The Authority Account of Prudential Options
Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (1):17-35 (2015)
Abstract
The Authority Account provides a new explanation why commonsense morality contains prudential options—options that permit agents to perform actions that promote their own wellbeing more than the action they have most reason to do, from the moral point of view. At the core of that explanation are two claims. The first is that moral requirements are traditionally widely taken to have an authoritative status; that is, to be rules that morality imposes by right. The second is that in order for moral requirements to have such a status, morality must contain prudential options. If both of these claims are true, then they will create a pressure to think of morality as containing prudential options. And according to the Authority Account, the fact that commonsense morality contains such options is the result of this pressure.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1111/sjp.12094
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Citations of this work
The Division of Normativity and a Defence of Demanding Moral Theories.Elizabeth Ventham - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-15.
References found in this work
Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality.Douglas W. Portmore - 2011 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press USA.