Anthony Skelton

Utilitarianism, Welfare, Children

There are few sustain discussions of the implications of utilitarian views of welfare for the matter of what makes a child’s life go well. This paper attempts to remedy this deficiency. It has four sections. Section 6.2 discusses the purpose of a theory of welfare and its adequacy conditions. Section 6.3 evaluates what prominent utilitarian theories of welfare imply about what makes a child’s life go well. Section 6.4 provides a sketch of a view about what is prudentially valuable for children. Section 6.5 sums things up.

Henry Sidgwick's Practical Ethics: A Defense

Henry Sidgwicks Practical Ethics offers a novel approach to practical moral issues. In this article, I defend Sidgwicks approach against recent objections advanced by Sissela Bok, Karen Hanson, Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael Davis. In the first section, I provide some context within which to situate Sidgwicks view. In the second, I outline the main features of Sidgwicks methodology and the powerful rationale that lies behind it. I emphasize elements of the view that help to defend it, noting some affinities it has with those of the later Rawls. In the third section, I indicate how it promises to help alleviate some difficulties facing modern practical ethics. In the fourth, I respond to Boks objections. I argue that her own work on practical ethics has some similarities to Sidgwicks which should make them friends, not enemies. In the fifth section, I respond to Hanson, Pritchard and Davis.

Henry Sidgwick's Moral Epistemology

In this essay I defend the view that Henry Sidgwick’s moral epistemology is a form of intuitionist foundationalism that grants common-sense morality no evidentiary role. In §1, I outline both the problematic of The Methods of Ethics and the main elements of its argument for utilitarianism. In §§2-4 I provide my interpretation of Sidgwick’s moral epistemology. In §§5-8 I refute rival interpretations, including the Rawlsian view that Sidgwick endorses some version of reflective equilibrium and the view that he is committed to some kind of pluralistic epistemology. In§9 I contend with some remaining objections to my view.

Schultz's Sidgwick

Bart Schultz’s Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Sidgwick. In this article, I direct my attention for the most part to one aspect of what Schultz says about Sidgwick’s masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, as well as to what he does not say about Sidgwick’s illuminating but neglected work Practical Ethics. This article is divided into three sections. In the first, I argue that there is a problem with Schultz’s endorsement of the view that Sidgwick’s moral epistemology combines elements of both coherentism and foundationalism. In the second, I argue that Schultz has failed to do justice to Sidgwick’s mature views in Practical Ethics. In the final section, I briefly say something about Schultz’s suggestion that Sidgwick succumbed to both racism and dishonesty.

On Sidgwick's Demise: A Reply to Professor Deigh

In ‘Sidgwick’s Epistemology’, John Deigh argues that Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’. In this article I dispute these claims. In a recent article in this journal, John Deigh 1 argues that Henry Sidgwick’sTheMethodsofEthics 2 ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ (438), and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’ (439). In this article I dispute these claims. I Deigh argues that Sidgwick’s Methods ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ (438). However, this is far from clear. First, to make his point Deigh relies on an article in Encyclopaedia Britannica and an obituary in Mind by Leslie Stephen. 3 These are not decisive. Stephen announces at the outset of his obituary that he is not concerned to provide an estimate of Sidgwick’s work in philosophy, though he notes that Methods is a ‘great book’ and that Sidgwick’s work in ethics gave ‘the most important of all modern contributions towards a clear realisation of the conditions of approaching the problems involved’. 4 The encyclopaedia article does not deny that Methods is a major contribution; instead, it merely fails to single it out. 5 Second, a number of important philosophers were sent copies of Methods when the first edition was published in 1874,

Introduction to the symposium on The Most Good You Can Do

Our world is awash in preventable and undeserved misery. The World Bank Group (Cruz et al. 2015) estimates that currently about 9.6% of the global population or 702 million people live in extreme poverty or on less than US

The Ethical Principles of Effective Altruism

1.90 per day. The extremely poor are unable to meet their most basic needs for nutrition, medical care, and shelter. As a result, they suffer and/or die from preventable illness and disease and malnutrition. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly hard hit: it is estimated that about 35% of its population is extremely poor (Cruz et al. 2015). Unsurprisingly, this region has the highest under-five mortality rate on the planet. The extremely poor are not the only ones living wretched lives. Each year vast numbers of non-human animals suffer and are killed in order to produce inexpensive, palatable foodstuffs. Billions of broiler chickens, for instance, are kept in cramped, polluted conditions, unable to engage in species-specific behavior, causing them to suffer from disease and to experience debilitating stress. The fact that they are bred to gain weight quickly only adds to their misery; their bone structure is often unable to support their bulk, leading to disability and deformity. At the end of their short lives, such chickens are deprived of food, captured, shipped in horrid conditions to slaughterhouses, and then killed (often painfully and brutally). The misery produced by extreme poverty and by our treatment of non-human animals calls for some kind of practical response. Much of this suffering and premature death is, after all, preventable, often easily so. There are, however, deep divisions over how best to respond in practice. One response to extreme poverty involves advocating for donations (or provisions of labor) to philanthropic organizations dedicated to preventing premature death and/or to preventing or alleviating suffering due to it. In the case of non-human animals, one response is to avoid consuming them and the products derived from them, especially those produced in factory farms, where conditions are inordinately despicable, and to donate (or labor for) charities aiming to improve the plight of non-human animals. This raises a number of moral questions. Should one respond in this way? How much should one contribute to philanthropic organizations, if in fact one should do so? How should one give? Through which conduits should one direct one’s contributions? Peter Singer has devoted his career in part to dealing with these questions. His work (1972, 1993) on what the global wealthy ought to do in response to extreme poverty

On Henry Sidgwick’s “My Station and Its Duties”*

In The Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick remarks that one who values conduct in proportion to its felicific consequences, will naturally set a higher estimate on effective beneficence in public affairs t...

Bioethics in Canada

Henry Sidgwick completed the first edition of The Methods of Ethics in 1874. He was unhappy with the result. To his friend Oscar Browning he reportedly said, “the first word of my book . . . is ‘Ethics,’ the last word is ‘failure.’” Sidgwick was perturbed, for he had reasoned himself to the “dualism of practical reason,” the view that utilitarianism and egoism are equally rational, but conflicting, ethical methods. He had reasons to lament his failure. Sidgwick wrote The Methods of Ethics to solve a problem that he found in the moral reasoning of the “unphilosophic man.” In this man’s reasoning about what to do he draws on a plurality of basic principles with no obvious priority relation between them, leading him to wonder, in cases in which the principles render conflicting verdicts, what he ought all things considered to do. Sidgwick thinks the solution to this problem lies in finding a systematic and comprehensive method of ethics that leaves no room for such wonder. Indeed, he had a personal stake in finding this solution. In his Memoir he writes, “I have mixed up the personal and general questions, because every speculation of this kind ends, with me, in a practical problem, ‘What is to be done here and now.’ That is a question which I must answer.” If he could not avoid the dual-