RETHINKING THE GOOD. Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning. Larry S. Temkin

Transcription

1 RETHINKING THE GOOD Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning Larry S. Temkin

2 Contents 1. Introduction 1.1 Overview of the Book 1.2 A Guide to the Material 1.3 Intuitions 1.4 Impossibility Arguments and Juggling 1.5 Some Terminology 1.6 Hammers and Nails 1.7 Final Remarks 2. Aggregation and Problems about Trade-offs: Many-Person Spectrum Arguments 2.1 Aggregation: A General Schema 2.2 Some Standard Views Regarding Trade-offs between Quality and Number 2.3 The Problem of Additive Aggregation 2.4 A Worry about Consistency 2.5 Some Initial Worries and Preliminary Responses 2.6 Concluding Remarks 3. Two New Principles of Aggregation 3.1 The Minimize Great Additional Burdens View 3.2 The Minimize Great Additional Burdens View and the Levelling Down Objection 3.3 The Consolidate Substantial Additional Benefits View 3.4 Worries about Iteration 3.5 The Bad Old Days and Harmless Torturers 3.6 Anti-additive Aggregationist Principles, Prisoner s Dilemmas, and Each-We Dilemmas 3.7 Summary of Chapter Three 4. On the Separateness of Individuals, Compensation, and Aggregation Within Lives 4.1 On the Separateness of Individuals: Sidgwick, Rawls, and Nozick 4.2 Compensation versus Moral Balancing 4.3 Compensation, Prudential Balancing, and Additivity 4.4 Summary of Chapter Four

3 5. Aggregation and Problems about Trade-offs Within Lives: Single-Person Spectrum Arguments 5.1 Two More Standard Views 5.2 Another Worry about Consistency 5.3 A Powerful Example From Torture to Mosquito Bites 5.4 Refining Views One Through Four and Clarifying the Example 5.5 An Objection to View Three: Invoking Principles of Decomposition and Recombination 5.6 A Proportionality Argument Against View Three 5.7 Trusting our Intuitions Regarding Inordinate Lengths of Time 5.8 Summary of Chapter Five 6. Exploring Transitivity, Part I 6.1 Transitive and Non-transitive Relations 6.2 Incommensurability 6.3 Rough Comparability 6.4 Rational Decision Making and the Non-transitivity of Not Worse Than 6.5 Rational Preferences and the Money Pump 6.6 The Importance of Global and Strategic Reasoning 6.7 Summary of Chapter Six 7. Exploring Transitivity, Part II 7.1 The Non-transitivity of Permissibility 7.2 The Non-transitivity of Moral Obligatoriness 7.3 The Obligatoriness Relation and Another Possible Money Pump 7.4 From Obligatoriness to Better Than: On the Right and the Good and Heritability of Non-transitivity 7.5 Defending the Transitivity of the Obligatoriness Relation: A Fine- Grained Solution 7.6 The High Cost of the Fine-Grained Solution to the Problem of Non-transitivity 7.7 Better Than: The Underlying Conditions that Would Make It a Transitive or Non-transitive Relation 7.8 Summary of Chapter Seven 8. Two Further Spectrum Arguments: On the Axiom of Continuity and an Anti-abortion Argument The Axiom of Continuity 8.1 Three Premises of Expected Utility Theory 8.2 Examining Continuity Easy Cases versus Extreme Cases 8.3 From Safe Bets to High Stake Bets The Challenge 8.4 Objections and Responses

4 Reassessing a Familiar Anti-abortion Argument 8.5 Another Spectrum Argument From Infant to Zygote 8.6 A First Pass at the Conservative s Argument 8.7 A Response to the Conservative s Argument 8.8 A Revised Version of the Conservative s Argument 8.9 Assessing the Revised Conservative Argument 8.10 Concluding Remarks 9. Spectrum Arguments: Objections and Replies, Part I 9.1 Different Kinds, Different Criteria 9.2 Sorites Paradoxes The Purported Analogy A Rough Intuitive Response A Detailed Response Revising the Sorites Paradox 9.3 Summary of Chapter Nine 10. Spectrum Arguments: Objections and Replies, Part II 10.1 Vagueness and Indeterminacy 10.2 Zeno s Paradox 10.3 Heuristics and Similarity-Based Arguments 10.4 Summary of Chapter Ten 11. On the Value of Utility and Its Relation to Other Moral Ideals 11.1 Preliminary Remarks 11.2 A Standard Model for Utility 11.3 Is All Utility Non-Instrumentally or Intrinsically Valuable? 11.4 Total versus Average Utility 11.5 Revisiting the Repugnant Conclusion 11.6 The Gymnastics Model for Moral Ideals 11.7 Upper and Lower Limits for Different Kinds of Utility 11.8 Contrasting the Gymnastics Model with the Standard Model of Utility 11.9 Shared Formal or Structural Features of Moral Ideals Summary of Chapter Eleven 12. On the Nature of Moral Ideals, Part I 12.1 The Mere Addition Paradox 12.2 Illuminating the Mere Addition Paradox: Parfit s Implicit Appeal to an Essentially Comparative View of Moral Ideals 12.3 The Impersonal Internal Aspect View of Moral Ideals 12.4 An Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Principle 12.5 On the Relevance of Mere Addition 12.6 Reconsidering the Mere Addition Paradox on the Impersonal Internal Aspect View of Moral Ideals 12.7 In the Mere Addition Paradox Genuinely Paradoxical 12.8 Summary of Chapter Twelve

5 13. On the Nature of Moral Ideals, Part II 13.1 Reconsidering the Essentially Comparative View of Moral Ideals 13.2 Restricting the Scope of Essentially Comparative Ideals 13.3 Another Reason to Accept Essentially Comparative Views: Revisiting How Only France Survives 13.4 Two Further Reasons to Accept Essentially Comparative Views 13.5 Norcross s Objections 13.6 Recalling the Inadequacy of Fine-Grained Solutions 13.7 Lexical Priority 13.8 Preserving Transitivity: A Sports Analogy 13.9 Summary of Chapter Thirteen 14. Conclusion 14.1 Topics Canvassed 14.2 Lessons Learned 14.3 Work Remaining 14.4 On the (Ir)Relevance of Meaning or Logic to Whether "All-Things- Considered Better Than" is a Transitive Relation 14.5 Some Responses to My Views 14.6 On the Appropriateness of (Sometimes) Embracing Incredible or Inconsistent Views 14.8 Skepticism 14.9 Final Remarks Summary Appendices A Worries about Duration and Number B On the Relations between Quantity, Quality, Duration, and Number C A New Version of the Paradox of the Heap Notes Bibliography Index