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3140Since 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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1214What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?Utilitas 33 (4): 379-383. 2021.The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.
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1065Why 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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947Goodness 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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911Is Incommensurability Vagueness?In Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, incomparability, and practical reason, Harvard. 1997.
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865Normative requirementsRatio 12 (4). 1999.Normative requirements are often overlooked, but they are central features of the normative world. Rationality is often thought to consist in acting for reasons, but following normative requirements is also a major part of rationality. In particular, correct reasoning – both theoretical and practical – is governed by normative requirements rather than by reasons. This article explains the nature of normative requirements, and gives examples of their importance. It also describes mistakes that ph…Read more
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716The 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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691The badness of death and the goodness of lifeIn Fred Feldman, Ben Bradley & Jens Johansson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Death, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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550Wide or narrow scope?Mind 116 (462): 359-370. 2007.This paper is a response to ‘Why Be Rational?’ by Niko Kolodny. Kolodny argues that we have no reason to satisfy the requirements of rationality. His argument assumes that these requirements have a logically narrow scope. To see what the question of scope turns on, this comment provides a semantics for ‘requirement’. It shows that requirements of rationality have a wide scope, at least under one sense of ‘requirement’. Consequently Kolodny's conclusion cannot be derived.
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542Incommensurable valuesIn Roger Crisp & Brad Hooker (eds.), Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin, Clarendon Press. pp. 21--38. 2000.Two options are incommensurate in value if neither is better than the other, and if a small improvement or worsening of one does not necessarily make it determinately better or worse than the other. If a person faces a sequence of choices between incommensurate options, she may end up with a worse options than she could have had, even though none of her choices are irrational. Yet it seems that rationality should save her from this bad outcome. This is the practical problem posed by incommensura…Read more
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463Does 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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459Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming WorldW. W. Norton. 2012.Esteemed philosopher John Broome avoids the familiar ideological stances on climate change policy and examines the issue through an invigorating new lens. As he considers the moral dimensions of climate change, he reasons clearly through what universal standards of goodness and justice require of us, both as citizens and as governments. His conclusions—some as demanding as they are logical—will challenge and enlighten. Eco-conscious readers may be surprised to hear they have a duty to offset all…Read more
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453A world climate bankIn Iñigo González-Ricoy & Axel Gosseries (eds.), Institutions for Future Generations, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 156-169. 2016.
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433Climate change: life and deathIn Jeremy Moss (ed.), Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge University Press. 2015.commissioned for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
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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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393General 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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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
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377Is Rationality Normative?Disputatio 2 (23): 161-178. 2007.Rationality requires various things of you. For example, it requires you not to have contradictory beliefs, and to intend what you believe is a necessary means to an end that you intend. Suppose rationality requires you to F. Does this fact constitute a reason for you to F? Does it even follow from this fact that you have a reason to F? I examine these questions and reach a sceptical conclusion about them. I can find no satisfactory argument to show that either has the answer ‘yes’. I consider t…Read more
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370Weighing 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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339Against DenialismThe Monist 102 (1): 110-129. 2019.Several philosophers deny that an individual person’s emissions of greenhouse gas do any harm; I call these “individual denialists.” I argue that each individual’s emissions may do harm, and that they certainly do expected harm. I respond to the denialists’ arguments.
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332Reasons and motivation: John BroomeAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1). 1997.Derek Parfit takes an externalist and cognitivist view about normative reasons. I shall explore this view and add some arguments that support it. But I shall also raise a doubt about it at the end.
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321Backwards induction in the centipede gameAnalysis 59 (4): 237-242. 1999.The standard backward-induction reasoning in a game like the centipede assumes that the players maintain a common belief in rationality throughout the game. But that is a dubious assumption. Suppose the first player X didn't terminate the game in the first round; what would the second player Y think then? Since the backwards-induction argument says X should terminate the game, and it is supposed to be a sound argument, Y might be entitled to doubt X's rationality. Alternatively, Y might doubt th…Read more
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305Instrumental reasoningIn Julian Nida-Rümelin & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Rationality, Rules and Structure, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 195-207. 2000.Like all reasoning, practical reasoning is a process that takes a person from some of her existing mental states to a new mental state. Theoretical reasoning concludes in a belief; practical reasoning in an intention. This paper concentrates on instrumental reasoning, a species of practical reasoning in general. It argues that instrumental reasoning is correct if the content of the reasoning is a valid derivation, just as theoretical reasoning is correct if its content is a valid derivation. It …Read more
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304Do not ask for moralityIn Adrian Walsh, Säde Hormio & Duncan Purves (eds.), The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics, Routledge. pp. 9-21. 2016.
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301The 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
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 |