Empirical ignorance as defeating moral intuitions? A puzzle for rule consequentialists

Analysis 79 (1):62-72 (2019)
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Abstract

This paper develops an argument that, if rule consequentialism is true, it’s not possible to defend it as the outcome of reflective equilibrium. Ordinary agents like you and me are ignorant of too many empirical facts. Our ignorance is a defeater for our moral intuitions. Even worse, there aren’t enough undefeated intuitions left to defend rule consequentialism. The problem I’ll describe won’t be specific to rule consequentialists, but it will be especially sharp for them.

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Caleb Perl
Australian Catholic University

Citations of this work

Some Question-Begging Objections to Rule Consequentialism.Caleb Perl - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):904-919.
Solving the Ideal Worlds Problem.Caleb Perl - 2021 - Ethics 132 (1):89-126.

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.

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