I hereby shamlessly plug a new journal with which I am associated, Studies in the History of Ethics. Studies is a new web-based, peer reviewed journal dedicated to publishing high quality articles and reviews in the history of ethics. We’ve just published our first batch […] Read More
Consequentialism, many philosophers have claimed, asks too much of us to be a plausible ethical theory. Indeed, consequentialism’s severe demandingness is often claimed to be its chief flaw. I will try to show that consequentialism’s demandingness cannot be the theory’s downfall. I do not here […] Read More
Sometimes moral philosophers engage in genuine debate. Sometimes, however, it turns out the apparent debate is merely verbal; the philosophers do not disagree about the fundamental normative facts. When this happens, let us say that the apparently conflicting normative theories are normatively equivalent. It seems […] Read More
The program for the Second Annual Metaethics Workshop, Sept. 16-18, has been announced. It’s below the fold. Congratulations to frequent PEA Soup commentor Robert Johnson for getting on the program!
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 utility is here meant a numerical representation of a person’s level of wellbeing, or welfare.) It is distinguished from regular […] 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 I should jump in and post something to let people know the rest of us are alive and to pick […] 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 the alternatives open to the agent, X will, as a matter of objective fact, have the best consequences; whereas X […] 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 action is possible. Subsequently, the same topic has received significant attention in the comments to another post, Favourite Objections to […] Read More
Thomas Hobbes argued famously that, if a group of human individuals were ever to find themselves in the conflict-ridden “state of nature” that he envisioned — an unenviable situation in which every individual faces the rather grim prospects of a “nasty, brutish, and short” life […] Read More