I argue that an act can be wrong _because_ it wrongs a particular person. I then show how this thesis serves as a constraint on moral theories, using Kantian ethics as a case study.

Some sharing economy firms have adopted a strategy of “regulatory entrepreneurship,” openly violating regulations with the aim of rendering them dead letters. This article argues that in a democracy, regulatory entrepreneurship is a presumptively unethical business strategy. In all but the most corrupt political environments, businesses that seek to change their regulatory environment should do so through the democratic political process, and they should do so without using illegal business practices to build a political constituency. To show this, the article (...) defends a qualified moral obligation for businesspeople to obey the law even in societies that fall short of ideal democracy and that are rife with economic injustice. Owners and managers of successful businesses have strong moral reasons to obey laws concerning resource allocation. Such laws include not only property law, but also tax laws, environmental regulations, and other laws that regulate businesses in competitive markets. The moral reasons to obey such laws apply even to laws that business leaders think unfair or inefficient, provided that the laws in question have reasonable, good faith defenders. (shrink)

In this open access book, Timothy Aylsworth and Clinton Castro draw on the deep well of Kantian ethics to argue that we have moral duties, both to ourselves and to others, to protect our autonomy from the threat posed by the problematic use of technology. The problematic use of technologies like smartphones threatens our autonomy in a variety of ways, and critics have only begun to appreciate the vast scope of this problem. In the last decade, we have seen a (...) flurry of books making “self-help” arguments about how we could live happier, more fulfilling lives if we were less addicted to our phones. But none of these authors see this issue as one involving a moral duty to protect our autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant gives a philosophically plausible derivation of the general duty of benevolence and that this derivation can be used to show how to derive other general duties of commission with the universalizability tests. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I explain Kant’s notion of a general duty. In the second, I introduce the universalizability tests. In the third, I examine and argue against an account in the secondary literature of how (...) to derive general duties from these tests. In the fourth, I look at Kant’s derivation of the duty of benevolence in the Metaphysics of Morals, and I suggest how this reasoning can be extended to other duties. (shrink)

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation, may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering (...) an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot. (shrink)

This paper introduces a referential reading of Kant’s practical project, according to which maxims are made morally permissible by their correspondence to objects, though not the ontic objects of Kant’s theoretical project but deontic objects (what ought to be). It illustrates this model by showing how the content of the Formula of Universal Law might be determined by what our capacity of practical reason can stand in a referential relation to, rather than by facts about what kind of beings we (...) are (viz., uncaused causes). This solves the neglected puzzle of why there are passages in Kant’s works suggesting robust analogies between mathematics and ethics, since to universalize a maxim is to test a priori whether a practical object with that particular content can be constructed. An apparent problem with this hypothesis is that the medium of practical sensibility (feeling) does not play a role analogous to the medium of theoretical sensibility (intuition). In response I distinguish two separate Kantian accounts of mathematical apriority. The thesis that maxim universalization is a species of construction, and thus a priori, turns out to be consistent with the account of apriority that informs Kant’s understanding of actual mathematical practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a subset of preferences in which a person desires the fulfillment of a choice they have made, even if it involves the violation of their desires, as in rape fantasies. I argue that such cases provide us with a unique insight into personal autonomy from a proceduralist standpoint. In its first part, I analyze some examples in light of Frankfurt's endorsement theory and argue that even when we cannot endorse a practical decision that involves being (...) violated, we nonetheless regard those cases as instances of autonomy. Therefore, autonomy does not necessarily require endorsement. Instead, I propose that the nature of the relevant highest-order volition dictates the procedure that should be established in one’s desire structure for its fulfillment. In the second part, I discuss how an agent may effectively consent to the violation of their decision by another person. Ordinary consent typically refers to actions but fails to communicate one's higher-order desires or commitments. To address this limitation, I propose a practical tool that accomplishes this by signaling shifts in the normative context where the agents are interacting. (shrink)

Principles of justice, David Estlund argues, cannot be falsified by people’s unwillingness to satisfy them. In his Utopophobia, Estlund rejects the view that justice must bend to human motivation to deliver practical implications for how institutions ought to function. In this paper, I argue that a substantive argument against such bending of justice principles must challenge the reasons for making these principles sensitive to motivational limitations. Estlund, however, provides no such challenge. His dispute with benders of justice is therefore a (...) verbal one over the true meaning of justice, which need not worry those with the intuition that justice should perform a function that requires bending. By focusing on John Rawls’s reasons for bending his justice principles, I point towards a substantive critique of bent justice. (shrink)

Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) steht zu Unrecht oft im Schatten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft und der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Tatsächlich sind die Grundelemente der Kantischen Moralphilosophie im Gegensatz zu vielen Thesen der ersten Kritik bis heute weitgehend anerkannt, und erst der Nachweis der zweiten Kritik, dass Freiheit wirklich ist, macht "den Schlussstein von dem ganzen Gebäude eines Systems der reinen, selbst der spekulativen Vernunft aus". Entlang der Stichworte reiner Wille, gesetzgebende Form der Maxime, transzendentale Freiheit, (...) Autonomie und Faktum der Vernunft zeigt Kant in der "Analytik", dass reine Vernunft "für sich" praktisch sein, nämlich den Willen bestimmen kann. Die "Dialektik" sichert den Ideen von der Existenz Gottes und der Unsterblichkeit der Seele objektive Realität und untersucht das Verhältnis von theoretischer und praktischer Vernunft. Die "Methodenlehre" schließlich skizziert eine Theorie moralischer Erziehung, die für den heutigen Ethikunterricht noch aktuell ist. Die zwölf Beiträge dieses kooperativen Kommentars, der anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants in einer 3., überarbeiteten Auflage erscheint, rekonstruieren die Argumente eines Schlüsseltextes der Moralphilosophie und prüfen die sachliche Überzeugungskraft. Mit Beiträgen von: Karl Ameriks, Reinhard Brandt, Eckart Förster, Otfried Höffe Allen W. Wood Christoph Horn, G. Felicitas Munzel, Onora O'Neill Annemarie Pieper, Friedo Ricken, Nico Scarano. (shrink)

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still are, or ought to (...) be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant presents the moral law as the sole ‘fact of pure reason’ that neither needs nor admits of a deduction to establish its authority. This claim may come as a surprise to many readers of his earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the last section of the Groundwork, Kant seemed to offer a sketch of just such a ‘deduction of the supreme principle of morality’ . Although notoriously obscure, this sketch shows that (...) Kant hoped to base the moral law in the freedom that rational agents can claim as members of the ‘intelligible world’ that transcendental idealism makes available to us. In contrast, the second Critique abandons all aspirations of deriving morality from more basic notions of freedom and practical rationality. (shrink)

This chapter has two sections, each focusing on a distinct way in which ethical disagreement and variations in ethical judgment matter for theories of ethical thought and talk. In the first section, we look at how the variation poses problems for both cognitivist and non-cognitivist ways of specifying the nature of ethical judgments. In the second, we look at how disagreement phenomena have been taken to undermine cognitivist accounts, but also at how the seeming variation in cognitive and non-cognitive contents (...) between parties of deep ethical disagreement challenges both cognitivist and non-cognitivist accounts of disagreement itself. (shrink)

It is often observed in metaethics that moral language displays a certain duality in as much as it seems to concern both objective facts in the world and subjective attitudes that move to action. In this paper, I defend The Dual Aspect Account which is intended to capture this duality: A person’s utterance of a sentence according to which φing has a moral characteristic, such as “φing is wrong,” conveys two things: The sentence expresses, in virtue of its conventional meaning, (...) the belief that φing has a moral property, and the utterance of the sentence carries a generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the person in question has an action-guiding attitude in relation to φing. This account has significant advantages over competing views: (i) As it is purely cognitivist, it does not have the difficulties of expressivism and various ecumenical positions. (ii) Yet, in spite of this, it can explain the close, “meaning-like,” connection between moral language and attitudes. (iii) In contrast to other pragmatic accounts, it is compatible with any relevant cognitivist view. (iv) It does not rest on a contentious pragmatic notion, such as conventional implicature. (v) It does not imply that utterances of complex moral sentences, such as conditionals, convey attitudes. In addition, the generalized implicature in question is fully calculable and cancellable. (shrink)

In this article we defend a moral conception of cosmopolitanism and its relevance for moral education. Our moral conception of cosmopolitanism presumes that persons possess an inherent dignity in the Kantian sense and therefore they should be recognised as ends‐in‐themselves. We argue that cosmopolitan ideals can inspire moral educators to awaken and cultivate in their pupils an orientation and inclination to struggle against injustice. Moral cosmopolitanism, in other words, should more explicitly inform the work that moral educators do. Real‐world constraints (...) on moral action and the need to prioritise one’s sometimes conflicting responsibilities will often qualify cosmopolitan justice as supererogatory. This fact does not absolve persons from aspiring to see themselves as having the moral obligation to help others in need, while recognising that their factual obligations are more modest in being bound by what they are actually able to do. (shrink)

Argues that the path to the good life does not consist in working toward some abstract concept of the good, but rather by ameliorating the problems of the practices and institutions that make up our practical life.

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

_Essays on Beauvoir’s influences, contemporary engagements, and legacy in the philosophical tradition._.

Thoughts of mortality sometimes bring on a crisis in confidence in the meaning in one's life. One expression of this collapse is the midlife crisis. In a recent article, Kieran Setiya argues that if one can value activities as opposed to accomplishments as the primary goods in one's life then one might avoid the midlife crisis. I argue that Setiya's advice, rather than safeguarding the meaning in one's life, substitutes for it something else, a kind of happiness. I use Susan (...) Wolf's concept of meaning in order to make this case. Wolf has not written much about the importance of death, but I argue that her account of meaning shares essential features with the theories developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Sartre argues that death is an unqualified harm, while Heidegger argues that there is meaning in life only because we are mortal. I conclude by showing how Heidegger's theory of mortality underwrites accounts of meaning like those found in Wolf. (shrink)

Kant and Hegel share a common foundational idea: they believe that the authority of normative claims can be justified only by showing that these norms are self-imposed or autonomous. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant argues that we can derive specific normative claims from the formal idea of autonomy, whereas Hegel contends that we use the idea of freedom not to derive, but to assess, the specific normative claims ensconced in our social institutions and practices. Exploring (...) these claims, I argue that each approach encounters certain difficulties. I then argue that Nietzsche develops a theory of normative authority that avoids these potential difficulties. Nietzsche’s theory proceeds, in part, by reconciling the most compelling aspects of the Kantian and Hegelian accounts—aspects that have seemed, to many interpreters, to be incompatible. The resultant theory generates a unique and fruitful account of normative authority. (shrink)

Many scholars, in view of the close link that he draws between morality and freedom, argue that Kant does not think that there are free choices between nonmoral ends. On this view, Kant only posits a freedom to resist our desires and act morally. We are still responsible for immoral choices because we always have the power to act morally. Henry Allison has opposed this reading by arguing that Kant grounds a notion of nonmoral freedom in the Incorporation Thesis. In (...) this paper, I criticize Allison’s argument and then try to replace it with an alternative that grounds nonmoral freedom in morality. (shrink)

Kant’s early readers were troubled by the appearance of a dilemma facing his theory of freedom. On the one hand, if we explain human actions according to laws or rules, then we risk reducing the activity of the will to necessity (the horn of determinism). But, on the other hand, if we explain human actions without laws or rules, then we face an equally undesirable outcome: that of reducing the will’s activity to mere chance (the horn of indeterminism). After providing (...) an overview of this dilemma, this chapter explores how Fichte and Schelling attempted to resolve it, in ways that ultimately shaped the course of post-Kantian idealism in the late 1790s and early 1800s. (shrink)

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

Kantian ethics has struggled terribly with the challenge of incorporating non-human animals as beings to which we can owe obligations. Christine Korsgaard’s Fellow Creatures is a bold, substantial attempt to meet that challenge. In this essay review, I set the scene for the book’s core argument, offer a reconstruction of that argument, and reflect on its strengths and limitations, arguing that it is ultimately unconvincing.

What moral reasons, if any, do we have to ensure the long-term survival of humanity? This article contrastively explores two answers to this question: according to the first, we should ensure the survival of humanity because we have reason to maximize the number of happy lives that are ever lived, all else equal. According to the second, seeking to sustain humanity into the future is the appropriate response to the final value of humanity itself. Along the way, the article discusses (...) various issues in population axiology, particularly the so-called Intuition of Neutrality and John Broome’s ‘greediness objection’ to this intuition. (shrink)

The representative institutions of democratic government require the public sphere; but this in turn rests on the fellow‐feeling of citizens. In this article, I explore some recent ways of fleshing out Mill’s thought that patriotic fellow‐feeling is instrumental for a form of trust that the public sphere requires. Deliberation, argument and negotiation in the public sphere require a willingness to discuss, alter one’s position, compromise with others, and do so in good faith and in the belief that other participants are (...) broadly also taking part in the same fashion. Since politics is a realm in which interests and identities clash, we have at least a prima facie reason to worry that others may in fact not be trustworthy in the desired way. Some potential for distrust is inherent in political deliberation, since it presupposes that there is some important conflict or disagreement that needs to be overcome through discussion: in other words, that I cannot simply rely on others to further my interests for the right reasons, or at all. While trust seems inherently problematic, political dialogue in the public sphere seems to require it from those who take part. I look at four accounts of the basis of democratic trust, viz. the communitarian, the ‘societal culture’ account, the public culture account, and what is known as the ‘constitutional patriotism’ account. In outline, my argument is that all four accounts fail to explain the basis of trust in the democratic sphere. I conclude that sharing a national identity still leaves the politics of trust to be negotiated by the participants concerned. (shrink)

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...) volume address four broad and interconnected themes: • What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? • Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? • What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? • What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? The Philosophy of Online Manipulation brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation. (shrink)

Can there be an objective morality without God? Derek Parfit argues that it can and offers a theory of morality that is neither theistic nor naturalistic. This book provides a critical assessment of Parfit's metaethical theory. Jakobsen identifies some problems in Parfit’s theory – problems concerning moral normativity, the ontological status of morality, and evolutionary influence on our moral beliefs – and argues that theological resources can help solve them. By showing how Parfit’s theory may be improved by the help (...) of theology, Jakobsen demonstrates the relevance of theology in philosophical and metaethical debates and argues that Christian theism offers a better explanation of morality than what Parfit’s non-naturalism does. (shrink)

Abstract:Recently, the idea that every hypothetical imperative must somehow be ‘backed up’ by a prior categorical imperative has gained a certain influence among Kant interpreters and ethicists influenced by Kant. Since instrumentalism is the position that holds that hypothetical imperatives can by themselves and without the aid of categorical imperatives explain all valid forms of practical reasoning, the influential idea amounts to a rejection of instrumentalism as internally incoherent. This paper argues against this prevailing view both as an interpretation of (...) Kant and as philosophical understanding of practical reason. In particular, it will be argued that many of the arguments that claim to show that hypothetical imperatives must be backed up by categorical imperatives mistakenly assume that the form of practical reasoning must itself occur as a premise within the reasoning. An alternative to this assumption will be offered. I will conclude that while instrumentalism may well be false, there is no reason to believe it is incoherent. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that received accounts of the concept of human dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated, when explaining the connection between human dignity and the duty of respect that dignity is supposed to generate. It also argues that a novel, relational, account has the adequate structure to explain such connection.

Kant’s moral philosophy usually considers two types of duties: negative duties that prohibit certain actions and positive duties commanding action. With that, Kant insists on deriving all morality from reason alone. Such is the Categorical Imperative that Kant lays at the basis of ethics. Yet while negative duties can be derived from the Categorical Imperative and thus from reason, the paper argues that this is not the case with positive duties. After answering a number of attempts to derive positive duties (...) from the Categorical Imperative, most notably those of Barbara Herman, it sketches an alternative approach to understanding the relationship between the universal moral law and specific moral contents. (shrink)

This paper aims to challenge the view that the sign present in many Frankfurt-style scenarios is insufficiently robust to constitute evidence for the possibility of an alternate decision, and therefore inadequate as a means of determining moral responsibility. I have amended Frankfurt’s original scenario, so as to allow Jones, as well as Black, the opportunity to monitor his (Jones’s) own inclination towards a particular decision (the sign). Different outcome possibilities are presented, to the effect that Jones’s awareness of his own (...) inclinations leads to the conclusion that the sign must be either (a) a prior determinate of the decision about to be made, (b) prior and indeterminate (therefore allowing for a contra-inclination decision to be made), or (c) constitutive of a decision that Jones has made but is not yet aware of. In effect, this means that, prior to the intervention of Black, Jones must have decided to do otherwise or could have so decided. Either way, although Frankfurt’s conclusion, that Jones could not have done other than he did, is upheld, the idea that he could not have decided otherwise must be rejected, and with it the view that the sign is nothing more than a flicker of freedom insufficient for assigning morally responsibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy contains a coherent, albeit implicit, defense of the legitimacy of capital punishment, one that refutes the most important objections leveled against it. I first show that Kant is consistent in his application of the ius talionis. I then explain how Kant can respond to the claim that death penalty violates the inviolable right to life. To address the most significant objection – the claim that execution violates human dignity – I argue that (...) motives of honor, as Kant conceives it, require a rational person to will her own execution, were she to commit murder. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of Kant's recorded thought beyond his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, this essay presents an overview of Kant's account of practical agency as embodied practical agency and argues against the intellectualized interpretations of Kant's account of practical agency presented by Christine Korsgaard and Henry Sidgwick. In both Kant's empirical-psychological and metaphysical descriptions of practical agency, he presents a recognizably human practical agent that is broader and deeper than the faculty of reason alone. This agent (...) chooses action from a reflective distance, but not from the complete affective distance of reason. We choose neither as reason alone, nor even as the sum of all of our ‘higher’ faculties, of cognition (including reason), feeling, and desire, in Kant's view. Instead, we choose as an agent that also has ‘lower’, ‘sensible’ faculties, of cognition (including sense), feeling, and desire, which together comprise our ‘sensibility’. These mental states of sensibility are not merely confused versions of our higher cognitions, feelings, or desires, and so different from them in degree only, but are instead distinct from our higher states in kind also; and these distinct sensible states are not dependent on our higher states and so on a commitment to the value of humanity, for example. For this reason, a choice in favour of sensible states and in opposition to the moral law need in no way undermine its own foundations and thus be incoherent, as Korsgaard and Sidgwick argue, but instead only immoral. Because Kant does not reduce the problem of immoral choice to one of insufficient reflection and ensuing confusion, he does not view moral progress in cognitive terms alone, whether in the form of a clearer understanding of the moral law, improved judgment in applying it, or deeper insight into our own nature as practical agents. Kant instead recognizes the crucial importance of cultivating our feelings and desires over the course of a lifetime both as a way to make ourselves worthy of the humanity within us directly and also as a way to facilitate future moral choices. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that punishment has an expressive dimension. Advocates of expressive theories have different views about what makes punishment expressive, what kinds of mental states and what kinds of claims are, or legitimately can be expressed in punishment, and to what kind of audience or recipients, if any, punishment might express whatever it expresses. I shall argue that in order to assess the plausibility of an expressivist approach to justifying punishment we need to pay careful attention to whether the (...) things which punishment is supposed to express are aimed at an audience. For the ability of any version of expressivism to withstand two important challenges, which I call the harsh treatment challenge’ and the ‘publicity challenge’ respectively. will depend on the way it answers them. The first of these challenges has received considerable discussion in the literature on expressive theories of punishment; the second considerably less. This is unfortunate. For careful consideration of the publicity challenge should lead us to favor a version of the expressive theory which has been under-discussed: the view on which punishment has an intended audience, and on which the audience is society at large, rather than—as on the most popular version of that view—the criminal. Furthermore, this view turns out to be better equipped to meet the harsh treatment challenge, and to be so precisely because of the way in which it meets the publicity challenge. (shrink)

In the face of pluralism, moral constructivists attempt to salvage cognitivism by separating moral and ethical issues. Divergence over ethical issues, which concern the good life, would not threaten moral cognitivism, which is based on identifying generalizable interests as worthy of defending, using reason. Yet this approach falters given the inability of the constructivist to provide us a sure path by which to discern generalizable interests in difficult cases. Still, even if this approach to constructivism fails, cognitivist aspirations may not (...) be defeated if we can continue discursively in a project of identifying and appreciating the interests of others. Grasping the interests of others may require a transformation of moral sensibility such that agents recognize values they have not acknowledged before. This view calls for external moral discourse—that is, moral discourse that makes no appeal to an agent's present interests or desires but rather engages in description of the moral situation in hopes of bringing about a change in moral sensibility. (shrink)

This paper considers the applicability of expressive theories of punishment to the punishment of corporate entities. The author argues that although arguments which suggest that the denunciatory account is superior to a communicative account in paradigmatic cases of punishment cannot be transferred straightforwardly to cover this kind of case, there are other reasons, connected with the different attitudes we have to regret and remorse in individual and collective cases, for preferring a communicative to a denunciatory account here.

This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical theories worth studying. The (...) article briefly discusses the relationship between these ideas and some other recent proposals that emphasize the common ground between Kantianism and versions of consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper looks at judgments of guilt in the face of alleged wrong-doing, be it in public or in private discourse. Its concern is not the truth of such judgments, although the complexity and contestability of such claims will be stressed. The topic, instead, is what sort of activities we are engaged in, when we make our judgments on others' conduct. To examine judging as an activity it focuses on a series of problems that can occur when we blame others. (...) On analysis, we see that these problems take the form of performative contradictions, so that the ostensible purposes of assigning guilt to others are undermined.There is clear evidence from social psychology that blame is especially frequently and inappropriately attributed to individuals in modern Western societies. On the other hand, it has often been observed how suspicious we are about the activity of judging – thus a widespread perception that a refusal to judge is somehow virtuous. My suggestion is that the sheer difficulty of attributions of responsibility, in the face of a complex and often arbitrary moral reality, frequently defeats us. This leads to a characteristic set of distortions when we blame, so that it is no surprise that we have become suspicious of all blaming activities. (shrink)

In his ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy’ Kant makes the astonishing claim that one is not entitled to lie even to save a friend from a murderer. This claim has been an embarrassment for Kant's defenders and an indication of Kant's excessive rigour for his detractors. Responses to SRL fall into three main groups. The first of these groups, that of Kant's critics, claim that SRL demonstrates that Kant's ethical views are so rigorous that they become abhorrent (...) in practice. The second group, Kant's defenders, argues that Kant's conclusions in SRL do not follow from his own ethical principles. The third group, made up of scholars who are generally sympathetic to Kant's position, attempts to explain why a liar is responsible for all the bad consequences that follow from his act by providing an account of Kant's theory of imputation. (shrink)

According to normative judgment internalism (NJI), normative judgments -- that is, judgments of the form 'I ought to F' and the like -- are "essentially practical", in the sense that they are in some way essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. Many metaethicists believe that if NJI is true, then it would cast grave doubts on any robustly realist (RR) conception of normative judgments. These metaethicists are mistaken. This mistake about the relations between NJI and RR (...) seems to be due to hasty and undefended assumptions about the nature of belief. Any philosophical conception of belief that has the resources to deal with Frege's Puzzle (how to explain the apparent failures of referential transparency in belief ascriptions) will also have the resources to reconcile NJI and RR with respect to normative judgments. (shrink)