that one is only one person among many others with equal intrinsic moral status. A person who adopts a less impartial deontological alternative to IOC may seem to fail to take seriously the fact that other persons (...) matter in the same way that she takes herself to matter. This paper examines this ‘seductive appeal’ of IOC. It argues that IOC is not the only rational way to recognize the fact that each person matters. It presents an alternative conception of how to recognize the status of other persons as beingswho-matter, an alternative that has Kantian rather than consequentialist implications. (shrink)

Psychopathic behavior is characteristically amoral, but to date research studies have largely failed to identify any systematic differences in moral judgment capability between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. In this study, we investigate whether significant differences in moral judgment emerge when taking into account the phenotypic heterogeneity of the disorder through a well-validated distinction between psychopathic subtypes. Three groups of incarcerated participants [low-anxious psychopaths (n 1⁄4 12), high-anxious psychopaths (n 1⁄4 12) and non-psychopaths (n 1⁄4 24)] completed a moral judgment test involving (...) hypothet- ical dilemmas. The moral dilemmas featured personal (i.e. involving direct physical harm) or impersonal (i.e. involving indirect or remote harm) actions. Compared to non-psychopaths, both groups of psychopaths were significantly more likely to endorse the impersonal actions. However, only the low-anxious psychopaths were significantly more likely to endorse the personal harms when commission of the harm would maximize aggregate welfare the utilitarian choice. High-anxious psychopaths and non-psychopaths did not significantly differ in their personal moral judgments. These results provide novel laboratory evidence of abnormal moral judgment in psychopaths, as well as additional support for the importance of considering psychopathic subtypes. (shrink)

The environmental crisis challenges the adequacy of traditional moral theories, particularly in the case of act consequentialism – the view that an act is morally right if and only if it brings about the best available outcome. Although anthropogenic climate change threatens the well-being of billions of humans and trillions of non-human animals, it is difficult for an act consequentialist to condemn actions that contribute to it, as each individual action makes no difference to the probability of whether climate (...) change will occur. Or so one argument goes. This chapter examines the limits and possibilities of a consequentialist approach to climate ethics. It discusses various types of consequentialist theories applicable to the current environmental situation. It outlines outcome-based strategies to address the no-difference problem and to promote individual climate action. Finally, it considers environmental cases of evaluative uncertainty and how a consequentialist could deal with them. (shrink)

Can morality be so demanding that we have reason not to follow its dictates? According to many, it can, if that morality is a consequentialist one. We take the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given and are also not concerned with finding the best response to the Objection. Instead, our main aim is to explicate the intuitive background of the Objection and to see how this background could be investigated. This double aim (...) leads to different albeit connected threads of inquiry. We first outline the Objection, its different forms and how intuition figures in them. After this, we move on to consider the ongoing debate about the use of intuitions in (moral) philosophy with a focus on two challenges: what intuitions are and how we can detect them. To answer these challenges, we propose an account according to which moral intuitions are seemings that are characterized by being non-inferential, spontaneous, non-doxastic, phenomenologically distinctive, non-sensory, intrinsically motivating, and stable. Armed with these seven “markers” of moral intuition, we put a forward a complex experimental methodology and raise and respond to possible problems with it. (shrink)

Comment on "The ethical 'elephant' in the death penalty 'room'". Arguments in defense of the death penalty typically fall into one of two groups. Consequentialist arguments point out beneficial aspects of capital punishment, normally focusing on deterrence, while non-consequentialist arguments seek to justify execution independently of its effects, for example, by appealing to the concept of retribution. Michael Keane's target article "The ethical 'elephant' in the death penalty 'room'" should, we believe, be read as an interesting new consequentialist defense of (...) physician involvement in capital punishment. (shrink)

Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. In one sense, they are. In another sense, however, they can be reconciled: a ‘global’ form of consequentialism might supply consequentialist foundations for a derivative morality that is non-consequentialist, and perhaps rights-based, in content. By way of case study to illustrate how this might work, I survey what a global consequentialist should think about a recent dispute between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue (...) on the morality and laws of war. (shrink)

A familiar objection to restrictive consequentialism is that a restrictive consequentialist is incapable of having true friendships. In this paper I distinguish between an instrumentalist and a non-instrumentalist version of this objection and argue that while the restrictive consequentialist can answer the non-instrumentalist version, restrictive consequentialism may still seem vulnerable to the instrumentalist version. I then suggest a consequentialist reply that I argue also works against this version of the objection. Central to this reply is the claim that (...) a restrictive consequentialist is capable of true friendship if the value she aims for is not merely seen as a function of her self-regarding desires, but includes as a central constituent a form of objective value often referred to as 'flourishing' or 'self-realization'. (shrink)

I discuss the third of Anscombe’s theses from “Modern Moral Philosophy”, namely that post-Sidgwickian consequentialism makes the worst action acceptable. I scrutinize her comprehension of “consequentialism”, her reconstruction of Sidgwick’s view of intention, her defence of casuistry, her reformulation of the double-effect doctrine, and her view of morality as based on Divine commands. I argue that her characterization of consequentialism suffers from lack of understanding of the history of utilitarianism and its self-transformation through the Intuitionism-Utilitarianism controversy; that (...) she uncritically accepted an impoverished image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism, which was, ironically, an unaware bequest from her consequentialist opponents; that her action theory, yet, is a decisive contribution that may prove useful in formulating answers to questions that have been left open in both utilitarian and Kantian or intuitionist theories; that, to make the best of her actions theory, it is as well to drop her divine law view of ethics, which is incompatible with the former; and that the rather obscure traditional theological doctrine of absolute prohibitions is unnecessary to her project that could fare well with the more sober distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. (shrink)

Inspired by the recent trends in education towards learner autonomy with their emphasis on the interests and desires of the students, and borrowing ideas from philosophy (particularly ethics), the present study is an attempt to investigate the discrepancy in the findings of the studies addressing error correction in L2 writing instruction, and suggest the (oft-neglected) students’ beliefs, interests and wants as what can point the way out of confusion. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and 56 advanced adult EFL (...) learners were asked to complete the questionnaire. The opinions of 20 EFL teachers were also collected using another questionnaire. Twenty-three of the students and 13 of the teachers were then interviewed in an attempt to collect explanations for their answers in the questionnaires. The results indicated that all the learners wanted the errors in their writings to be corrected. About 90 percent of them believed that all the errors in their writings should be corrected and only less than 10 percent of them agreed that there is no need to correct all the errors and that only “important” errors should be rectified. On the contrary, of the teachers who participated in the study, only 20 percent believed that all the errors in the students’ writings should be corrected. While most of the interviewed students attributed their preference of choice to feeling more confident and efficient in learning when they can recognize all the errors in their written assignments, most of the teachers believed that by correcting important errors (and not all errors), learners can get the most of their writings. Given the incongruity between teachers’ and (advanced) students’ beliefs over writing error correction, and considering advanced students as legitimate decision makers for their own learning, some suggestions are offered for EFL writing teachers. -/- . (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies (...) did not stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

After three decades in which needs, rights and egalitarianism have dominated the moral agenda among supporters of social housing, desert is making a controversial come-back. I argue that desert as a moral concept is useful but is secondary to other moral forces, rather than being a primary driving force itself. Its job is to allow us to factor responsibility into our moral interactions with others. Desert suffers from having kept bad company, and I outline the still resonant history of the (...) abuse of the concept when it was dominant in housing and other “poor relief”, but argue this should not blind us to its force. If we have a moral duty to provide social housing assistance, whether on the basis of need, rights or egalitarianism (but not pure utilitarianism), I argue that desert does have a legitimate limited role to play in adjusting the primary duty governing the allocation of that assistance. There are practical difficulties of restraining abuse of the concept of desert. But these are outweighed by the practical problems in ignoring it, as that can bring an allocation system into disrepute as well as leaving us unable to argue convincingly for appropriate restraint, rather than eradication, of the use of desert. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multidimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multidimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis—he calls it DEGREE—that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. (...) This goes against the orthodoxy according to which—Peterson calls this RESOLUTION—each act is always either entirely right or entirely wrong. The argument against RESOLUTION appeals to the existence of so-called deontic leaps: the idea is that endorsing RESOLUTION would not give each relevant moral aspect its due in the final analysis. Our paper argues that, contrary to Peterson, all moral aspects remain visible in what can properly be called the final analysis of a moral theory that involves RESOLUTION, moral aspects do not have to remain visible in judgements of all-things-considered rightness or wrongness, respectively, introduction of what Peterson calls verdictive reasons does not change the overall picture in favour of DEGREE. We conclude that multi-dimensional consequentialists should accept RESOLUTION rather than DEGREE. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence and robotics is pervasive in daily life and set to expand to new levels potentially replacing human decision-making and action. Self-driving cars, home and healthcare robots, and autonomous weapons are some examples. A distinction appears to be emerging between potentially benevolent civilian uses of the technology (eg unmanned aerial vehicles delivering medicines), and potentially malevolent military uses (eg lethal autonomous weapons killing human com- batants). Machine-mediated human interaction challenges the philosophical basis of human existence and ethical conduct. Aside (...) from technical challenges of ensuring ethical conduct in artificial intelligence and robotics, there are moral questions about the desirability of replacing human functions and the human mind with such technology. How will artificial intelligence and robotics engage in moral reasoning in order to act ethically? Is there a need for a new set of moral rules? What happens to human interaction when it is mediated by technology? Should such technology be used to end human life? Who bears responsibility for wrongdoing or harmful conduct by artificial intelligence and robotics? -/- Whilst Kant may be familiar to international lawyers for setting restraints on the use of force and rules for perpetual peace, his foundational work on ethics provides an inclusive moral philosophy for assessing ethical conduct of individuals and states and, thus, is relevant to discussions on the use and development of artificial intelligence and robotics. His philosophy is inclusive because it incorporates justifications for morals and legitimate responses to immoral conduct, and applies to all human agents irrespective of whether they are wrongdoers, unlawful combatants, or unjust enemies. Humans are at the centre of rational thinking, action, and norm-creation so that the rationale for restraints on methods and means of warfare, for example, is based on preserving human dignity as well as ensuring conditions for perpetual peace among states. Unlike utilitarian arguments which favour use of autonomous weapons on the basis of cost-benefit reasoning or the potential to save lives, Kantian ethics establish non-consequentialist and deontological rules which are good in themselves to follow and not dependent on expediency or achieving a greater public good. -/- Kantian ethics make two distinct contributions to the debate. First, they provide a human-centric ethical framework whereby human exist- ence and capacity are at the centre of a norm-creating moral philosophy guiding our understanding of moral conduct. Second, the ultimate aim of Kantian ethics is practical philosophy that is relevant and applicable to achieving moral conduct. -/- I will seek to address the moral questions outlined above by exploring how core elements of Kantian ethics relate to use of artificial intelli- gence and robotics in the civilian and military spheres. Section 2 sets out and examines core elements of Kantian ethics: the categorical imperative; autonomy of the will; rational beings and rational thinking capacity; and human dignity and humanity as an end in itself. Sections 3-7 consider how these core elements apply to artificial intelligence and robotics with discussion of fully autonomous and human-machine rule-generating approaches; types of moral reasoning; the difference be- tween ‘human will’ and ‘machine will’; and respecting human dignity. (shrink)

Purpose: Although psychopathy is characterized by amoral behavior, literature on the association between psychopathy and moral judgment pattern is mixed. Recent evidence suggests that this may be due to the moderation effect of anxiety (Koenigs, Kruepke, Zeier, & Newman, 2011). The current study aims to examine the psychopathy-utilitarian judgment association in college students. Method: In this study, a group of 302 college students completed a moral judgment test involving hypothetical dilemmas. Their psychopathic traits were assessed by the Psychopathic Personality (...) Inventory – Short Form (PPI-SF) (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Results: Individuals with higher psychopathic traits were more likely to make utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Furthermore, the association between utilitarian responses and psychopathy was more salient for the behavioral factor of psychopathy (PPI-II), and this association was mediated by self-reported aggression. However, the moderating effect of anxiety was not found. Conclusions: These results build upon work on utilitarian moral judgment in psychopathic individuals in a non-incarcerated, non-institutionalized sample, and have important implications for the behavioral correc- tion system. (shrink)

The paper discusses Ricardo's relationship to Mill and Bentham. It discusses first the origins of the myth of Ricardo's dependence from Bentham through Mill, and Halévy's contribution to the freezing of such a myth. The paper reconstructs what were their shared political commitments and activities and the kind of specific political views and agenda that may be ascribed to Ricardo himself. The paper discusses then the question of Ricardo's adhesion to Benthamite ethics. It examines fragments in Ricardo's correspondence with Maria (...) Edgeworth and Francis Place, and adds fresh light on the issue by highlighting the partial overlapping between Bentham's ethics and the kind of intuitionism with theological consequentialism that Ricardo had learned from the Unitarian minister Thomas Belsham. (shrink)

An idea that has attracted a lot of attention lately is the thought that consequentialism is a theory characterized basically by its agent neutrality.1 The idea, however, has also met with skepticism. In particular, it has been argued that agent neutrality cannot be what separates consequentialism from other types of theories of reasons for action, since there can be agent-neutral non-consequentialist theories as well as agent-relative consequentialist theories. I will argue in this paper that this last claim is (...) false. The paper is divided into four sections. Section one specifies two senses in which consequentialism is agent-neutral. Section two and three examine and reject, respectively, the claim that there are agent-relative consequentialist views as well as agent-neutral non-consequentialist views. I end the paper with some remarks on the plausibility, or better, the implausibility of characterizing consequentialism in terms other than agent neutrality. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a game-theoretic examination of indirect utilitarianism by comparing the expected payoffs of attempts to apply a deontological principle and a utilitarian principle within the context of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). Although many of the best-known utilitarians and consequentialists have accepted some indirect form of their respective views, the results in this paper suggest that they have been overly quick to dismiss altogether the benefits of directly enacting utilitarian principles. We show that for infallible (...) moral agents, what we call ‘non-autonomous agents’, direct utilitarianism dominates indirect utilitarianism via deontology in terms of achieving the maximized utilitarian outcome, but only in underlying games where the maximized utilitarian outcome involves unequal payoffs. In other situations, indirect utilitarianism implemented through Kantian deontology either ties or dominates direct utilitarianism in terms of achieving the maximized utilitarian outcome. We also examine the two different moralities on the assumption that fallibility, which is a form of autonomy, is an aspect of moral agency by introducing Endogenized Morality Models (EMM’s). We believe that just as indirect utilitarians worry about the cost of applying moral principles, so too they should worry about the fact that humans have both pro-social and materialistically selfish motivations and hence are fallible moral agents. We show that there are conditions under which fallible autonomous utilitarians achieve higher expected material and psychic payoffs than fallible autonomous deontologists and conditions under which they do not. (shrink)

Teleological theories of reason and value, upon which all reasons are fundamentally reasons to realize states of affairs that are in some respect best, cannot account for the intuition that victims in non-identity cases have been wronged. Many philosophers, however, reject such theories in favor of alternatives that recognize fundamentally non-teleological reasons, second-personal reasons that reflect a moral significance each person has that is not grounded in the teleologist’s appeal to outcomes. Such deontological accounts appear to be better positioned to (...) identify the wrong committed against non-identity victims because a person wrongs another on such accounts if she violates his second-personal claims -- overall benefit to victims presents no obstacle to the identification of second-personal wrongdoing. Derek Parfit argues that non-identity is a problem for these deontological theories as well because the alleged victims are properly understood as consenting to the action in question, thereby waiving any such second-personal claim. But his arguments misrepresent the role of consent on such theories by articulating it through appeal to the very teleological theory of reasons that their advocates dismiss as inadequate. Properly understood, Parfit’s appeal to consent understood as retroactive endorsement only provides the answer on such deontological accounts to the question of whether, given that the non-identity victim is second-personally wronged, he is nonetheless better off existing. Indeed, it becomes clear that it is teleological theories for which non-identity poses a particular problem: they cannot -- while their deontological counterparts can – account for the intuition that non-identity victims have been wronged. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen’s value conservatism entails that we ought to preserve some existing sources of value in lieu of more valuable replacements, thereby repudiating maximizing consequentialism. Cohen motivates value conservatism through illustrative cases. The consequentialist, however, can explain many Cohen-style cases by taking extrinsic properties, such as historical significance, to be sources of final value. Nevertheless, it may be intuitive that there’s stronger reason to preserve than to promote certain sources of value, especially historically significant things. This motivates an argument (...) that the weights of our reasons to preserve such things are especially strong relative to the amounts of value they bear. The value conservative can then explain these intuitions in non-consequentialist terms. There may be reason to preserve historically significant things as a matter of recognition respect for a cultural and historical heritage, or because it is virtuous to cultivate the right kind of connection with such a heritage. (shrink)

Punishment involves the intentional infliction of harm and suffering. Both of the most prominent families of justifications of punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – face several moral concerns that are hard to overcome. Moreover, the effectiveness of current criminal punishment methods in ensuring society’s safety is seriously undermined by empirical research. Thus, it appears to be a moral imperative for a modern and humane society to seek alternative means of administering justice. The special issue of Diametros “The Abolition of (...) Punishment: Is a Non-Punitive Criminal Justice System Ethically Justified?” was brought into life precisely to give the authors a platform for such progressive inquiries. And it is now safe to say that this platform has been put to excellent use, since Valerij Zisman, Alexander Stachurski, Giorgia Brucato, Perica Jovchevski, Sofia M. I. Jeppsson, Stephen G. Morris, Benjamin Vilhauer, John Lemos, Saul Smilansky, Elizabeth Shaw, Mirko Farina, Andrea Lavazza and Sergei Levin have presented such thought-provoking texts that they are bound to set the stage for debate in the years to come. This article is an introduction to this special issue and to the authors’ papers. (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The USA's climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes (...) a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

This article asks whether our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of our income to eradicate world poverty because billionaires do not donate? If so, how much should we donate? In short, should we make up for others’ defaulting on their moral duties – and if so, how and to what extent? Such situations are called non-ideal circumstances in political philosophy. With the increasing (...) importance of non-ideal theories of justice and ethics, the question of how we should act in non-ideal situations has received more attention in the ethics literature in recent years. This article poses and addresses the question of whether we should take up the slack when others do not comply with their own moral duty. This article examines how consequentialism and contractualism might respond to non-ideal situations of taking up the slack and then defends a contractualist-constructivist approach to dealing with these situations. (shrink)

In my essay I consider the imaginary case of a future mother who refuses to undergo genetic alteration on her germline although she knows that her, as yet unconceived, child will have a serious genetic disorder. I analyze the good and bad points of two branches of arguments directed against her decision, consequentialist and rights-based. Then I discuss whether accepting one line of these arguments or the other makes a difference in moral assessment. I conclude that, although from the preanalytical (...) perspective we strongly oppose the refusal of genetic treatment in my imaginary case, it is probably impossible to construct one coherent theory which embraces all possible moral dilemmas triggered by our actions which affect the number and the identity of future people. (shrink)

Non-Consequentialist moral theories posit the existence of moral constraints: prohibitions on performing particular kinds of wrongful acts, regardless of the good those acts could produce. Many believe that such theories cannot give satisfactory verdicts about what we morally ought to do when there is some probability that we will violate a moral constraint. In this article, I defend Non-Consequentialist theories from this critique. Using a general choice-theoretic framework, I identify various types of Non-Consequentialism that have otherwise been conflated in (...) the debate. I then prove a number of formal possibility and impossibility results establishing which types of Non-Consequentialism can -- and which cannot -- give us adequate guidance through through a risky world. (shrink)

Consequentialism is enticing, and yet it also seems overly demanding. As a result, many non-consequentialists try to explain why we aren’t required to maximize the good. One explanation is the Integrity Explanation: we aren’t required to maximize the good because morality must make room for us to pursue the projects we value most deeply. Some people hope that the Integrity Explanation will not just explain why consequentialism is false, but simultaneously vindicate the common-sense permission to generally refrain from (...) promoting the good of other people and instead spend our time on non-harmful actions of our choice. I argue that this hope is unrealistic, because if any version of the Integrity Explanation is correct, morality won’t contain broad permissions to refrain from promoting the good of others and do as we choose. Instead the basic structure of morality must be fundamentally different from what we usually take it to be. Our common-sense moral theories say that we take on responsibilities to others only in certain specific situations, but may otherwise engage in non-harmful actions of our choice. But if the Integrity Explanation is correct, then we are entitled to pursue our own interests to at least some extent, but unless we do, we come under obligations to maximize the good of others. (shrink)

I propose a new kind of meta-ethical theory, grounded in a theory of interests and of the modifications required in order to render interests compatible with each other. The theory hence is called "Interest Compatibilism" (IC). A basic account of the nature of interests, and of possible relations between them, is also included. Ethical values turn out to be those involved in optimally desirable forms of harmonization and control of interests and their associated values. The theory is presented and developed (...) with the aid of specific comparisons to more standard deontological and consequentialist ethical theories and views. Utilitarian consequentialist views are particularly criticised, and suggestions for an improved consequentialist view incorporating aspects of the IC approach are developed. Whether or not the IC theory is acceptable as a whole, I argue that some such alternative consequentialist theory is desperately needed. My account of interests should be independently acceptable also. (shrink)

Nietzsche on the Banishment of Supererogation by Luther and its Influence on Modern Ethical Life and Moral Theorizing. Much attention has been paid to Nietzsche’s refusal of obligation-centred moral theories (such as Kantian deontology and Utilitarian consequentialism), but little or no attention to the historical roots of such conceptions. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways Nietzsche connects the Kantian version of legal moral theory to the Lutheran Reformation, taking as its leitmotif the exclusion by (...) Luther of the so-called supererogation (the ideal of a Christian perfect life of sainthood being the most evident case) from the horizon of our ethical life (see D 88; GS 355; NL 1884, 25[271]). After establishing this historical connection, we are better positioned to understand the motivation behind his rejection of legal moral theories, particularly the Kantian version. This also allows us to shed new light on the contemporary attempts to characterize Nietzsche’s much-discussed perfectionist normative commitments. (shrink)