51 research outputs found
Autonomy, Value, and Conditioned Desire
Conditioning can produce desires that seem to be outside of--or āalienā to--the agent. Desire-based theories of welfare claim that the satisfaction of desires creates prudential value. But the satisfaction of alien desires does not seem to create prudential value. To explain this fact, we need an account of alien desires that explains their moral status. In this paper I suggest that alien desires are desires that would be rational if the person believed something that in fact she believes is false. Such desires could be produced by mental representations--or āquasi-beliefsā--with contents that conflict with the contents of oneās beliefs. The postulation of quasi-beliefs is plausible, for they explain important empirical facts about our behavior--facts that are difficult if not impossible to explain otherwise. Alien desires, I argue, involve quasi-beliefs with contents that conflict with the contents of regular beliefs. This theory provides the distinction between alien and authentic desires that desire-based theories of welfare need
Give till it hurts? Beneficence, imperfect duties, and a moderate response to the aid question
Autonomy and The Paradox of Self-Creation: Infinite Regresses, Finite Selves, and the Limits of Authenticity
For the Benefit of Another: Children, Moral Decency, and Non-therapeutic Medical Procedures
Resisting the Seductive Appeal of Consequentialism: Goals, Options, and Non-quantitative Mattering: Robert Noggle
Impartially Optimizing Consequentialism requires agents to act so as to bring about the best outcome, as judged by a preference ordering which is impartial among the needs and interests of all persons. IOC may seem to be only rational response to the recognition that one is only one person among many others with equal intrinsic moral status. A person who adopts a less impartial deontological alternative to IOC may seem to fail to take seriously the fact that other persons matter in the same way that she takes herself to matter. This paper examines this āseductive appealā of IOC. It argues that IOC is not the only rational way to recognize the fact that each person matters. It presents an alternative conception of how to recognize the status of other persons as beingswho-matter, an alternative that has Kantian rather than consequentialist implications
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