Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
Pauline Kleingeld, ‘How to Use Someone “Merely as a Means”’
ABSTRACT The prohibition on using others ‘merely as means’ is one of the best-known and most influential elements of Immanuel Kant’s moral theory. But it is widely regarded as impossible to specify with precision the conditions under which this prohibition is violated. On the basis of a re-examination of Kant’s texts, the article develops a […]
‘Trust’
“Trust is important, but it is also dangerous. It is important because it allows us to depend on others – for love, for advice, for help with our plumbing, or what have you – especially when we know that no outside force compels them to give us these things. But trust also involves the risk […]
Susanne Burri, ‘Morally Permissible Risk Imposition and Liability to Defensive Harm’
ABSTRACT This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform […]
‘Deontic Logic and the Philosophy of Law’
“It is curious that Anglophone philosophers of law (many of whom have had some training in logic in conjunction with the classwork required for a PhD) ignore deontic logic – the branch of logic that deals with propositions that employ normative concepts like obligation and permission. The point is not that deontic logic can answer […]
Victor Tadros, ‘Distributing Responsibility’
INTRODUCTION A widespread view in moral, legal, and political philosophy, as well as in public discourse, is that responsibility makes a difference to the fair allocation or distribution of things that are valuable or disvaluable independently of responsibility. For example, the fairness of punishing a person for wrongdoing varies with her responsibility for wrongdoing; the […]
‘Taking Utilitarianism Seriously’
Christopher Woodard, Taking Utilitarianism Seriously, Oxford University Press, 2019, 244pp, $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198732624. Christopher Woodard sets himself a difficult task here. Utilitarian theories are a subset of consequentialist theories, but even many of Woodard’s fellow consequentialists take themselves to have compelling reasons to reject certain commitments distinctive of utilitarian forms of consequentialism. They have […]
Timmermann and Viebahn, ‘To lie or to mislead?’
ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to argue that lying differs from mere misleading in a way that can be morally relevant: liars commit themselves to something they believe to be false, while misleaders avoid such commitment, and this difference can make a moral difference. Even holding all else fixed, a lie can therefore […]
‘Legal Theory Bookworm: Group Duties by Collins’
“The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals by Stephanie Collins. Here is a description …” (more) [Lawrence Solum, Legal Theory Blog, 23 May] First posted 2020-05-25 07:21:44
Stephen Bero, ‘Holding Responsible and Taking Responsibility’
ABSTRACT In matters of responsibility, there are often two sides to the transaction: one party who holds another responsible, and the other who (ideally) takes responsibility for her conduct. The first side has been closely scrutinized in discussions of the nature of responsibility, due to the influential Strawsonian conjecture that an agent is responsible if […]
Cass Sunstein, ‘On the Wrongness of Lies’
ABSTRACT Why are lies wrong? The Kantian answer sees lies as a close cousin to coercion; they are a violation of individual autonomy and a demonstration of contempt. By contrast, the utilitarian answer is that lies are likely to lead to terrible consequences, sometimes because they obliterate trust, sometime because they substitute the liar’s will […]