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Rightness, Parsimony, and Consequentialism: A Response to Peterson

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Abstract

This paper argues against Martin Peterson in favour of the ‘standard view’ of rightness, according to which rightness does not come in degrees. It begins (section 1) with a defence of the standard view against the charge that it is committed to ‘deontic leaps’. It goes on (section 2) to claim that greater conceptual parsimony would allow Peterson to avoid certain problems involving equality and related matters that arise out of his conception of moral value, and that Peterson should take the same instrumentalist attitude towards the norms of practical rationality as he does towards the norms of common-sense morality. The paper closes (section 3) with some doubts about Peterson’s programme of consequentialization and its alleged advantages.

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Notes

  1. All unattributed references below are to Peterson 2013.

  2. In his appendix (192–207), Peterson sketches a deontic logic which would allow for degrees of rightness even within multi-dimensional consequentialism to be measured on a cardinal scale.

  3. The phrases ‘duty proper’ and ‘prima facie duties’ here should be understood as something like ‘judgements about duty proper’ or ‘judgements about prima facie duties’, Stratton-Lake’s strategy being to elucidate the structure of practical or normative reasons in the light of that of corresponding epistemic reasons.

  4. Note that, as Stratton-Lake and Peterson point out, these are not Ross’s own terms. Other interpretations are of course available. Indeed in his substantial introduction to his edition of Ross’s The Right and the Good (Ross 2002), Stratton-Lake makes no mention of the evidential/verdictive distinction.

  5. Of course such verdictive considerations need not be explicitly mentioned in the conclusion. What remains visible is the fact of their existence.

  6. In this case, I cannot find an argument for the change in terminology. See also 93 for another assertion of the position without argument.

References

  • Crisp R (1997) Mill on utilitarianism. Routledge, London

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  • Mill JS (1998) Utilitarianism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, Ed. R Crisp

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  • Peterson M (2013) The dimensions of consequentialism: ethics, equality and risk. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

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  • Ross WD (2002) The right and the good. Clarendon Press, Oxford, Ed. P Stratton-Lake

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  • Stratton-Lake P (1997) Can Hooker’s rule consequentialism justify Ross’s prima facie duties? Mind 106:751–758

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Acknowledgments

For comments on and/or discussion of earlier drafts, I am grateful to participants in a workshop on Peterson’s book, organized by Vuko Andrić and Attila Tanyi at the University of Konstanz, November 2013, as well as to Attila Tanyi, Martin van Hees, and an anonymous reader for this journal.

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Correspondence to Roger Crisp.

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Crisp, R. Rightness, Parsimony, and Consequentialism: A Response to Peterson. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 19, 39–47 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9671-8

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