Philosophy, et cetera

Matthew Adelstein kindly invited me & Michael Huemer to hash out our disagreements about utilitarianism  over on his YouTube channel.  T...

Those put-off by the putative counterexamples to Act Consequentialism  may consider Rule Consequentialism a more appealing alternative. Mich...

In ' Why I Am Not a Utilitarian ', Michael Huemer objects that "there are so many counter-examples, and the intuitions about th...

Ethical theories are typically formulated as centrally concerning the concept of right  action.  Introductory ethics classes may define comp...

Back in July, I mentioned  our new introduction to population ethics .  Since then, I've also added a chapter on Theories of Well-being ...

One fundamental reason for favouring consequentialism  is the basic teleological intuition that the primary purpose  of agency is to realize...

In ' The Means and the Good ' ( Analysis , forthcoming) Matthew Oliver argues that pluralist consequentialists can accommodate intui...

[An excerpt from my paper-in-progress on the paradox of deontology, setting out my core argument...] Let's begin with some cases.^[The ...

I think that something very close  to utilitarianism is the right moral theory, and most of the standard objections are bunk .  But here ar...

From p.479 of ' Motive Utilitarianism ': The moral point of view—the point of view from which moral judgments are made—cannot safely...

Jason Brennan argues that most people can't have the faintest clue about the expected value of voting for either candidate in an elect...

Parfit sometimes suggested that Act Consequentialism might best be understood, not as a moral theory, but as an external rival  to morality....

"It’s obviously horrible to value the economy over human lives." - Regina Rini  echoes a common moral conviction.  I am so deeply ...

Max Hayward  has an interesting paper, 'Utility Cascades', forthcoming in Analysis .  We're told: " Utility Cascades occur...

Here's a fun puzzle (that I owe to Caspar Hare): Polluter is trying to work out how to dispose of her toxic waste barrel economically, w...

[ Update: see related discussion  at PEA Soup , and a much improved version of the argument in my paper, ' Preference and Prevention: A...

There's something I find puzzling about the dialectic on this issue .  Many philosophers suggest that there is an "inefficacy  pro...

Many people are drawn to the Prioritarian view that "Benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are." ( Parfit 199...

My new paper on ' Deontic Pluralism ' argues for " a maximizing account of the  ought of most reason , a satisficing account of...

Abstract:  Consequentialist views have traditionally taken a maximizing  form, requiring agents to bring about the very best outcome that th...