Rawls scholarship has not paid much attention to Rawls's early methodological writings so far, pretty much focusing on the reflective equilibrium (RE) which he is understood to have adopted in A Theory of Justice. Nelson Goodman's coherence-theoretical formulations concerning the justification of inductive logic in Fact, Fiction and Forecast have been suggested as the source of the RE. Following Rawls's methodological development in his early works, we shall challenge both these views. Our analysis reveals that the basic elements of RE can be located in his ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ essay. We shall further show that the origins of RE go all the way back to Aristotle's methods of ethics, as RE accords with the methodology entitled saving the appearances (SA) in recent Aristotle scholarship.

James Henderson ‘Jimmy’ Burns was the founding editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (1968–) and an outstanding historian of medieval and modern political thought. In this brief tribute I hope to emphasize, first, his contribution to the revival of interest in utilitarianism as a field of study, and, second, his reassessment of Bentham's ideas in the context of the British and French Enlightenment.

I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence from Schnall and others, and recent neuroscientific research from Greene, Klein, Kahane and Schaich Borg. It explains Mikhail and Hauser's ‘universal moral grammar’ and an interesting phenomenon about Double Effect cases noted by Bennett. When unequally vivid representations determine our decisions, we typically misjudge the merits of our options and make mistakes. So if Double Effect is a product of unequal vividness, it is likely to be mistaken. This argument, I claim, fits Berker's specifications for good empirically grounded arguments in ethics.

In this article, I argue that the small-improvement fails since some of the comparisons involved in the argument might be indeterminate. I defend this view from two objections by Ruth Chang, namely the argument from phenomenology and the argument from perplexity. There are some other objections to the small-improvement argument that also hinge on claims about indeterminacy. John Broome argues that alleged cases of value incomparability are merely examples of indeterminacy in the betterness relation. The main premise of his argument is the much-discussed collapsing principle. I offer a new counterexample to this principle and argue that Broome's defence of the principle is not cogent. On the other hand, Nicolas Espinoza argues that the small-improvement argument fails as a result of the mere possibility of evaluative indeterminacy. I argue that his objection is unsuccessful.

According to a well-established interpretive line, the Benthamic judge would be allowed no room for autonomous calculations of utility and his or her task would only be that of mechanically applying substantive law, which expresses the legislator's will. For Gerald Postema, in contrast, Bentham's judge would be granted ample power to decide cases by directly applying the principle of utility. This article criticizes both views, by showing that a ‘mechanical’ adjudication was for Bentham utterly impossible, although this does not mean that judges should be free to decide according to direct utility calculations. Judges must be the tutors of the citizens’ expectations, which, under a system of statute law, will focus on the code. However, they can avoid suboptimality in cases where applying a general rule would not maximize utility, without preponderant damage for law-induced expectations: Bentham's suggestion is that they do so by proposing amendments of the code to the legislature.

Adam and Eve have the same record yet receive different punishments. Adam receives the punishment that they both deserve, whereas Eve receives a more lenient punishment. In this article, we explore whether a deserved-but-unequal punishment, such as what Adam receives, can be just. We do this by explicating the conceptions of retributive justice that underlie both sides of the debate. We argue that inequality in punishment is disturbing mainly because of the disrespect it often expresses towards the offender receiving the harsher treatment, and also because it casts doubt on whether Adam got what he deserved. We suggest that when no disrespect is involved and when it is clear that the criminal got what he deserved, inequality is not worrisome.

Consequentialists insist there is no rational basis for distinguishing between determinate (or identifiable) victims and indeterminate (or statistical) victims. Whether it's a child drowning at our feet or needy communities abroad, our reason to help is the same. Experimental data indicate, however, that we regularly make such distinctions. In this article, I show that there are indeed persuasive normative grounds for preserving this distinction. When potential beneficiaries are determinate, they have a special claim on us grounded in fairness. I present several cases that demonstrate that treating determinate beneficiaries the same as indeterminate beneficiaries is unjust. I conclude with an analysis of the relevant social psychology data.

In this article I assess the ability of motivational accounts of paternalism to respond to a particular challenge: can its proponents adequately explain the source of the distinctive form of disrespect that animates this view? In particular I examine the recent argument put forward by Jonathan Quong that we can explain the presumptive wrong of paternalism by relying on a Rawlsian account of moral status. I challenge the plausibility of Quong's argument, claiming that although this approach can provide a clear response to the explanatory challenge, it is only successful in doing so when it relies on the strength of its rival: the argument from personal autonomy. In doing so I illustrate that such responses are conceptually dependent on an account of respect for persons, and thus much of the relevant controversy is actually disagreement over how we respect other individuals.

In this article I criticize the non-consequentialist Weighted Lottery (WL) solution to the choice between saving a smaller or a larger group of people. WL aims to avoid what non-consequentialists see as consequentialism's unfair aggregation by giving equal consideration to each individual's claim to be rescued. In so doing, I argue, WL runs into another common objection to consequentialism: it is excessively demanding. WL links the right action with the outcome of a fairly weighted lottery, which means that an agent can only act rightly if s/he has actually run the lottery. In many actual cases, this involves epistemic demands that can be almost impossible to meet. I argue that plausible moral principles cannot make such extreme epistemic demands.

It is the purpose of this article to offer an account of Mill's metaethics. Expanding upon clues given recently by Dale Miller, and previously by John Skorupski, I suggest that when it comes to the foundations of his philosophy, Mill might share more with the intuitionists than we are accustomed to think. Common wisdom holds that Mill had no time for the normativity of intuitions. I wish to dispute, or at least temper, this dogma, by claiming that Mill's attitude towards intuitions is far more complex and ambivalent than is generally thought. I argue that, according to Mill, our belief in the reliability of inductive moves and apparent memories, as well as the desirability of pleasure, is vindicated by something akin to intuition. Although his endorsement of the normativity of these intuitions might seem to be in tension with the arguments he offers against the ‘intuitionist school’, this tension is only apparent.

This article addresses the so-called ‘claimability objection’ to human rights. Focusing specifically on the work of Onora O'Neill, the article challenges two important aspects of her version of this objection. First: its narrowness. O'Neill understands the claimability of a right to depend on the identification of its duty-bearers. But there is good reason to think that the claimability of a right depends on more than just that, which makes abstract (and not welfare) rights the most natural target of her objection (section II). After examining whether we might address this reformulated version of O'Neill's objection by appealing to the specificity afforded to human rights in international, regional and domestic law (in section III), the article challenges a second important feature of that objection by raising doubts about whether claimability is a necessary feature of rights at all (section IV). Finally, the article reflects more generally on the role of abstraction in the theory and practice of human rights (section V). In sum, by allaying claimability-based concerns about abstract rights, and by illustrating some of the positive functions of abstraction in rights discourse, the article hopes to show that abstract rights are not only theoretically coherent but also useful and important.

This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of concern, love, pity and envy; and satisfies various other desiderata. I also highlight two ways in which the analysis is informative and can lead to progress in our substantive theorizing about the good life.

A traditional overall distinction between the various versions of retributive theories of punishment is that between positive and negative retributivism. This article addresses the question of what positive retributivism – and thus the obligation to punish perpetrators – implies for a society in which the state has many other types of obligation (e.g. obligations to provide its citizens with some degree of health care, education, protection, etc.). Several approaches to this question are considered. It is argued that the resource priority question constitutes a genuine and widely ignored challenge for positive retributivist theories of punishment.

Many critics of utilitarianism claim that we should reject interpersonal aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. In this article, I will reject this claim. I will first elucidate the theoretical structure of aggregation. I will then consider various interpretations of the notion of the separateness of persons and clarify what exactly those critics are trying to reject by appealing to the notion of the separateness of persons. I will argue that none of these interpretations can serve as the ground for rejecting aggregation.

Edgeworth's original mathematical formalization of utilitarianism as presented in his works of 1877–81 illustrates an intriguing phase in the mutually intertwined history of economics and utilitarianism. In this article I analyse Edgeworth's motivations and point to its interesting implications. In particular, it is pointed out that the starting point of Edgeworth's project had little to do with the field of economics, but formed part of an attempt to present utilitarianism in the most scientific way possible; an attempt made in the context of intensive dispute between the three opposing camps in the field of ethics at the time. Nevertheless, the project concluded with the monograph Mathematical Psychics (1881) that embodied an original relationship between economics and utilitarianism.

Many find it plausible to posit a category of supererogatory actions. But the supererogatory resists easy analysis. Traditionally, supererogatory actions are characterized as actions that are morally good, but not morally required; actions that go ‘beyond’ the call of our moral obligations. As I shall argue in this article, however, the traditional analysis can be accepted only by a view with troubling consequences concerning the structure of the moral point of view. I propose a different analysis that is extensionally correct, avoids the problems of the traditional view, and, incidentally, also defuses any objection to act-consequentialism, or any other first-order moral theory, on grounds that it cannot accommodate the supererogatory.

Scalar utilitarianism, a form of utilitarianism advocated by Alastair Norcross, retains utilitarianism's evaluative commitments while dispensing with utilitarianism's deontic commitments, or its commitment to the existence or significance of moral duties, obligations and requirements. This article disputes the effectiveness of the arguments that have been used to defend scalar utilitarianism. It is contended that Norcross's central ‘Persuasion Argument’ does not succeed, and it is suggested, more positively, that utilitarians cannot easily distance themselves from deontic assessment, just as long as scalar utilitarians admit – as they should do – that utilitarian evaluation generates normative reasons for action.

In a recent article in Utilitas, Gerald Lang suggests a solution to the so-called ‘wrong kind of reason problem’ (WKR problem) for the buck-passing account of value. In two separate replies to Lang, Jonas Olson and John Brunero, respectively, point out serious problems with Lang's suggestion, and at least Olson concludes that the solution Lang opts for is of the wrong kind for solving the WKR problem. I argue that while both Olson and Brunero have indeed identified considerable flaws in Lang's suggestion for a solution to the WKR problem, they have not provided sufficient grounds for dismissing the kind of solution that Lang proposes. I show how a version of this kind of solution can be formulated so as to avoid both Olson's and Brunero's objections. I also raise some worries concerning an alternative solution to the WKR problem suggested by Sven Danielsson and Jonas Olson.

So-called ‘objective-list’ theories of well-being (prudential value, welfare) are under-represented in discussions of well-being. I do four things in this article to redress this. First, I develop a new taxonomy of theories of well-being, one that divides theories in a more subtle and illuminating way. Second, I use this taxonomy to undermine some misconceptions that have made people reluctant to hold objective-list theories. Third, I provide a new objective-list theory and show that it captures a powerful motivation for the main competitor theory of well-being (the desire-fulfilment theory). Fourth, I try to defuse the worry that objective-list theories are problematically arbitrary and show how the theory can and should be developed.