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 costs borne by the (...) poor? These challenges have led some writers to question whether there really can be convincing demandingness objections, notwithstanding their strong initial appeal. David Sobel has argued that standard demandingness objections are ‘impotent’, Liam Murphy that they can be ‘dissolved’. In this paper, I aim to vindicate the possibility of demandingness objections by addressing these two challenges. (shrink)

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, and the epistemic—and give (...) examples of acts of supererogation of each of these types. (shrink)

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-term good. There are also significant implications for the morality of (...) addressing severe global poverty. (shrink)

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.

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 we (...) do face, or to explain why offering such a theory is ill-advised. I consider, and reject, one attempt at the second sort of strategy, put forward by Alastair Norcross, who defends a 'scalar' consequentialism which eschews the moral concepts of right, wrong and obligation, and limits itself to claims about what is better and worse. I go on to raise some considerations which suggest that no systematic consequentialist theory of our moral obligations will be plausible, and propose instead that consequentialism should have a more informal and indirect role in shaping what we take our moral obligations to be. (shrink)

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 most plausible when they are interpreted as claims about reasons (...) for action; other key ethical concepts involve claims about what there is reason to feel, which makes a consequentialist treatment of them implausible. (shrink)

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 motivate us (...) to act altruistically. (shrink)

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 objection, namely the claim that anyone who accepts (...) the theory will be practically irrational. (shrink)

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 demonstrating this, I counter Rob Lawlor's contention that consequentialists cannot (...) consistently care about permissibility and impermissibility. (shrink)

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, ordered according to the goodness of the consequences they produce. Following an introductory Sect. 1, I (...) assess the positive case for scalar consequentialism in Sect. 2, concluding that no strong case has been made for the view. In Sect. 3, I assess the case against the view, concluding that while scalar consequentialism may be able to avoid _the action-guidingness objection_, it falls foul of _the force objection_. In Sect. 4, I expand on this critique, showing that Norcross gives an unstable account of how to assess attitudes, such as desires, beliefs and emotions. In Sect. 5, I argue that appeal to a contextualist reductionism does little to make the scalar view appealing. (shrink)

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 of character not only (...) according to whom they benefit, but also according to the different reactions by which such traits are appropriately encouraged or discouraged. A full appreciation of Mill's views on virtue requires noting three strikingly distinctive features of his general understanding of character and its worth: the value of individuality, the malleability of human character and the relativity of virtue. (shrink)

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, why would it not be required (...) by the lights of that domain’s standards? I argue that the key to responding to such challenges involves giving a substantive account of what requirement is within the domain in question. The most promising type of account, I suggest, is what I call the Critical Reaction Account. (shrink)

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, the appropriate response account, not only (...) avoids the major objection facing the instrumental view, but gives the correct diagnosis of where it goes wrong.Two objections that seem to face the appropriate response account can in fact be convincingly met in ways which leave it looking stronger.The appropriate response account is also to be preferred to a disjunctive view or a mixed view. (shrink)