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A Life Worth LivingIn Weighing lives, Oxford University Press. 2004.This chapter defines the neutral value for extending life. This is the level of a person’s temporal wellbeing at which it is just worth the person’s continuing to live: extending the life is equally as good for the person as not extending it. The chapter examines and rejects the view that extending a person’s life is normally ethically neutral. This view is analogous to the neutrality intuition about adding a person to the population. It implies that every level of wellbeing is neutral. It may b…Read more
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307The wellbeing of future generationsIn The Oxford Handbook of Wellbeing and Public Policy, Oxford University Press. 2016.This chapter surveys some of the issues that arise in policy making when the wellbeing of future generations must be taken into account. It analyses the discounting of future wellbeing, and considers whether it is permissible. It argues that the effects of policy on the number of future people should not be ignored, and it considers what is an appropriate basis for setting a value on these effects. It considers the implications of the non-identity effect for intergenerational justice and for the…Read more
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3215Since the last ice age, when ice enveloped most of the northern continents, the earth has warmed by about five degrees. Within a century, it is likely to warm by another four or five. This revolution in our climate will have immense and mostly harmful effects on the lives of people not yet born. We are inflicting this harm on our descendants by dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We can mitigate the harm a little by taking measures to control our emissions of these gases, and to adapt …Read more
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165The value of living longerIn Sudhir Anand (ed.), Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 243--260. 2004.
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142Practical reasoningIn José Luis Bermúdez & Alan Millar (eds.), Reason and nature: essays in the theory of rationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 85--111. 2002.
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252Williams on OughtIn Ulrike Heuer & Gerald R. Lang (eds.), Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford University Press Usa. 2012.In 2002, Bernard Williams delivered a lecture that revisited the arguments of his article 'Ought and moral obligation', published in his Moral Luck. The lecture attributed to the earlier article the thesis that there are no ‘personal’ or (as I put it) ‘owned’ oughts. It also rejected this thesis. This paper explains the idea of an owned ought, and supports Williams’s lecture in asserting that there are owned oughts. It also examines the question of how accurately Williams’s later lecture interpr…Read more
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90The unity of reasoningIn Simon Robertson (ed.), Spheres of reason: new essays in the philosophy of normativity, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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971Goodness is Reducible to Betterness the Evil of Death is the Value of LifeIn Peter Koslowski Yuichi Shionoya (ed.), The Good and the Economical: Ethical Choices in Economics and Management, Springer Verlag. 1993.Most properties have comparatives, which are relations. For instance, the property of width has the comparative relation denoted by `_ is wider than _'. Let us say a property is reducible to its comparative if any statement that refers to the property has the same meaning as another statement that refers to the comparative instead. Width is not reducible to its comparative. To be sure, many statements that refer to width are reducible: for instance, `The Mississippi is wide' means the same as `T…Read more
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271Normative practical reasoning: John BroomeAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75 (1). 2001.Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious example is norm…Read more
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374Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and TimeWiley-Blackwell. 1991.This study uses techniques from economics to illuminate fundamental questions in ethics, particularly in the foundations of utilitarianism. Topics considered include the nature of teleological ethics, the foundations of decision theory, the value of equality and the moral significance of a person's continuing identity through time.
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935Is Incommensurability Vagueness?In Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, incomparability, and practical reason, Harvard. 1997.
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93The Public and Private Morality of Climate ChangeThe Tanner Lectures on Human Values 32 3-20. 2013.The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world
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237Reasoning with preferences?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 59 183-208. 2006.Rationality requires certain things of you. It requires you not to have contradictory beliefs or intentions, not to intend something you believe to be impossible, to believe what obviously follows from something you believe, and so on. Its requirements can be expressed using schemata such as
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29Reply to Jones-LeeEconomics and Philosophy 23 (3): 385-387. 2007.It is not the job of philosophy to give direct practical advice either to people or to governments. Nevertheless, moral philosophy is immensely significant in practical matters. It influences the way we think and act, but only slowly as it filters through the process of public debate. I hope Weighing Lives will have a practical influence, but it is not meant to be a directly practical guide
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289RequirementsHommage À Wlodek; 60 Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz. 2007.The object of this paper is to explore the intersection of two issues – both of them of considerable interest in their own right. The first concerns the role that feasibility considerations play in constraining normative claims – claims, say, about what we (individually and collectively) ought to do and to be. This issue has particular relevance for the confrontation of moral philosophy with economics (and social science more generally). The second issue concerns whether normative claims are to …Read more
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63Deontology and EconomicsEconomics and Philosophy 8 (2): 269-282. 1992.In The Moral Dimension, Amitai Etzioni claims, as did Albert Hirschman in Morality and the Social Sciences, that people often act from moral motives, that economics needs to recognize this, and that it will be significantly changed by doing so. I agree, though I think the changes may be smaller than Etzioni believes – I shall be explaining why. But Etzioni goes further. He makes a specific claim about the sort of morality that motivates people: it is deontological. In this paper, I shall examine…Read more
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402General and personal good: Harsanyi’s contribution to the theory of valueIn Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford University Press Usa. 2015.
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413MotivationTheoria 75 (2): 79-99. 2009.I develop a scheme for the explanation of rational action. I start from a scheme that may be attributed to Thomas Nagel in The Possibility of Altruism , and develop it step by step to arrive at a sharper and more accurate scheme. The development includes a progressive refinement of the notion of motivation. I end by explaining the role of reasoning within the scheme.
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72Responses to Setiya, Hussain, and HortyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1): 230-242. 2015.
John Broome
University Of Oxford
Australian National University
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University Of OxfordFaculty of PhilosophyProfessor
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Australian National UniversityProfessor (Part-time)
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |