Stephen Darwall has advanced the rational care theory of welfare, a metaethical thesis about the meaning of welfare judgments. Somewhat informally, here’s the view: RCTW: to say that some state of affairs x would be good for someone is to say that anyone who cares […] Read More
My previous pre-vital nonexistence is not, and was not, bad for me. My previous pre-vital nonexistence is relevantly similar to my forthcoming post-mortem nonexistence—that is, just as it is true to say that my going out of existence sooner than I might have means that […] Read More
It’s holiday time, and lots of good food is being ingested, so I figured this might be a good opportunity to explore an issue that’s caused me significant moral squirming over the past several years. I’m a carnivore. Yes, I said it. But I’m finding […] Read More
We’ve had past discussions here at PEA Soup about agenda-setting books in ethics and important articles. But like most of you, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of material published. (My fantasy is to hire someone who knows my interests, concerns, predilections, and the like, who […] Read More
Suppose you find yourself in a situation in which you can either save A and B or save C. A, B and C are relevantly similar – all are strangers to you, none is more deserving of life than any other, none is responsible for […] Read More
So here’s something fun. You can take a "moral sense" quiz, through a project at Harvard, by clicking here. It takes about 15 minutes, and you can also register for updates at the end. It’s testing your reactions to various moral scenarios, some of which […] Read More
In my post on the semantics of ‘ought’, I intimated that my end-relational analysis of ‘ought’ could also handle categorical uses, but tried to bracket that claim and those uses out of the conversation. Kris has invited me to explain, however, and so here I […] Read More
Pea Soup’s own Ben Bradley recently had his paper, "Against Satisficing Consequentialism" win the 2005 Dartmouth ISUS (International Society for Utilitarian Studies) Conference paper prize. Congrats Ben!
For my first post, here’s something on the semantics of ‘ought’ that I’ve been working on. I’m pretty excited about it, so maybe someone can burst my bubble. It’s striking that the deontic terms (‘ought’, ‘must’, ‘have to’, ‘might’, ‘may’, etc.) are also modal terms. […] Read More