Frans Svensson

The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to go beyond common philosophical practice and distinguish not merely between two such different uses but to make a tripartite distinction. Our aim is largely conciliatory: we grant the main parts of the points made by Stoutland and Dancy but argue that once the B‐D model has been properly stated, and different uses of the term ‘reason’ sufficiently regimented, the B‐D proponent is able to accommodate their respective criticisms within the framework of the B‐D model and thereby undermine their case against the model.

Philippa Foot has recently argued that non-cognitivism rests on a mistake. According to Foot, non-cognitivism cannot properly account for the role of reasons in moral thinking. Furthermore, Foot argues that moral judgements share a conceptual structure with the kind of evaluations that we make about plants and animals, which cannot be couched in non-cognitivist terms. In this article I argue that, in the form of expressivism, non-cognitivism is capable of accommodating most of what Foot says about reasons and morality. I then argue that the kind of evaluative judgements Foot suggests that we make about plants and animals, does not constitute a plausible alternative to an expressivist understanding of moral judgements. Finally I consider an account similar to Foot's, defended by Rosalind Hursthouse, which, I argue, suffers from an inconsistency, the avoidance of which leaves Hursthouse with a view that is either compatible with expressivism or shares the same problems as Foot's.

Moral particularism is commonly presented as an alternative to ‘principle- or rule-based’ approaches to ethics, such as consequentialism or Kantianism. This paper argues that particularists' aversions to consequentialism stem not from a structural feature of consequentialismper se, but from substantial and structural axiological views traditionally associated with consequentialism. Given a particular approach to (intrinsic) value, there need be no conflict between moral particularism and consequentialism. We consider and reject a number of challenges holding that there is after all such a conflict. We end by suggesting that our proposed position appears quite appealing since it preserves attractive elements from particularism as well as consequentialism.

The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to go beyond common philosophical practice and distinguish not merely between two such different uses but to make a tripartite distinction. Our aim is largely conciliatory: we grant the main parts of the points made by Stoutland and Dancy but argue that once the B‐D model has been properly stated, and different uses of the term ‘reason’ sufficiently regimented, the B‐D proponent is able to accommodate their respective criticisms within the framework of the B‐D model and thereby undermine their case against the model.

Because of its reliance on a basically Aristotelian conception of virtue, contemporary virtue ethics is often criticised for being inherently elitist. I argue that this objection is mistaken. The core of my argument is that we need to take seriously that virtue, according to Aristotle, is something that we acquire gradually, via a developmental process. People are not just stuck with their characters once and for all, but can always aspire to become better (more virtuous). And that is plausibly the basic normative requirement of virtue ethics. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 131-155

Conceived of as a contender to other theories in substantive ethics, virtue ethics is often associated with, in essence, the following account or criterion of right action: VR: An action A is right for S in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous agent would characteristically do A in C. There are serious objections to VR, which take the form of counter-examples. They present us with different scenarios in which less than fully virtuous persons would be acting rightly in doing what no fully virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances. In this paper, various proposals for how to revise VR in order to avoid these counter-examples are considered. I will argue that in so far as the revised accounts really do manage to steer clear of the counter-examples to VR, something which it turns out is not quite true for all of them, they instead fall prey to other damaging objections. I end by discussing the future of virtue ethics, given what has come to light in the previous sections of the paper. In particular, I sketch the outlines of a virtue ethical account of rightness that is structurally different from VR. This account also faces important problems. Still, I suggest that further scrutiny is required before we are in a position to make a definitive decision about its fate.

My main thesis in this article is that Descartes' ethics should be understood as involving a distinction between happiness and well-being. The distinction I have in mind is never clearly stated or articulated by Descartes himself, but I argue that we nevertheless have good reason to embrace it as an important component in a charitable reconstruction of his ethical thought. In section I, I present Descartes' account of happiness and of how he thinks happiness can (and cannot) be acquired. Then, in section II, I introduce and develop the distinction between happiness and well-being. I do this via a discussion of a difficult passage in one of Descartes' letters to Elisabeth, where he may seem first to grant and then immediately to reject the view that people's happiness can vary in degree depending on the possession of goods or perfections that are outside their power to control. I believe my proposed distinction can help us make good sense of this passage. In the last two sections (III and IV), I then offer some further grounds or reasons for why the proposed distinction should be ascribed to Descartes

My question in this paper concerns what eudaimonist virtue ethics (EVE) might have to say about what makes right actions right. This is obviously an important question if we want to know what (if anything) distinguishes EVE from various forms of consequentialism and deontology in ethical theorizing. The answer most commonly given is that according to EVE, an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. However, understood as a claim about what makes particular actions right, this is not especially plausible. What makes a virtuous person’s actions right must reasonably be a matter of the feature, or features, which she, via her practical wisdom, appreciates as ethically relevant in the circumstances, and not the fact that someone such as herself would perform those actions. I argue that EVE instead should be understood as a more radical alternative in ethical philosophy, an alternative that relies on the background assumption that no general account or criterion for what makes right actions right is available to us: right action is simply too complex to be captured in a ‘finite and manageable set of…moral principles’ (McKeever and Ridge, Principled ethics, Oxford University Press, 2006 , p. 139). This does not rule out the possibility that there might be some generalizations about how we should act which hold true without exception. Perhaps there are some things which we must never do, as well as some features of the world which always carry normative weight (even though their exact weight may vary from one context to another). Still, these things are arguably few and far between, and what we must do to ensure that we reliably recognize what is right in particular situations is to acquire practical wisdom. Nothing short of that could do the job.

In his reflections on ethics, Descartes distances himself from the eudaimonistic tradition in moral philosophy by introducing a distinction between happiness and the highest good. While happiness, in Descartes’s view, consists in an inner state of complete harmony and satisfaction, the highest good instead consists in virtue, i.e. in ‘a firm and constant resolution' to always use our free will well or correctly. In Section 1 of this paper, I pursue the Cartesian distinction between happiness and the highest good in some detail. In Section 2, I discuss the question of how the motivation to virtue should be accounted for within Descartes’s ethical framework. In Section 3, I turn to Descartes’s defence of the view that virtue, while fundamentally distinct from happiness, is nevertheless sufficient for obtaining it. In the final section of the paper , my concern is instead with a second and sometimes neglected distinction that Descartes makes between two different senses o..

In this paper, I propose and defend a particular desire-based theory of what makes a person’s life meaningful. Desire-based theories avoid the problems facing other theories of meaning in life: in contrast to objectivist theories (both consequentialist and non-consequentialist ones), they succeed in providing a necessary link between what makes a person’s life meaningful and the person’s own set of attitudes or concerns; in contrast to hybrid theories (or subjectivist theories with a value requirement), they avoid the elitism or exclusivism inherent in the former; and in contrast to mental-state theories, they avoid the problem of not taking the state of the world properly into account when determining whether someone’s life is meaningful. However, meaningfulness does not plausibly depend on the satisfaction of just any desires—perhaps especially not on the satisfaction of desires that we experience as alien to ourselves. I therefore suggest that the meaning in your life depends on the extent to which your categorical desires (i.e. those desires that are partly constitutive of your practical identity) are satisfied or fulfilled. In the final section of the paper, I respond to at least four possible objections to this view.