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  1.  99
    Moral Conditionals, Noncognitivism, and Meaning.David Alm - 2000 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):355-377.
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  2.  40
    Punishment, Consent and Value.David Alm - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (4):903-914.
    In this paper I take another look at the view, defended by C. Nino, that we may punish criminals because, by knowingly breaking a law, they have consented to becoming liable to the prescribed punishment. I will first rebut the criticisms usually aimed at this view in the literature, aiming to show that they are inconclusive. They are all efforts to show that criminal offenders in fact do not consent to becoming liable to punishment simply by committing crimes. I then (...)
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  3. Atomism about value.David Alm - 2004 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (2):312 – 331.
    Atomism is defined as the view that the moral value of any object is ultimately determined by simple features whose contribution to the value of an object is always the same, independently of context. A morally fundamental feature, in a given context, is defined as one whose contribution in that context is determined by no other value fact. Three theses are defended, which together entail atomism: (1) All objects have their moral value ultimately in virtue of morally fundamental features; (2) (...)
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  4.  75
    Crime Victims and the Right to Punishment.David Alm - 2019 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 13 (1):63-81.
    In this paper, I consider the question of whether crime victims can be said to have a moral right to see their victimizers punished that could explain why they often feel wronged or cheated when the state fails to punish offenders. In the first part, I explain what I mean by a “right to punishment” and what it is for such a right to “explain” the frustrated crime victim’s reaction. In the second part, I distinguish such a right from a (...)
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  5.  82
    Deontological Restrictions and the Good/Bad Asymmetry.David Alm - 2009 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (4):464-481.
    I argue that a defense of deontological restrictions need not resort to what I call the 'Good/Bad asymmetry', according to which it is morally more important to avoid harming others than to prevent just such harm. I replace this paradoxical asymmetry with two non-paradoxical ones. These are the following: We ought to treat an act of preventing harm to persons precisely as such , rather than as the causing of a benefit; but we ought to treat an act that causes (...)
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  6.  19
    Moral Rights and Their Grounds.David Alm - 2018 - New York, USA: Routledge.
    Moral Rights and Their Grounds offers a novel theory of rights based on two distinct views. The first--the value view of rights--argues that for a person to have a right is to be valuable in a certain way, or to have a value property. This special type of value is in turn identified by the reasons that others have for treating the right holder in certain ways, and that correlate with the value in question. David Alm then argues that the (...)
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  7.  89
    Self-Defense, Punishment and Forfeiture.David Alm - 2013 - Criminal Justice Ethics 32 (2):91-107.
    According to the self-defense view, the moral justification of punishment is derived from the moral justification of an earlier threat of punishment for an offense. According to the forfeiture view, criminals can justly be punished because they have forfeited certain rights in virtue of their crimes. The paper defends three theses about these two views. (1) The self-defense view is false because the right to threaten retaliation is not independent of the right to carry out that threat. (2) A more (...)
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  8. Non-Cognitivism and Validity.David Alm - 2007 - Theoria 73 (2):121-147.
    In this paper I defend against a certain objection the view that it is possible to account for validity and kindred notions for moral language within a non-cognitivist framework by appeal to the descriptive meaning of moral terms. The objection is that such an account leads to an asymmetry in the accounts it offers for synonymy in different contexts; in certain contexts it holds that sameness of meaning for a moral term depends on its evaluative meaning, in other contexts that (...)
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  9.  31
    Defending Fundamental Requirements of Practical Reason.David Alm - 2011 - Journal of Philosophical Research 36:77-102.
    In this paper I offer a partial defense of a constitutivist view according to which it is possible to defend fundamental requirements of practical reason by appeal to facts about what is constitutive of rational agency. I show how it is possible for that approach to circumvent the ‘is’/’ought’ problem as well as the requirement that it be possible to act contrary to practical reason. But I do not attempt to establish any particular fundamental requirement. The key ideas are that (...)
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  10.  16
    How Much Effort Can We Make?David Alm - 2011 - American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (4):387-397.
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  11. Desert and the Control Asymmetry.David Alm - 2010 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (4):361 - 375.
    According to what we could call the "liberal" theory of distributive justice, people do not deserve the money they are able to make in the market for contributing to the economy. Yet the standard arguments for that view, which center on the fact that persons have very limited control over the size of their contributions, would also seem to imply that persons cannot deserve admiration, appreciation, esteem, praise and so on for these and other contributions. The control asymmetry is this: (...)
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  12.  83
    Equality and Comparative Justice.David Alm - 2010 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (4):309-325.
    In this paper I criticize the standard argument for deontological egalitarianism, understood as the thesis that there is a moral claim to have an equal share of well-being or whatever other good counts. That argument is based on the idea that equals should be treated equally. I connect the debate over egalitarianism with that over comparative justice. A common theme is a general skepticism against comparative claims. I argue (i) that there can be no claim to equality based simply on (...)
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  13.  43
    Responsibility, Manipulation, and Resentment.David Alm - 2015 - Social Theory and Practice 41 (2):253-274.
    The paper presents a compatibilist explanation of why manipulated agents are not responsible for the actions that result from the manipulation. I first show that an agent’s having reason to resent being manipulated into action is a sufficient condition for his not being responsible for that action, and so an adequate explanation of the latter fact in standard cases in which the agent does have reason to resent. I then consider some cases in which, apparently, manipulation is not cause for (...)
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  14.  48
    Is There a Claim to Deserved Punishment?David Alm - 2014 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):403-425.
    In this paper I defend the view that persons have a claim to deserved treatment, including many forms of punishment, against an objection resting on the principle that it is not possible to have a claim to harmful treatment. I do not challenge this principle, but argue, rather, that the harms wrongdoers typically deserve either (a) are not genuine harms at all (for reasons relevant to their being deserved) or (b) are not relevant to the content of these wrongdoers' claims.
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  15. Sorting out ethics.David Alm - 2000 - Philosophical Review 109 (1):122-124.
    The bulk of this volume consists of a somewhat revised version of the Axel Hägerström Lectures given in Uppsala, Sweden in 1991. It also contains previously published papers on the relevance of philosophy of language to ethics and the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. The latter, in particular, deserves comment, but space considerations force me to devote my attention to the Hägerström Lectures, entitled “A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories.”.
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  16.  37
    Positive Rights: Two-Person Cases.David Alm - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (1).
    The aim of this paper is to analyze the simplest type of case in which need-based positive rights to aid are often attributed. In such "two-person cases" there is just one agent and one patient, and the agent can aid the patient. Two questions are asked about such cases: why does the agent in such a case lack a negative right he would normally have? And why does the patient have a positive right he would not normally have? The main (...)
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  17. Contractualism, reciprocity, compensation.David Alm - 2007 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2 (3):1-23.
    Two generally recognized moral duties are to reciprocate benefits one has received from others and to compensate harms one has done to others. In this paper I want to show that it is not possible to give an adequate account of either duty – or at least one that corresponds to our actual practices – within a contractualist moral theory of the type developed by T. M. Scanlon (1982, 1998). This fact is interesting in its own right, as contractualism is (...)
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  18. Consequentialism and the Autonomy of the Deontic.David Alm - 2008 - Utilitas 20 (2):199-216.
    I distinguish between two forms of consequentialism: reductionist and anti-reductionist. Reductionist consequentialism holds that the deontic properties of rightness and wrongness are identical with the axiological properties of optimality and suboptimality, respectively. Anti-reductionist consequentialism denies this identification, hence accepting what I call the autonomy of the deontic. In this article I ignore reductionist consequentialism. Instead I argue that anti-reductionist consequentialism is deeply problematic or even incoherent. Simply put, the main point is that the criterion of rightness of any ethical theory (...)
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  19.  79
    An argument for agent-neutral value.David Alm - 2007 - Ratio 20 (3):249–263.
    This paper argues that to any agent‐relative value maker there will correspond an agent‐neutral value maker, and the latter explains the former; and that to each agent‐relative constitutive ground there corresponds a neutral one, and the latter explains the former. It follows from , if not from , that agent‐neutral value exists if agent‐relative value does.
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  20.  38
    A Puzzle About Proportionality.David Alm - 2019 - Res Publica 25 (2):133-149.
    The paper addresses a puzzle about the proportionality requirement on self-defense due to L. Alexander. Indirectly the puzzle is also relevant to the proportionality requirement on punishment, insofar as the right to punish is derived from the right to self-defense. Alexander argues that there is no proportionality requirement on either self-defense or punishment, as long as the aggressor/offender has been forewarned of the risk of a disproportional response. To support his position Alexander appeals to some puzzle cases, challenging us to (...)
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  21.  83
    Desert and aggregation.David Alm - 2010 - Journal of Political Philosophy 18 (2):156-177.
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  22.  83
    Deontological restrictions and the self/other asymmetry.David Alm - 2008 - Noûs 42 (4):642-672.
    This paper offers a partial justification of so-called "deontological restrictions." Specifically it defends the "self/other asymmetry," that we are morally obligated to treat our own agency, and thus its results, as specially important. The argument rests on a picture of moral obligation of a broadly Kantian sort. In particular, it rests on the basic normative assumption that our fundamental obligations are determined by the principles which a rational being as such would follow. These include principles which it is not essential (...)
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  23.  63
    Manipulation, Responsibility and Rights.David Alm - 2013 - Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (1-2):1-15.
  24.  16
    On an Apparent Asymmetry in Attitude Desert.David Alm - unknown
    It is possible for persons to deserve evaluative attitudes such as admiration and disdain. There is an apparent asymmetry between positive and negative attitudes, however. While the latter appear to be subject to what I will call a "control requirement," the former do not appear to be so subject. I attempt to explain away this asymmetry by appeal to pragmatic factors.
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  25. Promises, Rights and Claims.David Alm - 2011 - Law and Philosophy 30 (1):51-76.
    The paper argues that promise rights presuppose independently existing (if not pre-existing) claims. The argument relies on the Bifurcation Thesis, according to which all claims, and all rights, can be exhaustively divided into two categories: capacity based and exercise based.
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  26.  38
    Subjectivism, Ethical.David Alm - unknown
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  27.  54
    Self-Defense, Forfeiture and Necessity.David Alm - 2019 - Philosophical Papers 48 (3):335-358.
    The thesis of this paper is that it is possible to explain why a culpable aggressor forfeits his right not to suffer the harm necessary to prevent his aggression if a killer forfeits his right to life. I argue that this strategy accounts also for the necessity restriction on self-defense. I respond to several objections, including the worry that it makes no sense to attempt a derivation of the relatively uncontroversial from the highly controversial.
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