Broadly construed, a theory is consequentialist (or teleological, if you prefer) iff it takes the deontic status of an action to be solely a function […] Read More
Category: Normative Ethics
A number of ethical theorists in southern California (myself included) have recently convened a reading group to consider Derek Parfit’s unpublished manuscript Climbing the Mountain. […] Read More
It seems to me that there are not only reasons for action, but also reasons for belief and even reasons for having certain feelings and […] Read More
Following our earlier discussion about the merits of particularism comes this review by Timonthy Chappell of Jonathan Dancy’s new book, Ethics Without Principles. Book reviewing, […] Read More
Satisficing consequentialism (SC) is the view that an act is morally right iff its consequences are “good enough.” Michael Slote came up with a few […] Read More
Actualist Utilitarianism (AU) is, roughly stated, the view that we ought to act so as to maximise the sum total of actual people’s utilities. (By […] Read More
Lest anyone think that Campbell Brown went on a murderous rampage against all other PEA Brains to take over the blog for himself, I feel […] Read More
Within consequentialism, it’s common to draw a distinction between two kinds of rightness: an act X is said to be objectively right just when, among […] Read More
In an earlier post, Supererogation for Maximisers, I tried to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable claims: first, that maximising consequentialism is true; and, second, that supererogatory […] Read More