Results for 'supererogation'

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  1. Supererogation and Conditional Obligation.Daniel Muñoz & Theron Pummer - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1429–1443.
    There are plenty of classic paradoxes about conditional obligations, like the duty to be gentle if one is to murder, and about “supererogatory” deeds beyond the call of duty. But little has been said about the intersection of these topics. We develop the first general account of conditional supererogation, with the power to solve familiar puzzles as well as several that we introduce. Our account, moreover, flows from two familiar ideas: that conditionals restrict quantification and that supererogation emerges (...)
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  2. Supererogation, Inside and Out: Toward an Adequate Scheme for Common Sense Morality.Paul McNamara - 2010 - In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume I. Oxford University Press. pp. 202-235.
    The standard analysis of supererogation is that of optional actions that are praiseworthy to perform, but not blameworthy to skip. Widespread assumptions are that action beyond the call is at least necessarily equivalent to supererogation ("The Equivalence") and that forgoing certain agent-favoring prerogatives entails supererogation (“The Corollary”). I argue that the classical conception of supererogation is not reconcilable with the Equivalence or the Corollary, and that the classical analysis of supererogation is seriously defective. I sketch (...)
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  3. Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent.Alfred Archer - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (2):447-462.
    It has been claimed, by David Heyd, that in order for an act to count as supererogatory the agent performing the act must possess altruistic intentions (1982 p.115). This requirement, Heyd claims, allows us to make sense of the meritorious nature of acts of supererogation. In this paper I will investigate whether there is good reason to accept that this requirement is a necessary condition of supererogation. I will argue that such a reason can be found in cases (...)
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  4. Epistemic supererogation and its implications.Trevor Hedberg - 2014 - Synthese 191 (15):3621-3637.
    Supererogatory acts, those which are praiseworthy but not obligatory, have become a significant topic in contemporary moral philosophy, primarily because morally supererogatory acts have proven difficult to reconcile with other important aspects of normative ethics. However, despite the similarities between ethics and epistemology, epistemic supererogation has received very little attention. In this paper, I aim to further the discussion of supererogation by arguing for the existence of epistemically supererogatory acts and considering the potential implications of their existence. First, (...)
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  5. Supererogation and the Limits of Reasons.Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt & Daniel Munoz - 2023 - In David Heyd (ed.), Handbook of Supererogation. Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 165-180.
    We argue that supererogation cannot be understood just in terms of reasons for action. In addition to reasons, a theory of supererogation must include prerogatives, which can make an action permissible without counting in favor of doing it.
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  6. Supererogation, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Duty.Alfred Archer - 2016 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (3):333-354.
    It is often claimed that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. This claim is made because it is thought that it is the level of sacrifice involved that prevents these acts from being morally required. In this paper, I will argue against this claim. I will start by making a distinction between two ways of understanding the claim that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. I will then examine some purported counterexamples to the view that supererogation always (...)
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  7. (1 other version)Aesthetic Supererogation.Alfred Archer & Lauren Ware - 2017 - Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (1):102-116.
    Many aestheticians and ethicists are interested in the similarities and connections between aesthetics and ethics (Nussbaum 1990; Foot 2002; Gaut 2007). One way in which some have suggested the two domains are different is that in ethics there exist obligations while in aesthetics there do not (Hampshire 1954). However, Marcia Muelder Eaton has argued that there is good reason to think that aesthetic obligations do exist (Eaton 2008). We will explore the nature of these obligations by asking whether acts of (...)
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  8. Three Paradoxes of Supererogation.Daniel Muñoz - 2020 - Noûs 55 (3):699-716.
    Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.
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  9. Rational supererogation and epistemic permissivism.Robert Weston Siscoe - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (2):571-591.
    A number of authors have defended permissivism by appealing to rational supererogation, the thought that some doxastic states might be rationally permissible even though there are other, more rational beliefs available. If this is correct, then there are situations that allow for multiple rational doxastic responses, even if some of those responses are rationally suboptimal. In this paper, I will argue that this is the wrong approach to defending permissivism—there are no doxastic states that are rationally supererogatory. By the (...)
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  10. How Supererogation Can Save Intrapersonal Permissivism.Han Li - 2019 - American Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2):171-186.
    Rationality is intrapersonally permissive just in case there are multiple doxastic states that one agent may be rational in holding at a given time, given some body of evidence. One way for intrapersonal permissivism to be true is if there are epistemic supererogatory beliefs—beliefs that go beyond the call of epistemic duty. Despite this, there has been almost no discussion of epistemic supererogation in the permissivism literature. This paper shows that this is a mistake. It does this by arguing (...)
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  11. Transitivity, Moral Latitude, and Supererogation.Douglas W. Portmore - 2017 - Utilitas 29 (3):286-298.
    On what I take to be the standard account of supererogation, an act is supererogatory if and only if it is morally optional and there is more moral reason to perform it than to perform some permissible alternative. And, on this account, an agent has more moral reason to perform one act than to perform another if and only if she morally ought to prefer how things would be if she were to perform the one to how things would (...)
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  12. Vocation to Love: Supererogation in Aquinas.James Dominic Rooney - 2022 - International Journal of Systematic Theology 24 (2):156-172.
    Thomas Aquinas’ account of religious vocation has been interpreted as involving a qualified duty, where ordinary people fall short of living up to the moral ideal of becoming a monk or nun. Such an account of religious vocation makes a hash of Aquinas’ thought and misses important aspects of his ethics. Aquinas holds that religious life is praiseworthy, but not morally required, because there are multiple sources of normativity. I conclude by proposing that, while elements of Aquinas’ notion of (...) might be shared with other traditions in virtue ethics, his theological commitments are central to his notion of supererogation. (shrink)
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  13. Supererogation and the Limits of Moral Obligations. Guest Editor’s Preface.Simone Grigoletto - 2017 - Etica and Politica / Ethics and Politics 19 (1):221-224.
    Do moral obligations include all the good that can be possibly achieved? Does every instance of the good always entail obligatory performance? Supererogation is a moral concept that tries to address this claim, by pointing out the existence of a category of morally relevant good acts that go beyond the call of duty. Paradigmatic examples of this category of acts are represented by deeds of heroism and sanctity, where the agent is sacrificing herself in order to benefit the others (...)
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  14. Supererogation, optionality and cost.Claire Benn - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (10):2399-2417.
    A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all (...)
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  15. Intentions, Motives and Supererogation.Claire Benn - 2019 - Journal of Value Inquiry 53 (1):107-123.
    Amy saves a man from drowning despite the risk to herself, because she is moved by his plight. This is a quintessentially supererogatory act: an act that goes above and beyond the call of duty. Beth, on the other hand, saves a man from drowning because she wants to get her name in the paper. On this second example, opinions differ. One view of supererogation holds that, despite being optional and good, Beth’s act is not supererogatory because she is (...)
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  16. Supererogation and Consequentialism.Alfred Archer - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. New York, USA: Oup Usa.
    The thought that acts of supererogation exist presents a challenge to all normative ethical theories. This chapter will provide an overview of the consequentialist responses to this challenge. I will begin by explaining the problem that supererogation presents for consequentialism. I will then explore consequentialist attempts to deny the existence of acts of supererogation. Next, I will examine a range of act consequentialist attempts to accommodate supererogation: including satisficing consequentialism, dual-ranking act consequentialism and an anti-rationalist form (...)
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  17. Supererogation, Suberogation, and Maximising Expected Choiceworthiness.Leora Urim Sung - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
    Recently, several philosophers have argued that, when faced with moral uncertainty, we ought to choose the option with the maximal expected choiceworthiness (MEC). This view has been challenged on the grounds that it is implausibly demanding. In response, those who endorse MEC have argued that we should take into account the all-things-considered choiceworthiness of our options when determining the maximally choiceworthy option. In this paper, I argue that this gives rise to another problem: for the most part, acts that we (...)
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  18. Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?Alfred Archer - 2015 - Theoria 82 (3):238-255.
    It is commonly assumed that praiseworthiness should form part of the analysis of supererogation. I will argue that this view should be rejected. I will start by arguing that, at least on some views of the connection between moral value and praiseworthiness, it does not follow from the fact that acts of supererogation go beyond what is required by duty that they will always be praiseworthy to perform. I will then consider and dismiss what I will call the (...)
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  19. Heroic Supererogation.Alfred Archer - 2023 - Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies.
    In this entry I will introduce two such puzzles that relate to the heroic actions and testimony. I will first introduce the basic idea of supererogation and why some heroic actions give us reason to accept the existence of supererogatory actions. I will then introduce the problem that supererogation raises for moral theory and explain the main responses that have been offered to this problem. I will then explain two related problems that arise from the way that heroes (...)
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  20. Sporting supererogation and why it matters.Alfred Archer - 2017 - Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (3):359-373.
    A commonly accepted feature of commonsense morality is that there are some acts that are supererogatory or beyond the call of duty. Recently, philosophers have begun to ask whether something like supererogation might exist in other normative domains such as epistemology and esthetics. In this paper, I will argue that there is good reason to think that sporting supererogation exists. I will then argue that recognizing the existence of sporting supererogation is important because it highlights the value (...)
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  21. A Theory of Epistemic Supererogation.Han Li - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (2):349-367.
    Though there is a wide and varied literature on ethical supererogation, there has been almost nothing written about its epistemic counterpart, despite an intuitive analogy between the two fields. This paper seeks to change this state of affairs. I will begin by showing that there are examples which intuitively feature epistemically supererogatory doxastic states. Next, I will present a positive theory of epistemic supererogation that can vindicate our intuitions in these examples, in an explanation that parallels a popular (...)
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  22. Supererogation and Offence: A Conceptual Scheme for Ethics.R. M. Chisholm - 1963 - Ratio (Misc.) 5 (1):1.
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  23. Promising and supererogation.Jason Kawall - 2005 - Philosophia 32 (1-4):389-398.
    A paradox involving promises to perform supererogatory actions is developed. Several attempts to resolve the problem, focusing in particular on changing our understanding of supererogatory actions, are explored. It is concluded that none of the proposed solutions are viable; the problem lies in promises with certain contents, not in our understanding of supererogation.
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  24. On promising to supererogate: A response to Heyd.Jason Kawall - 2006 - Philosophia 34 (2):153-156.
    In my “Promising and Supererogation” I argue that one cannot fulfill promises to perform supererogatory actions (such as “I hereby promise to perform one supererogatory action every month”). In a response to my paper, David Heyd argues that there is an alternative solution to the problem I raise. While I agree with much that Heyd says about the examples he discusses, his proposed solution involves a crucial alteration of the problem; his proposed solution does not solve the problem I (...)
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  25. (1 other version)What’s the use of non-moral supererogation?Alfred Archer - 2023 - In David Heyd (ed.), Springer Handbook of Supererogation. Springer. pp. 237-253.
    While moral philosophers have paid significant attention to the concept of moral supererogation, far less attention has been paid to the possibility that supererogation may also exist in other areas of normativity. Recently, though, philosophers have begun to consider the possible existence of prudential, epistemic, aesthetic and sporting supererogation. These discussions tend to focus on aspects of our practices in these areas of normativity that suggest an implicit acceptance of the existence of supererogation. In this chapter, (...)
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  26. (2 other versions)Supererogation, wrongdoing, and vice: On the autonomy of the ethics of virtue.Gregory W. Trianosky - 1986 - Journal of Philosophy 83 (1):26-40.
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  27. Why Proximity Matters for the Concept of Supererogation.Simone Grigoletto - 2017 - Etica and Politica / Ethics and Politics 19 (1):291-307.
    The concept of supererogation is strictly correlated with duty, since its peculiar value is defined by acts that go beyond our regular obligations. This paper highlights the importance of proximity (relational closeness) in allowing the proper theoretical space to supererogation. As a matter of fact if we broaden our sense of duty, the possibility to perform supererogatory acts correspondingly decreases. Special obligations emphasize how difficult acts of supererogation are to perform if we stand in some morally-relevant special (...)
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  28. What is Wrong with Promising to Supererogate.Claire Benn - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (1):55-61.
    There has been some debate as to whether or not it is possible to keep a promise, and thus fulfil a duty, to supererogate. In this paper, I argue, in agreement with Jason Kawall, that such promises cannot be kept. However, I disagree with Kawall’s diagnosis of the problem and provide an alternative account. In the first section, I examine the debate between Kawall and David Heyd, who rejects Kawall’s claim that promises to supererogate cannot be kept. I disagree with (...)
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  29. Must We Be Perfect?: A Case Against Supererogation.Megan Fritts & Calum Miller - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63.
    In this paper we offer an argument against supererogation and in favour of moral perfectionism. We argue three primary points: 1) That the putative moral category is not generated by any of the main normative ethical systems, and it is difficult to find space for it in these systems at all; 2) That the primary support for supererogation is based on intuitions, which can be undercut by various other pieces of evidence; and 3) That there are better reasons (...)
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  30. Praise, blame, obligation, and DWE: Toward a framework for classical supererogation and kin.Paul McNamara - 2011 - Journal of Applied Logic 9 (2):153-170.
    Continuing prior work by the author, a simple classical system for personal obligation is integrated with a fairly rich system for aretaic (agent-evaluative) appraisal. I then explore various relationships between definable aretaic statuses such as praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and deontic statuses such as obligatoriness and impermissibility. I focus on partitions of the normative statuses generated ("normative positions" but without explicit representation of agency). In addition to being able to model and explore fundamental questions in ethical theory about the connection between (...)
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  31. The Suberogation Problem for Lei Zhong's Confucian Virtue Theory of Supererogation.Tsung-Hsing Ho - 2019 - Philosophy East and West 69 (3):779-784.
    A virtue-based theory of right action aims to explain deontic moral principles in terms of virtue and vice. For example, it may maintain the following account of moral obligation: It is morally obligatory for an agent A to ϕ in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous and relevantly informed person V would characteristically ϕ in C. However, this account faces the so-called supererogation problem. A supererogatory action is an action that is morally praiseworthy but not morally (...)
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  32. Nietzsche on the Banishment of Supererogation by Luther and its Influence on Modern Ethical Life and Moral Theorizing.Rogério Lopes - 2020 - In Helmut Heit & Andreas Urs Sommer (eds.), Nietzsche Und Die Reformation. De Gruyter. pp. 331-348.
    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 (...)
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  33. Infinite options, intransitive value, and supererogation.Daniel Muñoz - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (6):2063-2075.
    Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.
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  34. Motivational Judgement Internalism and The Problem of Supererogation.Alfred Archer - 2016 - Journal of Philosophical Research 41:601-621.
    Motivational judgement internalists hold that there is a necessary connection between moral judgments and motivation. There is, though, an important lack of clarity in the literature about the types of moral evaluation the theory is supposed to cover. It is rarely made clear whether the theory is intended to cover all moral judgements or whether the claim covers only a subset of such judgements. In this paper I will investigate which moral judgements internalists should hold their theory to apply to. (...)
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  35. What We Owe to Ourselves: Essays on Rights and Supererogation.Daniel Muñoz - 2019 - Dissertation, MIT
    Some sacrifices—like giving a kidney or heroically dashing into a burning building—are supererogatory: they are good deeds beyond the call of duty. But if such deeds are really so good, philosophers ask, why shouldn’t morality just require them? The standard answer is that morality recognizes a special role for the pursuit of self-interest, so that everyone may treat themselves as if they were uniquely important. This idea, however, cannot be reconciled with the compelling picture of morality as impartial—the view that (...)
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  36. Moral norms, moral ideals and supererogation.Piotr Machura - 2013 - Folia Philosophica 29:127--159.
    The aim of the paper is to investigate the relations between the basic moral categories, namely those of norms, ideals and supererogation. The subject of discussion is, firstly, the ways that these categories are understood; secondly, the possible approaches towards moral acting that appear due to their use; and thirdly, their relationship within the moral system. However, what is of a special importance here is the relationship between the categories of norms and ideals (or in a wider aspect — (...)
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  37. Beyond reasons and obligations: A dual-role approach to reasons and supererogation.Knoks Aleks & Streit David - 2023 - In Juliano Maranhão, Clayton Peterson, Christian Straßer & van der Torre Leendert (eds.), Deontic Logic and Normative Systems: 16th International Conference (DEON2023, Trois-Rivières). College Publications. pp. 119-137.
    Dual-role approaches to reasons say, roughly, that reasons can relate to actions in two fundamentally different ways: they can either require conformity, or justify an action without requiring that it be taken. This paper develops a formal dual-role approach, combining ideas from defeasible logic and practical philosophy. It then uses the approach to shed light on the phenomenon of supererogation and resolve a well-known puzzle about supererogation, namely, Horton’s All or Nothing Problem.
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  38. The Enemy of the Good: Supererogation and Requiring Perfection.Claire Benn - 2018 - Utilitas 30 (3):333-354.
    Moral theories that demand that we do what is morally best leave no room for the supererogatory. One argument against such theories is that they fail to realize the value of autonomy: supererogatory acts allow for the exercise of autonomy because their omissions are not accompanied by any threats of sanctions, unlike obligatory ones. While this argument fails, I use the distinction it draws – between omissions of obligatory and supererogatory acts in terms of appropriate sanctions – to draw a (...)
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  39. Only Through Complexity. Morality and the Case of Supererogation.Simone Grigoletto - 2019 - Padova University Press.
    This volume deals with some of the major issues in contemporary moral philosophy. The core metaethical argument illuminates the structure of a moral system and emphasizes the importance of a phenomenological attitude toward the moral subject. From this starting point, further questions (typically addressed in normative ethics) arise: “How does moral deliberation work?” “How is moral justification possible?” “What is moral pluralism?” “How do we give an account of supererogatory acts?” Regarding all these questions, the volume works out the following (...)
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  40. Self-regarding supererogatory actions.Jason Kawall - 2003 - Journal of Social Philosophy 34 (3):487–498.
    Many philosophers, in discussing supererogation, maintain that supererogatory actions must be done for the benefit of others. In this paper I argue that there can be instances of self-regarding supererogatory actions. That is, there are cases in which the primary (or sole) intended beneficiary of a supererogatory action is the agent herself, and she need not be acting out of a concern for morality or moral rules. In such cases the agent still acts suitably 'beyond the call of duty', (...)
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  41. Binding Oneself.Janis David Schaab - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
    This article advances three claims about the bindingness of duties to oneself: (1) To defend duties to oneself, one had better show that they can bind, i.e., provide normative reason to comply. (2) To salvage the bindingness of duties to oneself, one had better construe them as owed to, and waivable by, one's present self. (3) Duties owed to, and waivable by, one's present self can nevertheless bind. In advancing these claims, I partly oppose views recently developed by Daniel Muñoz (...)
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  42. Saints, Heroes and Moral Necessity.Alfred Archer - 2015 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:105-124.
    Many people who perform paradigmatic examples of acts of supererogation claim that they could not have done otherwise. In this paper I will argue that these self-reports from moral exemplars present a challenge to the traditional view of supererogation as involving agential sacrifice. I will argue that the claims made by moral exemplars are plausibly understood as what Bernard Williams calls a ‘practical necessity’. I will then argue that this makes it implausible to view these acts as involving (...)
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  43. The Ethics of Partiality.Benjamin Lange - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 1 (8):1-15.
    Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper (...)
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  44. A Defense of Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism.Elizabeth Jackson - 2021 - Episteme 18 (2):313–327.
    Permissivism is the view that there are evidential situations that rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. In this paper, I argue for Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism (IaBP): that there are evidential situations in which a single agent can rationally adopt more than one belief-attitude toward a proposition. I give two positive arguments for IaBP; the first involves epistemic supererogation and the second involves doubt. Then, I should how these arguments give intrapersonal permissivists a distinct response to the (...)
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  45. Parity, Pluralism, and Permissible Partiality.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - In Eric Siverman (ed.), Virtuous and Vicious Expressions of Partiality. Routledge.
    We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s notion (...)
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  46. Supererogatory Spandrels.Claire Benn - 2017 - Etica and Politica / Ethics and Politics 19 (1):269-290.
    Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints (...)
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  47. Virtue theory, ideal observers, and the supererogatory.Jason Kawall - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 146 (2):179-96.
    I argue that recent virtue theories (including those of Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton) face important initial difficulties in accommodating the supererogatory. In particular, I consider several potential characterizations of the supererogatory modeled upon these familiar virtue theories (and their accounts of rightness) and argue that they fail to provide an adequate account of supererogation. In the second half of the paper I sketch an alternative virtue-based characterization of supererogation, one that is grounded in the attitudes of virtuous ideal (...)
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  48. Supererogatory Duties and Caregiver Heroic Testimony.Chris Weigel - 2023 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 9 (1).
    The sacrifices of nurses in hard-hit cities during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and of family caregivers for people with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease present two puzzles. First, traditional accounts of supererogation cannot allow for the possibility of making enormous sacrifices that make one’s actions supererogatory simply to do what morality requires. These caregivers, however, are doing their moral duty, yet their actions also seem to be paradigmatic cases of supererogation. I argue that Dale Dorsey’s new account (...)
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  49. Finlay's Radical Altruism.Gerald Hull - manuscript
    The question “Why should I be moral?” has long haunted normative ethics. How one answers it depends critically upon one’s understanding of morality, self-interest, and the relation between them. Stephen Finlay, in “Too Much Morality”, challenges the conventional interpretation of morality in terms of mutual fellowship, offering instead the “radical” view that it demands complete altruistic self-abnegation: the abandonment of one’s own interests in favor of those of any “anonymous” other. He ameliorates this with the proviso that there is no (...)
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  50. Too far beyond the call of duty: moral rationalism and weighing reasons.Chris Tucker - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (6):2029-2052.
    The standard account of supererogation holds that Liv is not morally required to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing her life, to save the lives of five soldiers. Many proponents defend the standard account by appealing to moral rationalism about requirement. These same proponents hold that Bernie is morally permitted to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing his life, to spare someone a mild burn. I argue that this position is unstable, at least as moral rationalism is ordinarily defended. (...)
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