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  1. Roman Altshuler (2009). Political Realism and Political Idealism: The Difference That Evil Makes. Public Reason 1 (2):73-87.
    According to a particular view of political realism, political expediency must always override moral considerations. Perhaps the strongest defense of such a theory is offered by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political. A close examination of Schmitt’s main presuppositions can therefore help to shed light on the tenuous relation between politics and morality. Schmitt’s theory rests on two keystones. First, the political is seen as independent of and prior to morality. Second, genuine political theory depends on a view (...)
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  2. Matthew S. Bedke (2010). Might All Normativity Be Queer? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):41-58.
    Here I discuss the conceptual structure and core semantic commitments of reason-involving thought and discourse needed to underwrite the claim that ethical normativity is not uniquely queer. This deflates a primary source of ethical scepticism and it vindicates so-called partner in crime arguments. When it comes to queerness objections, all reason-implicating normative claims?including those concerning Humean reasons to pursue one's ends, and epistemic reasons to form true beliefs?stand or fall together.
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  3. Elizabeth Butterfield (2004). Sartre and Marcuse on the Relation Between Needs and Normativity: A Step Beyond Postmodernism in Moral Theory. Sartre Studies International 10 (2):28-46.
    In this article, I will investigate Sartre's claims regarding need as an element of the human condition, and I will compare them to the analysis of need found in the works of Marx and of Herbert Marcuse. These comparisons will raise important questions, such as: given the cultural diversity of experiences of need, is Sartre justified in speaking of needs common to all humans? Are these human needs to be considered permanent fixtures, or do they change historically? And, how might (...)
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  4. Mark J. Cherry (2009). The Normativity of the Natural : Can Philosophers Pull Morality Out of the Magic Hat of Human Nature? In Mark J. Cherry (ed.), The Normativity of the Natural: Human Goods, Human Virtues, and Human Flourishing. Springer.
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  5. Bradford Cokelet (2007). Review of Normativity and the Will by R. Jay Wallace. [REVIEW] Ethics 117 (4):790-794.
  6. David Copp (1995). Morality, Normativity, and Society. Oxford University Press.
    Moral claims not only purport to be true, they also purport to guide our choices. This book presents a new theory of normative judgment, the "standard-based theory," which offers a schematic account of the truth conditions of normative propositions of all kinds, including moral propositions and propositions about reasons. The heart of Copp's approach to moral propositions is a theory of the circumstances under which corresponding moral standards qualify as justified, the "society-centered theory." He argues that because any society needs (...)
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  7. David Copp (1991). Normativity and the Very Idea of Moral Epistemology. Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (S1):189-210.
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  8. Josep Corbí (2004). Normativity, Moral Realism, and Unmasking Explanations. Theoria 19 (2):155-172.
    Moral Projectivism must be able to specify under what conditions a certain inner response counts as a moral response. I argue, however, that moral projectivists cannot coherently do so because they must assume that there are moral properties in the world in order to fix the content of our moral judgements. To show this, I develop a number of arguments against moral dispositionalism, which is, nowadays, the most promising version of moral projectivism. In this context, I call into question both (...)
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  9. Antonella Corradini (2003). On the Normativity of Human Nature: Some Epistemological Remarks. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2):239 – 254.
    This paper examines the role played by the concept of human nature in ethical theory. The focus is on the epistemological problems that arise from application of this notion to the foundation of ethics. From this viewpoint, two theories, the neoscholastic and the neoclassical ones, are expounded, analyzed and compared. The aim is to highlight their opposite ways of relating the "ought-to-be" (of norms) to the "is" (of human nature). The conclusion is drawn that an adequate solution of the dispute (...)
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  10. Stephen Darwall (2003). Moore, Normativity, and Intrinsic Value. Ethics 113 (3):468-489.
    Principia Ethica set the agenda for analytical metaethics. Moore’s unrelenting focus on fundamentals both brought metaethics into view as a potentially separate area of philosophical inquiry and provided a model of the analytical techniques necessary to pursue it.1 Moore acknowledged that he wasn’t the first to insist on a basic irreducible core of all ethical concepts. Although he seems not to have appreciated the roots of this thought in eighteenth-century intuitionists like Clarke, Balguy, and Price, not to mention sentimentalists like (...)
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  11. James Dreier (2002). The Expressivist Circle: Invoking Norms in the Explanation of Normative Judgment. [REVIEW] Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1):136–143.
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  12. James Dreier (1994). Perspectives on the Normativity of Ethics. [REVIEW] Noûs 28 (4):514 - 525.
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  13. David Enoch (2011). Shmagency Revisited. In Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics. Palgrave Macmillan.
    1. The Shmagency Challenge to Constitutivism In metaethics – and indeed, meta-normativity – constitutivism is a family of views that hope to ground normativity in norms, or standards, or motives, or aims that are constitutive of action and agency. And mostly because of the influential work of Christine Korsgaard and David Velleman (and, some would say, because of the also-influential work of Kant and Aristotle), constitutivism seems to be gaining grounds in the current literature. The promises of constitutivism are significant. (...)
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  14. Stephen Finlay (2011). Errors Upon Errors: A Reply to Joyce. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3):535-547.
    In his response to my paper ?The Error in the Error Theory? criticizing his and J. L. Mackie's moral error theory, Richard Joyce finds my treatment of his position inaccurate and my interpretation of morality implausible. In this reply I clarify my objection, showing that it retains its force against their error theory, and I clarify my interpretation of morality, showing that Joyce's objections miss their mark.
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  15. Christopher W. Gowans (1991). Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict, by James D. Wallace. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (2):478-481.
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  16. Paul Katsafanas (forthcoming). Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford University Press.
    Confronted with normative claims as diverse as “murder is wrong” and “agents have reason to take the means to their ends,” we can ask how these claims might be justified. Constitutivism is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to them simply in virtue of acting. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics explains the constitutivist strategy and argues that the attractions of this view are considerable: constitutivism promises to resolve longstanding philosophical puzzles (...)
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  17. Paul Katsafanas (forthcoming). The Problem of Normative Authority in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. In Tom Bailey & João Constâncio (eds.), Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics.
    Kant and Hegel share a common foundational idea: they believe that the authority of normative claims can be justified only by showing that these norms are self-imposed or autonomous. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant argues that we can derive specific normative claims from the formal idea of autonomy, whereas Hegel contends that we use the idea of freedom not to derive, but to assess, the specific normative claims ensconced in our social institutions and practices. Exploring (...)
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  18. Jason Kawall (2005). Moral Realism and Arbitrariness. Southern Journal of Philosophy 43 (1):109-129.
    In this paper I argue (i) that choosing to abide by realist moral norms would be as arbitrary as choosing to abide by the mere preferences of a God (a difficulty akin to the Euthyphro dilemma raised for divine command theorists); in both cases we would lack reason to prefer these standards to alternative codes of conduct. I further develop this general line of thought by arguing in particular (ii) that we would lack any noncircular justification to concern ourselves with (...)
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  19. Michelle Mason (2006). Aretaic Appraisal and Practical Reason. Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (4):629-656.
    When we criticize someone for being unjust, deceitful, or imprudent -- or commend him as just, truthful, or wise -- what is the content of our evaluation? On one way of thinking, evaluating agents in terms that employ aretaic concepts evaluates how they regulate their actions (and judgment-sensitive attitudes) in light of the reasons that bear on them. On this virtue-centered view of practical reasons appraisal, evaluations of agents in terms of ethical virtues (and vices) are, 'inter alia', evaluations of (...)
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  20. Michelle Mason (1999). Knud Ejler Logstrup, The Ethical Demand:The Ethical Demand. [REVIEW] Ethics 109 (2):446-448.
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  21. Francesco Orsi (forthcoming). What's Wrong with Moorean Buck-Passing? Philosophical Studies.
    In this paper I discuss and try to remove some major stumbling blocks for a Moorean buck-passing account of reasons in terms of value (MBP): There is a pro tanto reason to favour X if and only if X is intrinsically good, or X is instrumentally good, or favouring X is intrinsically good, or favouring X is instrumentally good. I suggest that MBP can embrace and explain the buck-passing intuition behind the far more popular buck-passing account of value, and has (...)
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  22. Michael Philips (1987). Moralism and the Good. Philosophical Studies 52 (1):131 - 139.
    It is often held that moral considerations take precedence over considerations of other kinds in determining what we ought to do. I contend that this claim is ambiguous and argue that objections to each interpretation of it can be met only by rejecting the other. One surprising consequence of my argument is that no deontic moral theory can effectively guide action unless it is conjoined with a theory of the good. Another interesting consequence is that the deontologists' favorite objection to (...)
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  23. Jesse Prinz (2009). The Normativity Challenge: Cultural Psychology Provides the Real Threat to Virtue Ethics. Journal of Ethics 13 (2-3):117 - 144.
    Situationists argue that virtue ethics is empirically untenable, since traditional virtue ethicists postulate broad, efficacious character traits, and social psychology suggests that such traits do not exist. I argue that prominent philosophical replies to this challenge do not succeed. But cross-cultural research gives reason to postulate character traits, and this undermines the situationist critique. There is, however, another empirical challenge to virtue ethics that is harder to escape. Character traits are culturally informed, as are our ideals of what traits are (...)
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  24. Peter Railton (2006). Normative Guidance. In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 1. Oxford University Press.
    I’ve been told that there are two principal approaches to drawing figures from life. One begins by tracing an outline of the figure to be drawn, locating its edges and key features on an imagined grid, and then using perspective to fill in depth. The other approach proceeds from the ‘center of mass’ of the subject, seeking to build up the image by supplying contour lines, the intersections of which convey depth—as if the representation were being created in relief. The (...)
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  25. Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.) (2007). Oxford Studies in Metaethics Vol. 2. Oxford University Press.
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  26. Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.) (2006). Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press.
    The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to acquaint themselves ...
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  27. William Hosmer Smith (2012). The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity. Routledge.
  28. Daniel Star (2010). Review of Terence Cuneo, The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism (OUP, 2007). [REVIEW] Mind 119 (473):210-215.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
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  29. Richard Swinburne (1976). Reply to Wallace's 'on Making Actions Morally Wrong'. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6:551 - 552.
    IN MY PAPER "DUTY AND THE WILL OF GOD," I CLAIM THAT IF THERE IS A GOD, HE CAN MAKE SOME ACTIONS RIGHT OR WRONG BY HIS WILL, WHILE OTHER ACTIONS DERIVE THEIR RIGHTNESS OR WRONGNESS FROM FACTORS QUITE OTHER THAN HIS WILL. IN HIS PAPER, WALLACE DENIES THAT IT IS COHERENT TO SUPPOSE THAT AN AGENT CAN MAKE ACTIONS RIGHT OR WRONG, AND HE CLAIMS THAT MY ACCOUNT OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY IS NOT A TRADITIONAL ONE. IN THIS PAPER, I (...)
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  30. Peter Vallentyne (1989). Two Types of Moral Dilemmas. Erkenntnis 30 (3):301 - 318.
    In recent years the question of whether moral dilemmas are conceptually possible has received a fair amount of attention. In arguing for or against the conceptual possibility of moral dilemmas authors have been almost exclusively concerned with obligation dilemmas, i.e., situations in which more than one action is obligatory. Almost no one has been concerned with prohibition dilemmas, i.e., situations in which no feasible actions is permissible. I argue that the two types of dilemmas are distinct, and that a much (...)
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  31. Eric Vogelstein (2011). Morality, Reasons, and Sentiments. Philosophical Studies 155 (3):421-432.
    Morality is commonly thought to be normative in a robust and important way. This is commonly cashed out in terms of normative reasons. It is also commonly thought that morality is necessarily and universally normative, i.e., that moral reasons are reasons for any possible moral agent. Taking these commonplaces for granted, I argue for a novel view of moral normativity. I challenge the standard view that moral reasons are reasons to act. I suggest that moral reasons are reasons for having (...)
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  32. Christopher Zurn (2000). Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneth's 'Formal Conception of Ethical Life'. Philosophy and Social Criticism 26 (1):115-124.
    Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammer of Social Conflicts (reviewed by Christopher Zurn).
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  33. Radosław Zyzik (2011). Normativity and Moral Psychology : The Social Intuitionist Model and a World Without Normative Moral Rules? In Jerzy Stelmach & Bartosz Brożek (eds.), The Normativity of Law. Copernicus Center Press.
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Ought Implies Can
  1. Scott F. Aikin (2005). Who is Afraid of Epistemology's Regress Problem? Philosophical Studies 126 (2):191 - 217.
    What follows is a taxonomy of arguments that regresses of inferential justification are vicious. They fall out into four general classes: (A) conceptual arguments from incompleteness, (B) conceptual arguments from arbitrariness, (C) ought-implies-can arguments from human quantitative incapacities, and (D) ought-implies can arguments from human qualitative incapacities. They fail with a developed theory of “infinitism” consistent with valuational pluralism and modest epistemic foundationalism.
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  2. William P. Alston (1988). The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification. Philosophical Perspectives 2:257-299.
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  3. Jonny Anomaly (2008). Internal Reasons and the Ought-Implies-Can Principle. Philosophical Forum 39 (4):469-483.
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  4. Guy Axtell (2001). Teaching James's “The Will to Believe”. Teaching Philosophy 24 (4):325-345.
    Many readers have viewed William James's "The Will to Believe" as his most distinctive and resonating lecture. Yet for all the scholarly attention it has received, the complexities of the "pragmatic defence," and the issues it raises concerning evidential and pragmatic reasoning are still often misunderstood. In this paper I explicate a neglected "core" argument tied closely to James's thesis statement, and provide charts and other tools useful in presenting James' lecture in the philosophy classroom. This argument, based on the (...)
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  5. Dirk Baltzly (2000). Moral Dilemmas Are Not a Local Issue. Philosophy 75 (2):245-263.
    It is sometimes claimed that the Kantian Ought Implies Can principle (OIC) rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas. A certain understanding of OIC does rule out the possibility of moral dilemmas in the sense defined. However I doubt that this particular formulation of the OIC principle is one that fits well with the eudaimonist framework common to ancient Greek moral philosophy. In what follows, I explore the reasons why Aristotle would not accept the OIC principle in the form in (...)
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  6. Thomas M. Besch (2011). Factualism, Normativism and the Bounds of Normativity. Dialogue 50 (02):347-365.
    The paper argues that applications of the principle that “ought” implies “can” (OIC) depend on normative considerations even if the link between “ought” and “can” is logical in nature. Thus, we should reject a common, “factualist” conception of OIC and endorse weak “normativism”. Even if we use OIC as the rule ““cannot” therefore “not ought””, applying OIC is not a mere matter of facts and logic, as factualists claim, but often draws on “proto-ideals” of moral agency.
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  7. P. Bloomfield (2007). Two Dogmas of Metaethics. Philosophical Studies 132 (3):439 - 466.
    The two dogmas at issue are the Humean dogma that “‘is’ statements do not imply ‘ought’ statements” and the Kantian dogma that “‘ought’ statements imply ‘can’” statements. The extant literature concludes these logically contradict each other. On the contrary, it is argued here that while there is no derivable formal contradiction, the juxtaposition of the dogmas manifests a philosophical disagreement over how to understand the logic of prescriptions. This disagreement bears on how to understand current metaethical debate between (...)
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  8. Doreen Bretherton (1962). 'Ought' Implies 'Can Say'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 63:145 - 166.
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  9. Frederick E. Brouwer (1969). A Difficulty with 'Ought Implies Can'. Southern Journal of Philosophy 7 (1):45-50.
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  10. James Brown (1977). Moral Theory and the Ought--Can Principle. Mind 86 (342):206-223.
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  11. B. Sharon Byrd (2010). Kant's Doctrine of Right: A Commentary. Cambridge University Press.
    Introduction and methods of interpretation -- The idea of the juridicial state and the postulate of public law -- The state of nature and the three leges -- Iustitia tutatrix, iustitia commutativa, and iustitia distributiva and their differences -- The right to freedom -- The permissive law in the Doctrine of right -- The external mine and thine -- Intelligible possession of land -- The "state in the idea" -- The state in reality -- International and cosmopolitan law -- The (...)
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  12. Erik Carlson (1999). The Oughts and Cans of Objective Consequentialism. Utilitas 11 (01):91-96.
    Frances Howard-Snyder has argued that objective consequentialism violates the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In most situations, she claims, we cannot produce the best consequences available, although objective consequentialism says that we ought to do so. Here I try to show that Howard-Snyder's argument is unsound. The claim that we typically cannot produce the best consequences available is doubtful. And even if there is a sense of ‘producing the best consequences’ in which we cannot do so, objective consequentialism (...)
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  13. Ian Carter (2001). Ought Implies Practically Possible. In Freedom, Power and Political Morality: Essays for Felix Oppenheim. Palgrave.
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  14. Philippe Chuard & Nicholas Southwood (2009). Epistemic Norms Without Voluntary Control. Noûs 43 (4):599-632.
    William Alston’s argument against the deontological conception of epistemic justification is a classic—and much debated—piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston’s argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why some of the standard responses to Alston’s argument don’t work, we elucidate the mistake and offer a hypothesis as to why it has escaped attention.
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  15. Michelle Ciurria (2012). A New Mixed View of Virtue Ethics, Based on Daniel Doviak's New Virtue Calculus. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (2):259-269.
    In A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics , Daniel Doviak develops a novel agent-based theory of right action that treats the rightness (or deontic status) of an action as a matter of the action’s net intrinsic virtue value (net-IVV)—that is, its balance of virtue over vice. This view is designed to accommodate three basic tenets of commonsense morality: (i) the maxim that “ought” implies “can,” (ii) the idea that a person can do the right thing for the wrong reason, (...)
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  16. D. G. Collingridge (1977). 'Ought-Lmplies-Can' and Hume's Rule. Philosophy 52 (201):348-.
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  17. David Copp (2008). 'Ought' Implies 'Can' and the Derivation of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Analysis 68 (297):67–75.
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  18. Robert C. Cummins, Pierre Poirier & Martin Roth (2004). Epistemological Strata and the Rules of Right Reason. Synthese 141 (3):287 - 331.
    It has been commonplace in epistemology since its inception to idealize away from computational resource constraints, i.e., from the constraints of time and memory. One thought is that a kind of ideal rationality can be specified that ignores the constraints imposed by limited time and memory, and that actual cognitive performance can be seen as an interaction between the norms of ideal rationality and the practicalities of time and memory limitations. But a cornerstone of naturalistic epistemology is that normative assessment (...)
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  19. Norman O. Dahl (1974). Ought Implies Can and Deontic Logic. Philosophia 4 (4):485-511.
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  20. John R. Danley (1988). “Ought” Implies “Can”, or, the Moral Relevance of a Theory of the Firm. Journal of Business Ethics 7 (1-2):23 - 28.
    Since ought implies can, i.e., one cannot be obligated to do what one cannot do, the question of corporate responsibility cannot be discussed intelligibly without an inquiry into the range of corporate or managerial discretion. Hence, the moral relevance of a theory of the firm. Within classical or neo-classical economic theory, for instance, firms which act other than to maximize profit are eliminated. They cannot do otherwise, and thus either have no obligations at all or only the duty to maximize (...)
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  21. Daniel Doviak (2011). A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (3):259-272.
    In Morals From Motives, Michael Slote defends an agent-based theory of right action according to which right acts are those that express virtuous motives like benevolence or care. Critics have claimed that Slote’s view— and agent-based views more generally— cannot account for several basic tenets of commonsense morality. In particular, the critics maintain that agent-based theories: (i) violate the deontic axiom that ought implies can , (ii) cannot allow for a person’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and (...)
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  22. Julia Driver, Promising Too Much.
    This paper begins with the idea that we can learn a good deal about promising by examining the conditions and norms that govern promise- breaking. Sometimes promises are broken as a deliberate plan, other times they are broken because they are simply incompatible with other, more signifi cant moral norms, or because it becomes clear that they are impossible to keep. There are cases where people make promises that are actually incompatible with each other. Politicians, for example, often give such (...)
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  23. Julia Driver (1983). Promises, Obligations, and Abilities. Philosophical Studies 44 (2):221 - 223.
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  24. Don Fawkes (1990). Regarding Rich's “Compatibilism Argument” and the 'Ought- Implies-'Can' Argument. Southwest Philosophy Review 6 (2):123-124.
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  25. Guglielmo Feis (2012). The “Ought” Implies “Can” Principle: A Challenge to Collective Intentionality. Phenomenology and Mind 2:114-121.
    I investigate collective intentionality (CI) through the “Ought” implies “Can” (OIC) principle. My leading question is does OIC impose any further requirement on CI? In answering the challenge inside a Searlean framework, I realize that we need to clarify what CI's structure is and what kind of role the agents joining a CI-act have. In the last part of the paper, I put forward an (inverted) Hartian framework to allow the Searlean CI theory to be agent sensitive and cope with (...)
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  26. John Martin Fischer (2003). ‘Ought-Implies-Can’, Causal Determinism and Moral Responsibility. Analysis 63 (279):244–250.
  27. Harry G. Frankfurt (1988). What Are We Morally Responsible For. In The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press.
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  28. Danny Frederick (2011). Scarcity and Saving Lives. The Reasoner 5 (6):89-90.
    I argue that, because of scarcity, the right to life cannot imply an obligation on others to save the life of the right-holder, and that collectivising resources for health care not only ensures that resources are used inefficiently and inappropriately but also removes from people the authority to make decisions for themselves about matters of health, life and death.
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  29. Danny Frederick (2010). Why Universal Welfare Rights Are Impossible and What It Means. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 9 (4):428-445.
    Cranston argued that scarcity makes universal welfare rights impossible. After showing that this argument cannot be avoided by denying scarcity, I consider four challenges to the argument which accept the possibility of conflicts between the duties implied by rights. The first denies the agglomeration principle; the second embraces conflicts of duties; the third affirms the violability of all rights-based duties; and the fourth denies that duties to compensate are overriding. I argue that all four challenges to the scarcity argument are (...)
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  30. Henrik Friberg-Fernros (2011). Allies in Tension: Identifying and Bridging the Rift Between R2p and Just War. Journal of Military Ethics 10 (3):160-173.
    Abstract It has become almost commonplace to regard the concepts of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Just War as not only compatible but rather closely connected. Contrary to this position I argue here that some Just War criteria are in significant tension with R2P. This tension results from the fact that Just War only makes war permitted while R2P prescribes an obligation. But R2P and Just War not only are in significant tension, but also suffer from inverted weaknesses: R2P is (...)
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  31. G. C. Goddu (2006). More on Blameworthiness and Alternative Possibilities. Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (1):69-75.
    The derivation of the generally held Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), roughly ‘you are morally responsible only if you could do otherwise’, from an even more generally held moral principle, K (for Kant), that roughly speaking ‘ought implies can’, has recently been the focus of significant debate. In this paper I shall argue that by focusing on PAP interpreted in terms of commissions alone an alternative derivation of PAP interpreted in terms of omissions is being overlooked. The advantage of the (...)
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  32. P. A. Graham (2011). 'Ought' and Ability. Philosophical Review 120 (3):337-382.
    A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' is true is floated. Though (...)
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  33. Peter A. Graham (2011). Fischer on Blameworthiness and “Ought” Implies “Can”. Social Theory and Practice 37 (1):63-80.
    I argue that Fischer’s attempts to undermine the “Ought” Implies “Can” principle (OIC) fail. I argue both against his construal of the natural motivation for OIC and against his argument for the falsity of OIC. I also consider some attempts to salvage Fischer’s arguments and argue that they can work only if the true moral theory is motive determinative--i.e., it is such that, necessarily, any action performed from a motive which renders one of the blame emotions appropriate is morally impermissible, (...)
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  34. W. A. Hart (1998). Nussbaum, Kant and Conflicts Between Duties. Philosophy 73 (4):609-618.
    Martha Nussbaum has claimed that it is possible for a moral agent to be confronted, through no fault of his own, with an irresolvable conflict between his moral duties; and cites Kant as someone who takes the opposing view. Kant did indeed take the view that conflict between duties was inconceivable, but Nussbaum has failed to grasp his main reason for doing so, namely the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. When that principle is properly understood it can be seen that (...)
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  35. Robert J. Hartman (2011). Involuntary Belief and the Command to Have Faith. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69 (3):181-192.
    Richard Swinburne argues that belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for faith, and he also argues that, while faith is voluntary, belief is involuntary. This essay is concerned with the tension arising from the involuntary aspect of faith, the Christian doctrine that human beings have an obligation to exercise faith, and the moral claim that people are only responsible for actions where they have the ability to do otherwise. Put more concisely, the problem concerns the coherence of the (...)
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  36. Lawrence L. Heintz (1975). Excuses and '"Ought" Implies "Can"'. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (3):449 - 462.
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  37. G. P. Henderson (1966). “Ought” Implies “CAN”. Philosophy 41 (156):101-.
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  38. Ulrike Heuer (2010). Reasons and Impossibility. Philosophical Studies 147 (2).
    In this paper, I argue that a person can have a reason to do what she cannot do. In a nutshell, the argument is that a person can have derivate reasons relating to an action that she has a non-derivative reason to perform. There are clear examples of derivative reasons that a person has in cases where she cannot do what she (non-derivatively) has reason to do. She couldn’t have those derivative reasons, unless she also had the non-derivative reason to (...)
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  39. Jaakko Hintikka (1981). Some Main Problems of Deontic Logic. In Risto Hilpinen (ed.), Deontic Logic: Introductory and Systematic Readings. Sold and Distributed in the U.S.A. And Canada by Kluwer Boston.
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  40. Brad Hooker (2005). Some Questions Not to Be Begged in Moral Theory. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 19 (2):277-284.
    This paper starts by considering Sterba’s argument from non-question-beggingness to morality. The paper goes on to discuss his use of the “ought” implies “can” principle and the place, within moral theorizing, of intuitions about reasonableness.
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  41. John F. Horty (2003). Reasoning with Moral Conflicts. Noûs 37 (4):557–605.
    Let us say that a normative conflict is a situation in which an agent ought to perform an action A, and also ought to perform an action B, but in which it is impossible for the agent to perform both A and B. Not all normative conflicts are moral conflicts, of course. It may be that the agent ought to perform the action A for reasons of personal generosity, but ought to perform the action B for reasons of prudence: perhaps (...)
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  42. Frances Howard-Snyder (2006). “Cannot” Implies “Not Ought”. Philosophical Studies 130 (2):233 - 246.
    I argue for a version of “ought” implies “can”. In particular, I argue that it is necessarily true that if an agent, S, ultima facie ought to do A at T’, then there is a time T* such that S can at T* do A at T’. In support of this principle, I have argued that without it, we cannot explain how it is that, in cases where agents cannot do the best thing, they often ought to do some alternative (...)
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  43. Frances Howard-Snyder (1999). Response to Carlson and Qizilbash. Utilitas 11 (01):106-111.
    In ‘The Rejection of Objective Consequentialism’ I argued against objective consequentialism on the grounds that it requires us to do what we cannot do and hence violates the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Erik Carlson and Mozaffar Qizilbash have raised objections to my arguments, chiefly by distinguishing different senses of ‘can’ and ‘ought’. I here attempt to rebut those challenges.
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  44. Frances Howard-Snyder (1997). The Rejection of Objective Consequentialism. Utilitas 9 (02):241-248.
    Objective consequentialism is often criticized because it is impossible to know which of our actions will have the best consequences. Why exactly does this undermine objective consequentialism? I offer a new link between the claim that our knowledge of the future is limited and the rejection of objective consequentialism: that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and we cannot produce the best consequences available to us. I support this apparently paradoxical contention by way of an analogy. I cannot beat Karpov at chess in (...)
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  45. Brian Huss (2009). Three Challenges (and Three Replies) to the Ethics of Belief. Synthese 168 (2):249 - 271.
    In this paper I look at three challenges to the very possibility of an ethics of belief and then show how they can be met. The first challenge, from Thomas Kelly, says that epistemic rationality is not (merely) a form of instrumental rationality. If this claim is true, then it will be difficult to develop an ethics of belief that does not run afoul of naturalism. The second challenge is the Non-Voluntarism Argument, which holds that because we cannot believe at (...)
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  46. Russell Jacobs (1985). Is “Ought Implies Can” a Moral Principle? Southwest Philosophy Review 2:43-54.
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  47. Daniel Jacobson (2002). An Unsolved Problem for Slote's Agent-Based Virtue Ethics. Philosophical Studies 111 (1):53 - 67.
    According to Slote's ``agent-based'' virtue ethics, the rightness orwrongness of an act is determined by the motive it expresses. Thistheory has a problem with cases where an agent can do her duty onlyby expressing some vicious motive and thereby acting wrongly. In sucha situation, an agent can only act wrongly; hence, the theory seemsincompatible with the maxim that `ought' implies `can'. I argue thatSlote's attempt to circumvent this problem by appealing to compatibilism is inadequate. In a wide range of psychologically (...)
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  48. Dale Jacquette (1991). Moral Dilemmas, Disjunctive Obligations, and Kant's Principle That 'Ought' Implies 'Can'. Synthese 88 (1):43 - 55.
    In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kant's principle that ought implies can, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kant's ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the principle is incompatible (...)
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  49. Robert Kane (2000). Deontic Acts, Frankfurt-Style Examples, and "'Ought' Implies 'Can'" (Comments on Ishtiyaque Haji's Presentation). Journal of Ethics 4 (4):357 - 360.
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  50. John Kekes (1984). `Ought Implies Can' and Two Kinds of Morality. Philosophical Quarterly 34 (137):459-467.
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  51. Matthew H. Kramer (2005). Moral Rights and the Limits of the Ought-Implies-Can Principle: Why Impeccable Precautions Are No Excuse. Inquiry 48 (4):307 – 355.
    This essay argues against the commonly held view that "ought" implies "can" in the domain of morality. More specifically, I contest the notion that nobody should ever be held morally responsible for failing to avoid the infliction of any harm that he or she has not been able to avoid through all reasonably feasible precautions in the carrying out of some worthwhile activity. The article explicates the concept of a moral right in order to show why violations of moral rights (...)
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  52. John Ladd (1958). Remarks on the Conflict of Obligations. Journal of Philosophy 55 (19):811-819.
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  53. Holly Lawford-Smith (forthcoming). Non-Ideal Accessibility. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
    It ought to be that the procrastinating professor accept the task of reviewing a book, and actually review the book, but given that he won't review it, he ought not to accept. That is a genuine moral obligation in light of less than perfect circumstances. I want to seriously entertain the possibility that a set of such obligations form something like a 'practical morality', that which we ought to do given that we're unlikely or unwilling to do much of what (...)
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  54. Clayton Littlejohn (2012). Does 'Ought' Still Imply 'Can'? Philosophia 40 (4):821-828.
    According to ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC), your obligation can never be to do what you cannot do. In a recent attack on OIC, Graham has argued that intuitions about justified intervention can help us determine whether the agent whose actions we use force to prevent would have acted permissibly or not. These intuitions, he suggests, cause trouble for the idea that you can be obligated to refrain from doing what you can refrain from doing. I offer a defense of OIC (...)
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  55. Clayton Littlejohn (2009). ‘Ought’, ‘Can’, and Practical Reasons. American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (4):363-73.
    Some recent defenses of the 'ought' implies 'can' (OIC) principle try to derive that principle from uncontroversial claims about reasons for action. Reasons for action, it's said, are reasons only for 'potential' actions, which are actions that an agent can perform. Given that 'ought' implies 'reasons', it seems we have our proof of OIC. In this paper, I argue that this latest strategy for defending OIC fails.
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  56. Rosemary Lowry (forthcoming). Reasons for Action and Psychological Capacities. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
    Most moral philosophers agree that if a moral agent is incapable of performing some act ф because of a physical incapacity, then they do not have a reason to ф. Most also claim that if an agent is incapable of ф-ing due to a psychological incapacity, brought about by, for example, an obsession or phobia, then this does not preclude them from having a reason to ф. This is because the ‘ought implies can’ principle is usually interpreted as a claim (...)
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  57. Rita C. Manning (1981). “Ought Implies Can” and the Price of Duty. Southern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1):117-121.
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  58. Joel Marks (2009). Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist Critique. Lexington Books.
    Ought Implies Kant defends Kantianism via a critical examination of consequentialism. The latter is shown to be untenable on epistemic grounds; meanwhile, the charge that Kantianism is really consequentialism in disguise is refuted. The book also presents a novel interpretation of Kantianism as according direct duties to other animals.
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  59. Wayne Martin (2009). Ought but Cannot. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109 (1pt2):103-128.
    I assess a series of arguments intended to show that 'ought' implies 'can'. Two are rooted in uses of 'ought' in contexts of deliberation and command. A third draws on the distinctive resources of deontic logic. I show that, in each case, the arguments leave scope for forms of infinite moral consciousness—forms of moral consciousness in which a moral obligation retains its authority even in the face of the conviction that the obligation is impossible to fulfil. In this respect the (...)
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  60. Elinor Mason (2013). Objectivism and Prospectivism About Rightness. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 7 (2).
    In this paper I present a new argument for prospectivism: the view that, for a consequentialist, rightness depends on what is prospectively best rather than what would actually be best. Prospective bestness depends on the agent’s epistemic position, though exactly how that works is not straightforward. I clarify various possible versions of prospectivism, which differ in how far they go in relativizing to the agent’s limitations. My argument for prospectivism is an argument for moderately objective prospectivism, according to which the (...)
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  61. Elinor Mason (2003). Consequentialism and the "Ought Implies Can" Principle. American Philosophical Quarterly 40 (4):319 - 331.
    It seems that the debate between objective and subjective consequentialists might be resolved by appealing to the ought implies can principle. Howard-Snyder has suggested that if one does not know how to do something, cannot do it, and thus one cannot have an obligation to do it. I argue that this depends on an overly rich conception of ability, and that we need to look beyond the ought implies can principle to answer the question. Once we do so, it appears (...)
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  62. Terrance McConnell, Moral Dilemmas. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  63. Terrance McConnell (1989). “'Ought' Implies 'Can'” and the Scope of Moral Requirements. Philosophia 19 (4):437-454.
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  64. Gregory Mellema (2001). Praise, Blame, and the Ought Implies Can Principle. Philosophia 28 (1-4):425-436.
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  65. Moti Mizrahi (2012). Does 'Ought' Imply 'Can' From an Epistemic Point of View? Philosophia 40 (4):829-840.
    In this paper, I argue that the “Ought Implies Can” (OIC) principle, as it is employed in epistemology, particularly in the literature on epistemic norms, is open to counterexamples. I present a counterexample to OIC and discuss several objections to it. If this counterexample works, then it shows that it is possible that S ought to believe that p, even though S cannot believe that p. If this is correct, then OIC, considered from an epistemic point of view, is false, (...)
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  66. Moti Mizrahi (2012). Does 'Ought' Imply 'Can' From an Epistemic Point of View? Philosophia 40 (4):829-840.
    In this paper, I argue that the “Ought Implies Can” (OIC) principle, as it is employed in epistemology, particularly in the literature on epistemic norms, is open to counterexamples. I present a counterexample to OIC and discuss several objections to it. If this counterexample works, then it shows that it is possible that S ought to believe that p, even though S cannot believe that p. If this is correct, then OIC, considered from an epistemic point of view, is false, (...)
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  67. G. E. Moore (1922). The Nature of Moral Philosophy. In Philosophical papers. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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