First, a sort of apology: this post is a bit lengthy, and it may be a bit more “metaphysicsy” than the usual on PEA Soup, […] Read More
Category: Value Theory
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
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
Value objectivists like myself tend to think of practical reasoning as the process by which an agent forms beliefs about what things have value, and […] Read More
Fred Feldman (Pleasure and the Good Life) and Chris Heathwood (“The Problem of Defective Desires”) point out the following paradox for desire satisfaction theory, which […] Read More
Proponents of intrinsic value have sometimes attempted to argue for its existence via the following sort of regress argument: Something is valuable; but […] Read More
A couple of months ago, on Orangephilosophy, I posted descriptions of the following two lives: Baby. A three-week-old baby, Baby, dies in an accident. Had […] Read More
In a recent review essay, “Morality and Virtue: An Assessment of Some Recent Work in Virtue Ethics“, David Copp and PEA Soup’s own David Sobel […] Read More
Ronald Dworkin argues, in two lengthy papers (“What is Equality? Parts 1 and 2”, P&PA 1981), that, if we care about equality at all, then […] Read More