PEA Soup

Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: Cécile Fabre's "Guns, Food, and Liability to Attack in War"

We are pleased to announce the first installment of our collaboration with Ethics, where we will host a discussion of one article from each issue of the journal, and the journal will make a copy of that article freely accessible (for a limited time) to our participants. 

Our first featured article is Cécile Fabre's "Guns, Food, and Liability to Attack in War" (Volume 120, issue 1).  The article is now available here.  We are also very pleased that Jeff McMahan has agreed to provide a précis to introduce the discussion.  Professor McMahan's précis will appear, and discussion of the article will begin, on Monday, January 11.

CFP: Graduate Conference in Political Theory

Princeton University

9-10 April 2010

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach or topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.

Welcome Richard Chappell!

We are pleased to announce that Richard Chappell has accepted our invitation to be a contributor here at PEA Soup. Richard is a graduate student in Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the author of Philosophy, et cetera. He specializes in ethical theory with a primary interest in rational normativity, or the all-things-considered "ought". Welcome aboard, Richard!

The Definition of ‘Securable’

As I argued in my previous post, I think that ‘ought’ implies ‘securable’, and, from that, it follows that agents can only be required to perform securable acts. I am, however, a bit unsettled about how best to define ‘securable’. Below, I list the three most obvious contenders and explain why my current thinking is that something along the lines of D3 is best. Here are the three contenders, D1-D3:

Doing the Best We Can

I used to think that we ought to do the best we can. After debating the issue with Richard Chappell, doing some more research, and rereading some articles that I hadn’t read in awhile, I’ve changed my mind. The idea that we ought to do the best we can is plausible if we assume that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and nothing more restrictive than ‘can’. Consider that it is plausible to suppose that we ought to perform the best alternative, whatever the relevant set of alternatives is – at least, this is plausible so long as we presume, as I will, that the best alternative is to be understood in a theory-neutral way such that the best alternative is not necessarily the one that has the best consequences but is necessarily the alternative that is best according to the correct normative theory (i.e., the one that there is best/most reason to perform). But what is the relevant set of alternatives? I used to think that it was the set of alternatives that the agent can perform – call these ‘personally possible’. But what if ‘ought’ implies something more restrictive than ‘personally possible’? Suppose, for instance, that ‘ought’ implies ‘X’, where the set of alternatives that are X is a proper subset of those that are personally possible. If that’s true, then there would be some acts that are personally possible for me but which I cannot be obligated to perform: those that are personally possible for me but not X. I now think that there is such an X and that X equals ‘securable’. Below the fold, I explain the notion and defend the claim that ‘ought’ implies ‘securable’.

CFP: Northwestern University Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy

CALL FOR PAPERS

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL THEORY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

MAY 20-22, 2010

CFP: The Felician Ethics Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS: The fourth annual meeting of the Felician Ethics Conference will be held at the Rutherford campus of Felician College on Saturday, April 24, 2010, from 9 am – 6 pm. (Felician’s Rutherford campus is located at 223 Montross Ave., Rutherford NJ, 07070.)

The Next Chapter: Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup

We are very pleased to announce a new partnership between PEA Soup and the distinguished journal, Ethics.  In addition to our regular postings, PEA Soup's editors will select one article from each issue of Ethics to be the focus of a featured discussion on our blog.  Ethics, in turn, will make an on-line copy of the featured article available to our readers for free (for three months).  At the time of the article's publication, we will post a link to the open-access copy, and then a week later an open discussion of it will be introduced with a critical précis by an invited discussant.

We expect that this partnership will give rise to a series of lively and productive conversations.  Stay tuned for details on the first featured article, which will be selected from the next issue of Ethics (Volume 120, Number 1).

Special thanks to everyone at Ethics, especially its Editor, Henry S. Richardson, and Managing Editor, Catherine Galko Campbell, for their help and participation.

Commonsense Consequentialism: A Bleg for Comments

Currently, I’m working on a book entitled Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality. (Click on the link to be taken to a web site where you can download individual chapters.) The book is on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, I defend a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons. I have a complete draft of the book finished, but I’m still in the process of revising it. I have promised to submit it by the end of this coming January. I would be very grateful, then, to those who have the time to read it (or any portion of it) and give me comments before then, as this would be of tremendous help to me in revising it. Comments, questions, and/or criticisms can be posted here or sent to me at douglas.portmore@asu.edu. Below the fold, I include the table of comments followed by a brief synopsis of each chapter.

Subjective Utilitarianism: What is it good for? – Absolutely Nothing

Suppose that a subject, S, is in some less-than-ideal epistemic position with respect to both the relevant normative facts and the relevant non-normative facts – that is, assume that S faces both normative uncertainty (i.e., uncertainty about the relevant normative facts) and non-normative uncertainty (i.e., uncertainty about the relevant non-normative facts). Yet S must still choose which of the mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive act alternatives available to her to perform. Call this S’s choice situation.

Theories about what S ought to do in her choice situation fall into one of the following three categories: