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1086Why economics needs ethical theoryIn Kaushik Basu & Ravi Kanbur (eds.), Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen: Volume I: Ethics, Welfare, and Measurement and Volume Ii: Society, Institutions, and Development, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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724The Value of a PersonAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 68 (1). 1994.(for Adam Morton's half) I argue that if we take the values of persons to be ordered in a way that allows incomparability, then the problems Broome raises have easy solutions. In particular we can maintain that creating people is morally neutral while killing them has a negative value.
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137Normative Practical ReasoningAristotelian 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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80Jean E. Hampton (1954-1996). ObituaryEconomics and Philosophy 12 (2): 251-252. 1996.An obituary of Jean E. Hampton (1954-1996) by the editors of Economics and Philosophy. At the time of her premature death, Jean was serving as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal.
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302The 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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3156Since 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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149The value of living longerIn Sudhir Anand, Fabienne Peter & Amartya Sen (eds.), Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, Oxford University Press. pp. 243--260. 2004.
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141Practical 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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242Williams 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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89The unity of reasoningIn Simon Robertson (ed.), Spheres of Reason, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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952Goodness 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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62Deontology 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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394General 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. 2015.
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288RequirementsHommage 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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404MotivationTheoria 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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466Does Rationality Consist in Responding Correctly to Reasons?Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (3): 349-374. 2007.Some philosophers think that rationality consists in responding correctly to reasons, or alternatively in responding correctly to beliefs about reasons. This paper considers various possible interpretations of ‘responding correctly to reasons’ and of ‘responding correctly to beliefs about reasons’, and concludes that rationality consists in neither, under any interpretation. It recognizes that, under some interpretations, rationality does entail responding correctly to beliefs about reasons. Tha…Read more
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72Responses to Setiya, Hussain, and HortyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1): 230-242. 2015.
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382"Utility"Economics and Philosophy 7 (1): 1-12. 1991.“Utility,” in plain English, means usefulness. In Australia, a ute is a useful vehicle. Jeremy Bentham specialized the meaning to a particular sort of usefulness. “By utility,” he said, “is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered”. The “principle of utility” is the principle that actions are to be judged by their use…Read more
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 |