Cliff Landesman provides a vivid description of a case where we have no best outcome available to us. He poses this as a problem for utilitarians who advise us to do the best we can. This does indeed make such advice impractical. I begin by contrasting older versions of utilitarianism with newer ones that have appeared in deontic logic and that were designed precisely to accommodate Landesman's sort of scenario. (I cast matters in terms of the Limit Assumption and world-theoretic (...) versions of utilitarianism.) I then make three points. First, Landesman's problem does not pose any special problem for these newer theories. Secondly, I note that it is an interesting consequence of these newer theories being utilitarian theories, that--contrary to the tradition--utilitarianism isn't automatically a no conflicts theory of obligation. Thirdly, and most importantly, I identify a new, deeper and wider theoretical problem: "The Confinement Problem". This problem infests the newer versions of utilitarianism. Worse still, the infestation spreads to satisficing consequentialism (cf. Scheffler, Slote), the direction Landesman points to for a solution to his problem, and this new problem is one where the theoretical rulings of these theories clearly conflict with intuition. (shrink)

When a conflict of duties arises, a resolution is often sought by use of an ordering of priority or importance. This paper examines how such a conflict resolution works, compares mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature, and gives preference to one developed by Brewka and Nebel. I distinguish between two cases – that some conflicts may remain unresolved, and that a priority ordering can be determined that resolves all – and provide semantics and axiomatic systems for accordingly defined (...) dyadic deontic operators. (shrink)