John Harsanyi has offered an argument grounded in Bayesian decision theory that purports to show that John Rawls's original position analysis leads directly to utilitarian conclusions. After explaining why a prominent Rawlsian line of response to Harsanyi's argument fails, I argue that a seemingly innocuous Bayesian rationality assumption, the continuity axiom, is at the heart of a fundamental disagreement between Harsanyi and Rawls. The most natural way for a Rawlsian to respond to Harsanyi's line of analysis, I argue, is to (...) reject continuity. I then argue that this Rawlsian response fails as a defence of the difference principle, and I raise some concerns about whether it makes sense to posit the discontinuities needed to support the other elements of Rawls's view, although I suggest that Rawls may be able to invoke discontinuity to vindicate part of his first principle of justice. (shrink)

In “Desire as Belief” and “Desire as Belief II,” David Lewis ( 1988 , 1996 ) considers the anti-Humean position that beliefs about the good require corresponding desires, which is his way of understanding the idea that beliefs about the good are capable of motivating behavior. He translates this anti-Humean claim into decision theoretic terms and demonstrates that it leads to absurdity and contradiction. As Ruth Weintraub ( 2007 ) has shown, Lewis’ argument goes awry at the outset. His decision (...) theoretic formulation of anti-Humeanism is one that no sensible anti-Humean would endorse. My aim is to demonstrate that Lewis’ infelicitous rendering of anti-Humeanism really does undermine the force of his arguments. To accomplish this, I begin by developing a more adequate decision theoretic rendering of the anti-Humean position. After showing that my formulation of anti-Humeanism constitutes a plausible interpretation of the anti-Humean thesis, I go on to demonstrate that if we adopt this more accurate rendition of anti-Humeanism, the view is no longer susceptible to arguments like the ones Lewis has devised. I thereby provide a more robust response to Lewis’ arguments than has yet been offered, and in the process I develop a formulation of anti-Humeanism that creates the possibility for future decision theoretic arguments that, unlike Lewis’, speak directly to the plausibility of anti-Humeanism. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge has argued that typical citizens of affluent nations participate in an unjust global order that harms the global poor. This supports his conclusion that there are widespread negative institutional duties to reform the global order. I defend Pogge’s negative duty approach, but argue that his formulation of these duties is ambiguous between two possible readings, only one of which is properly confined to genuinely negative duties. I argue that this ambiguity leads him to shift illicitly between negative and (...) positive duties, and ultimately to overstate the extent of the negative ones. I also argue that recognition of this ambiguity makes it possible to draw a meaningful distinction between the relevant positive and negative duties, and that Pogge’s analysis can therefore be revised in a way that reveals substantial negative institutional duties to the global poor, albeit less extensive ones than Pogge asserts. In order to demonstrate this, I discuss two aspects of the global order that Pogge has criticized: the system of intellectual property rights in pharmaceuticals and the rights of de facto rulers to dispose of a nation’s natural resources. In each case, although I do not specify the relevant negative institutional duties precisely, I try to identify intelligible questions whose answers would reveal genuinely negative duties and show that their likely answers are distinct from the conclusions asserted by Pogge and suggested by his analysis. (shrink)

This article discusses moral issues raised by defined contribution retirement plans, specifically 401(k) plans in the United States. The primary aim is to defend the claim that the federal government ought to require 401(k) plans to include a range of socially responsible investment (SRI) options. The analysis begins with the minimal assumption that corporations engage in behavior that imposes morally impermissible harms on others with sufficient regularity to warrant attention. After motivating this assumption, I argue that individual investors typically share (...) in the responsibility for the harms imposed by corporations in which they invest, and that they therefore have a moral obligation to incorporate considerations of social responsibility into their investment decisions, when possible, to avoid being complicit in morally impermissible corporate behavior. I further argue that individuals are subject to substantial institutional and structural pressures that create a powerful incentive to invest in 401(k) plans, even though such plans typically lack any SRI options. To eliminate this pressure to commit indirect harm in the process of saving for retirement, I recommend that the federal government requires 401(k) plans to incorporate a range of SRI options, and I defend this proposal from several possible objections. (shrink)

This paper offers an assessment of current welfare policy in the United States. I argue that there is a genuine set of reciprocal obligations owed between fellow citizens that both justify and constrain U.S. welfare policy. In particular, I argue that there is both a widespread duty for potential welfare recipients to seek employment and a similarly robust obligation for other members of society to provide publicly funded jobs of last resort for those unable to find traditional employment. This leads (...) me to endorse elements of current U.S. welfare policy but also recommend several substantial changes that would make the overall policy more just. (shrink)

R. M. Hare has an ambitious project of arguing from a limited set of premises about the nature of moral thought and language all the way to substantive utilitarian conclusions. I reconstruct Hare's argument, identify an important problem for Hare, and then develop and endorse a restricted Hare-like argument. This argument is less ambitious than Hare's, and does not substantiate utilitarian conclusions on its own, but I demonstrate that it nonetheless imposes important constraints on moral judgements and I indicate how (...) it can play a role in a larger argument for utilitarian conclusions. (shrink)

This paper will address the ethics of euthanasia, understood as an interaction between a patient and a physician in which the physician behaves in a way that is intended to lead to the death of the patient, for the patient's own sake. Forms of euthanasia are often categorized as active or passive, with the distinction lying in the extent to which the physician either actively causes the patient's death or else passively allows the patient to die of an underlying medical (...) condition. That distinction will not play a role in my analysis, but it is worth noting that I will be focusing on, and defending, paradigmatically active instances of euthanasia. Another common distinction, one that will play... (shrink)