Andrew T. Forcehimes

On L. W. Sumner’s “Normative Ethics and Metaethics”*

Due largely to the influential work of Ronald Dworkin, there is an ongoing debate concerning the possibility of genuine metaethical theorizing. Those suspicious of the possibility of metaethics argue in two steps. The first step lays down a requirement, namely, neutrality: genuine metaethical theories must avoid having first-order normative commitments. The second step maintains that the nature of metaethical theorizing is such that a breach of neutrality is inevitable. The upshot of violating neutrality is that metaethical theories turn out to be moral theories in disguise. Call this case against metaethics the collapse argument. One way to resist collapse is to reject neutrality. The downside of this strategy is that it does little to persuade those who find neutrality intuitive. Neutrality, after all, is how the cut between metaethics and normative ethics is often made. Another response is to artificially generate metaethical theories that satisfy neutrality. Though this shows the possibility of metaethical theorizing, the contrived nature of these generated theories makes these victories pyrrhic. In his short and widely neglected paper, L. W. Sumner clarifies the collapse argument and provides a compelling third response. Sumner accepts neutrality. Indeed, he takes the claim that metaethics is neutral to be analytic ð100Þ. But, he argues, the neutrality requirement needs further specification ð97Þ. More precisely, Sumner dis-

Non-Compliance Shouldn't Be Better

ABSTRACT Agent-relative consequentialism is thought attractive because it can secure agent-centred constraints while retaining consequentialisms compelling idea—the idea that it is always permissible to bring about the best available outcome. We argue, however, that the commitments of agent-relative consequentialism lead it to run afoul of a plausibility requirement on moral theories. A moral theory must not be such that, in any possible circumstance, were every agent to act impermissibly, each would have more reason (by the lights of the very same theory) to prefer the world thereby actualized over the world that would have been actualized if every agent had instead acted permissibly.

Expectations and the Limits of Legal Validity

Drawing on the work of Jeremy Bentham, we can forward a parity thesis concerning formal and substantive legal invalidity. Formal and substantive invalidity are, according to this thesis, traceable to the same source, namely, the sovereigns inability to adjust expectations to motivate obedience. The parity thesis, if defensible, has great appeal for positivists. Explaining why contradictory or contrary mandates yield invalidity is unproblematic. But providing an account of content-based invalidity invites the collapse of the separation between what the law is and what the law ought to be. Grounding formal and substantive invalidity in a unified source – the sovereigns inability to adjust expectations to motivate obedience – allows us to avoid bringing in any additional apparatus that might compromise this separation. This essay fleshes out and defends the parity thesis.

Leviathans Restrained: International Politics for Artificial Persons

This essay challenges the analogy argument . The analogy argument aims to show that the international domain satisfies the conditions of a Hobbesian state of nature: There fails to be a super-sovereign to keep all in awe, and hence, like persons in the state of nature, sovereigns are in a war every sovereign against every sovereign. By turning to Hobbes’ account of authorization, however, we see that subjects are under no obligation to obey a sovereign’s commands when doing so would contradict the very end that motivated the authorization of the sovereign in the first place. There is thus an important disanalogy between natural and artificial persons, and this accordingly produces different reactions to the state of nature.