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This chapter discusses the four features of paternalism: (1) benefits the patient, (2) needs moral justification, (3) does not have patient’s consent, and (4) the patient believes he can make his own decision, showing why accounts that leave out any of these features is inadequate. It then contrasts the accounts of the justification of paternalism offered by act consequentialism and strict deontology with the justification procedure offered by common morality, and discusses several cases of paternalism.

This chapter focuses on the challenge to consequentialism by locating standard act consequentialism within a triad of claims that are in considerable tension with each other. Acceptance of any two of these three claims — (i) RAMS: the rational authoritativeness of moral standards (agents have decisive reasons to do what they are morally required to do); (ii) NIR: the non-impersonality of practical reason (agents have fundamental reasons that are often sufficient for acting in ways which do not promote the overall value of states of affairs); and (iii) CMS: the consequentialist theory of moral standards — appears to generate obstacles to endorsing the third. Traditional arguments that consequentialism is too extreme — too demanding, too confining, and too alienating — invoke different aspects of the problem that, by RAMS and CMS, we have decisive reasons always to bring about the best overall state of affairs, but rational agents frequently appear to have sufficient reasons not to bring about the best overall state of affairs [NIR], hence to do what consequentialism identifies as wrong.

According to this chapter's arguments, rule‐consequentialism need not be guilty of either collapse into extensional equivalence with act‐consequentialism or incoherence. The chapter also explains how rule‐consequentialism and contractualism differ over what is the best account of impartially justified rules. The final two sections consider rule‐consequentialism's relation to intuitionism and Ross‐style pluralism and whether rule‐consequentialism fails to be a form of consequentialism.

This chapter explores ways in which an ethical theory can develop through time, and in particular the variations in Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories. It argues that if offered a choice between (a) the case-by-case approach of act consequentialism, and (b) unswerving loyalty to what is (by some consequentialist standards) an optimal set of rules, we should reject both. It also discusses ways to move beyond act consequentialism and at the same time emphasize the power of the underlying consequentialist intuition.

This chapter explains the sense in which Mahāyāna practitioners must go beyond ethics, relating this concept to the doctrine of no self. Advanced Mahayanists internalize morality so completely that they do not have to think about moral rules, and will ignore them when doing so produces benefits for sentient beings. This model allows us to understand Vajrayāna ethics. The outrageously unconventional behavior of Tantric siddhas such as Padmasambhava is not amorality, but the perfection of act-consequentialism. Beings in such a state neither deliberate nor think of themselves as moral agents. This state requires the freedom and creativity made possible by a deep, experiential understanding of emptiness. Despite appearances, the Madhyamaka teaching of emptiness does not destroy ethics, though it may eliminate self-defeating attachments to following ethical rules.

This chapter discusses the three foundations—fairness, respect for persons, and sympathy—and examines how the considerations that they point toward might be combined in a single theory. It considers one influential attempt to reduce all moral considerations to consideration of consequences, namely act consequentialism.

One kind of reason for action is that the action would have a good outcome. According to Act Consequentialism all reasons are like this. However, these ‘act-based’ reasons may be contrasted with ‘pattern-based’ reasons, which flow from the fact that an action is part of some good pattern of action. This chapter argues that both kinds of reasons exist, and explores some of the issues facing any theory of pattern-based reasons. One such issue is whether they can exist in cases where the valuable pattern would not be realized because other agents are unwilling to play their parts. According to idealizing forms of Rule Consequentialism, they can. However, the chapter endorses an argument made by Alexander Dietz that this is incompatible with any plausible account of the strength of pattern-based reasons. It ends by explaining how pattern-based reasons may nevertheless retain their practical significance.

The school’s members defended specific versions of consequentialism and deontology. This chapter first discusses Sidgwick’s and Moore’s combination of act- and indirect consequentialism, where the latter says we should mostly abandon act-consequentialist reasoning in everyday life and follow those simpler rules whose adoption will have the best consequences. It then looks in detail at Ross’s version of pluralist deontology, discussing the points where it overlaps with consequentialism, for example by leaving no room for supererogation; its account of conflicts of prima facie duties; and some ways in which it needs elaboration, either to specify some duties more fully or to give them a further rationale. The chapter ends by noting some important moral ideas omitted from Ross’s theory but compatible with his general framework, for example about agent-relative permissions, the duty to respect free choice, and the evil of racial injustice.

This chapter asks what individuals should do in cases of unfulfilled weakly collective duties. Three possibilities are introduced: mimicking duties (do what would be required by fair collective scheme), promotional duties (promote collective action), or direct duties (alleviate harm or aid victims directly, oneself or with a like-minded subset). The widespread appeal of mimicking duties is acknowledged in the climate change case. Five possible philosophical defences are considered: a “fair shares” argument; direct harm arguments; a rule consequentialist defence; appeal to the fairness of anticipating a collective scheme; a virtue-ethics defence, and appeal to the Kantian categorical imperative. It is argued that none succeeds in defending mimicking duties as exclusive, or even primary.

This concluding chapter presents a philosophical discussion of Immanuel Kant's consequentialism and contractualism. It first considers Act Consequentialism, which says everyone ought always to do, or try to do, whatever would make things go best. It then asks whether this principle is universal acceptance-optimific, by being the principle whose universal acceptance would make things go best. It also examines the universal acceptance version of Rule Consequentialism, that is: Everyone ought to follow the principles of which it is true that, if they were universally followed, things would go best. Finally, it analyses Kant's contractualism, which says everyone ought to follow the principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws, as well as his Formula of the Greatest Good and Triple Theory.

This chapter reveals some insights into act consequentialism. It begins with the claim that it would often be wrong to treat people in certain ways, such as deceiving or coercing them, or breaking our promises to them, even when such acts would make things go better. The chapter then turns to deontic and non-deontic badness. These are different kinds of badness, as is shown by cases in which such acts are not wrong, because their non-deontic badness is outweighed by the goodness of their effects. Since these acts would have this intrinsic badness, though they would not be wrong, it could not be their wrongness that made them intrinsically bad.

This chapter explains and critically evaluates those solutions to the non-identity problem that involve rejecting the fifth premise of the argument that gives rise to the problem, the claim that if an act wrongs no one, then the act is not morally wrong. These include solutions based on appeals to utilitarian and consequentialist principles, in both act- and rule-forms, and to Parfit’s Principle Q, as well as solutions based on considerations of group rights and of virtue. It is argued that no solution that involves rejecting the fifth premise of the non-identity argument satisfies all three of the criteria that a successful solution to the problem must satisfy.

Joshua Greene argues that science can advance ethics and that, in particular, empirical evidence tends to support characteristically consequentialist over deontological judgments, because characteristically deontological judgments are frequently tied to, and perhaps the product of, automatic emotional responses, which should lead us to have less confidence in them than in consequentialist judgments. This chapter argues that Greene’s experimental results are compatible with a certain kind of rule consequentialism, acceptance rule consequentialism, and that since the dictates of this kind of rule consequentialism are “characteristically deontological,” this means that Greene’s analysis should not lead us to have more confidence in characteristically consequentialist judgments rather than characteristically deontological judgments.

Chapter 7 notes that the question of moral demandingness usually focuses on maximizing act consequentialist theories that posit extreme, impartial moral demands. The chapter suggests considering instead the possibility of extremely demanding agent-relative requirements to care for particular, proximate, or intimate others. In an effort to protect women from being coerced into or exploited through dependency work, care ethicists have portrayed some of the demands of morality as moderate; they have formulated what could be called a feminist version of the “demandingness objection.” The chapter critiques this attempt to argue that morality is moderate. However, the critique is not meant to support the stringent, action-guiding moral demands that impartialist, maximizing act consequentialism emphasizes and that tend to be strikingly counterintuitive. The moral demands in care ethics are often grasped intuitively and can be impossible to meet, making moral life especially difficult, if not “demanding” in any traditional sense.

This chapter introduces a number of claims. If we are not act consequentialists, we may think that we could always reasonably want and hope that things will go in the ways that would be best and that it would often be best if some people acted wrongly. Therefore we could often reasonably want and hope that some people will act wrongly. Act consequentialists claim that, when it would be best if people acted in some way, this fact would make this act right. Some other people claim that the badness of any wrong act would prevent this act from making things go best. This second claim is false. Some wrong acts make things go better by preventing several other similar wrong acts. There are other wrong acts, most of us believe, that would make things go best.

Several authors have worried, or anyway assumed, that confronting people with highly demanding moral requirements would be counterproductive, in the sense of causing people to turn away from morality, and thus actually decreasing (for instance) amounts donated. In this chapter, Ben Sachs notes that whether or not such behaviour would be counterproductive is a non-obvious empirical matter. After reviewing the available evidence, Sachs concludes that we should not be at all confident that “demanding the demanding” would be counterproductive. Sachs argues that more empirical studies are needed, but tentatively defends a theory of moral psychology according to which, when people are confronted with a demanding ethical theory (like act-consequentialism) they will, if they accept the theory, respond by coming close to conforming to it.

The chapter examines three issues addressed in the literature. The first is the objection that governments cannot be trusted with making these intervention decisions. The chapter accepts the force of the objection, but argues that such government failure must be part of the proportionality calculus. The second issue is whether consent matters for intervention. The chapter claims that the consent of the victims' fellow citizens is irrelevant, as is the consent of the incumbent regime and its supporters. And finally, the chapter proposes an alliance of rights-respecting governments as the more plausible institutional alternative to approve and supervise justified interventions.

People often say that some normative ethical theory, act consequentialism perhaps, faces some objection based on ‘obvious intuitions’. It is also sometimes said—e.g. by Bernard Williams—that a theory like act consequentialism can make some things too obvious; can make obvious things that aren’t obvious but deeply morally problematic and troubling even if correct. Ridge and McKeever agree that objections of Williams’ sort can sometimes have some weight; but how much weight, and how often? They remind us that the anti-theorist’s deeper aim is often to insist on the subtlety and variety of the moral landscape. But, the more subtle and variable the moral landscape can be, the less sure we can be that we know which cases truly are the ‘hard ones’. And if we cannot be confident which cases are hard, then we cannot have strong reason to reject a theory for miscategorizing hard cases.