Garrett Cullity

The moral demands of affluence

1. The Life-Saving Analogy 2. An Argument from Beneficence 3. Objections to Aid 4. Saving Lives 5. The Extreme Demand 6. Problems of Demandingness 7. Impartiality, Fairness, and Beneficence 8. The Rejection of the Extreme Demand 9. Permission 10. Requirement 11. Overview Appendix 1: Poverty and Aid Appendix 2: The Cost of Saving a Life

Moral Character and the Iteration Problem

Moral evaluation is concerned with the attribution (to its various objects – actions, character, attitudes, states of affairs, institutions) of values whose distinction into two broad groups has become familiar. On the one hand, there are the most general moral values of lightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, and what ought to be or to be done. On the other, there is a great diversity of more specific moral values which these objects can have: of being a theft, for instance, or a thief; of honesty, reliability or callousness. Within the recent body of work attempting to restore to the virtues a central place in ethical thinking, two claims stand out. One is that, of these two kinds of values, the specific ones are explanatorily prior to the general – that if an action is wrong, it is because it is wrong in one of those specific respects. A second claim, though, is now standardly made definitive of ‘Virtue ethics’: that amongst the specific values, the value of character is explanatorily prior to that of action – that if an action is callous, say, it is because it expresses callousness of character – and that in this sense, the moral value of action derives from that of character. This second claim has been widely attacked; in what follows, I present a reason for believing that, at least in the case of callousness, it is right.

Particularism and presumptive reasons

Weak particularism about reasons is the view that the normative valency of some descriptive considerations varies, while others have an invariant normative valency. A defence of this view needs to respond to arguments that a consideration cannot count in favour of any action unless it counts in favour of every action. But it cannot resort to a global holism about reasons, if it claims that there are some examples of invariant valency. This paper argues for weak particularism, and presents a framework for understanding the relationships between practical reasons. A central part of this framework is the idea that there is an important kind of reason—a ‘presumptive reason’—which need not be conclusive, but which is neither pro tanto nor prima facie .

Decisions, Reasons, and Rationality*

What difference do our decisions make to our reasons for action and the rationality of our actions? There are two questions here and good grounds for answering them differently. However, it still makes sense to discuss them together. By thinking about the relationships that reasons and rationality bear to decisions, we may be able to cast light on the relationship that reasons and rationality bear to each other. Two forceful thoughts have set the agenda for recent discussion of this pair of questions and suggest that the answers must be different. On the one hand, your decisions surely do make a difference to what it is rational for you to do. If you decide to do something (and do not rescind the decision), not taking suitable steps toward implementing your decision can be irrational. And this seems true even if you ought not to have decided to do it. On the other hand, though, it is hard to see how decisions that you ought not to have made can be reasons in favor of the things you ought not to have decided to do. These two thoughts set the agenda here, too, and explain the structure of what follows. The second thought is often expressed as the complaint that treating decisions as reasons amounts to an objectionable kind of “bootstrapping.” After explaining the force of that complaint in Section II, I ask what exactly it shows. It does not show that our decisions never make a difference to our reasons for action: Section III explains three kinds of difference they can make. Moreover, in the third kind of case—one that is overlooked by most discussions of these issues—decisions that we ought not to have made can indeed provide us

I—Garrett Cullity: Particularism and Presumptive Reasons

Weak particularism about reasons is the view that the normative valency of some descriptive considerations varies, while others have an invariant normative valency. A defence of this view needs to respond to arguments that a consideration cannot count in favour of any action unless it counts in favour of every action. But it cannot resort to a global holism about reasons, if it claims that there are some examples of invariant valency. This paper argues for weak particularism, and presents a framework for understanding the relationships between practical reasons. A central part of this framework is the idea that there is an important kind of reason—a ‘presumptive reason’—which need not be conclusive, but which is neither pro tanto nor prima facie .

As you were

What is the significance of empirical work on moral judgement for moral philosophy? Although the more radical conclusions that some writers have attempted to draw from this work are overstated, few areas of moral philosophy can remain unaffected by it. The most important question it raises is in moral epistemology. Given the explanation of our moral experience, how far can we trust it? Responding to this, the view defended here emphasizes the interrelatedness of moral psychology and moral epistemology. On this view, the empirical study of moral judgement does have important implications for moral philosophy. But moral philosophy also has important implications for the empirical study of moral judgement.

Virtue Ethics, Theory, and Warrant

Are there good grounds for thinking that the moral values of action are to be derived from those of character? This ‘virtue ethical’ claim is sometimes thought of as a kind of normative ethical theory; sometimes as form of opposition to any such theory. However, the best case to be made for it supports neither of these claims. Rather, it leads us to a distinctive view in moral epistemology: the view that my warrant for a particular moral judgement derives from my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge. This view seems to confront a regress-problem. For the belief that I am a good moral judge is itself a particular moral judgement. So it seems that, on this view, I need to derive my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge from my warrant for believing that I am a good judge of moral judges; and so on. I show how this worry can be met, and trace the implications of the resulting view for warranted moral judgement.

Public goods and fairness

To what extent can we as a community legitimately require individuals to contribute to producing public goods? Most of us think that, at least sometimes, refusing to pay for a public good that you have enjoyed can involve a kind of ‘free riding’ that makes it wrong. But what is less clear is under exactly which circumstances this is wrong. To work out the answer to that, we need to know why it is wrong. I argue that when free riding is wrong, the reason is that it is unfair. That is not itself a very controversial claim. But spelling out why it is unfair allows us to see just which forms of free riding are wrong. Moreover, it supplies a basis from which some more controversial conclusions can be defended. Even if a public good is one that you have been given without asking for it or seeking it out, it can still be wrong not to be prepared to pay for it. It can be wrong not to be prepared to pay for public goods even when you do not receive them at all. And furthermore, it can be right to force you to do so.

The Moral, the Personal and the Political

What is the relation between moral reasons and reasons of ‘political necessity’? Does the authority of morality extend across political decision-making; or are there ‘reasons of state’ which somehow either stand outside the reach of morality or override it, justifying actions that are morally wrong?

Conflicts of interest in divisions of general practice

Community-based healthcare organisations manage competing, and often conflicting, priorities. These conflicts can arise from the multiple roles these organisations take up, and from the diverse range of stakeholders to whom they must be responsive. Often such conflicts may be titled conflicts of interest; however, what precisely constitutes such conflicts and what should be done about them is not always clear. Clarity about the duties owed by organisations and the roles they assume can help identify and manage some of these conflicts. Taking divisions of general practice in Australia as an example, this paper sets out to distinguish two main types of conflicts of interest, so that they may be more clearly identified and more effectively managed.