Developing Deontology E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Ratio Special Issues
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 250

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Developing Deontology consists of six new essays in ethical theory by leading contemporary moral philosophers. Each essay considers concepts prominent in the development of deontological approaches to ethics, and these essays offer an invaluable contribution to that development.

• Essays are contributed by Michael Smith, Philip Stratton-Lake, Ralph Wedgewood, David Owens, Peter Vallentyne, and Elizabeth Harman - all leading contemporary moral philosophers
• Each essay offers an original and previously unpublished contribution to the subject
• A significant addition to the field for anyone with an interest in the development of deontology
• The collection is edited by a leading philosophical scholar

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Ratio Book Series

Title page

Copyright page

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

1 DEONTOLOGICAL MORAL OBLIGATIONS AND NON-WELFARIST AGENT-RELATIVE VALUES

1. A Familiar Puzzle

2. Rethinking Hume’s Strictures

3. Moral Obligations, Reasons for Action, and Agent-relative Values

4. Conclusion

2 RECALCITRANT PLURALISM

Introduction: Moral foundationalism

Deontic Reasons

Moral reasons and moral motivation.

Being wronged and reasons to resent

Moral reasons and recalcitrant pluralism

Expanding the good

Family relations

The son’s motive

3 DEFENDING DOUBLE EFFECT

4 THE POSSIBILITY OF CONSENT

1. The Problem of Normative Power

2. Consent and Choice

3. Promise, Consent and Normative Interests

4. Permissive Interests

5 ENFORCEMENT RIGHTS AGAINST NON-CULPABLE NON-JUST INTRUSION

1. Background on the Problem: Intrusion, Unjust Infringement, and Enforcement Rights

2. Intrusion-Harm Reduction

3. Sufficient Conditions for Enforcement Rights against Non-Culpable Non-Just Intrusions

4. A Defence

5. Conclusion

6 DOES MORAL IGNORANCE EXCULPATE?

1. Rosen’s Argument

2. Objections to Rosen’s Argument

3. The Significance of the Narrower Conclusion

4. My Proposed View

5. Objections to the Proposed View

6. Understanding My Disagreement with Rosen

7. Conclusion

Index

Ratio Book Series

Each book in the series is devoted to a philosophical topic of particular contemporary interest, and features invited contributions from leading authorities in the chosen field.

Volumes published so far:

Developing Deontology: New Essays in Ethical Theory, edited by Brad Hooker

Agents and Their Actions, edited by Maximilian de Gaynesford

Philosophy of Literature, edited by Severin Schroeder

Essays on Derek Parfit’s On What Matters, edited by Jussi Suikkanen and John Cottingham

Justice, Equality and Constructivism, edited by Brian Feltham

Wittgenstein and Reason, edited by John Preston

The Meaning of Theism, edited by John Cottingham

Metaphysics in Science, edited by Alice Drewery

The Self?, edited by Galen Strawson

On What We Owe to Each Other, edited by Philip Stratton-Lake

The Philosophy of Body, edited by Mike Proudfoot

Meaning and Representation, edited by Emma Borg

Arguing with Derrida, edited by Simon Glendinning

Normativity, edited by Jonathan Dancy

This edition first published 2012

Originally published as Volume 24, Issue 4 of Ratio

Chapters © 2012 The Authors

Book compilation © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Developing deontology : new essays in ethical theory / edited by Brad Hooker.

p. cm.

 Includes index.

 ISBN 978-1-4443-6194-0 (pbk.)

 ISBN 978-1-1183-2125-6 (epub)

 ISBN 978-1-1183-2127-0 (mobi)

 1. Ethics. I. Hooker, Brad, 1957–

 BJ21.D48 2012

 171′.2--dc23

2012001062

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Harman is an associate professor of Philosophy and Human Values at Princeton University. Her articles include ‘Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion’ (Philosophy and Public Affairs) and ‘ “I’ll Be Glad I Did It” Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires’ (Philosophical Perspectives).

David Owens became a professor at the University of Reading after having taught at University of Sheffield for 17 years. He has held visiting positions at London, Yale, Oxford’s All Souls College, Sydney and Lublin. He is the author of Causes and Coincidences (Cambridge University Press, 1992), Reason Without Freedom (Routledge, 2002) and Shaping the Normative Landscape (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Michael Smith is McCosh Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the author of The Moral Problem (Blackwell, 1994) and Ethics and the A Priori: Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and the co-author, with Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, of Mind, Morality, and Explanation: Selected Collaborations (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Philip Stratton-Lake is a professor at the University of Reading. He is the author of Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth (Routledge, 2000) and the editor of Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (Oxford University Press, 2002), the new edition of W. D. Ross’s The Right and the Good (Oxford University Press, 2002), and On What We Owe to Each Other (Blackwell, 2004).

Peter Vallentyne is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri. He writes on issues of liberty and equality in the theory of justice (and left-libertarianism in particular) and, more recently, on enforcement rights (rights to protect primary rights). He is an associate editor of Ethics.

Ralph Wedgwood is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California; he previously taught at Merton College, University of Oxford and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of many articles on various aspects of ethics and epistemology, and of The Nature of Normativity (Oxford University Press, 2007).

1

DEONTOLOGICAL MORAL OBLIGATIONS AND NON-WELFARIST AGENT-RELATIVE VALUES

Michael Smith

Abstract

Many claim that a plausible moral theory would have to include a principle of beneficence, a principle telling us to produce goods that are both welfarist and agent-neutral. But when we think carefully about the necessary connection between moral obligations and reasons for action, we see that agents have two reasons for action, and two moral obligations: they must not interfere with any agent’s exercise of his rational capacities and they must do what they can to make sure that agents have rational capacities to exercise. According to this distinctively deontological view of morality, though we are obliged to produce goods, the goods in question are non-welfarist and agent-relative. The value of welfare thus turns out to be, at best, instrumental.

Many theorists think that two related claims will occupy centre stage in any plausible moral theory. The first is that we should bring about more rather than less of what’s of intrinsic value. The second is that welfare has intrinsic value. Putting these two claims together, they suppose that any plausible moral theory will tell us that we should produce more rather than less welfare.