Don Locke

Doing What Comes Morally

The cognition/conduct problem is outlined, as it arises in cognitive-developmental moral theory. A model of the connection between stage of moral reasoning and behaviour is developed, involving two separate steps, from reasoning to judgments, and from judgments to behaviour. The current unsatisfactoriness of cognition/conduct studies is due to the failure to distinguish these two. A closer examination of the role of moral reasoning suggests three ways in which reasoning stage might affect behaviour, and the implications for cognitive-developmental programmes of moral education are discussed. It is concluded that future research must take more account of the detailed connections between cognition and conduct, in particular the relationship between the form of moral reasoning and the content of moral judgments.

The Parfit Population Problem

Derek Parfits Reasons and Persons is a long, difficult and fascinating book, inside which three shorter, clearer and better books are struggling to get out. The third of these shorter but better books deals with the problem of Future Generations, and that is the book I want to discuss. In it Parfit tries, but fails, to find a theory—Theory X, he calls it—which will deal with various problems and issues which he develops, and in particular the issue which I will call the Parfit Population Problem, the problem of how many people there ought to be. In this paper I offer not so much a theory as a suggestion as to what the solution(s) might be.

The Choice Between Lives

Are there circumstances in which we would be justified in taking one persons life for the sake of others? I am not here concerned with cases of self-defence, or what we might call ‘other-defence’, where one person has to be killed to prevent him taking the lives of others. Nor am I concerned with cases of self-sacrifice, or suicide more generally, or euthanasia; nor with capital punishment, or killing in warfare; nor even, for reasons we shall explore, with abortion. I am concerned with those cases where several people have an equal claim or right to life, the same claim or right which we typically accord to all human beings, but where not all can survive. In short we are faced with a choice, as to who shall live and who shall die.

Knowledge, Perception and Memory.

I. Introduction.- II. The General Conditions of Knowledge: Truth and Confience.- III. The General Conditions of Knowledge: Justification.- IV. The General Conditions of Knowledge: External Conclusiveness.- V. Perceptual Facts.- VI. Perceptual Knowledge.- VII. Memory Knowledge.- VIII. When and Why to Trust Ones Senses and Memory.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.