Hare has written a clear, brief, and readable introduction to ethics which looks at all the fundamental problems of the subject.

Part I The Imperative Mood 'Virtue, then, is a disposition governing our choices '. ARISTOTLE, Eth. Nic. 36 Prescriptive Language. ...

Part I Describing and Prescribing He to whom thou was sent for ease, being by name Legality, is the son of the Bond-woman . . . how canst thou expect by ...

In this work, the author has fashioned out of the logical and linguistic theses of his earlier books a full-scale but readily intelligible account of moral argument.

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

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This book is divided into three parts: in Part I, R. M. Hare offers a justification for the use of philosophy of language in the treatment of moral questions, together with an overview of his moral philosophy of ‘universal prescriptivism’. The second part, and the core of the book, consists of five chapters originally presented as a lecture series under the title ‘A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories’. Hare identifies descriptivism and non‐descriptivism as the two main positions in modern moral philosophy. (...) The former he divides into Naturalism and Intuitionism, and the latter into Emotivism and Rationalism. Hare argues that all forms of descriptivism tend to lead to Relativism because the truth conditions of moral statements are culturally variant. Of the positions discussed, only Hare's own position, a form of Rationalism, which he calls Universal Prescriptivism, meets all of the requirements that an adequate ethical theory should meet. Part III consists of Hare's previously published essay ‘Could Kant have been a Utilitarian?’ (Utilitas 5, 1993). Here, Hare puts forward the controversial thesis that Kant's moral philosophy is, in its basic principles, compatible with utilitarianism. (shrink)

This is about the rights and wrongs of bringing people into existence. In a nutshell: sometimes what matters is not what would have happened to you, but what would have happened to the person who would have been in your position, even if that person never actually exists.

Caspar Hare makes an original and compelling case for "egocentric presentism," a view about the nature of first-person experience, about what happens when we see things from our own particular point of view. A natural thought about our first-person experience is that "all and only the things of which I am aware are present to me." Hare, however, goes one step further and claims, counterintuitively, that the thought should instead be that "all and only the things of which I am (...) aware are present." There is, in other words, something unique about me and the things of which I am aware. On Myself and Other, Less Important Subjects represents a new take on an old view, known as solipsism, which maintains that people's experiences give them grounds for believing that they have a special, distinguished place in the world--for example, believing that only they exist or that other people do not have conscious minds like their own. Few contemporary thinkers have taken solipsism seriously. But Hare maintains that the version of solipsism he argues for is in indeed defensible, and that it is uniquely capable of resolving some seemingly intractable philosophical problems--both in metaphysics and ethics--concerning personal identity over time, as well as the tension between self-interest and the greater good. This formidable and tightly argued defense of a seemingly absurd view is certain to provoke debate. (shrink)

In this dissertation I spell out, and make a case for, egocentric presentism, a view about what it is for a thing to be me. I argue that there are benefits associated with adopting this view. ;The chief benefit comes in the sphere of ethics. Many of us, when we think about what to do, feel a particular kind of ambivalence. On the one hand we are moved by an impartial concern for the greater good. We feel the force of (...) considerations of the form: 'all things considered, doing...will make things better overall'. On the other hand we are selfish. We feel the force of considerations of the form 'doing...will make things better for me.' And it appears as if these sorts of considerations often conflict. Often by doing what makes things better for me I do not make things better overall, and vice-versa. But egocentric presentism is capable of resolving this conflict. As an egocentric presentist I can think both that considerations of the greater good always count in favor my doing what's good for me, and that considerations of the greater good always count in favor of other people doing what's good for them. ;Another benefit comes in the sphere of metaphysics. As an egocentric presentist I can make sense of some otherwise perplexing puzzles about personal identity over time, by combining a non-reductionist view about who I will be, with Parfitian reductionism about personal identity over time and a lean physicalist ontology. (shrink)

Caspar Hare presents a bold and original approach to questions of what we ought to do, and why we ought to do it. He breaks with tradition to argue that we can tackle difficult problems in normative ethics by starting with a principle that is humble and uncontroversial. Being moral involves wanting particular other people to be better off.

Some moral theories tell you, in some situations in which you are interacting with a group of people, to avoid acting in the way that is expectedly best for everybody. This essay argues that such theories are mistaken. Go ahead and do what is expectedly best for everybody. The argument is based on the thought that when interacting with an individual it is fine for you to act in the expected interests of the individual and that many interactions with individuals (...) may compose an interaction with a group. (shrink)

R.M. Hare is one of the most widely discussed of today's moral philosophers. In this volume he has collected a number of essays, including one which is previously unpublished, which fill in the theoretical background of his thought. Each essay is self-contained, but together they give a connected picture of his views on such questions as the objectivity and rationality of moral thinking, the issue between the ethical realists and their opponents, the place in our moral thought of appeals to (...) common convictions, and how to tell whether a feature of a situation is morally relevant. (shrink)

Is morality too difficult for human beings? Kant said that it was, except with God's assistance. Contemporary moral philosophers have usually discussed the question without reference to Christian doctrine, and have either diminished the moral demand, exaggerated human moral capacity, or tried to find a substitute in nature for God's assistance. This book looks at these philosophers--from Kant and Kierkegaard to Swinburne, Russell, and R.M. Hare--and the alternative in Christianity.

It is natural to distinguish between objective and subjective senses of.

In this chapter on time‐the emotional asymmetry, the author addresses two questions concerning future‐bias. The first is with respect to the sorts of things are people future‐biased. Do people want all things that they regard as bad to be in the past, or just some of them? Second, are people justified in being future‐biased? The second question has received a good deal of attention from philosophers. The author aims to survey different answers to the question, and to give a sense (...) of how things presently lie. A section presents some poor arguments for future‐bias, including discussions on the shrinking block theory of time. It is also said that, even if four‐dimensionalism is false, a charge of arbitrariness can be leveled at future‐bias. Finally, the chapter presents a discussion on some incoherence arguments against future‐bias. (shrink)

This is about the metaphysics of the self and ethical egoism. It can serve as a preview for my manuscript-in-progress below.

… the supreme end, the happiness of all mankind (Kr VA851/NKS 665).The law concerning punishment is a Categorical Imperative; and woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness, looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it (Rl.A196/B226, 6:331; Ladd, 100).

This article discusses the definition of slavery as a status in society and a relation to an owner. an imaginary case in which utilitarian arguments could justify slavery. this case, just because it is highly unlikely to occur in the actual world, does not provide an argument against utilitarianism. if it did occur, slavery would be justified in this case, but that is no reason for abandoning our intuitive principle condemning slavery. the adoption of this principle has in the actual (...) world a good utilitarian justification. slavery is wrong because in the world of men as they are it will almost always cause misery. (shrink)

I Imperative Sentences It has often been taken for granted by logicians that there is a class of sentences which is the proper subject-matter of logic, ...

Should we be time-biased on behalf of other people? 'Sometimes yes, sometimes no'—it is tempting to answer. But this is not right. On pain of irrationality, we cannot be too selective about when we are time-biased on behalf of other people.

This work is an exploration of divine command theory, which is the theory that what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it.

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing (...) economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet. (shrink)

The title of Hare’s book refers to the gap between the demand that morality places on us and our natural capacity to live by it. Such a gap is paradoxical if we accept the “‘ought’ implies ‘can”’ principle. The solution, Hare argues, is that the gap is filled by the Christian God. So we ought to be moral and can do so—with divine assistance. Hare’s statement and defense of the existence of the gap combines a rigorously Kantian notion of the (...) moral demand with a rigorously Calvinist notion of human depravity. As such, many readers will find the gap exaggerated, but most people will admit that there is some sort of gap here to be faced, and any gap at all is a problem. (shrink)

This collection of thirteen original essays by such well-known philosophers as Thomas Nagel, Peter Singer, J.O. Urmson, David A.J. Richards, James Griffin, R.B. Brandt, John C. Harsanyi, T.M. Scanlon, and others discusses the philosophy of R.M. Hare put forth in his book Moral Thinking, including his thoughts on universalizability, moral psychology, and the role of common-sense moral principles. In addition, Professor Hare responds to his critics with an essay and a detailed, point-by-point criticism.

Should we be time-biased on behalf of other people? ‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no’—it is tempting to answer. But this is not right. On pain of irrationality, we cannot be too selective about when we are time-biased on behalf of other people.

On one view of time past, present and future things exist, but their being past, present or future does not consist in their standing in before‐ and after‐relations to other things. So, for example, the event of the signing of the Magna Carta is past, and its being so does not consist in, or reduce to, its coming before the events of 2010.In this paper I discuss arguments for and against this view and view in its near vicinity, perspectival realism. (...) I suggest that perspectival realism is a better view than tense realism. It shares the principal virtues, but not the principal vices, of tense realism. (shrink)

Many practical issues in medical ethics depend on an understanding of the concept of health. The main question is whether it is a purely descriptive or a partly evaluative or normative concept. After posing some puzzles about the concept, the views of C Boorse, who thinks it is descriptive, are discussed and difficulties are found for them. An evaluative treatment is then suggested, and used to shed light on some problems about mental illness and to compare and contrast it with (...) physical illness and with political and other deviancies which are not illnesses. (shrink)