Doing the Best We Can
An Essay in Informal Deontic Logic
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In his 2018 book Why Does Inequality Matter? T. M. Scanlon discusses the question how significant differences of economic advantage can be justified. He surveys a variety of possible justifications. In Chapter 8—...
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In earlier work I defended Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism—a view about what makes for individual personal welfare. On this view, a person’s level of welfare is entirely determined by the amounts of intrinsic a...
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According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts ...
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Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would...
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Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Brentano, Moore, and Chisholm have suggested ’’marks‘‘ or criteria of intrinsic goodness. I distinguish among eight of these. I focus in this paper on four: (a) unimprovability, (b) unq...
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In this paper, I present my solutions to two closely related questions about pleasure. One of these questions is fairly well known. Quite a few philosophers have discussed it, and the literature contains many ...
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One of the main claims I want to make concerning the views I have presented in the preceding chapters of this book is a claim about their unity. I have been trying here to provide a unified set of accounts of ...
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There is a magnificent old idea according to which the concept of obligation can be understood by appeal to the concepts of possibility and goodness. Roughly, the idea is that something is obligatory if and on...
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The sort of neo-utilitarian approach that I advocate has been subjected of a fair amount of criticism. I think it will be useful to spend some time considering and evaluating some of this criticism. I want to ...
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The moral writings of Immanuel Kant have drawn attention to a class of interesting and puzzling iffy oughts. These are the so-called “hypothetical imperatives”. While some philosophers1 have apparently used the t...
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Many moral thinkers have accepted the notion that there is an important connection between moral obligation and group welfare. More specifically, they have thought that the welfare of a social group would more...