The mistake Mill made by confusing what we can desire and what deserves to be desired or must be desired has been discussed extensively in the literature. However, the meta-normative intuition that remains in the background of the argument has been less discussed. This intuition, though, aims in the right direction, as it points at the idea that the desirable emerges from the desirable. My purpose here is to defend this claim by arguing that it provides a way to avoid (...) some of the classical objections to utilitarianism. (shrink)

It is sometimes believed that moral hypocrites –those who say that something should be made without having any disposition to do it– cannot give honest lessons on Ethics. In this paper, I distinguish two forms of normative beliefs and I defend that the claim stated above is false 1) if the concept of belief is the common one and 2) regardless of the conditions of validity of the norms.