In the last post, I asked, following Dave and Josh’s lead, whether Hooker’s notion of the costs of internalizing a moral code left him with a dilemma: either he is inconsistent about what costs are to be included in the calculation that determines the ideal […] Read More
It is taken to be a platitude that one person can’t be morally responsible for the actions of someone else (see, e.g., Ted Sider’s book Four Dimensionalism for a recent reaffirmation of this claim). But there seems to be a fairly simple argument against this […] Read More
Josh, Doug, Dave, Richard Rodewald, and I were discussing the last two chapters of Brad Hooker’s Ideal Code, Real World, in which Hooker goes to great lengths to discuss the importance of taking into account the costs associated with having each member of an overwhelming […] Read More
Lest our readers begin to think that this blog will turn out to be some sort of consequentialist love-fest, here’s something from the deontology corner of PEA Soup. I recently gave a paper at UNC-Greensboro, in which I defend deontology against Samuel Scheffler’s objection that […] Read More
I recently wrote a paper entitled “Why Most Moral Theories Are Deficient.” I welcome comments and criticisms. Here’s an abstract: “In this paper, I present an argument that poses the following dilemma for any moral theory: either reject one or more of our most firmly […] Read More
This entry is the final installment of a three-part series on consequentializing non-consequentialist moral theories. As noted in Part I, a number of philosophers accept what’s called Dreier’s Conjecture: For any moral theory M, there is some conceivable theory of the good that, when combined […] Read More
Many people think that the problem of embedding ethical sentences like (1) (1) Intentionally flying airplanes into tall buildings is wrong within more complex sentences like (2) (2) If intentionally flying airplanes into tall buildings is wrong, then I won’t do it is one of […] Read More
This entry is the second installment of a three-part series on consequentializing non-consequentialist moral theories. As noted in Part I, a number of philosophers accept what’s called Dreier’s Conjecture: For any moral theory M, there is some conceivable theory of the good that, when combined […] Read More
A number of philosophers (e.g., Brown 2004, Dreier 1993, and Louise forthcoming) have hypothesized that most, if not all, non-consequentialist theories can be “consequentialized.” More precisely, the conjecture is this (paraphrasing Brown 2004): For any moral theory M, there is some conceivable theory of the […] Read More