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727Deciding How to Decide: Is There a Regress Problem?In Michael Bacharach & Susan Hurley (eds.), Essays in the Foundations of Decision Theory, Blackwell. 1991.
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1190The "Prospective View" of ObligationJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (1): 1-9. 2010.No abstract.
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678The Moral Clout of Reasonable BeliefsIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume I, Oxford University Press. 2010.Because we must often make decisions in light of imperfect information about our prospective actions, the standard principles of objective obligation must be supplemented with principles of subjective obligation (which evaluate actions in light of what the agent believes about their circumstances and consequences). The point of principles of subjective obligation is to guide agents in making decisions. But should these principles be stated in terms of what the agent actually believes or what i…Read more
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15A Paradox of PromisingPhilosophical Review 106 (2): 153-196. 1997.For centuries it has been a mainstay of European and American moral thought that keeping promises—and the allied activity of upholding contracts—is one of the most important requirements of morality. On some historically powerful views the obligation to uphold promises or contracts not only regulates private relationships, but also provides the moral foundation for our duty to support and obey legitimate governments. Some theorists believe that the concept of keeping promises has gradually moved…Read more
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96Subjective rightness: Holly M. SmithSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 64-110. 2010.Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who may be uncertain about the…Read more
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Doing the best one canIn Alvin I. Goldman & Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brandt, Springer. pp. 186-214. 1978.in Values and Morals, eds. Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim (Reidel, 1978), pp. 186-214.
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21The 'collective' interpretation of utilitarian generalizationPhilosophical Studies 34 (2). 1978.Peer Reviewed.
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166The Subjective Moral Duty to Inform Oneself before ActingEthics 125 (1): 11-38. 2014.The requirement that moral theories be usable for making decisions runs afoul of the fact that decision makers often lack sufficient information about their options to derive any accurate prescriptions from the standard theories. Many theorists attempt to solve this problem by adopting subjective moral theories—ones that ground obligations on the agent’s beliefs about the features of her options, rather than on the options’ actual features. I argue that subjective deontological theories suffer a…Read more
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70Moral realism, moral conflict, and compound actsJournal of Philosophy 83 (6): 341-345. 1986.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
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664Doing the Best One CanIn A. I. Goldman & I. Kim (eds.), Values and Morals, D. Reidel. pp. 185--214. 1978.
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432Two Concepts of DemocracyIn Norman Bowie (ed.), Ethical Issues in Government, Temple University Press. 1981.
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44Two-Tier Moral Codes: HOLLY M. SMITHSocial Philosophy and Policy 7 (1): 112-132. 1989.A moral code consists of principles that assign moral status to individual actions – principles that evaluate acts as right or wrong, prohibited or obligatory, permissible or supererogatory. Many theorists have held that such principles must serve two distinct functions. On the one hand, they serve a theoretical function, insofar as they specify the characteristics in virtue of which acts possess their moral status. On the other hand, they serve a practical function, insofar as they provide an a…Read more
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38Goldman's 'level-2' act descriptions and utilitarian generalizationPhilosophical Studies 30 (1). 1976.
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600Measuring the Consequences of Rules: Holly M. SmithUtilitas 22 (4): 413-433. 2010.Recently two distinct forms of rule-utilitarianism have been introduced that differ on how to measure the consequences of rules. Brad Hooker advocates fixed-rate rule-utilitarianism, while Michael Ridge advocates variable-rate rule-utilitarianism. I argue that both of these are inferior to a new proposal, optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism. According to optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism, an ideal code is the code whose optimum acceptance level is no lower than that of any alternative code. I then a…Read more