Brad Hooker

We typically think that morality prohibits certain kinds of behaviour, such as killing the innocent, stealing, breaking promises, etc. This chapter explores rule‐consequentialism's ability to underwrite these prohibitions, and, in particular, to underwrite our views about when such prohibitions should be amended or overridden. Argues against absolute prohibitions and explores the role of judgement in rule‐consequentialism. The final section explains how rule‐consequentialism can endorse rules giving agents special obligations towards family and friends.

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be.

_Developing Deontology_ consists of six new essays in ethical theory by leading contemporary moral philosophers. Each essay considers concepts prominent in the development of deontological approaches to ethics, and these essays offer an invaluable contribution to that development. Essays are contributed by Michael Smith, Philip Stratton-Lake, Ralph Wedgewood, David Owens, Peter Vallentyne, and Elizabeth Harman - all leading contemporary moral philosophers Each essay offers an original and previously unpublished contribution to the subject A significant addition to the field for anyone with an interest in the development of deontology The collection is edited by a leading philosophical scholar.

What distinguishes moral judgements from judgements of other kinds? In addressing this question, this paper tries to remain as neutral as possible about which moral judgments are correct. The paper addresses objections to thinking that the defining feature of moral judgements is their other-regarding grounds, or their social function, or their motivational force, or their connection to reactive attitudes such as guilt, indignation, and resentment. The proposal this paper makes is that a judgment is a moral judgment if and only if this judgment is a member of a group of judgments of which some do carry commitment to the appropriateness of such reactive attitudes.

This paper employs (and defends where needed) a familiar four-part methodology for assessing moral theories. This methodology makes the most popular kind of moral pluralism--here called Ross-style pluralism--look extremely attractive. The paper contends, however, that, if rule-consequentialism's implications match our considered moral convictions as well as Ross-style pluralism's implications do, the methodology makes rule-consequentialism look even more attractive than Ross-style pluralism. The paper then attacks two arguments recently put forward in defence of Ross-style pluralism. One of these arguments is that no moral theory containing some single normative principle to justify general pro tanto duties can do justice to the ineliminable role of judgment in moral thinking. The other argument is that no such theory is plausible in light of the fact that our moral ideas come from disparate historical sources

This paper has been about the question of what there is most reason to doin situations in which either there are no moral considerations to be takeninto account or the moral considerations to be taken into account are equally balanced. I have assessed all Parfit's arguments for concluding that the Present-aim Theory is right and the Self-interest Theory wrong aboutthis question. In § III, I showed how Parfit's argument from personal identity leads not to the abandonment of the Self-interest Theory, but merely to a revision of it. In § IV, I argued that a premiss relied on by Parfit's argument from incomplete relativity - the premiss that theoretical and practical reason are relevantly similar - is too weak to support the conclusion that knowingly doing what is against one's long- term self-interest is rational (when no moral considerations are in play). In § V, I addressed Parfit's argument that we must reject the Self-interest Theory because we believe that it is rational to care more about certain things (such as achievement) than about one's overall welfare. I suggested that he misdescribed what we believe: for what we really believe is that it is not irrational to care more about these things than about either having the most pleasant life possible or having the life with the strongest desires fulfilled. This thought is consistent with Objective List versions of the Self- interest Theory. In § VI, I suggested Parfit's argument from our bias towards the future might be answered by making a second revision to the Self-interest Theory. Therefore, for all Parfit has argued, a version of the Self-interest Theory might be the most plausible theory of what we have most reason to do when moral considerations do not decide the issue.21.

Most of us believe morality requires us to help the desperately needy. But most of us also believe morality doesn't require us to make enormous sacrifices in order to help people who have no special connection with us. Such self-sacrifice is of course praiseworthy, but it isn't morally mandatory. Rule-consequentialism might seem to offer a plausible grounding for such beliefs. Tim Mulgan has recently argued in _Analysis and _Pacific Philosophical Quarterly that rule-consequentialism cannot do so. This paper replies to Mulgan's arguments.