Consequentialism and Partiality

Consequentialism has often been criticized for its inability to accommodate the partiality toward intimates that most people regard as not only morally permissible but as morally required. Consequentialists have responded to this objection by attempting to show, in various ways, that such partiality can, in some sense, be justified by their theory. While the classical utilitarians such as Mill and Sidgwick claimed that adherence to rules of thumb advising partial behavior is a good strategy for maximizing value, in recent years, Peter Railton has defended what is known as indirect consequentialism. According to the indirect consequentialist, consequentialism is to be understood as a criterion of right action, not as a decision procedure for agents to employ in their practical reasoning. Thus, according to Railton and others, a good consequentialist agent will often act and be motivated in the partial manner supposedly advocated by common sense. I argue that consequentialist moves such as those taken by Railton et al. are misguided, because the real issue is not how much partial behavior a moral theory is able to justify but, rather, the way in which it justifies that partial behavior.

Philosophy in a Polycentric World

In the first part of the article, the author substantiates the importance of philosophical communication as a kind of dependent variable that does not have an independent meaning without pointing to something else through which the philosophy itself (often negatively and non-reflectively) defines. We are talking about global centers of “systemic” communication (politics, science, religion, etc.), imposing their observations on other communities. It is argued that the priority of philosophical communication is justified by the ability to carry out “universal observations”, which is deprived of all other communication systems.In the second part of the article, the methodological question is first solved about the possibility of explaining a number of phenomena (communications, observations), for which no indication of external factors justifying their existence is required. It is proved that the description and explanation of such phenomena is possible on the way of formulating “significant tautologies” (Peter Railton). Using this method, the author carries out a meaningful deployment of the significant tautology “philosophy is only philosophy” and substantiates that philosophy is communication, capable of defining itself in a universal way: through something else and through itself. The author concludes that philosophy can be considered as a communicative system (i.e.,observer), whose mission is to generate a unique product: a universal self-description of modern society, where philosophy combines three fundamental observational abilities: scientific, protest and artistic activity.

Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress

This chapter lays out several alternative understandings of moral progress found in the contemporary literature of analytical moral and political philosophy. None of these amounts to a theory of moral progress, but each is suggestive of some of the building blocks for constructing such a theory. Among the accounts considered are those offered by Peter Singer, Ruth Macklin, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Railton. A taxonomy of types of views is provided, utilizing the following distinctions: monistic (reductionist) versus pluralistic, static versus dynamic, and better norm compliance versus functionalist, where the latter are grounded in the idea that managing problems of cooperation is constitutive of morality. Each of these understandings is shown to be inadequate because it is unable to accommodate the full range of types of moral progress or, in the case of functionalist views, because it betrays an impoverished conception of what morality has come to encompass.

Deliberation and Spontaneity

This chapter argues that in some contexts, deliberation may have a limited role to play in making our spontaneous reactions more virtuous. The chapter begins by considering the arguments of Peter Railton, and Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder, that deliberation cannot be foundational for action. Then, the chapter examines cases in which agents appear to act ethically in spite of their deliberative reasoning. Even perfect deliberation can undermine ethical action, the chapter argues. In the case of overcoming implicit bias, the relationship between spontaneity and deliberation is fraught too. Even when deliberation appears to be playing a central role in guiding our decisions and behavior, things may be considerably more complicated.

Peter Railton’s moral realism

Peter Railton is a moral realist, a naturalistic cognitivist, and a reductivist. He is a moral relist because he believes that moral facts exist. These moral facts are constituted by a complex set of natural facts (this is why Railton is a naturalistic realist). In order to make his naturalism plausible, Railton has to prove that moral facts (which are constituted by natural facts) can satisfy certain important conditions. Namely, he has to show that moral facts can have both explanatory and normative role. In the first part of this paper I shall attempt to demonstrate Railton?s arguments with which he proves that these conditions are satisfied in the area of non-moral goodness and in the area of moral rightness. In the conclusion of this paper I shall attempt to show that the most serious argument against Railton?s position is that Railton does not and cannot give a plausible answer to some very important questions about moral standards.

Feeling Utilitarian

Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams are recent proponents of the influential objection against utilitarianism that it leads to important forms of alienation. The famous response is that such objections are mistaken. The objections picture agents being motivated by the principle of utility, but, e.g., Peter Railton argues we should see this principle as purely normative – agents can be motivated any way they like and still be ‘objective’ consequentialists. I argue that this type of position is inadequate as a full answer to Stocker and Williams. I trace this failure to his inattention to moral psychology, then show how other remarks made by Mill provide the roots of a better answer to Stocker and Williams.