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 we should care about equality of resources — as opposed to, in particular, equality of welfare. Central to his argument […] Read More
I was browsing some of the blogs over at Experimental Philosophy the other day, and it got me thinking about something weird that has happened in every ethics course I have taught to date. The class will be discussing hedonism (about welfare), and I present […] Read More
Ever come across an argument that you just know can’t be right but you can’t pin down its flaw? I had that experience recently while reading an older paper on punishment, Alan Wertheimer’s “Deterrence and retribution.” (Ethics 86 (1976): 181-199) Quick background: Retributivists about criminal […] Read More
On behalf of all of us here at PEA Soup, I extend a warm welcome to Jason Kawall, who has graciously accepted our invitation to be a contributor. Jason Kawall is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colgate University. He specializes in ethics, epistemology, and […] Read More
A common picture of value determination with respect to pains, pleasures and other such mental states seems to be the following: the intrinsic value of such states is determined by their phenomenological character. Thus, some people hold that all pleasures are intrinsically good, and all […] Read More
First, let me apologize to my fellow bloggers at PEA Soup for taking so long to break my silence. I agreed to join a couple of days before leaving for an extended vacation on the East Coast, and upon my return, the great weather we […] Read More
Let’s start off with a rough characterization of what a normative reason (hereafter, simply “reason”) is. The fact that p will be the case if S Xs is a reason for S to X if and only if that p will be the case if […] Read More
It’s widely believed that maximising consequentialism implies that supererogatory action is impossible. And many philosophers, finding the idea of supererogation intuitively plausible, regard this as a reason to reject maximising consequentialism (and perhaps to adopt some form of “satisficing” consequentialism instead). As I shall argue, […] Read More
According to the fitting-attitudes analysis of value (the FA analysis), to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude. For instance, on one version of the FA analysis, what it is for an object to be valuable for its own sake is […] Read More