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This is a book about morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons.
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When making decisions, we ought to choose the option that is best in terms of what ultimately matters. However, knowing what ultimately matters is not always enough when it comes to knowing what we ought to do. In Opting for the Best, Douglas Portmore examines the questions that remain after we have determined what matters. In doing so, he engages with some of the most complex puzzles concerning what we ought to do, including those involving supererogation, indeterminate or overdetermined outcomes, predictable future misbehavior, among others.
Provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of consequentialism today, Includes a brief summary of the anthology's four parts and a concise primer on the nature and importance of the consequentialism/nonconsequentialism distinction, Relates consequentialism to the significant reform movements calling for environmentalism, effective altruism, animal liberation, and women's liberation Book jacket.
As Socrates famously noted, there is no more important question than how we ought to live. The answer to this question depends on how the reasons that we have for living in various different ways combine and compete. To illustrate, suppose that I've just received a substantial raise. What should I do with the extra money? I have most moral reason to donate it to effective charities but most self-interested reason to spend it on luxuries for myself. So, whether I should live my life as I have most moral reason to live it or as I have most self-interested reason to live it depends on how these and other sorts of reasons combine and compete to determine what I have most reason to do, all things considered. This Element seeks to figure out how different sorts of reasons combine and compete to determine how we ought to live.
Dale Dorsey considers one of the most fundamental questions in philosophical ethics: to what extent do the demands of morality have normative authority over us and our lives? Must we conform to moral requirements? Most who have addressed this question have treated the normative significance of morality as simply a fact to be explained. But Dorsey argues that this traditional assumption is misguided. According to Dorsey, not only are we not required to conform to moral demands, conforming to morality's demands will not always even be normatively permissible---moral behavior can be (quite literally) wrong. This view is significant not only for understanding the content and force of the moral point of view, but also for understanding the basic elements of how one ought to live.
New essays by leading moral philosophers on the nature and ethics of self-blame, and its connections to moral responsibility.
An important issue in epistemology concerns the source of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialism maintains that epistemic norms are genuine norms in virtue of the way in which they are conducive to epistemic value, whatever epistemic value may be. So, for example, the epistemic consequentialist might say that it is a norm that beliefs should be consistent, in that holding consistent beliefs is the best way to achieve the epistemic value of accuracy. Thus epistemic consequentialism is structurally similar to the family of consequentialist views in ethics. Recently, philosophers from both formal epistemology and traditional epistemology have shown interest in such a view. In formal ...
Michael J. Zimmerman explores whether and how our ignorance about ourselves and our circumstances affects what our moral obligations and moral rights are. He rejects objective and subjective views of the nature of moral obligation, and presents a new case for a 'prospective' view.
This volume represents the main papers delivered by both prominent and rising philosophers at the 1999 SOFIA conference in Mazatlan, Mexico. The volume contains twenty substantial papers spanning important issues of current interest including sexuality and consent, rights and scarcity, democracy and individualism, and the nature of law and the value of punishment.