“The Murphy Institute’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University is pleased to announce residential Faculty Fellowships for the 2009-2010 academic year. These fellowships, made possible by funds from the Tulane Murphy Foundation, are available to support outstanding faculty whose teaching and research […] Read More
The poll question was: If someone holds both (a) that an act is morally permissible if and only if it maximizes aggregate pleasure and (b) that nothing whatsoever (not even pleasure) is good, then s/he is what type of theorist? And, as of 9:20 a.m. […] Read More
The poll question was: Assuming that you’re a consequentialist (if you’re not one, then please don’t take this poll), do you believe that the best outcome available to a given agent is always the one that she ought to prefer to all other available alternatives? […] Read More
If appropriate, please cast your vote in the following polls. Once I have a fair bit of data, I’ll explain why I’m interested in people’s answers to these questions. Here’s the first poll, a poll for only consequentialists: Online Surveys & Market Research Below the […] Read More
Since we’ve talked a bit in the past here about the editorial practices followed by our profession’s journals, I thought I’d ask what people think about journals giving authors deadlines to respond to ‘revise and resubmit’ letters.
We are pleased to announce that Patricia Greenspan has accepted our invitation to become a contributor here at PEA Soup. She is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and works primarily in the areas of ethics and philosophy of mind. “She […] Read More
Consider absolute-level satisficing consequentialism: ALSC: “There is a number, n, such that: An act is morally right iff either (i) it has a utility of at least n, or (ii) it maximizes utility” (Bradley 2006, 101). ALSC, like many other versions of satisficing consequentialism, permits […] Read More
I once heard someone maintain something absolutely absurd: A life in prison is just the price for committing murder, he said, and you are "free" to commit murder as long as you are willing to pay that price. Clearly this is crazy. A life in […] Read More
The philosopher Kristen Bell has discovered a puzzling new asymmetry which has come to be known affectionately as ‘Bell’s Inequality.’ Probably the best way to explain the effect she uncovered is just to describe her original experiment.