•  335
    The rights and wrongs of consequentialism
    Philosophical Studies 151 (3). 2010.
    I argue that the strongest form of consequentialism is one which rejects the claim that we are morally obliged to bring about the best available consequences, but which continues to assert that what there is most reason to do is bring about the best available consequences. Such an approach promises to avoid common objections to consequentialism, such as demandingness objections. Nevertheless, the onus is on the defender of this approach either to offer her own account of what moral obligations w…Read more
  •  333
    Consequentialism, Demandingness and the Monism of Practical Reason
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt3): 359-374. 2007.
  •  233
    Demandingness Objections in Ethics
    Philosophical Quarterly 67 (266): 84-105. 2017.
    It is common for moral philosophers to reject a moral theory on the basis that its verdicts are unreasonably demanding—it requires too much of us to be a correct account of our moral obligations. Even though such objections frequently strike us as convincing, they give rise to two challenges: Are demandingness objections really independent of other objections to moral theories? Do standard demandingness objections not presuppose that costs borne by the comfortably off are more important than cos…Read more
  •  169
    Consequentialism and permissibility
    Utilitas 22 (2): 171-183. 2010.
    Scalar consequentialism, recently championed by Alastair Norcross, holds that the value of an action varies according to the goodness of its consequences, but eschews all judgements of moral permissibility and impermissibility. I show that the strongest version of scalar consequentialism is not vulnerable to the objection that it is insufficiently action-guiding. Instead, the principle objection to the scalar view is simply that it leaves out important and interesting ethical judgements. In demo…Read more
  •  143
    Impartial Reasons, Moral Demands
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (4): 457-466. 2011.
    Consequentialism is often charged with demandingness objections which arise in response to the theory’s commitment to impartiality. It might be thought that the only way that consequentialists can avoid such demandingness objections is by dropping their commitment to impartialism. However, I outline and defend a framework within which all reasons for action are impartially grounded, yet which can avoid demandingness objections. I defend this framework against what might appear to be a strong obj…Read more
  •  122
    Supererogation Across Normative Domains
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (3): 505-516. 2017.
    The phenomenon of moral supererogation—action that goes beyond what moral duty requires—is familiar. In this paper, I argue that the concept of supererogation is applicable beyond the moral domain. After an introductory section 1, I outline in section 2 what I take to be the structure of moral supererogation, explaining how it comes to be an authentic normative category. In section 3, I show that there are structurally similar phenomena in other normative domains—those of prudence, etiquette, an…Read more
  •  93
    The Appeal of Self-Ownership
    Social Theory and Practice 36 (2): 213-232. 2010.
    In this paper, I argue that the appeal of a principle of self-ownership is grounded in the specially intimate relationship that each of us has with our body. I argue that once we appreciate the source of the appeal of a claim of self-ownership, we can see how a differently shaped set of strong rights over our body can do justice to the considerations that ground this appeal, without committing us to the most controversial implications of a claim of self-ownership.
  •  67
    The Value of the Virtues
    Utilitas 27 (1): 61-81. 2015.
    I argue that debates about virtue are best settled by clearly distinguishing two questions:What sort of character trait is there reason to cultivate?What sort of character trait is there reason to admire?With this distinction in mind, I focus on recent accounts of what consequentialists ought to say about virtue, arguing that:The instrumentalist view of virtue accepted by many prominent consequentialists should not be accepted as the default view for consequentialists to hold.The main rival view…Read more
  •  65
    Should We de‐Moralize Ethical Theory?
    Ratio 23 (3): 308-321. 2010.
    Some philosophers, such as Roger Crisp and Alastair Norcross, have recently argued that the traditional moral categories of wrongness, permissibility and obligation should be avoided when doing ethical theory. I argue that even if morality does not itself provide reasons for action, the moral categories nevertheless have a central role to play in ethical theory: they allow us to make crucial judgements about how to feel about, and react to, agents who behave in anti‐social ways, and they help mo…Read more
  •  43
    The Ambitions of Consequentialism
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 17 (2): 198--218. 2020.
    Consequentialism is most famously a theory of right action. But many consequentialists assume, and some have explicitly argued, that consequentialism is equally plausible as a direct theory of the right rules, motives, character traits, institutions, and even such things as climates and eye colours. In this paper, I call into question this ‘Global Consequentialist’ extension of consequentialist evaluation beyond the domain of action. Consequentialist treatments of evaluands other than action are…Read more
  •  39
    Cost and Psychological Difficulty: Two Aspects of Demandingness
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4): 920-935. 2023.
    The demandingness of a moral prescription is generally understood exclusively in terms of the welfare costs involved in complying with that prescription. I argue that psychological difficulty is a second aspect of demandingness, whose relevance cannot be reduced to that of welfare costs. Appeal to psychological difficulty explains intuitive verdicts about the permissibility of favouring oneself over others, favouring loved ones over strangers, and favouring one’s short-term good over one’s long-…Read more
  •  30
    Right and Wrong: Assessing Scalar Consequentialism
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1-18. forthcoming.
    Demoralising ethical theory involves eschewing the deontic categories of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility from our ethical thought. In this paper, I evaluate the case made in Alastair Norcross’s recent book, _Morality By Degrees_ (2020), for a consequentialist version of such demoralisation. Norcross defends scalar consequentialism, a radical variant of consequentialism which restricts fundamental normative verdicts to a scalar ranking of available actions, orde…Read more
  •  20
    Etmp bset 2018 editorial
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (5): 1033-1034. 2018.
  •  4
    Going Above and Beyond: Non-moral Analogues of Moral Supererogation
    In David Heyd (ed.), Handbook of Supererogation, Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 255-270. 2023.
    Apparent analogues of moral supererogation can be found in other normative domains, such as the prudential domain and the epistemic domain. Vindicating moral supererogation requires a convincing response to the challenge of the ‘paradox of moral supererogation’: if some act would be morally best, why would it not be morally required? Vindicating putative non-moral types of supererogation requires responding to analogous challenges: if some act would be best by the lights of some normative domain…Read more
  •  2
    Mill and Virtue
    In Christopher Macleod & Dale E. Miller (eds.), A Companion to Mill, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. 2016.
    This chapter examines Mill's remarks on the nature and value of virtue in Utilitarianism, before looking at where virtue fits in Mill's moral philosophy. The objection that utilitarians fail to do justice to virtue, and to the value of virtue in particular, is one of the two objections to utilitarianism that Mill takes most seriously (the other being that utilitarianism cannot give an adequate account of justice). Mill draws fine‐grained distinctions amongst virtues and vices, classifying traits…Read more