Integrity, practical deliberation and utilitarianism

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 191, 1998, Pages 189-198

  Harcourt, Edward ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1842685160     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00091     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. See Bernard Williams, 'A Critique of Utilitarianism' (hereafter CU), in J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against (Cambridge UP, 1973), esp. §5
2. See also Williams, 'Utilitarianism and Moral Self-Indulgence' (UMS), in his Moral Luck (Cambridge UP, 1981), pp. 40-53
3. 'Practical Necessity' (PN), in Moral Luck, pp. 124-31
4. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985, hereafter ELP), esp. chs 5 and 6
5. and 'Replies', in J.E.J. Altham and R. Harrison (eds), World, Mind and Ethics (Cambridge UP, 1995, hereafter WME), pp. 210-16
6. I borrow this terminology from Railton, 'Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 13 (1984), pp. 134-71, at pp. 152, 156-60
7. Cf. UMS pp. 51-2: 'To think in one way rather than another about what to do is to be empirically different, to be a certain kind of person'
8. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (eds), Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge UP, 1982), introduction, p. 8
9. See also ELP p. 86
10. For a discussion of the forward-looking representation of practical deliberation in rational choice theory, and of its limitations, see Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: an Introduction (Cambridge UP, 1994), esp. pp. 187-95
11. On the unthinkable, see also CU p. 92, and 'Moral Incapacity', in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge UP, 1995), pp. 46-55, at pp. 46-7
12. 'Moral Incapacity' passim
13. Here I am indebted to Robert Gay, 'Bernard Williams on Practical Necessity', Mind, 98 (1989), pp. 552-69
14. Large-scale life choices can also be cases where the characteristic expression of one's practical conclusion is a 'must' of the relevant sort: see on this Martin Hollis, 'The Shape of a Life', in WME, pp. 170-84
15. Cf. Sen, 'Behaviour and the Concept of Preference', Economica, 40 (1973), pp. 247-9