Online research in philosophy

Tensions exist between the disability rights movement and the work of many bioethicists. These reveal themselves in a major recent book on bioethics and genetics, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book defends certain genetic policies against criticisms from disability rights advocates, in part by arguing that it is possible to accept both the genetic policies and the rights of people with impairments. However, a close reading of the book reveals a series of direct moral criticisms of the disability rights movement. The criticisms go beyond a defense of genetic policies from the criticisms of disability rights advocates. The disability rights movement is said not to have the same moral legitimacy as other civil rights movements, such as those for women or "racial" minorities. This paper documents, and in some cases shows the flaws within, these challenges to the disability rights movement.

Richard J. Arneson Word count 6932 Most people believe that partiality toward those near and dear to us is morally required. Parents ought to favor their own children over other people’s children, and friends ought to favor each other over strangers. Partiality toward extended kin, fellow clan members, co-nationals, neighbors, members of one’s own community, and other affiliates is often affirmed, though it is controversial or at least unclear just what sorts of social relationship generate obligations of partiality.

Rule utilitarianism has recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest triggered by Brad Hooker’s sophisticated treatment in Ideal Code, Real World.1 An intriguing new debate has now broken out about how best to formulate rule utilitarianism – whether to evaluate candidate moral codes in terms of the value of their consequences at a fixed rate (such as 90%) of social acceptance (as Hooker contends), or to evaluate codes in terms of the value of their consequences throughout the entire range of possible acceptance rates (as Hooker’s opponent Ridge contends).2 I shall argue that both Hooker’s fixed-rate ruleutilitarianism and Ridge’s variable-rate rule-utilitarianism, suitably interpreted and revised, survive the criticisms that each theorist lodges against the other. But I shall use the insights gained through this examination to argue that both these forms of rule utilitarianism, arguably the best available, fall prey to two fatal problems that have gone unnoticed in these debates, or indeed in most debates about rule utilitarianism. The weaknesses I describe in Hooker and Ridge’s forms of rule utilitarianism threaten to undermine all versions of rule utilitarianism, not just the nuanced versions developed by Hooker and Ridge.

In his review of my book, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization, (Oxford University Press, 2010) in NYRB Nov 11, 2010. Colin McGinn makes a number of criticisms. I believe that without exception these criticisms are mistaken; and most, though not all, rest on misunderstandings of my position. I do not normally respond to reviews of my work, but I make an exception in this case because The New York Review is so important both to me personally and to intellectual life in the English speaking world. The Review does not have space for the entire reply so I am augmenting the published short reply with this longer one.

(Forthcoming in Social Theory and Practice, 2002) Richard J. Arneson A notable achievement of T.M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other1 is its sustained critique of welfarist consequentialism.2 Consequentialism is the doctrine that one morally ought always to do an act, of the alternatives, that brings about a state of affairs that is no less good than any other one could bring about. Welfarism is the view that what makes a state of affairs better or worse is some increasing function of the welfare for persons realized in it. I shall argue that Scanlon’s critique, though containing much of interest, fails on its own terms.

What are the appropriate criteria for assessing a theory of morality? In this enlightening work, Brad Hooker begins by answering this question. He then argues for a rule-consequentialist theory which, in part, asserts that acts should be assessed morally in terms of impartially justified rules. In the end, he considers the implications of rule-consequentialism for several current controversies in practical ethics, making this clearly written, engaging book the best overall statement of this approach to ethics.

My reply corrects one misstatement in Oppy’s summary of my book, abandons a footnote in the light of one of Oppy’s criticisms, and argues that Oppy’s other criticisms do not succeed in showing either that my claims are mistaken or that the arguments by which I supported them are defective.

The popularity of rule-consequentialism among philosophers has waxed and waned. Waned, mostly; at least lately. The idea that the morality that ought to claim allegiance is the ideal code of rules whose acceptance by everybody would bring about best consequences became the object of careful analysis about half a century ago, in the writings of J. J. C. Smart, John Rawls, David Lyons, Richard Brandt, Richard Hare, and others.1 They considered utilitarian versions of rule consequentialism but discovered flaws in the view that attach to the wider consequentialist doctrine. In the eyes of many, the flaws were decisive. Brad Hooker has produced brilliant work that unsettles this complacent consensus.2 Over a period of several years he has produced a sustained and powerful defense of a version of rule consequentialism that does not obviously succumb to the criticisms that have been thought to render this doctrine a nonstarter. He acknowledges intellectual debts to Richard Brandt. But Hooker avoid certain excrescences in Brandt’s efforts to conceive of morality as an ideal code of rules. Most notably, Hooker eschews Brandt’s misguided attempt to derive some version of rule utilitarianism from an underlying commitment to some form of contractualism. Moreover, Hooker has worked to articulate a version of rule consequentialism in sufficient detail that one can see how the different parts of the doctrine hang together and how the best version of the..