Offsetting, Denialism, and Risk

In Climate Matters John Broome defends two claims. First, if you live a “normal life” in a rich country, you will probably cause significant harm by your emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG), violating a moral duty of harm-avoidance. Second, you can satisfy this duty by offsetting your emissions. Some would deny Broome’s first claim on the grounds that an individual’s emissions of GHG do no harm. Broome calls this position “IndividualDenialism” (ID) and in a recent paper he attempts to refute it. I explain how, if Broome’s refutation of ID were successful, it would undermine his claim that you can satisfy your duty of harm avoidance by offsetting. I suggest an alternative defence of the claim that you can satisfy your individual duty to reduce your carbon footprint by offsetting. This alternative defence assumes that your duty to reduce your carbon footprint derives from a duty of risk-avoidance.

Logical Form

Chapter 2 presents the particular reasons locutions on which the book focuses, and argue that one of them is fundamental. The chapter identifies the logical form of this fundamental reasons locution by introducing the idea that ‘reason’ is a predicate/operator hybrid. It then shows why ‘reason’ as a count noun is not ambiguous in any way (contra Mark Schroeder and John Broome), and offer arguments against Justin Snedegar’s claim that reasons locutions are contrastive and John Skorupski’s claim that reasons locutions have an epistemic parameter and/or a weight parameter.

Early Death and Later Suffering

In this chapter I sketch an account of the misfortune of death for which I have previously argued (the Time-Relative Interest Account) and defend it against objections advanced by John Broome in his contribution to this book. I then consider other objections and suggest the beginnings of responses to them. The general conclusion I draw is that issues about our continuing to exist cannot be separated from issues about our beginning to exist and that we therefore cannot fully understand certain issues raised by death without understanding certain deeply intractable issues in population ethics. I suggest, in particular, that a promising way forward is to accept a view about harming and benefiting that has its source in population ethics (either the familiar Asymmetry about procreation or, more plausibly in my view, a Weak Asymmetry) and to restrict the scope of the Time-Relative Interest Account so that it applies only to the conferral of what I call noncomparative benefits and not to the infliction of suffering or other intrinsic harms.

Prioritarianism: A response to critics

Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is ‘welfarist’ (namely, it satisfies axioms of Pareto Indifference, Strong Pareto, and Anonymity) as well as satisfying three further axioms: Pigou–Dalton (formalizing the property of giving greater weight to those who are worse off), Separability, and Continuity. Philosophical discussion of prioritarianism was galvanized by Derek Parfit’s 1991 Lindley Lecture. Since then, and notwithstanding Parfit’s support, a variety of criticisms of prioritarianism have been advanced: by utilitarians (such as John Broome and Hilary Greaves), egalitarians (such as Lara Buchak; Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve; Ingmar Persson; and Larry Temkin), and sufficientists (Roger Crisp). In previous work, we have each endorsed prioritarianism. This article sets forth a renewed defense, in the light of the accumulated criticisms. We clarify the concept of a prioritarian moral view (here addressing work by David McCarthy), discuss the application of prioritarianism under uncertainty (herein of ‘ex post’ and ‘ex ante’ prioritarianism), distinguish between person-affecting and impersonal justifications, and provide a person-affecting case for prioritarianism. We then describe the various challenges mounted against prioritarianism – utilitarian, egalitarian, and sufficientist – and seek to counter each of them.

A Broomean Model of Rationality and Reasoning

John Broome has developed an account of rationality and reasoning which gives philosophical foundations for choice theory and the psychology of rational agents. We formalize his account into a model that differs from ordinary choice-theoretic models through focusing on psychology and the reasoning process. Within that model, we ask Broome’s central question of whether reasoning can make us more rational: whether it allows us to acquire transitive preferences, consistent beliefs, non-akratic intentions, and so on. We identify three structural types of rationality requirements: consistency requirements, completeness requirements, and closedness requirements. Many standard rationality requirements fall under this typology. Based on three theorems, we argue that reasoning is successful in achieving closedness requirements, but not in achieving consistency or completeness requirements. We assess how far our negative results reveal gaps in Broome's theory, or deficiencies in choice theory and behavioral economics.

Skorupski and Broome on the Agent-Neutral/Relative Distinction

I have two aims in this article. The first is to break the deadlocked exchange between John Skorupski and John Broome concerning how best to understand Thomas Nagel's distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action. The second is to provide a reformulation of the distinction which captures an uncontroversial distinction between those reason-giving considerations which encapsulate an indexical relationship between an agent and an object of moral concern, and those which do not. The resolution of this exchange, and subsequent reformulation of the dichotomy, has two important ramifications for contemporary debates in moral philosophy. First and foremost, it reveals the true, pre-theoretical nature of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action, and how the notion of agent-relativity cannot be utilized to underwrite the existence of deontic constraints. And, second, it provides definitive support for Skorupski's claim that agent-relative reasons are not the defining feature of deontological ethics.

The Coherent and the Rational

This chapter motivates Reasons Responsiveness by situating it within the metaethical literature on rationality. The first task is to show how Reasons Responsiveness can overcome prominent arguments given by John Broome that seek to show that rationality is not a function of normative reasons. The second task is to show that Reasons Responsiveness can capture the data that motivates rival coherentist accounts in the metaethical literature. It is argued that usually one is irrational when incoherent and that Reasons Responsiveness can explain this because of the way in which reasons transmit. Some forms of incoherence are not irrational. Reasons Responsiveness can explain this as well. The upshot is that Reasons Responsiveness can explain the data that motivates rival views without incurring their main problems.

What You’re Rationally Required to Do and What You Ought to Do (Are the Same Thing!)

This chapter is about whether we ought to be rational—i.e., whether rationality is normative or deontically significant. Although this is a truism, skepticism about whether we ought to be rational is popular in the wake of very influential work by John Broome and Niko Kolodny. This chapter argues that Reasons Responsiveness vindicates the deontic significance of rationality. It is argued that it is independently plausible that what one deliberatively ought to do is determined by the reasons one possesses. The argument for this is anchored in the thought that there is a constitutive connection between deliberative obligations and being able to correctly respond to reasons. If this is right, then what one ought to do and what one is rationally required to do are the same thing. Thus, rationality has ultimate deontic significance.

Reflections on the Ideology of Reasons

In this chapter we offer a series of reflections on the ideology of reasons. Among the normative reasons for an agent X to phi, it is common to distinguish between those reasons that the agent possesses and those which she does not. After some background (5.1), we argue (5.2) that possession of a reason requires knowledge. In 5.3, we argue, first, that the normative reason construction is factive, and second, that possession ascriptions can be factored into a normative reason construction and a possession claim. In 5.4, we compare two prominent views concerning the nature of normative reasons: those of Kearns and Star and of John Broome. While both views have significant merit, we argue that they also face some non-trivial challenges, and discuss a range of considerations that can help to adjudicate between these two conceptions.