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  1. John Rawls: Two Concepts of Rules.Leslie Allan - manuscript
    In his seminal essay, 'Two Concepts of Rules', John Rawls draws a central distinction between justifying a practice and justifying a particular action falling under it. In this review, Leslie Allan walks through Rawls's essay, highlighting his key arguments for a strengthened version of rule utilitarianism and reflecting on the lasting influence of his analysis.
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  2. The paralysis argument.William MacAskill & Andreas Mogensen - manuscript
    Given plausible assumptions about the long-run impact of our everyday actions, we show that standard non-consequentialist constraints on doing harm entail that we should try to do as little as possible in our lives. We call this the Paralysis Argument. After laying out the argument, we consider and respond to a number of objections. We then suggest what we believe is the most promising response: to accept, in practice, a highly demanding morality of beneficence with a long-term focus. GPI Working (...)
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  3. Consequentialism and Coordination Problems.Douglas W. Portmore - manuscript
    Imagine both that (1) S1 is deliberating at t about whether or not to x at t' and that (2) although S1’s x-ing at t' would not itself have good consequences, good consequences would ensue if both S1 x's at t' and S2 y's at t", where S1 may or may not be identical to S2 and where t < t' ≤ t". In this paper, I consider how consequentialists should treat S2 and the possibility that S2 will y at (...)
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  4. Maximalism vs. Omnism about Permissibility.Douglas W. Portmore - manuscript
    The performance of one option can entail the performance of another. For instance, I have the option of baking a pumpkin pie as well as the option of baking a pie, and the former entails the latter. Now, suppose that both of these options are permissible. This raises the issue of which, if either, is more fundamental than the other. Is baking a pie permissible because it’s permissible to perform some instance of pie-baking, such as pumpkin-pie baking? Or is baking (...)
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  5. What Would Lewis Do?Daniel Nolan - forthcoming - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 220-239.
    David Lewis rejected consequentialism in ethics. However, two aspects of his meta-ethical views make it a challenge to see how consequentialism could be resisted. Lewis endorses a maximising conception of rationality, where to be rational is to maximise value of a certain sort; he appears to think it is possible to be both rational and moral; and yet he rejects conceptions of moral action as acting to maximise moral value. The second tension in Lewis's views arises from his meta-ethics. Lewis's (...)
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  6. Resources and the acceptability of the Repugnant Conclusion.Stephen J. Schmidt - forthcoming - Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science.
    Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion argues, against intuition, that for any world A, another world Z with higher population and minimal well-being is better. That intuition is incorrect because the argument has not considered resources that support well-being. Z must have many more resources supporting well-being than A does. Z is repugnant because it spreads those resources among too many people; another world with Z’s resources and fewer people, if available, would be far superior. But Z is still better than A; it (...)
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  7. Act and Rule Consequentialism: A Synthesis.Jussi Suikkanen - forthcoming - Moral Philosophy and Politics.
    As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism’s indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific code has suboptimal consequences in the real (...)
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  8. Longtermism in an infinite world.Christian Tarsney & Hayden Wilkinson - forthcoming - In Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    The case for longtermism depends on the vast potential scale of the future. But that same vastness also threatens to undermine the case for longtermism: If the universe as a whole, or the future in particular, contain infinite quantities of value and/or disvalue, then many of the theories of value that support longtermism (e.g., risk-neutral total utilitarianism) seem to imply that none of our available options are better than any other. If so, then even apparently vast effects on the far (...)
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  9. Williams’s Integrity Objection as a Psychological Problem.Nikhil Venkatesh - forthcoming - Topoi:1-11.
    Utilitarianism is the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being—that is, that maximises the sum of whatever makes life worth living, with each person’s life equally weighted. The promise of utilitarianism is to reduce morality to one simple principle, easily incorporated into policy analysis, economics and decision theory. However, utilitarianism is not popular amongst moral philosophers today. This is in large part due to the influence of (...)
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  10. When a Free Act Costs a Motive: Clearing Consequentialism of Conflict.Austen McDougal - 2023 - Utilitas 35 (1):25-39.
    Consequentialist theories that directly assess multiple focal points face an important objection: that one right option may conflict with another. Robert Adams raises an instance of this objection regarding the possibility that the right act conflicts with the right motives. Whereas only partial responses have previously been given, assuming particular views of the relation between motives and acts, an exhaustive treatment is in order. Either motives psychologically determine acts, or they do not – and I defend direct consequentialism on each (...)
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  11. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls: Against Hayward's “Utility Cascades”.Ryan Doody - 2022 - Utilitas 34 (2):225-232.
    In his article “Utility Cascades”, Max Khan Hayward argues that act-utilitarians should sometimes either ignore evidence about the effectiveness of their actions or fail to apportion their support to an action's effectiveness. His conclusions are said to have particular significance for the effective altruism movement, which centers seeking and being guided by evidence. Hayward's argument is that act-utilitarians are vulnerable to succumbing to “utility cascades”, that these cascades function to frustrate the ultimate goals of act-utilitarians, and that one apposite way (...)
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  12. The Consequentializing Argument Against...Consequentializing?Paul Hurley - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 12:253-275.
    Consequentializing involves both a strategy and conditions for its successful implementation. The strategy takes the features a target theory holds to be relevant to deontic evaluation of actions, and builds them into a counterpart ranking of outcomes. It succeeds if the result is 1) a substantive version of consequentialism that 2) yields the same deontic verdicts as the target theory. Consequentializers typically claim and their critics allow that all plausible alternative theories can be consequentialized. I demonstrate that even standard alternatives (...)
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  13. Überforderungseinwände in der Ethik.Lukas Naegeli - 2022 - Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
    Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.
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  14. Absolutism, Utilitarianism and Agent-Relative Constraints.Mark T. Nelson - 2022 - International Philosophical Quarterly 62 (2):243-252.
    Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative constraints, too. I show that, despite its ingenuity, Denyer’s argument does not succeed. (...)
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  15. The Philosophical Core of Effective Altruism.Brian Berkey - 2021 - Journal of Social Philosophy 52 (1):93-115.
    Effective altruism’s identity as both a philosophy and a social movement requires effective altruists to consider which philosophical commitments are essential, such that one must embrace them in order to count as an effective altruist, at least in part in the light of the goal of building a robust social movement capable of advancing its aims. The goal of building a social movement provides a strong reason for effective altruists to embrace an ecumenical set of core commitments. At the same (...)
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  16. Consequentialism and Virtue.Robert J. Hartman & Joshua W. Bronson - 2021 - In Christoph Halbig & Felix Timmermann (eds.), Handbuch Tugend Und Tugendethik. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 307-320.
    We examine the following consequentialist view of virtue: a trait is a virtue if and only if it has good consequences in some relevant way. We highlight some motivations for this basic account, and offer twelve choice points for filling it out. Next, we explicate Julia Driver’s consequentialist view of virtue in reference to these choice points, and we canvass its merits and demerits. Subsequently, we consider three suggestions that aim to increase the plausibility of her position, and critically analyze (...)
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  17. The Paralysis Argument.Andreas Mogensen & William MacAskill - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (15).
    Many everyday actions have major but unforeseeable long-term consequences. Some argue that this fact poses a serious problem for consequentialist moral theories. We argue that the problem for non-consequentialists is greater still. Standard non-consequentialist constraints on doing harm combined with the long-run impacts of everyday actions entail, absurdly, that we should try to do as little as possible. We call this the Paralysis Argument. After laying out the argument, we consider and respond to a number of objections. We then suggest (...)
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  18. Must I Benefit Myself?Michael Cholbi - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. pp. 253-268.
    Morality seems to require us to attend to the good of others, but does not require that we assign any importance to our own good. Standard forms of consequentialism thus appear vulnerable to the compulsory self-benefit objection: they require agents to benefit themselves when doing so is entailed by the requirement of maximizing overall impersonal good. Attempts to address this objection by appealing to ideally motivated consequentialist agents; by rejecting maximization; by leveraging consequentialist responses to the more familiar special relationships (...)
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  19. Subjective Consequentialism and the Unforeseeable.Christopher Jay - 2020 - Utilitas 32 (1):33-49.
    As is already well known, subjective consequentialists face a challenge which arises from the fact that many of the consequences of an action are unforeseeable: this fact makes trouble for the assignment of expected values. Recently there has been some discussion of the role of ‘indifference’ principles in addressing this challenge. In this article, I argue that adopting a principle of indifference to unforeseeable consequences will not work – not because of familiar worries about the rationality of such indifference principles, (...)
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  20. Consequentialism and Promises.Alida Liberman - 2020 - In Douglas Portmore (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. pp. 289 - 309.
    I explore the debate about whether consequentialist theories can adequately accommodate the moral force of promissory obligation. I outline a straightforward act consequentialist account grounded in the value of satisfying expectations, and raise and assess three objections to this account: that it counterintuitively predicts that certain promises should be broken when commonsense morality insists that they should be kept, that the account is circular, and Michael Cholbi’s argument that this account problematically implies that promise-making is frequently obligatory. I then discuss (...)
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  21. Deservingness Transfers.Knut Olav Skarsaune - 2020 - Utilitas 32 (2):209-218.
    This article seeks to cause trouble for a brand of consequentialism known as ‘desertarianism’. In somewhat different ways, views of this kind evaluate outcomes more favourably, other things equal, the better the fit between the welfare different people enjoy and the welfare they each deserve. These views imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing welfare to fit desert, which seems plausible enough. Unfortunately, they also imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing desert to fit welfare: in other words, (...)
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  22. One-by-one: moral theory for separate persons.Bastian Steuwer - 2020 - Dissertation, London School of Economics
    You and I lead different lives. While we share a society and a world, our existence is separate from one another. You and I matter individually, by ourselves. My dissertation is about this simple thought. I argue that this simple insight, the separateness of persons, tells us something fundamental about morality. My dissertation seeks to answer how the separateness of persons matters. I develop a precise view of the demands of the separateness of persons. The separateness of persons imposes both (...)
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  23. Fittingness Objections to Consequentialism.Richard Yetter Chappell - 2019 - In Christian Seidel (ed.), Consequentialism: New Directions, New Problems? Oxford University Press.
    New work in the foundations of ethics—extending the fitting attitudes analysis of value to yield a broader notion of normative fittingness as a (or perhaps even the) fundamental normative concept—provides us with the resources to clarify and renew the force of traditional character-based objections to consequentialism. According to these revamped fittingness objections, consequentialism is incompatible with plausible claims about which attitudes are truly fitting. If a theory’s implications regarding the fittingness facts are implausible, then this can be taken to cast (...)
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  24. Exiting The Consequentialist Circle: Two Senses of Bringing It About.Paul Edward Hurley - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (2):130-163.
    Consequentialism is a state of affairs centered moral theory that finds support in state of affairs centered views of value, reason, action, and desire/preference. Together these views form a mutually reinforcing circle. I map an exit route out of this circle by distinguishing between two different senses in which actions can be understood as bringing about states of affairs. All actions, reasons, desires, and values involve bringing about in the first, deflationary sense, but only some appear to involve bringing about (...)
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  25. The world destruction argument.Simon Knutsson - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (10).
    The most common argument against negative utilitarianism is the world destruction argument, according to which negative utilitarianism implies that if someone could kill everyone or destroy the world, it would be her duty to do so. Those making the argument often endorse some other form of consequentialism, usually traditional utilitarianism. It has been assumed that negative utilitarianism is less plausible than such other theories partly because of the world destruction argument. So, it is thought, someone who finds theories in the (...)
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  26. Empirical ignorance as defeating moral intuitions? A puzzle for rule consequentialists.Caleb Perl - 2019 - Analysis 79 (1):62-72.
    This paper develops an argument that, if rule consequentialism is true, it’s not possible to defend it as the outcome of reflective equilibrium. Ordinary agents like you and me are ignorant of too many empirical facts. Our ignorance is a defeater for our moral intuitions. Even worse, there aren’t enough undefeated intuitions left to defend rule consequentialism. The problem I’ll describe won’t be specific to rule consequentialists, but it will be especially sharp for them.
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  27. The No Act Objection: Act‐Consequentialism and Coordination Games.Simon Rosenqvist - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (3):179-189.
    Coordination games show that all individuals can do what is right according to act‐consequentialism, even if they do not bring about the best outcome as a group. This creates two problems for act‐consequentialism. First, it cannot accommodate the intuition that there is some moral failure in these cases. Second, its formulation as a criterion of rightness conflicts with the underlying act‐consequentialist concern that the best outcome is brought about. The collectivist view solves these problems by holding that any group of (...)
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  28. Consequentialism and Moral Worth.Nathaniel Sharadin - 2019 - Utilitas 31 (2):117-136.
    Sometimes, agents do the right thing for the right reason. What’s the normative significance of this phenomenon? According to proponents of the special status view, when an agent acts for the right reason, her actions enjoy a special normative status, namely, worthiness. Proponents of this view claim that self-effacing forms of consequentialism cannot say this plausible thing, and, worse, are blocked from having a perspicuous view of matters by the self-effacing nature of their consequentialism. In this paper, I argue that (...)
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  29. Crash Algorithms for Autonomous Cars: How the Trolley Problem Can Move Us Beyond Harm Minimisation.Dietmar Hübner & Lucie White - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3):685-698.
    The prospective introduction of autonomous cars into public traffic raises the question of how such systems should behave when an accident is inevitable. Due to concerns with self-interest and liberal legitimacy that have become paramount in the emerging debate, a contractarian framework seems to provide a particularly attractive means of approaching this problem. We examine one such attempt, which derives a harm minimisation rule from the assumptions of rational self-interest and ignorance of one’s position in a future accident. We contend, (...)
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  30. Are We Conditionally Obligated to be Effective Altruists?Thomas Sinclair - 2018 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 46 (1):36-59.
    It seems that you can be in a position to rescue people in mortal danger and yet have no obligation to do so, because of the sacrifice to you that this would involve. At the same time, if you do save anyone, then you must not leave anyone to die whom it would cost you no additional sacrifice to save. On the basis of these claims, Theron Pummer and Joe Horton have recently defended a ‘conditional obligation of effective altruism’, which (...)
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  31. O Lugar das Emoções na Ética e na Metaética.Flavio Williges, Marcelo Fischborn & David Copp (eds.) - 2018 - Pelotas: NEPFil online/Editora da UFPel.
    Esta coletânea explora o papel desempenhado pelas emoções na teorização em ética e metaética. Inclui capítulos escritos por pesquisadores do Brasil e de outros países.
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  32. Multidimensional Consequentialism and Risk.Vuko Andrić & Attila Tanyi - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (1):49-57.
    In his new book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson proposes a version of multi-dimensional consequentialism according to which risk is one among several dimensions. We argue that Peterson’s treatment of risk is unsatisfactory. More precisely, we want to show that all problems of one-dimensional (objective or subjective) consequentialism are also problems for Peterson’s proposal, although it may fall prey to them less often. In ending our paper, we address the objection that our discussion overlooks the fact that Peterson’s proposal (...)
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  33. Multi-dimensional consequentialism and degrees of rightness.Vuko Andrić & Attila Tanyi - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (3):711-731.
    In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multidimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multidimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis—he calls it DEGREE—that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. This goes against the (...)
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  34. Cluelessness.Hilary Greaves - 2016 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (3):311-339.
    Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action, however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless. In this paper, I distinguish between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ possible sources of cluelessness. In terms of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing literature on cluelessness focusses (...)
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  35. Morality, Accountability and the Wrong Kind of Reasons.Micah Lott - 2016 - Utilitas 28 (1):28-40.
    In The Second Person Standpoint, Stephen Darwall makes a new argument against consequentialism, appealing to: the conceptual tie between obligation and accountability, and the for holding others accountable. I argue that Darwall's argument, as it stands, fails against indirect consequentialism, because it relies on a confusion between our being right to establish practices, and our having a right to do so. I also explore two ways of augmenting Darwall's argument. However, while the second of these ways is more promising than (...)
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  36. The Case Against Consequentialism Reconsidered.Nikil Mukerji - 2016 - Cham: Springer.
    This book argues that critics of consequentialism have not been able to make a successful and comprehensive case against all versions of consequentialism because they have been using the wrong methodology. This methodology relies on the crucial assumption that consequentialist theories share a defining characteristic. This text interprets consequentialism, instead, as a family resemblance term. On that basis, it argues quite an ambitions claim, viz. that all versions of consequentialism should be rejected, including those that have been created in response (...)
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  37. On the Incoherence Objection to Rule-Utilitarianism.Alex Rajczi - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4):857-876.
    For a long time many philosophers felt the incoherence objection was a decisive objection to rule-consequentialism, but that position has recently become less secure, because Brad Hooker has offered a clever new way for rule-consequentialists to avoid the incoherence objection. Hooker’s response defeats traditional forms of the incoherence objection, but this paper argues that another version of the problem remains. Several possible solutions fail. One other does not, but it introduces other problems into the theory. I conclude that the new (...)
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  38. E. F. Carritt (1876-1964).Anthony Skelton - 2016 - In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Wiley-Blackwell.
    E. F. Carritt (1876-1964) was educated at and taught in Oxford University. He made substantial contributions both to aesthetics and to moral philosophy. The focus of this entry is his work in moral philosophy. His most notable works in this field are The Theory of Morals (1928) and Ethical and Political Thinking (1947). Carritt developed views in metaethics and in normative ethics. In meta-ethics he defends a cognitivist, non-naturalist moral realism and was among the first to respond to A. J. (...)
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  39. Is anything just plain good?Mahrad Almotahari & Adam Hosein - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1485-1508.
    Geach and Thomson have argued that nothing is just plain good, because ‘good’ is, logically, an attributive adjective. The upshot, according to Geach and Thomson, is that consequentialism is unacceptable, since its very formulation requires a predicative use of ‘good’. Reactions to the argument have, for the most part, been uniform. Authors have converged on two challenging objections . First, although the logical tests that Geach and Thomson invoke clearly illustrate that ‘good’, as commonly used, is an attributive, they don’t (...)
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  40. Making room for rules.Adam Cureton - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (3):737-759.
    Kantian moral theories must explain how their most basic moral values of dignity and autonomy should be interpreted and applied to human conditions. One place Kantians should look for inspiration is, surprisingly, the utilitarian tradition and its emphasis on generally accepted, informally enforced, publicly known moral rules of the sort that help us give assurances, coordinate our behavior, and overcome weak wills. Kantians have tended to ignore utilitarian discussions of such rules mostly because they regard basic moral principles as a (...)
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  41. Non-Consequentialism Demystified.John Ku, Howard Nye & David Plunkett - 2015 - Philosophers' Imprint 15 (4):1-28.
    Morality seems important, in the sense that there are practical reasons — at least for most of us, most of the time — to be moral. A central theoretical motivation for consequentialism is that it appears clear that there are practical reasons to promote good outcomes, but mysterious why we should care about non-consequentialist moral considerations or how they could be genuine reasons to act. In this paper we argue that this theoretical motivation is mistaken, and that because many arguments (...)
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  42. What the Utilitarian Cannot Think.Mark T. Nelson - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (4):717-729.
    I argue that utilitarianism cannot accommodate a basic sort of moral judgment that many people want to make. I raise a real-life example of shockingly bad behavior and ask what can the utilitarian say about it. I concede that the utilitarian can say that this behavior caused pain to the victim; that pain is bad; that the agent’s behavior was impermissible; even that the agent’s treatment of the victim was vicious. However, there is still one thing the utilitarian cannot say, (...)
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  43. Ein Plädoyer für den Rechtsnormen-Konsequentialismus.Vuko Andrić & Martin Kerz - 2014 - Archiv Für Rechts- Und Sozialphilosophie. Beihef 140:87-98.
    How can legal norms be morally evaluated? In this paper we discuss and defend consequentialism about legal norms. According to this doctrine, the legitimacy of legal norms depends entirely on the consequences of the norms’ validity. Consequentialism about legal norms shares the advantages of both act- and rule-consequentialism while avoiding the respective disadvantages. In particular, consequentialism about legal norms has prima-facie plausibility like act-consequentialism and for similar reasons: it qualifies as a version of collective act-consequentialism. At the same time, the (...)
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  44. Agents, Patients, and Obligatory Self-Benefit.Michael Cholbi - 2014 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (2):159-184.
    Consequentialism is often criticized for rendering morality too pervasive. One somewhat neglected manifestation of this pervasiveness is the obligatory self-benefit objection. According to this objection, act-consequentialism has the counterintuitive result that certain self-benefitting actions turn out, ceteris paribus, to be morally obligatory rather than morally optional. The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, I consider and reject four strategies with which consequentialists might answer the obligatory self-benefit objection. Despite the apparent consequentialist credentials of these answers, none of these strategies (...)
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  45. Comments on Douglas Portmore’s Commonsense Consequentialism.Paul Hurley - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1):225-232.
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  46. Why Retributivism Needs Consequentialism: The Rightful Place of Revenge in the Criminal Justice System.Ken Levy - 2014 - Rutgers Law Review 66:629-684.
    Consider the reaction of Trayvon Martin’s family to the jury verdict. They were devastated that George Zimmerman, the defendant, was found not guilty of manslaughter or murder. Whatever the merits of this outcome, what does the Martin family’s emotional reaction mean? What does it say about criminal punishment – especially the reasons why we punish? Why did the Martin family want to see George Zimmerman go to jail? And why were – and are – they so upset that he didn’t? (...)
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  47. Consequentialism, Deontology and the Morality of Promising.Nikil Mukerji - 2014 - In Johanna Jauernig & Christoph Lütge (eds.), Business Ethics and Risk Management. Springer. pp. 111-126.
    In normative ethics there has been a long-standing debate between consequentialists and deontologists. To settle this dispute moral theorists have often used a selective approach. They have focused on particular aspects of our moral practice and have teased out what consequentialists and deontologists have to say about it. One of the focal points of this debate has been the morality of promising. In this paper I review arguments on both sides and examine whether consequentialists or deontologists offer us a more (...)
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  48. A Better World.Ryan Preston-Roedder - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (3):629-644.
    A number of moral philosophers have endorsed instances of the following curious argument: it would be better if a certain moral theory were true; therefore, we have reason to believe that the theory is true. In other words, the mere truth of the theory—quite apart from the results of our believing it or acting in accord with it—would make for a better world than the truth of its rivals, and this fact provides evidence of the theory’s truth. This form of (...)
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  49. Consequentialist Options.Jussi Suikkanen - 2014 - Utilitas 26 (3):276-302.
    According to traditional forms of act-consequentialism, an action is right if and only if no other action in the given circumstances would have better consequences. It has been argued that this view does not leave us enough freedom to choose between actions which we intuitively think are morally permissible but not required options. In the first half of this article, I will explain why the previous consequentialist responses to this objection are less than satisfactory. I will then attempt to show (...)
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  50. Consequentializing and Deontologizing: Clogging the Consequentialist Vacuum".Paul Hurley - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 3:123-153.
    That many values can be consequentialized – incorporated into a ranking of states of affairs – is often taken to support the view that apparent alternatives to consequentialism are in fact forms of consequentialism. Such consequentializing arguments take two very different forms. The first is concerned with the relationship between morally right action and states of affairs evaluated evaluator-neutrally, the second with the relationship between what agents ought to do and outcomes evaluated evaluator-relatively. I challenge the consequentializing arguments for both (...)
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