Counterexample to Parfit's Rule Consequentialism Copyedited2
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The Evidential Weight of Considered Moral Judgments
San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research 2009 The evidential weight of considered moral judgments Christopher Michael Cloos San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Cloos, Christopher Michael, "The evidential weight of considered moral judgments" (2009). Master's Theses. 3352. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.28pf-kx6u https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3352 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Philosophy San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Christopher Michael Cloos December 2009 © 2009 Christopher Michael Cloos ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS by Christopher Michael Cloos APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY December 2009 Dr. William H. Shaw Department of Philosophy Dr. Anand J. Vaidya Department of Philosophy Dr. Richard L. Tieszen Department of Philosophy ABSTRACT THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS by Christopher Michael Cloos The input objection to reflective equilibrium (RE) claims that the method fails as a method of moral justification. According to the objection, considered moral judgments (CMJs) are not truth-conducive. Because the method uses inputs that are not credible, the method does not generate justified moral beliefs. -
Non-Religious Ethics? a Critical Notice of Derek Parfit, on What Matters
Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Rosen, Michael. 2013. “Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21, no. 5: 755–772. Published Version doi:10.1080/09672559.2013.857818 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12967839 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters The History Workshop was a movement of radical social historians which flourished in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Its goal was to promote “history from below” – to tell the stories of those left out of conventional narratives, and, at the same time, to open up the practice of history itself. Anyway, when the group decided to start a journal, there was a debate over whether it should carry book reviews. Weren’t book reviews – the ranking of others’ work, delivered in a tone of apparent omniscience – examples of exactly the kind of academic gate-keeping against which they had set themselves? So, in its early issues at least, the History Workshop Journal didn’t carry reviews but “Enthusiasms” – contributions in which someone would introduce a new book to readers in positive terms, without pretending to be marking it in some transcendental Prize Fellowship Examination. -
Review of Parfit, on What Matters
Draft for London Review of Books Review of Parfit, On What Matters Allan Gibbard Morality can’t just be a system of arbitrary taboos. We want its protections, and others need those protections from us. A morality worth heeding must have a rationale, and considerations like these must somehow drive it. A chief job of moral philosophers is to discern such a rationale, and to shape it by criticism and argument. Utilitarians Bentham and John Stuart Mill grounded morality in the general happiness—but at times, duty and total happiness seem to conflict. If a dead husband had led a secret life, then a sweet lie told to the widow may forestall even greater misery, but if she would really want to know the truth however bitter, the lie wrongs her. Utilitarianism is sometimes at odds, it seems, with our moral intuitions. Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics in 1874—“his great, drab book”, as Derek Parfit calls it—argued over hundreds of pages that whereas moral knowledge must rest ultimately on intuition, “the morality of common sense is unconsciously utilitarian.” Utilitarianism, in Sidgwick’s version, is the doctrine that morally right acts are those that produce the greatest total happiness for all. When Parfit and I were young in the 1960’s, utilitarianism or something close was widely accepted among leading moral philosophers. Parfit developed the astoundingly original ideas of his youth in his vast 1984 book Reasons and Persons. His line was more or less utilitarian, scrutinizing with avid precision the logic of alternative forms of utilitarianism and supporting concern for others by a set of Bhuddist-like arguments that there need be no clear boundary between one person’s experience and another’s. -
Gibbard, Allan
ThinkingH ow to Live with Each Other ALLAN GibbARD The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Delivered at TheU niversity of California, Berkeley February 28–March 2, 2006 Allan Gibbard is Richard Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He graduated from Swarth- more College and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Achimota School in Ghana while in the Peace Corps, and at the Uni- versity of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as president of the Central Division of the Ameri- can Philosophical Society. His many publications include Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result (1973); Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (1990); Moral Discourse and Practice (co- editor with Stephen Darwall and Peter Railton, 1997); and ThinkingH ow to Live (2003). I. INSight, CONSISTENCY, AND PLANS FOR LiviNG Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist, entitles a fascinating article “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail.” His topic is moral judgment, and the emotional dog is what he calls “intuition.” Mostly, he argues, we don’t arrive at our moral conclusions by reasoning. We jump to them with emo- tional judgments, with “affectively valenced intuitions,” as he puts it. We will often be firmly convinced that our moral judgments rest on sound reasoning, and that unless others are driven by bias, they will appreciate the force of our arguments. -
Normative Ethics
Philosophy 34: Normative Ethics Matthew Silverstein Spring 2008 Contact Information Office: 204 Cooper House Office Hours: Tuesday, 2:00–5:00 pm, and by appointment Email: [email protected] Phone: (413) 542-8310 Course Description Is anything to be said in a principled way about right and wrong, or good and bad? We will examine a number of positive and negative answers to this question. Our primary focus will be on three of the central traditions of Western ethical philosophy, typified by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. We will also study one of modern morality’s harshest critics: Friedrich Nietzsche. Along the way, we will look at contemporary discussions of the relation between the demands of morality and those personal obligations that spring from friendships, as well as recent views about the nature of well-being. Course Requirements There will be one short expository paper (2–3 pages) and two longer critical papers (6–8 pages). Preparation and active participation also count towards your grade. Your final grade will be determined as follows: 20% Short Paper 35% Long Paper 1 35% Long Paper 2 5% Preparation 5% Participation Your preparation grade will be a function of unannounced, in-class ten-minute essay assignments. There will be several such assignments over the course of the semester. Their purpose is to ensure that everyone has studied the assigned reading and to encourage thoughtful discussion in class. Though they will not be graded, I will collect them at the end of class. These essays cannot be made up, and unsatisfactory work will receive no credit. -
A Consequentialist Response to the Demandingness Objection
1 A CONSEQUENTIALIST RESPONSE TO THE DEMANDINGNESS OBJECTION Nicholas R. Baker, Lee University INTRODUCTION We usually believe that morality has limits; that is, that there is some limit to what morality may reasonably demand of moral agents. We suppose that there are supererog atory actions that are just that, supererogatory. We often think that while morality may require some positive and negative obligations, there are at least some actions that are simply permissible.1 This is what the demandingness objection to consequentialism is about; it draws upon our intuitions on these issues in order to show how counter-intuitive the implications of some versions of normative ethics can be. In this paper I will outline and defend the demandingness objection as it applies to act-consequentialism (hereafter AC), then I will argue that rule-consequentialism (hereafter RC), as conceived of by Brad Hooker, is also susceptible to this objection; finally, I will attempt to amend RC so that it may escape the demandingness objection. THE DEMANDS OF ACT CONSEQUENTIALISM Shelly Kagan states in the early parts of his text, The Limits of Morality, that, “[T]here are [. .] what we might think of as limits imposed on morality – for it is typically believed that there are limits to what morality can demand of us.”2 He goes on to further suggest that, “[I]t is generally held that although morality does sometimes require us to make sacrifices, we are not morally required to make our greatest possible contributions to the overall good. There is a limit to moral requirement.”3 While Kagan himself argues for a withholding of judgement as to whether or not these limits do exist, I will be arguing that these limits do, in fact, exist. -
Home of the Owl? Kantian Reflections on Philosophy at University
Home of the Owl? Kantian Reflections on Philosophy at University Wolfgang ERTL Professor, Keio University Abstract: The focus of this paper will be on Kant and on a text which has often been drawn upon when talking about the present situation of philosophy at university, namely his The Conflict of the Faculties of 1798. Kant’s claims, though not applicable to the contemporary situation directly, can indeed be worked out in a way which can assign a distinct and clearly identifiable role for university-based philosophy. I need to emphasize, though, that I am not suggesting that this is the only way Kant’s thoughts in this respect can be adapted to and utilized for such an account. Quite the contrary, Kant’s text offers a manifold of highly important options here. In my article I will seek to establish the following claims: a) Kant, in his later years, which therefore amounts to something like his “mature” position, subscribed to a conception of a public use of reason which mainly referred to the Faculties of Philosophy at universities. b) Kant’s dismissal of philosophy according to the school conception of it must not be taken as a dismissal of academic philosophy altogether. Philosophy practiced at university by professionals is vital for Kant to build philosophy as a fully worked out discipline and to answer questions revolving around the issue of the compatibility of the theoretical standpoint and Kant’s own moral theory. c) Neither a) nor b) can be immediately applied to the contemporary situation we find ourselves in. Combining elements of a) and b), however, a possible route for the actualization of Kant’s ideas may open up. -
Allan Gibbard Reviews ‘On What Matters’ by Derek Parfit · LRB 7 June 2012 9/27/12 1:15 PM
Allan Gibbard reviews ‘On What Matters’ by Derek Parfit · LRB 7 June 2012 9/27/12 1:15 PM This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of × cookies. (More Information) Back to article page Five Girls on a Rock Allan Gibbard On What Matters by Derek Parfit Oxford, 540 pp. and 825 pp, £30.00, May 2011, ISBN 978 0 19 926592 3 Morality can’t just be a system of arbitrary taboos. We want its protections, and others want those same protections against us. A morality worth heeding must have a rationale. A chief task of moral philosophers is to discern such a rationale and to shape it by criticism and argument. Derek Parfit’s On What Matters looks to two great moral philosophers, Immanuel Kant in the late 18th century and Henry Sidgwick, whose treatise The Methods of Ethics first appeared in 1874. Kant, Parfit writes, ‘is the greatest moral philosopher since the ancient Greeks’, but Sidgwick’s Methods ‘is, I believe, the best book on ethics ever written’. Kant and Sidgwick are normally taken to stand for the two great opposing moral visions: Sidgwick for utilitarianism, which concerns itself with how to maximise happiness, and Kant for a moral law grounded in reason. Parfit finds, however, that Kant and Sidgwick are ‘climbing the same mountain’ by different routes. We are still far from the summit by either route, but as Parfit said a quarter-century ago, ‘compared with the other sciences, non-religious ethics is the youngest and the least advanced.’ As with any science, a mature ethics might take generations to formulate. -
Moral Theory for Separate Persons
London School of Economics and Political Science One-by-One: Moral Theory for Separate Persons Bastian Steuwer A thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, 14th May 2020. 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others. I confirm that a version of Chapter 1 is published as “Why It Does Not Matter What Matters: Personal Identity, Relation R, and Moral Theory” in The Philosophical Quarterly 70 (2020): 178-98; a version of Chapter 3 is forthcoming as “Contractualism, Complaints, and Risk” in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy; and a version of Chapter 5 is forthcoming as “Aggregation, Balancing, and Respect for the Claims of Individuals” in Utilitas. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that this thesis consists of 84,347 words. Bastian Steuwer 2 Abstract You and I lead different lives. While we share a society and a world, our existence is separate from one another. You and I matter individually, by ourselves. My dissertation is about this simple thought. -
DEPARTMENT of PHILOSOPHY – Generic Course Descriptions
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY – Generic Course Descriptions PHI 500 The Philosophy of Plato The course is a study of the development of Plato's thought and an examination of the validity of his major contributions in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, cosmology, and ethics. PHI 501 The Philosophy of Aristotle The course is an historical and critical study of the major concepts of the metaphysics, theory of knowledge, and ethics of Aristotle. Particular attention is given to the Metaphysics, to parts of the Physics, Categories, Posterior Analytics, and the de Anima, and to the Nicomachean Ethics. PHI 502 The Philosophy of Kant Selected works of Kant are read, analyzed, and discussed. PHI 506 Topics in Medieval Philosophy The course is an intensive examination of selected developments in medieval philosophical thought. Topics may range from the detailed examination of a single text or the work of a single philoso- pher to the consideration of various medieval approaches to a significant philosophical problem. Among the areas that may be considered are medieval logic and semantics, universals, individuation and the plurality of forms, abstractive and intuitive knowledge, theories of human nature, and natural theology. PHI 507 (Cross-listed under POL 507) Plato's Statesman (Half-Term) Plato's Statesman remains relatively neglected in political theory and in classical philosophy alike. This course elucidates its relevance to key topics in political philosophy, including: the nature of politics as a science, art or craft; its relationship to other arts and sciences that contribute to society and political life; the relationship between knowledge and law; the relationship between ideal theory and non-ideal regimes. -
On What Matters DEREK PARFIT
ON WHAT MATTERS DEREK PARFIT Draft of 23 January 2009 CONTENTS VOLUME ONE 205,000 525 pages INTRODUCTION Samuel Scheffler 5,000 PREFACE 4,500 SUMMARY 13,500 PART ONE REASONS 50,000 CHAPTER 1 NORMATIVE CONCEPTS 1 Sufficient and Decisive Reasons 2 Reason-Involving Goodness CHAPTER 2 OBJECTIVE THEORIES 3 Two Kinds of Theory 4 Responding to Reasons 5 State-given Reasons 6 Hedonic Reasons 2 7 Irrational Preferences CHAPTER 3 SUBJECTIVE THEORIES 8 Subjectivism about Reasons 9 Why People Accept Subjective Theories 10 Analytical Subjectivism 11 The Agony Argument CHAPTER 4 FURTHER ARGUMENTS 12 The All or Nothing Argument 13 The Incoherence Argument 14 Reasons, Motives, and Well-Being 15 Arguments for Subjectivism CHAPTER 5 RATIONALITY 16 Practical and Epistemic Rationality 17 Beliefs about Reasons 18 Other Views about Rationality CHAPTER 6 MORALITY 19 Sidgwick’s Dualism 20 The Profoundest Problem CHAPTER 7 MORAL CONCEPTS 21 Acting in Ignorance or with False Beliefs 22 Other Kinds of Wrongness PART TWO PRINCIPLES 34,000 CHAPTER 8 POSSIBLE CONSENT 3 23 Coercion and Deception 24 The Consent Principle 25 Reasons to Give Consent 26 A Superfluous Principle? 27 Actual Consent 28 Deontic Beliefs 29 Extreme Demands CHAPTER 9 MERELY AS A MEANS 30 The Mere Means Principle 31 As a Means and Merely as a Means 32 Harming as a Means CHAPTER 10 RESPECT AND VALUE 33 Respect for Persons 34 Two Kinds of Value 35 Kantian Dignity 36 The Right and the Good 37 Promoting the Good CHAPTER 11 FREE WILL AND DESERT 38 The Freedom that Morality Requires 39 Why We Cannot -
Anita L. Allen
ANITA L. ALLEN Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy CONTACT INFORMATION: University of Pennsylvania Law School 3400 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19041 Office: (215) 898-9035; cell: (610) 716-7603 Fax: (215) 573-2025; Home fax: (610) 896-7508 E-mail: [email protected]. AREAS OF INTEREST AND SPECIALIZATION: Privacy, Intimacy, and Personal Accountability; Ethics, Bioethics; Personal Injury Law; Moral, Social and Political Philosophy; Legal Philosophy; Feminist Philosophy and Legal Theory; Race Policy; Philosophy of the Family; Reproductive Rights EDUCATION: HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, J.D., 1981-84 · Mark DeWolfe Howe Fellowship, 1984 · American Association of University Women Fellow, 1983 · Teaching Fellow, in philosophy and political theory, Harvard College, 1981-1984 · Danforth Center Certificate of Distinction in Undergraduate Teaching, 1984 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ph.D., M.A., Philosophy, 1974-79 · Ford Foundation Fellow, 1974-1978 · Teaching Fellow, in ethics, political theory, and medical humanities , 1975-78 · Dissertation, “Rights, Children and Education,” Richard Brandt, Chair NEW COLLEGE, Sarasota, Florida, B.A., Philosophy, Classics and Literature, 1970-74 · Senior Thesis, “Rudolf Carnap and the Possibility of Metaphysics” ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law (2004- present); Professor of Law and Philosophy (1998-present); Senior Fellow, Bioethics Department, School of Medicine, 2005-present. 1 Service: Chair, Entry-level Faculty Appointments Committee;