For many philosophers working in the area of Population Ethics, it seems that either they have to confront the Repugnant Conclusion , or they have to confront the Non-Identity Problem . To them it seems there is no escape, they either have to face one problem or the other. However, there is a way around this, allowing us to escape the Repugnant Conclusion, by using what I will call Negative Average Preference Utilitarianism – which though similar to anti-frustrationism, has some (...) important differences in practice. Current “positive” forms of utilitarianism have struggled to deal with the Repugnant Conclusion, as their theory actually entails this conclusion; however, it seems that a form of Negative Average Preference Utilitarianism easily escapes this dilemma. (shrink)

One of the major arguments against Act consequentialism is that it has counterintuitive implications in many kinds of cases. One of the methods of avoiding these counterintuitive verdicts is through the use of a “Generalization Argument” such as that proposed by Marcus Singer in his (1961) book Generalization in Ethics, which is intended to be an improved version of the traditional “What if everyone did that?” approach to moral theory. This Generalization Argument, however, also has counterintuitive implications due to over-generalizing. (...) In the spirit of his nomenclature, I thus propose that a form of consequentialism that partially generalizes, in a sense explained below, can avoid some of these counterintuitive results. The purpose of my proposing this new theory is to explore the idea of using some filter to sort actions into the categories of permissible vs. impermissible, and then use a consequentialist maximizing framework to choose between only the permissible options. (shrink)

In his 1972 work Famine, Affluence and Morality, Peter Singer presents an argument that we of the developed world, can and ought to do more for the developing nations to alleviate their poverty. Singer believes that his argument leads to the inescapable conclusion that we should keep giving to the poor until giving more, will harm us more than it will benefit them. -/- Singer’s conclusion is reached however, using a cost benefit analysis of absolute welfare to determine cost; whereas (...) by using a capabilities/freedoms approach combined with Pareto efficiency to determine cost, we reach a much more acceptable conclusion - a Pareto efficient conception of justice. This commits us to helping/aiding the poor, but only up until a level where we lose a capability of our own, a reduction not in relative terms but rather absolute terms. -/- In this paper, I outline this different conception of justice based on a Pareto Efficient Capabilities Approach. (shrink)

ExcerptAt first glance, the title of Kalb's new book The Tyranny of Liberalism seems to be an oxymoron. How can a theory of liberalism result in something illiberal? Liberalism is designed to give people freedom, so how can it be tyrannical? This is what Kalb attempts to show: the paradoxical nature of liberalism, and how it is self-defeating. To Kalb there are two main problems with contemporary liberalism: first, liberalism is tyrannical, insofar as it does not allow for any dissension (...) or criticism of itself; and second, the logic of liberalism is based on the false assumption that human societal…. (shrink)