Christoph Schmidt-Petri

The conclusion of the paper reads: There is a view compatible with everything Mill says in these passages that can deal with all three problems. It’s a simple act utilitarianism in which the moral value of an action is determined by its actual consequences. On this view, the consequences of an action, what happens, depends on what the agent wants to bring about, that is to say, they depend on the agent’s intentions. Therefore the moral value of an action depends, given that on simple act utilitarianism it entirely depends on the action’s consequences, entirely on the intentions of the agent – at least in the simple cases at issue between Mill and Davies in which people manage to bring about what they want to bring about. In these cases, varying the intention varies the consequences and thus the moral value. The simple act utilitarian nevertheless recognises that motives are also relevant – not necessarily to the consequences of the actions that do get performed but to which actions get performed at all. Hence motives are of paramount importance in theory and practice. However, as actions are individuated by the agent’s intentions and the action’s consequences, without appealing to the motive giving rise to it, any particular action might be brought about by different motives. Mill’s example illustrates this scenario. Hence it is possible to vary the motive due to which an action is performed without varying the action’s consequences, that is, without varying its moral value. In this sense, the moral value of an action does not depend on the motive with which it is done. Hence Davies’s objection is indeed unfounded and Mill’s footnote is rescued.

This paper challenges (in a shorter version than the also listed 2002 LSE discussion paper) the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either.