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Trust is a key ingredient of business activities. Scams are spectacular betrayals of trust. When the victim is a powerful organization that does not look vulnerable at first sight, we can suspect that this organization has developed an excessive trust, or over-trust. In this article, we take over-trust as the result of the intentional production of gullibility by the scammer. The analysis of a historically famous scam case, the Elf “Great Sniffer Hoax,” suggests that the victim is made gullible by (...) the scammer through a range of seduction and protection maneuvers that prevent the victim from developing doubts and suspicions. An integrated framework of the production of gullibility in organizations is proposed in order to further our understanding of over-trust. We discuss how these insights might be extended, beyond the case of scams, to more ordinary contexts of business activities. (shrink)

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According to Adam Smith, the acquisition of moral conscience is an essential part of a person’s moral education. I argue that moral conscience as conceived by Smith enables a person to intentionally take the role of an impartial spectator. I trace the process of moral education from the child in its family, to interaction with peers to learning and then to a self-evaluation, learning to become one’s own spectator and judge. This is a move from uncritical trust to external guidance (...) to acquiring the faculty of conscience. Smith recommends most people to rely on the ‘common rules of morality’ rather than on sympathetic processes alone. But such reliance represents merely a second best procedure for reaching a properly impartial moral judgment. While the ‘wise and virtuous’ may well improve on the impartiality of the ‘common rules of morality’, even their moral judgments will never be perfectly impartial or certain beyond doubt. (shrink)

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Fruit de la collaboration de 95 chercheurs et chercheuses de renommée nationale et internationale, cet ouvrage se compose d’une vingtaine d’articles longs et d’une centaine de notices plus courtes, illustrés par 1 200 images (peintures, dessins, gravures, sculptures, affiches, cartes postales, photographies, presse, objets du quotidien, etc.). Ce format « beau-livre»s’impose au regard par une finition soignée. Volumineux, il est structuré en quatre parties couvrant tous les empires coloniau...

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Effective altruism is the project of using resources like time and money to help others as much as possible. Those who engage in this project—effective altruists—tend to focus on three ways of helping.First, effective altruists focus on helping people living in extreme poverty and typically support interventions that prevent diseases such as malaria, trachoma, and schistosomiasis. These interventions have been shown to be highly cost-effective. For example, it costs on average about $4,500 to prevent someone from dying of malaria.Second, effective (...) altruists focus on reducing animal suffering. For example, tens of billions of animals are raised each year on factory farms. The conditions on these farms are so poor that the animals’ lives are probably not worth living. A host of charities aim to improve conditions on these farms or reduce the number of animals raised on them.Finally, effective altruists focus on improving the long-term future. This often takes the form of safeguarding the very existence of humanity's future by reducing risks of existential catastrophe posed by threats like nuclear weapons, pandemics, and artificial intelligence. It is frequently argued that, since there is vast value in avoiding such catastrophes, reducing the risk of any of them even fractionally has relatively high expected value.Each of these three ways of helping has been argued to be the most cost-effective way to help, that is, what makes the biggest positive difference, per dollar donated (or hour of time volunteered). There is disagreement among effective altruists over which of these areas, if any, should be the top priority.The effective altruism social movement has been around since about 2011 and now has thousands of supporters and is backed by billions of dollars in donations. At the same time, the project, underlying philosophy, and social movement of effective altruism have attracted substantial criticism, voiced in very visible venues. The present special issue of PAQ deals with a range of philosophical issues at the heart of this ongoing public debate. Below is a very brief overview of the articles in this issue.In “Why Not Effective Altruism?” Richard Yetter Chappell takes a careful look at criticisms that have been offered against effective altruism. He focuses on four ideas associated with effective altruism that have received particular attention, including moral prioritization, earning to give, billionaire philanthropy, and longtermism. Chappell argues that, in each case, the core moral claims of effective altruism cannot reasonably be rejected.In “Effective Altruists Need Not Be Pronatalist Longtermists,” Tina Rulli offers a sustained rebuttal to the argument for longtermism presented by William MacAskill in his recent book What We Owe the Future. In particular, she objects to pronatalist longtermism, which favors extensively populating the future, provided the future will be on balance good. Rulli argues that taking account of moral considerations most would recognize shows this position to be implausible. Her view is nonetheless compatible with versions of longtermism that focus on preventing harms to future people.In “How (Not) to Fear Death,” Susanne Burri provides a fresh perspective on the ancient question of whether we should fear death. She argues that, on a wide range of theories of well-being, it can be fitting to fear death. Burri argues that having a proper philosophical understanding of our reasons to fear death is in fact essential to reducing our death-related fears. This, she argues, provides an example of philosophical therapy, a neglected type of intervention effective altruists should consider. Given that the dissemination of valuable philosophical insight is so cheap, and could significantly benefit so many, it can and should be pursued alongside more resource-intensive interventions such as distributing malaria nets or reducing existential risks.In “Effective Altruism and Requiring Reasons to Help Others,” Thomas Sinclair provides a response to one of the main claims of my recent (2023) book The Rules of Rescue. I claim that each of us has a requiring reason (or pro tanto duty) to prevent harm to others, whenever we have the opportunity to do so. I argue that since these opportunities are ubiquitous, so, too, are requiring reasons. In response, Sinclair argues that we have requiring reasons to help others only when we engage with the plights of these others in a certain way. That engagement is not ubiquitous; it is present in cases of nearby emergency rescues, but it is not present simply whenever we can donate to effective charities.Philosophical debates surrounding effective altruism have developed rapidly over the past decade or so. As the articles in this special issue suggest, there is still much to be explored. (shrink)

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When do you have to sacrifice life and limb, time and money, to prevent harm to others? When must you save more people rather than fewer? These questions might arise in emergencies involving strangers drowning or trapped in burning buildings, but they also arise in our everyday lives, in which we confront opportunities to donate time or money to help distant strangers in need of food, shelter, or medical care. With the resources available, we can provide more help--or less. -/- (...) In The Rules of Rescue, Theron Pummer argues that we are often morally required to engage in effective altruism, directing altruistic efforts in ways that help the most. Even when the personal sacrifice involved makes it morally permissible not to help at all, he contends, it often remains wrong to provide less help rather than more. Using carefully crafted examples, he defends the view that helping distant strangers is more morally akin to rescuing nearby strangers than most of us realize. The ubiquity of opportunities to help distant strangers threatens to make morality extremely demanding, and Pummer argues that it is only thanks to adequate permissions grounded in considerations of cost and autonomy that we may pursue our own plans and projects. He ultimately concludes that many of us are required to provide no less help over our lives than we would have done if we were effective altruists. (shrink)

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This paper presents a review of studies that were aimed at determining which brain regions are recruited during visual self-recognition, with a particular focus on self-face recognition. A complex bilateral network, involving frontal, parietal and occipital areas, appears to be associated with self-face recognition, with a particularly high implication of the right hemisphere. Results indicate that it remains difficult to determine which specific cognitive operation is reflected by each recruited brain area, in part due to the variability of used control (...) stimuli and experimental tasks. A synthesis of the interpretations provided by previous studies is presented. The relevance of using self-recognition as an indicator of self-awareness is discussed. We argue that a major aim of future research in the field should be to identify more clearly the cognitive operations induced by the perception of the self-face, and search for dissociations between neural correlates and cognitive components. (shrink)

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In France, some institutions seem to call for the engineer’s sense of social responsibility. However, this call is scarcely heard. Still, engineering students have been given the opportunity to gain a general education through courses in literature, law, economics, since the nineteenth century. But, such courses have long been offered only in the top ranked engineering schools. In this paper, we intend to show that the wish to increase engineering students’ social responsibility is an old concern. We also aim at (...) highlighting some macro social factors which shaped the answer to the call for social responsibility in the French engineering “Grandes Ecoles”. In the first part, we provide an overview of the scarce attention given to the engineering curriculum in the scholarly literature in France. In the second part, we analyse one century of discourses about the definition of the “complete engineer” and the consequent role of non technical education. In the third part, we focus on the characteristics of the corpus which has been institutionalized. Our main finding is that despite the many changes which occurred in engineering education during one century, the “other formation” remains grounded on a non academic “way of knowing”, and aims at increasing the reputation of the schools, more than enhancing engineering students’ social awareness. (shrink)

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I present and explore a new version of the Person-Affecting View, according to which reasons to do an act depend wholly on what would be said for or against this act from the points of view of particular individuals. According to my view, (i) there is a morally requiring reason not to bring about lives insofar as they contain suffering (negative welfare), (ii) there is no morally requiring reason to bring about lives insofar as they contain happiness (positive welfare), but (...) (iii) there is a permitting reason to bring about lives insofar as they contain happiness. I show how my view solves the non-identity problem, while retaining the procreation asymmetry and avoiding implausible forms of antinatalism. We can be morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower when this involves bringing about (worth living) lives that would contain less suffering rather than bringing about different (worth living) lives that would contain more suffering. (shrink)

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Is there some large number of very mild hangnail pains, each experienced by a separate person, which would be worse than two years of excruciating torture, experienced by a single person? Many people have the intuition that the answer to this question is No. However, a host of philosophers have argued that, because we have no intuitive grasp of very large numbers, we should not trust such intuitions. I argue that there is decent intuitive support for the No answer, which (...) does not depend on our intuitively grasping or imagining very large numbers. (shrink)

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This paper describes the emergence of a controversy concerning pollution and environmental and health risks in two southern French towns, Viviez and Salindres, which are both known for their long industrial history. It explores some of the reasons why the majority of the local populations resented the fact that the; issues raised were addressed publicly. It also examines some of the coping strategies residents may have developed to avoid talking about risks and to distance themselves from them. It goes on (...) to discuss the differences and similarities in the development of concerns for environmental inequalities in the North American and French contexts, asking, in the manner of Werner Sombart on socialism in the USA at the end of the nineteenth century, why environmental justice is not a strong concern (either as a social movement or frame of analysis) this side of the Atlantic. (shrink)

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Roman B. J. Kwasniewski, a son of Polish immigrants, used his camera to document life in this neighborhood shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The photographs in this book are representative of the Polish American experience in Milwaukee prior to World War II. Kwasniewski's photographs document this critical time when the children and grandchildren of Milwaukee's Polish immigrants established themselves fully as American citizens. The photographs in this collection depict what life was like in Kwasniewski's Lincoln Avenue/Mitchell Street (...) neighborhood. Many images such as family portraits and wedding pictures are from the time when Kwasniewski operated Park Studio between 1913 and 1947. Kwasniewski also took his camera out into the community to capture scenes of life on the streets, local businesses, homes, classrooms, and cultural, social, and recreational activities. With an introduction by well-known Milwaukee historian John Gurda, this book provides a visual picture of the growth of Milwaukee's second largest ethnic group and the distinctive community that developed on Milwaukee's South Side. (shrink)

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Effective altruists recommend that we give large sums to charity, but by far their more central message is that we give effectively, i.e., to whatever charities would do the most good per dollar donated. In this paper, I’ll assume that it’s not wrong not to give bigger, but will explore to what extent it may well nonetheless be wrong not to give better. The main claim I’ll argue for here is that in many cases it would be wrong of you (...) to give a sum of money to charities that do less good than others you could have given to instead, even if it would not have been wrong of you not to give the money to any charity at all. I assume that all the charities under discussion here do positive good overall, do not cause harm, do not infringe rights, etc. What makes my main claim here particularly interesting is that it is inconsistent with what appears to be a fairly common assumption in the ethics of giving, according to which if it is not wrong of you to keep some sum of money for yourself, then it is likewise not wrong of you to donate it to any particular charity you choose. Roughly: if it’s up to you whether to donate the money, it’s also up to you where to donate the money. I challenge this common assumption. (shrink)

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There are plenty of classic paradoxes about conditional obligations, like the duty to be gentle if one is to murder, and about “supererogatory” deeds beyond the call of duty. But little has been said about the intersection of these topics. We develop the first general account of conditional supererogation, with the power to solve familiar puzzles as well as several that we introduce. Our account, moreover, flows from two familiar ideas: that conditionals restrict quantification and that supererogation emerges from a (...) clash between justifying and requiring reasons. (shrink)

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Suppose two children face a deadly threat. You can either do nothing, save one child by sacrificing your arms, or save both by sacrificing your arms. Here are two plausible claims: first, it is permissible to do nothing; second, it is wrong to save only one. Joe Horton argues that the combination of these two claims has the implausible implication that if you are not going to save both children, you ought to save neither. This is one instance of what (...) he calls the ALL OR NOTHING PROBLEM. I here present CONDITIONAL PERMISSIONS as the solution. Although saving only one child is wrong, it can be conditionally permissible, that is, permissible given what you are not going to do. You ought to save both children or save neither, but if you are not going to save both, you ought to do the next best thing (save one) or save neither. (shrink)

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It seems plausible that (i) how much punishment a person deserves cannot be affected by the mere existence or nonexistence of another person. We might have also thought that (ii) how much punishment is deserved cannot increase merely in virtue of personal division. I argue that (i) and (ii) are inconsistent with the popular belief that, other things being equal, when people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they ought to be punished for this—even if they have repented, are (...) now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. Insofar as we cannot deny (i), we are either forced to abandon the popular belief in desert, or else allow that personal division could, as I put it, “multiply desert.” Some may not find the latter, considered by itself, troubling. But I argue that the thesis that division multiplies desert faces a potentially serious problem, which arises in the context of personal fusion. It is difficult to see how to maintain a particular family of desert views in light of the cases here presented. (shrink)

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It is commonly held that unexcused impermissible acts are necessarily blameworthy, not praiseworthy. I argue that unexcused impermissible acts can not only be pro tanto praiseworthy, but overall praiseworthy—and even more so than permissible alternatives. For example, there are cases in which it is impermissible to at great cost to yourself rescue fewer rather than more strangers, yet overall praiseworthy, and more so than permissibly rescuing no one. I develop a general framework illuminating how praiseworthiness can so radically come apart (...) from deontic status. (shrink)

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The ancient theory of an identity of some sort between subject and predicate is not merely out of fashion. Rejection of it is just about the cornerstone of the Fregean analysis of propositions in terms of argument and function.

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"God became man that man might become God. This thought, expressed in terms of a sharing of natures, human and divine, is to be found in the most ancient Christian liturgies and still in use, at the Offertory typically. This book shows how Hegel fleshes this thought out, shorn though of picture-language, in conscious or less-than-conscious continuity with this Biblical belief in the power to become the sons of God. This involves some stripping away of the false fleshliness cast over (...) Hegels philosophy of spirit by interpreters ignorant of and hence unable to see this element in him, wishing, quite hopelessly, rather to adapt his work to a current materialist vision of development. The book is, thus, in the line of Thomas Aquinas and, obliquely, McTaggart and other idealist thinkers immediately prior to the rediscoveries of this strand and more in Hegel by todays theologians and others, such as Charles Taylor in our English-speaking world, who, nonetheless, regrettably, mostly fail to go the whole hog. They cannot believe that Hegels thought corresponds, in development as charted by, say, Newman, to the original Patristic line. Nonetheless, in these respects, at least, it does, as is brought out here."--Back cover. (shrink)

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volume 2. Le stoïcisme intermédiaire (Diogène de Babylonie, Panétius de Rhodes, Posidonius d'Apamée).

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Face à l’oubli relatif dans lequel est tombée aujourd’hui la pensée des économistes germanophones du XIXe siècle qui ont critiqué l’économie classique, ce livre fait le pari de « réparer l’oubli » en resituant leurs idées dans leur contexte historique. Comme le rappelle l’auteur, le point commun des économistes étudiés dans l’ouvrage ne réside pas dans l’unité de leurs positions, mais seulement dans leur opposition au classicisme. L’intérêt de cet ouvrage, au-delà du simple exposé concernant ..

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Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the (...) imagination in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate.". (shrink)

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Lorsqu’il rédige son traité De officiis, Cicéron a sous les yeux le Peri kathekontos de Panétius, auquel il emprunte sa structure tripartite. Cette structure laisse pourtant perplexe, puisque le devoir (kathekon) y est envisagé sous l’angle du beau moral, puis sous l’angle de l’utile, pour en venir à une confrontation des deux. La perplexité naît de ce que le beau moral et l’utile sont interchangeables, si l’on s’en tient aux principes posés par Zénon et Chrysippe. Que signifie alors cette structure? (...) Notre hypothèse est la suivante : Panétius entend, par ce programme, résoudre le problème de l’indétermination inhérente à la définition même du devoir ; il s’efforce de refonder le devoir en remontant à son lieu d’origine, la vertu elle-même, comprise sous ses deux faces les plus claires : kalon et sympheron. (shrink)

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Larry Temkin famously argues that what he calls spectrum arguments yield strong reason to reject Transitivity, according to which the ‘all-things-considered better than’ relation is transitive. Spectrum arguments do reveal that the conjunctions of independently plausible claims are inconsistent with Transitivity. But I argue that there is very strong independent reason to reject such conjunctions of claims, and thus that the fact that they are inconsistent with Transitivity does not yield strong reason to reject Transitivity.

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN AQUINAS IN THIS PAPER I discuss principally the claim of Aquinas that the divine attribute which is the formal constituent of the divine nature is es.'!e. I also discuss the consequent attribute of simplicity, with some reflections on this relation of consequence. I conclude with some remarks on philosophical realism in general, which I take to be the necessary background to this theory or, as (...) I argue, discovery. * * * In St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae we are confronted first, not with a study of the attributes of God, but with Five Ways of knowing that God exists. Strictly consequent upon this, there are then two basic movements of thought upon which, to mix the metaphor, the next structure after the Five Ways, that of the attributes, is laid. The first step is to find just one attribute which can be put forward as the formal constituent of the divine natura, its essentia (this will be the so-called metaphysical essence, since the real divine essence is one with the simple and hence constituentless divine nature). This is come upon through an immanent logic arising strictly out of conclusions reached through the Five Ways, and is in fact subsisting existence, ipsum esse subsistens, often called Being, confusingly, since this translates ens as well as esse. If it were not this there would be unexplained composition in God, at least between His nature and His act of existing. The second step is then to derive whatever attributes can be strictly deduced from this conception of God as subsistent esse, while a subsidiary step is to divide these into what commentators later called entitative and operative attributes. The first step identifies the nature of God with His aot of existing, 37 38 liTEPHEN THERON actus essendi, stressing that as pure ad He is not in any genus, not to be grasped in an abstract idea, even though the theory of the attributes must go on to say He is truth, is goodness and so on. The saving grace of these attributions, however, is that they do not imply limitation, even though it is a general principle of the Thomistic interpretation of things that form is what places a limitation on being, so that in being a man I cannot be an elephant. Of course the necessary infinity of these absolutely simple perfections entails that each of them is really identical with the divine nature, itself identical with His esse, His actus essendi. There can only be one reality in God, understood as the infinite. But my intention here is not to run through all the well-known arguments yet again. Thus that God, any God, must be subsisting Existence, I take to be well established. We can't have a divine essence capable of receiving existence, and for God to be love, say, He has first to be. I can make no sense of saying that this is merely chosen as appropriate to our way of thinking. I would rather say it thinks itself, once we 'let being be' (Heidegger's inspired definition of thinking). Of course God is not being identified with ens in commune, that almost cynical error of pantheism. God is identified with His own act of existing, proper to Him alone. Since this is, as divine, an act without limitation, we then go on to say that this cannot be an existence shared with any other existing, that God must exist in a uniquely eminent way, that that act of existing which He himself is, is transcendent. In the sense in which God exists, nothing else does, as the doctrine of analogy should bring out rather than obscure.1 Nonetheless, we need to enquire into the significance and implications of it being just existence which is the formal attribute 1 Cf. Leo J. Elders, Die Metaphysik de Thomas von Aquin, I, Salzburg 1985, p. 133: 'Das ens commune ist das geschaffene Seiende... Gott fallt nicht unter das ens commune: Er ist das ganz Andere, von dem wir wohl wissen konnen, daB Er ist, nicht aber, was Er ist.' THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN AQUINAS 39 of the divine nature, something to which both Kant and Aristotle... (shrink)

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In this entry, we discuss both the definition of effective altruism and objections to effective altruism, so defined.

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A NECESSARY CONDITION FOR THE TRUTH OF MORAL AND OTHER JUDGMENTS STEPHEN THERON Na,tional University of Lesotho Lesotho, Africa, SIMPSON'S RECENT review of Morals as Founded on Natural Law 1 so misrepresents its main point, one so vital to civilization's continuance, that I feel obliged to try to restate that point. It was of course disconcerting that he misunderstood the main point of the hook (whetlrer he agrees with (...) it or not), thoogh it may,weN. be, as he says, that the book oouM have been mOire readably written. He summarizes the book's aim as being" to establish morality on an external authoritative law "-a summary which does indeed seem close, even :identicaJ., to what is said in the book's first paragraph. However, there is ra potential equivocation in the w;ay he uses " externail.'' One should ask, external to what? What.the book speaks of in this opening paragraph is of justifying morality on ra principle " external to states of mind." I use "external" in the sense of that principle's being "independent of them," 'i.e., of meuba1l srtates. So :llar, this is a very open statement. Brut how do I go on to amplify it? Not the way Simpson does. He takes me as equating this principle with " the authoritative law of God," in the sense of "a divine legislative aiuthority " which, he reports me as arguing, " is just somehow an inemdicwblegiven." This " somehow " not only refoses to consider the meta1 Stephen Theron, Mora,ls M Founded on Na,tural Lww, European University Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 1987; 2nd ed. 1988). Reviewed by Peter Simpson in The ThomiBt 53 (1989): 341-342. ~93 294 STEPHEN THERON physical reasoning at the heart of the book's position but even seems to suggest that such reasoning was not evien offered. In fact it is precisely at this point that Simpson goes right off the raiJs as far as representing my view is concerned. H~ claims that this foundation upon divine authority would make morals "dependent on ·divine 1a.w, not, as his title dedares, on natural law." However, my use of " naturrul law " is rthe Thomistic use, which is sufficiently wen known in the debate so as not to be misleading. In the view of St. Thomas (and a whole established school of thought), natural law is indeed, in Simpson's words, "deriviative and secondary," or, in St. Thomas's words, "a reflected divine light.'' 2 Brut in the famous Artiicle 2 of Question 94 of the Prima secundae of the Summa theologica, so exh81ustively discussed in.the rooent literaturie, natural law is declared to be derived from the eternal law and not from divine law in the "external " or positivist •sense clearly intended by Simpson. (A different distinction is used in the Contra gentiles, but throughout my book the above text was referred to, often explicitly). "Divine law," the fourth type of law (eternal law and natural law being the first two types), does indeed refer, in this text, to some kind of positiv;e legisfation on the part of God in the 01d and New Testaments. (But evien here St. Thomas is oarefoil to point out that the law of the New Testament is only analogous to positive law, since it is not written on stone but poured into men's hearts by the Holy Spirit.) If I had been referring to this divine law (in such phrases as " reaISOn is divine and.therefore law ") and not thait eternal law which is one with the divine being, Simpson might have been able to brooket me with those nominalist theologians for whom.2" quasi lumen r.ationis naturalis... nihil aliud sit quam impressio luminis divini in nobis. Unde patet quod lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura." St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica I-II, 91. 2. THE TRUTH OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 295 God might hav:e decreed an opposite morality if he so chose. (Though this, too, would be contrary to St. Thomas's view of such positive divine law, ev;en for the Old Testament; indeed for him even 011dinary "human" positivie law loses the sense... (shrink)

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Ethics in the tradition of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons is riddled with sorites-like arguments, which lead us by what seem innocent steps to seemingly false conclusions. Take, for example, spectrum arguments for the Repugnant Conclusion that appeal to slight differences in quality of life. Several authors have taken the view that, since spectrum arguments are structurally analogous to sorites arguments, the correct response to spectrum arguments is structurally analogous to the correct response to sorites arguments. This sorites analogy is (...) here argued against. There are potential structural disanalogies between spectrum arguments and sorites arguments. But even if these arguments are relevantly structurally analogous, they differ in their content in ways that show the sorites analogy to be implausible. Two content-based disanalogies are here explored—one is inspired by Parfit’s work on reductionism, and the other involves hypersensitivity. The chapter concludes with a methodological lesson. (shrink)

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It is sometimes morally permissible not to help others even when doing so is overall better for you. For example, you are not morally required to take a career in medicine over a career in music, even if the former is both better for others and better for you. I argue that the permissibility of not helping in a range of cases of “compensated altruism” is explained by the existence of autonomy-based considerations. I sketch a view according to which you (...) can have autonomy-based permissions to choose between alternatives when these alternatives differ in terms of the valuable features they instantiate. Along the way, I argue that considerations of moral autonomy do not support rejecting the plausible view that we each constantly face reasons with morally requiring strength to help (distant) strangers. (shrink)

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