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71Teleology, consequentialism, and the pastJournal of Value Inquiry 22 (2): 89-101. 1988.Act teleological theories are theories that judge an action permissible just in case its outcome is maximally good.[1] It is usually assumed that act teleological theories cannot be @i, i.e., make the permissibility of actions depend on what the past was like (e.g., on what promises were made, what wrong doings were done, and more generally on what actions were performed).[2] I shall argue that this is not so. Although @u act teleological theories, such as classical act utilitarianism, are not p…Read more
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71The teleological/deontological distinctionJournal of Value Inquiry 21 (1): 21-32. 1987.The teleological/deontological distinction was introduced in 1930 by C.D. Broad] and since then it has come to be accepted as the fundamental classificatory distinction for moral philosophy. I shall argue that the presupposition that there is a single fundamental classificatory distinction is false. There are too many features of moral theories that matter for that to be so. I shall argue furthermore that as it is usually drawn the teleological/deontological distinction is not even a fundamental…Read more
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68Infinite utility: Anonymity and person-centrednessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (3). 1995.In 1991 Mark Nelson argued that if time is infinitely long towards the future, then under certain easily met conditions traditional utilitarianism is unable to discriminate among actions. For under these conditions, each action produces the same infinite amount of utility, and thus it seems that utilitarianism must judge all actions permissible, judge all actions impermissible, or remain completely silent. In response to this criticism of utilitarianism, I argued that utilitarianism had the r…Read more
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67Gauthier on Rationality and MoralityEidso 5 (1): 79-95. 1986.David Gauthier's book represents the culmination of his work over the last twenty years on the theory of rational choice and on contractarian moral theory. It is the most important book on contractarianisni since Rawls‘ A Theory of Justice' and is mandatory reading for anyone specializing in contemporary moral theory. Gauthier does two distinct, although closely related, things in his book: (l) he defends a theory of rational choice, and (2) he defends a contractarian theory of morality. The two…Read more
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67Libertarianism, Autonomy, And ChildrenPublic Affairs Quarterly 5 (4): 333-352. 1991.IBERTARIANS hold that we have such duties as: not to directly and significantly harm others or their property, to keep agreements, to refrain from lying and certain other sorts of deception, and to compensate those whom we wrong. They also hold that we have a duty not to interfere with the liberty of others as long as they are fulfilling these duties. This duty of non-interference, they have thought, has protected the privacy of the home, and hence parental autonomy, for it insures that others h…Read more
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66Hurley on Justice and Responsibility (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2). 2006.In Justice, Luck, and Knowledge, Susan Hurley defends a reason-responsive account of responsibility, argues that appeals to responsibility cannot provide a justification or non-trivial specification of brute luck egalitarian theories of justice, and sketches her own cognitive-bias-neutralizing theory of justice. Throughout, Hurley is concerned with normative (as opposed to causal) responsibility, where this is understood as that which licenses (moral or prudential) praise, blame, and other react…Read more
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65Gimmicky representations of moral theoriesMetaphilosophy 19 (3-4): 253-263. 1988.The teleological/deontological distinction is generally considered to be the fundamental classificatory distinction for ethics. I have argued elsewhere (Vallentyne forthcoming (a), and Ch.2 of Vallentyne 1984) that the distinction is ill understood and not as important as is generally supposed. Some authors have advocated a moral radical thesis. Oldenquist (1966) and Piper (1982) have both argued that the purported distinction is a pseudo distinction in that any theory can be represented both as…Read more
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58Self-ownershipIn Laurence Becker & Charlotte Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd edition, Garland Publishing. 2001.John Locke (1690), libertarians, and others have held that agents are self-owners in the sense that they have private property rights over themselves in the same way that people can have private property rights over inanimate objects. This private ownership is typically taken to include (1) control rights over (power to grant and deny permission for) the use of their persons (e.g., what things are done to them), (2) rights to transfer the rights they have to others (by sale, rental, gift, or loa…Read more
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57Contractarianism and the assumption of mutual unconcernPhilosophical Studies 56 (2). 1989.A contractarian moral theory states that an action (practice, social structure, etc.) is morally permissible if and only if it (or rules to which if conforms) would be agreed to by the members of society under certain circumstances. What people will agree to depends on what their desires are like. Most contractarian theories - for example those of Rawls (1971) and Gauthier (1986) - specify that parties to the agreement are mutually unconcerned (take no interest in each other's interests). Contra…Read more
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55Against Maximizing Act-Consequentialism (December 2, 2010) in Moral Theories edited by Jamie Dreier (Blackwell Publishers, 2006), pp. 21-37 (review)In Dreier Jamie (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Moral Theories, Blackwell. 2006.Maximizing act consequentialism holds that actions are morally permissible if and only if they maximize the value of consequences—if and only if, that is, no alternative action in the given choice situation has more valuable consequences.1 It is subject to two main objections. One is that it fails to recognize that morality imposes certain constraints on how we may promote value. Maximizing act consequentialism fails to recognize, I shall argue, that the ends do not always justify the means. Act…Read more
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54Review of Peter Vallentyne: Contractarianism and Rational choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (review)Ethics 103 (2): 385-387. 1993.
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53Teaching Non-Philosophy Faculty to Teach Critical Thinking about Ethical IssuesLiberal Education 84 (2): 46-51. 1998.At various universities across the country, philosophers are organizing faculty development workshops for non-philosophy faculty members who want to incorporate critical thinking about ethical and social justice issues into their courses. The demand for such programs is reasonably strong. In part this is due to the increasing pressure from professional associations (e.g., those of nursing and accounting) for the inclusion of ethics in the curriculum. In part, however, it is simply due to the rec…Read more
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49On Economic InequalityPhilosophical Review 108 (1): 85. 1999.This is a reprint of Amartya Sen’s 1973 book on the measurement of inequality, plus an updated bibliography and index, and an annex by James Foster and Sen that summarizes and comments on the main developments since 1973. The book is superbly written and focuses on verbal discussion of the plausibility and significance of the conditions, theorems, and measures.
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48David Copp, Morality, Normativity, and Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1995, pp. 262Utilitas 11 (1): 130. 1999.
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48How to combine pareto optimality with liberty considerationsTheory and Decision 27 (3): 217-240. 1989.
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46D. D. Raphaell, Concepts of Justice, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2001, pp. 256Utilitas 15 (1): 112. 2003.
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45Enforcement Rights and Rights to ReparationProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 50 813-820. 2008.I shall develop and defend a view of the reparation (e.g., rights to compensation) and enforcement rights (i.e., rights to use force) that individuals have in response to rights-transgressions. The general nature of the account is intermediate to two well-developed alternatives. Pure responsibility accounts hold that reparation and enforcement rights hold only to the extent that the transgressor is culpable, or in some way responsible, for the transgression or resulting harm. Strict liability ac…Read more
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44In Child versus Childmaker Melinda Roberts provides an enlightening analysis and a cogent defense of a version of the person-affecting restriction in ethics. The rough idea of this restriction is that an action, state of affairs, or world, cannot be wrong, or bad, unless it would wrong, or be bad for, someone. I shall focus solely on Roberts’s core principles, and thus shall not address her interesting chapter-length discussions of wrongful life cases and of human cloning cases. The person-affec…Read more
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40The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings (edited book)Palgrave Publishing. 2000.This book contains the historically most important discussions of the philosophical foundations of left-libertarianism. Like the more familiar right-libertarianism (such as that of Nozick), left-libertarianism holds that agents own themselves (and thus owe no service the others expect as the result of voluntary action). Unlike right-libertarianism, however, left-libertarianism holds that natural resources are owned by the members of society in some egalitarian manner, and may be appropriated onl…Read more
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39Democratic distributive justice, Ross Zucker. Cambridge university press, 2001, X + 336 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 19 (1): 156-160. 2003.
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39A Tree Can Make a DifferenceJournal of Philosophy 114 (1): 33-42. 2017.We show that it is not possible to extend the ranking of one-stage lotteries based on their weak-expectation to a reflexive and transitive relation on the collection of one- and two-stage lotteries that satisfies two basic axioms, the minimal value axiom and the reduction axiom. We propose an extension that satisfies only the first axiom. This ranking takes payoffs, their probabilities, and the tree structure into account.
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39Practical Guilt: Moral Dilemmas, Emotions, and Social NormsPhilosophical Review 105 (4): 550. 1996.This book brings together and develops Patricia Greenspan’s thoughts on moral dilemmas and the role of emotions in moral judgment. Her main focus is on metaethics and moral psychology, and she discusses moral dilemmas primarily as a concrete way of introducing these issues.
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38Motivational Ties and Doing What One Most WatsJournal of Philosophical Research 16 443-445. 1991.In his paper "Motivational Ties"[i] Al Mele addresses the question of how intentional behavior is possible in "Buridan’s ass" choice situations. This is the question of how an agent could make a choice between two or more (equally) maximally attractive options (such as choosing one, rather than another, of two effectively identical copies of a desired book). For if, as is commonly supposed, choices and intentions are based on the attractiveness of options (roughly, how strongly one is motivated …Read more
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36Review of Steven J. Brams and Alan D. Taylor: Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution (review)Ethics 108 (1): 213-215. 1997.
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36The connection between prudential and moral goodnessJournal of Social Philosophy 24 (2): 105-128. 1993.
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31Infinity in ethics (2nd ed.)Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.Puzzles can arise in value theory and deontic (permissibility) theory when infinity is involved. These puzzles can arise for ethics, for prudence, or for any normative perspective. For the sake of simplicity, we focus on the ethical versions of these problems. We start by addressing problems that can arise in determining what is permissible, either in a given choice situation when there are an infinite number of options or in infinite sequence of choice situations, each with only finitely many o…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |