The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 44, 1998

Theoretical Ethics

John J. Tilley
Pages 248-253

Two (Faulty) Responses to the Challenge of Amoralism

To the question "Why should I be moral?" there is a simple answer (SA) that some philosophers find tempting. There is also a response, common enough to be dubbed the standard response (SR), to the simple answer. In what follows, I show that the SA and SR are unsatisfactory; they share a serious defect.