Gerald Lang

Steinhoff defends the moral and legal permissibility of torture in a limited range of circumstances. This article criticizes Steinhoff’s arguments. The analogy between ordinary defensive violence and defensive torture which Steinhoff argues for is partly spoiled by the presence, within defensive torture, of opportunistic harm, in addition to eliminative harm. Steinhoff’s arguments that the mere legalization of defensive torture would not metastasize into a more full-fledged institutionalization of torture are also found wanting. As a minimal form of institutionalization, the mere legalization of torture would already be at risk of further entrenchment and growth.

Imagine a two-person distributive case in which Ernest's choices yield X and Bertie's choices yield X + Y, producing an income gap between them of Y. Neither Ernest nor Bertie is responsible for this gap of Y, since neither of them has any control over what the other agent chooses. This is what Susan Hurley calls the “Boring Problem” for luck egalitarianism. Contrary to Hurley's relatively dismissive treatment of it, it is contended that the Boring Problem poses a deep problem for standard luck egalitarianism. To counter it, luck egalitarianism needs to be recast as a baseline-relative theory. This new version of luck egalitarianism is then put to work against some significant problems that have been encountered by luck egalitarianism: Saul Smilansky's “Paradox of the Baseline,” the “Partiality Worry,” and the “Pluralism Worry.” But baseline-relative luck egalitarianism is not without problems of its own.

Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich describes how a man's exposure to imminent death allows him to secure redemption from a flawed life. Through close textual attention to Tolstoy's novella and extensive engagement with Frances Kamm's treatment of it, this article quarrels with this of Ivan's case, offering a sourer, more pessimistic view. It is argued that Ivan's reconciliation to death is facilitated by a series of mistakes he makes en route to his dying moments. Two more general lessons are drawn: first, that we are all vulnerable to the mistakes Ivan makes, and second, that reflection on the quality of our lives does not present us with any obvious resources for coming to terms with our own deaths.

Scalar utilitarianism, a form of utilitarianism advocated by Alastair Norcross, retains utilitarianism's evaluative commitments while dispensing with utilitarianism's deontic commitments, or its commitment to the existence or significance of moral duties, obligations and requirements. This article disputes the effectiveness of the arguments that have been used to defend scalar utilitarianism. It is contended that Norcross's central ‘Persuasion Argument’ does not succeed, and it is suggested, more positively, that utilitarians cannot easily distance themselves from deontic assessment, just as long as scalar utilitarians admit – as they should do – that utilitarian evaluation generates normative reasons for action.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Should Utilitarianism Be Scalar?Volume 25, Issue 1GERALD LANG DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000295Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Should Utilitarianism Be Scalar?Volume 25, Issue 1GERALD LANG DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000295Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Should Utilitarianism Be Scalar?Volume 25, Issue 1GERALD LANG DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000295Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission.

Republican liberty, as recently defended by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, characterises liberty in terms of the absence of domination, instead of, or in addition to, the absence of interference, as favoured by Berlin-style negative liberty. This article considers several claims made on behalf of republican liberty, particularly in Pettit's and Skinner's recent writings, and finds them wanting. No relevant moral or political concern expressed by republicans, it will be contended here, fails to be accommodated by negative liberty

One Rawlsian response to G. A. Cohen’s criticisms of justice as fairness which Cohen canvasses, and then dismisses, is the 'Freedom Objection'. It comes in two versions. The 'First Version' asserts that there is an unresolved trilemma among the three principles of equality, Pareto-optimality, and freedom of occupational choice, while the 'Second Version' imputes to Rawls’s theory a concern to protect occupational freedom over equality of condition. This article is mainly concerned with advancing three claims. First, the 'ethical solution' Cohen advances against the First Version of the Freedom Objection does not grant a fair hearing to the Freedom Objection. Second, the distinction Cohen presses between the legal and moral right of occupational choice in his response to the Second Version cannot save him from worries about Stalinist coercion. Third, Cohen’s response to the First Version of the Freedom Objection is actually in tension with his response to the Second Version of the Freedom Objection.

In a series of influential papers, John McDowell has argued that the rule‐following considerations explored in Wittgenstein’s later work provide support for a particularist form of moral objectivity. The article distinguishes three such arguments in McDowell’s writings, labelled the Anthropocentricism Argument, the Shapelessness Argument, and the Anti‐Humean Argument, respectively, and the author disputes the effectiveness of each of them. As far as these metaethical debates are concerned, the article concludes that the rule‐following considerations leave everything in their place

The ‘standard interpretation’ of John Taurek’s argument in ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ imputes two theses to him: first, ‘numbers scepticism’, or scepticism about the moral force of an appeal to the mere number of individuals saved in conflict cases; and second, the ‘equal greatest chances’ principle of rescue, which requires that every individual has an equal chance of being rescued. The standard interpretation is criticized here on a number of grounds. First, whilst Taurek clearly believes that equal chances are all-important, he actually argues for a position weaker than the equal greatest chances principle. Second, the argument Taurek gives for the importance of equal chances ought to commit him to being more hospitable to the significance of numbers than he seems to be. Third, and as a result, Taurek should not have dismissed the significance of numbers but embraced a form of pluralism instead. Fourth, this result should be welcomed, because pluralism is more plausible than either the equal greatest chances principle or the saving the greater number principle.