As everyone knows, I ‘Reealy’ like Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other. One good thing about the book is that every time you read it (and I’ve read it quite a few times) you find something new that’s usually both interesting and puzzling. Here’s […] Read More
Lately I’ve been thinking about taxonomy of philosophical views, especially in the area of normative ethics. Here’s a fragment of a common taxonomy of ethical theories. (This will be a bit rough; but the details aren’t important here.) To begin, we distinguish consequentialist from non-consequentialist […] Read More
The standard view of Kantianism has been that it firmly denies that the right is grounded in the good.
Does anyone hold the following view? If so, who? Where? When? Why? The notion of desire is to be understood/analyzed in terms of the notion of preference, perhaps along the following lines: S wants that P =df. S prefers P to not-P. (The basic idea […] Read More
In James Rachels’ famous article, “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” he argues that, if the only relevant difference between active and passive euthanasia is that the former involves killing and the latter involves letting die, then that difference is not a morally relevant difference if there’s […] Read More
One of the best parts of Crisp’s book so far is the section on enjoyment. He is a hedonist about well-being – something increases your well-being only in so far as it creates experiences of enjoyment for you. Having this view about well-being then supposedly […] Read More
The international conference "Utilitarianism: anethics of experience?" will be held at the Universityof Rome "La Sapienza", Rome, June 14-16, 2007.
The latest appears below the fold.
I’m happy to announce the addition of John Oberdiek to our list of contributors. John is a co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy, and he’s also on the graduate faculty in the Rutgers department of philosophy. He specializes in — wait for […] Read More