Action Guidance and Rational Decision Procedures

With the background out of the way, let's now look at how we should go about formulating a "decision procedure" to complement our moral theory's criterion of rightness.

Assessing Decision Procedures: Background

Fred Feldman's 'True and Useful: On the Structure of a Two Level Normative Theory' discusses the "implementability problem" that confronts not just consequentialism, but -- he suggests -- any moral theory that attributes normative significance to features that an agent may be ignorant of (as surely any plausible theory does). Any plausible moral theory, then, will need to have two "levels": the theoretical criterion of rightness, and the practical (i.e. implementable) decision procedure that goes with it. Feldman's generality claim strikes me as an important insight, but I want to raise some questions about how we should understand the relevant "decision procedures".

NY Times catches up to science on "Morning-After Pills"

Here:

But an examination by The New York Times has found that, the federally approved labels and medical Web sites do not reflect what the science shows. Studies have not established that emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb, leading scientists say. Rather, the pills delay ovulation, the release of eggs from ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized, and some pills also thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming.

About time.