Against Securitism, the New Breed of Actualism in Consequentialist Thought

Utilitas 28 (2):164-178 (2016)
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Abstract

In Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality, Douglas Portmore introduces a novel position regarding the actualist securitism – a position he argues is theoretically superior to the standard views in both the actualist and possibilist camps. After distinguishing the two camps through an examination of the original Procrastinate case, I present Portmore's securitism and its implications regarding his modified Procrastinate case. I level two serious objections against securitism: that it implausibly implies that morality is radically more demanding for the virtuous than it is for the vicious and that it fails to recognize moral vice in a wide range of cases. I close by arguing that a possibilist variant of Portmore's securitist view is impervious to such objections and thus appears theoretically superior to the actualist version Portmore promotes

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Jean-Paul Vessel
New Mexico State University

Citations of this work

Actualism Has Control Issues.Yishai Cohen & Travis Timmerman - 2016 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (3):1-18.
Actualism and Possibilism in Ethics.Travis Timmerman & Yishai Cohen - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Does Ought Imply Ought Ought?Daniel Immerman - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273):702-716.

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References found in this work

Oughts, options, and actualism.Frank Jackson & Robert Pargetter - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (2):233-255.
Satisficing Consequentialism.Michael Slote & Philip Pettit - 1984 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 58 (1):139-176.
Beyond Optimizing: A Study of Rational Choice.Michael Slote - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Against satisficing consequentialism.Ben Bradley - 2006 - Utilitas 18 (2):97-108.
The Background of Circumstances.I. L. Humberstone - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1):19-34.

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