The Motives for Moral Credit

To deserve credit for doing what is morally right, we must act from the right kinds of motives. Acting from the right kinds of motives involves responding both to the morally relevant reasons, by acting on these considerations, and to the morally relevant individuals, by being guided by appropriate attitudes of regard for them. Recent theories of the right kinds of motives have tended to prioritize responding to moral reasons. I develop a theory that instead prioritizes responding to individuals (through appropriate attitudes of regard for them) and argue that it better accounts for the basic features of the right kinds of motives – what we most fundamentally care about in judging whether persons deserve moral credit

Side Effects and the Structure of Deliberation

There is a puzzle about the very possibility of foreseen but unintended side effects, and solving this puzzle requires us to revise our basic picture of the structure of practical deliberation. The puzzle is that, while it seems that we can rationally foresee, but not intend, bringing about foreseen side effects, it also seems that we rationally must decide to bring about foreseen side effects and that we intend to do whatever we decide to do. I propose solving this puzzle by rejecting the idea that we intend to do whatever we decide to do. My solution involves taking account of the underappreciated role that qualified intentions play in deliberation. I also argue that this solution fares better than those that instead reject the idea that we rationally must decide to bring about foreseen side effects, for these solutions are committed to rejecting the even more compelling idea that decisions rationally serve as the conclusions of practical deliberation

Social politics and freedom: Incorporating civil society into Arendt\u27s political thought

The possibility of human freedom has captivated philosophers throughout the ages, often leading them to conclude that freedom is a unique capacity of humanity, exemplifying our potential for politics, contemplation, and/or religious salvation. In the modern age, beginning with the political writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, freedom has been understood (at least within the early liberal tradition and common discourse) as unhindered and individuated economic movement, motivated by self-interest and actualized most fully in institutions such as the consumerist free market. Yet, we find that the more we devote our actions to fulfilling our individual interests and needs, the more our actions become subservient to physical/emotional impulses, leaving one to wonder how freedom can be found in these apparently necessitated activities. Hannah Arendt’s political theory, which draws on her personal experience of totalitarianism in Europe and her understanding of Greek culture and thought, offers a profoundly different and, in my estimation, superior understanding of freedom. It is not in individual, economic action that we find human freedom, but rather in the discursive and action-based associations we form with others. Thus, freedom is an essentially political phenomenon, and depends upon the willingness of humans to form public identities through their communal interactions with one another