Campbell Brown

In Better Never to Have Been, David Benatar argues that existence is always a harm (Benatar 2006, pp. 18--59). His argument, in brief, is that this follows from a theory of personal good which we ought to accept because it best explains several 'asymmetries'. I shall argue here (a) that Benatar's theory suffers from a defect which was already widely known to afflict similar theories, and (b) that the main asymmetry he discusses is better explained in a way which allows that existence is often not a harm.

Recent epistemology has introduced a new criterion of adequacy for analyses of knowledge: such an analysis, to be adequate, must be compatible with the common view that knowledge is better than true belief. One account which is widely thought to fail this test is reliabilism, according to which, roughly, knowledge is true belief formed by reliable process. Reliabilism fails, so the argument goes, because of the "swamping problem". In brief, provided a belief is true, we do not care whether or not it was formed by a reliable process. The value of reliability is "swamped" by the value of truth: truth combined with reliability is no better than truth alone. This paper approaches these issues from the perspective of decision theory. It argues that the "swamping effect" involves a sort of information-sensitivity that is well modelled decision-theoretically. It then employs this modelling to investigate a strategy, proposed by Goldman and Olsson, for saving reliabilism from the swamp, the so-called "conditional probability solution". It concludes that the strategy is only partially successful.

A good life, or a life worth living, is a one that is "better than nothing". At least that is a common thought. But it is puzzling. What does "nothing" mean here? It cannot be a quantifier in the familiar sense, yet nor, it seems, can it be a referring term. To what could it refer? This paper aims to resolve the puzzle by examining a number of analyses of the concept of a life worth living. Temporal analyses, which exploit the temporal structure of lives, are distinguished from non-temporal ones. It is argued that the temporal analyses are better.

Bart Streumer argues that a certain variety of consequentialism – he calls it ‘semi-global consequentialism’ – is false on account of its falsely implying the possibility of ‘blameless wrongdoing’. This article shows (i) that Streumer's argument is nothing new; (ii) that his presentation of the argument is misleading, since it suppresses a crucial premiss, commonly called ‘agglomeration’; and (iii) that, for all Streumer says, the proponent of semi-global consequentialism may easily resist his argument by rejecting agglomeration.

Moral conclusions cannot validly be inferred from nonmoral premises – this principle, commonly called “Hume’s law,” presents a conundrum. On one hand, it seems obviously true, and its truth is often simply taken for granted. On the other hand, an ingenious argument by A. N. Prior seems to refute it. My aim here is a resolution. I shall argue, first, that Hume’s law is ambiguous, admitting both a strong and a weak interpretation; second, that the strong interpretation is false, as shown by Prior’s argument; and, third, that the weak interpretation is true.