Basil Smith

In this paper, I explore our common-sense thinking about the relation between moral value, moral merit, and well-being. Starting from Ross’s observation that welfarist axiologies ignore our intuitions about desert, I focus on axiologies that take moral merit and well-being to be independent determinants of value. I distinguish three ways in which these axiologies can be formulated, and I then consider their application to the issue of punishment. The objection that they recommend penalties in circumstances in which intuitively we would judge them to be unjustified is examined, and I suggest that it can be met by incorporating temporal information into the way in which value, well-being and moral merit are linked

In this paper I outline Donald Davidson’s account of two forms of irrationality, akrasia and self-deception, and relate this account to ethical action and belief. His view of irrationality is generally a Freudian one, to the effect that agents must compartmentalize both offending particular mental contents, and governing second order principles. Davidson also hints that his account of akrasia and self-deception might show certain normative and meta-ethical theories to be irrational, insofar as they too engender irrationality. I explore these hints, and hopefully show both that Davidson is correct about irrationality and correct that certain ethical theories engender irrationality as well. I believe this to be no great loss to ethics generally, but will hopefully aid our understanding of how ethical action and belief actually happen

Robert Nozick famously asks us whether we would plug in to an experience machine, or whether we would insist upon ‘living in contact with reality’. Felipe De Brigard, after conducting a series of empirical ‘inverted’ experience machine studies, suggests that this is a false dilemma. Rather, he says, ’…the fact is that people tend to prefer the state of affairs they are in currently,’ or the status quo. In this paper, I argue that these studies are a test case for ‘experimental philosophy’ as such. Specifically, I argue that De Brigard offers a series of faulty studies, and so, reaches unfounded conclusions. More generally, I argue that certain philosophical thought experiments cannot be tested empirically at all, and this limits what experimental philosophy can do