J.J.C. Smart famously complained that rule utilitarianism is incoherent, and that rule utilitarians are guilty of rule worship . Much has been said about whether Smart’s complaint is justified, but I will assume for the sake of argument that Smart was on to something. Instead, I have three other goals. First, I want to show that Smart’s complaint is a specific instance of a more general objection to a moral theory—what I will call the Incoherence Objection. Second, I want to (...) illustrate how the Incoherence Objection can apply both to consequentialist and, surprisingly, some nonconsequentialist theories. Finally, I want to demonstrate at least one way nonconsequentialist theories that make use of rules, principles, and the like can dodge the Incoherence Objection. (shrink)

Ido Geiger's paper ‘What it is the Use of the Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative?’ is part of a growing trend in Kant scholarship, which stresses the significance of the rational competence of ordinary human beings. I argue that this approach needs to take into account that the common agent is an active reasoner who has the means to find out what she ought to do. The purpose of my paper is to show how universality already figures in (...) the active reasoning of pre-theoretical agents in the form of a common universalization test. I present textual evidence for this test, and argue that this conception does not present pre-theoretical moral cognition in an overly intellectualistic or mechanistic way. Finally, I discuss how, on the pre-theoretical level, universalization relates to humanity or a rational agent's special status. Universalization is present to common agents in the form of procedures or questions that we ask ourselves, humanity as an awareness of certain particularly blatant violat.. (shrink)

The role normative ethics has in guiding action is unclear. Once moral theorists hoped that they could devise a decision procedure that would enable agents to solve difficult moral problems. Repeated attacks by anti-theorists seemingly dashed this hope. Although the dispute between moral theorists and anti-theorists rages no longer, no decisive victor has emerged. To determine how we ought to make moral decisions, I argue, we must first examine how we do decide in moral situations. Intuitionism correctly captures the essence (...) of the moral element in such situations, finding itself located somewhere between moral theory and anti-theory. In order that intuitionism may constitute an improvement over predecessors in normative ethics we must proceed with awareness of the limits imposed by the still dominant framework of modern moral theory. I argue that the deliberatively open system of intuitionism, interlocked in practice with prudential considerations, allows us to constructively move normative ethics beyond those limits. (shrink)

Recent research, especially with functional brain imaging, demonstrated cases where the administration of a placebo produces objective effects in tissues that are indistinguishable from those of the real therapeutic agents. This phenomenon has been shown in treatments of pain, depression, Parkinsonism, and more. The main ethical complaint against placebo treatment is that it is a kind of deception, where supposedly we substitute what works just psychologically for a real drug that actually works on the tissue level. We claim that the (...) scientific findings bring to a new level the seeming deconstruction of the distinction between “placebo” and “real” drugs, and that instances of placebo treatment which fulfill this criterion should be recognized as a unique category—we call it “comparable placebo treatment” (CPT). The paper uses an analysis of the notion of deception to argue that CPT does not amount to deception; that it can preserve patient autonomy; and that it is therefore morally legitimate. (shrink)

Critics often charge that Kantian ethics is implausibly rigoristic: that Kantianism recognizes a set of perfect duties, encapsulated in rules such as ‘don’t lie,’ ‘keep one’s promises,’ etc., and that these rules apply without exception. Though a number of Kantians have plausibly argued that Kantianism can acknowledge exceptions to perfect duties, this acknowledgment alone does not indicate how and when such exceptions ought to be made. This article critiques a recent attempt to motivate how such exceptions are to be made, (...) namely, the constitutive approach developed by Tamar Schapiro. I argue that the constitutive approach is vulnerable to the objection that it is too permissive, justifying many morally dubious exceptions to perfect duties. I conclude by briefly outlining an alternative ‘fine print’ approach to the rigorism objection that appears to avoid the objection leveled at Schapiro’s approach, focusing on how modifying the constituents of agents’ maxims can change the deontic status of an act of a generally impermissible kind. (shrink)

Given Kant's exceptionless moral prohibition on lying, one might suspect that he is committed to a similar prohibition on withholding diagnostic and prognostic information from patients. I confirm this suspicion by adapting arguments against therapeutic privilege from his arguments against lying. However, I show that all these arguments are importantly flawed and submit that they should be rejected. A more compelling Kantian take on informed consent and therapeutic privilege is achievable, I argue, by focusing on Kant's duty of beneficence, which (...) requires us to aim at furthering others’ ends. But I show that there are some cases in which furthering a patient's ends requires withholding material medical information from her. Although I concede that these cases are probably quite rare, I conclude that the best Kantian thinking agrees with that of therapeutic privilege's advocates. (shrink)

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...) Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work? (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Other philosophers, such as Locke and Hobbes, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards were either desirebased instrumental principles of rationality or based on sui generis rational intuitions. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason (...) will reveal only the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle) and hence to moral requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant's moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the fact that emissions of (...) greenhouse gases, with climate change as their result, are an immanent threat to any reflectively embraced development project. In the universal pursuit of progress, basic needs of both present and future people are put at risk. Even so, a political stalemate and business-as-usual prevail. The situation is locked up by an uncertainty about the exact impacts of choices made and by the reasonable disagreement of modern societies. The result is passiveness, and the passing on of a slowly and indiscernibly growing problem to future generations. This dissertation brings out a crucial message about the need to make our development sustainable. Instead of delaying action through trying to resolve the intractable epistemic and normative uncertainty fully, the focus should be on vindicating already shared points of practical convergence. On the constructivist method here adopted, the task is to characterise the agent and the situation faced from a practical and first-person point of view. More specifically, to specify the practical problem climate change gives rise to; the moral importance of needs (chapter three); how a principled priority of basic needs can be defended (chapter four), intergenerationally (chapter five) and internationally (chapter six); and what natural and social limits there are to development (chapter seven). These conceptions narrows the practice of development in the present context: it can be concluded that development must not risk the basic needs of anyone implicated. This common ground brackets off disagreement irrelevant to the urgent need to act, and so brings together otherwise deeply divided agents. A sufficientarian basic needs-principle, as the focus of an overlapping consensus, is practicable and anticipatory in the disuniting moral conundrum of climate change. (shrink)