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This chapter explores the relations between ethics and common sense. It argues that (1) common sense is essential to ethics, but not sufficient for it; (2) ethics is also essential to common sense, which is an inherently practical capacity; (3) common sense is basically conservative, not innovative, and can be oppressive, and consequently on its own terms requires supplementation and correction by ethical thinking; and (4) developments — improvements — in ethics that lead to improvements in morality lead to improvements in common sense by leading to improvements in common-sense morality.

By attaching significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent and by recognizing special obligations to family members and others, common‐sense morality limits the size of an agent's moral world. Consequentialism, by contrast, upholds a more expansive notion of normative responsibility that neither assigns intrinsic moral significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent nor recognizes special obligations as a fundamental moral category. The conflict between restrictive and expansive notions of normative responsibility has a parallel in modern political life, in the opposition between nationalism and other varieties of particularism, on the one hand, and globalism or universalism, on the other. The opposing pulls of global integration and ethnic fragmentation pose a political problem that, Scheffler argues, we are unlikely to resolve without attaining greater stability in our thinking about normative responsibility more generally.

Sidgwick argues that common sense morality is not a repository of intuitively evident moral principles, as some of his contemporaries thought. Common sense rules cannot provide conclusive reasons for actions, because they all have exceptions and leave some issues unresolved. A first principle is needed to supplement them. It must be more than intuitively evident. It must, first, give deductively warranted assurance that a particular judgment is valid. So common sense judgements depend for their own validity on some exceptionless and completely universal principle. Second, the principle or principles providing this assurance must enable us to systematize and complete our moral beliefs. The dependence and systematization arguments, Sidgwick holds, taken together, lead to a utilitarian principle. Unfortunately they also warrant egoism. Practical reason thus seems to be at odds with itself.

Common sense morality is in a better epistemic position than Egoism, for those who accept common sense morality can modestly vindicate it – they can defend it to their own satisfaction – whereas most Egoists cannot defend Egoism, even modestly. The key to this defence of morality is the importance of moral understanding. What are the implications of recognizing that the focus of moral epistemology should be moral understanding rather than moral knowledge? Moral philosophers already act as if they are aiming for moral understanding, but there are many unanswered questions about moral understanding that need to be addressed in the future.

Scheffler's main aim in this essay is to explore the nature of ‘associative duties’—the special duties that participants in close personal relationships and members of significant social groups are thought to have to one another. These duties occupy a central position in common‐sense moral thinking, even though their precise content is often unclear. Scheffler considers two objections to associative duties: the voluntarist objection, rooted in an ideal of freedom and autonomy; and the distributive objection, rooted in a principle of equality. Like associative duties themselves, the values of freedom and equality exert genuine authority within common‐sense moral thought, and so there are deep internal conflicts in our thinking about the extent of our responsibilities to different individuals and groups.

This chapter reviews relevant aspects of human psychology and common-sense morality. The fact that it is easier for us to harm than to benefit is reflected in so-called loss aversion; that our aversion of losing something is greater than our desire to acquire something similar. It is also reflected in that common-sense morality imposes strict duties not to commit harmful acts of killing etc. — and thereby gives us corresponding negative rights to life etc. — but provides only weaker reasons to benefit. Together with a conception of responsibility as based on causation this makes up the act-omission doctrine. Relevant aspects of our psychology are a bias towards the near future and an altruism that is limited to individuals who are near to us and that is not proportionate to larger numbers. We have a sense of justice or fairness, which primarily manifests in acts of reciprocity, tit-for-tat.

Distinguishes between cosmopolitanism about justice and cosmopolitanism about culture, identifying moderate and extreme forms of each of the two views. The extreme versions of cosmopolitanism, Scheffler argues, are implausible because they conflict with a notion of special responsibility that is deeply embedded in common‐sense moral thought. In arguing that a commitment to the equality of persons is neither substantively or conceptually incompatible with the recognition of special responsibilities, Scheffler seeks to undermine the case for these extreme forms of cosmopolitanism and to build the case for the moderate forms. But he notes that the moderate forms of cosmopolitanism, despite being much more plausible than the extreme versions, still face a number of philosophical and practical challenges, among them that of devising institutions and practices that take seriously both equality and special responsibilities.

This paper argues that theorists who want to respect common sense morality must respect not just verdicts but also grounds for verdicts. Just as theories that baldly deny that there is any value in personal commitments or who say that personal commitments do not generate duties are problematically reversionary, so are theories that say that there is value in personal commitments but it is something foreign to common sense morality. Indirect consequentialism is in fact committed to a massive error theory about ordinary moral thought. Thus it loses the advantage it was supposed to have in comparison with direct consequentialism. In one case the massive error is over verdicts, in the other over grounds for verdicts. Neither form of consequentialism can respect matters of the heart. 

This chapter covers Sidgwick’s long discussion of the individual virtues that he saw as most central in common-sense morality. He is charged with distorting wisdom into a form of self-control, and with allowing his own utilitarian views to influence his account of virtues. The chapter moves to the issue of justice, and it is shown how Sidgwick’s emphasis on the importance of not disappointing expectations is worth greater attention, and how his criticisms of natural rights theories and desert theories anticipate various later arguments. Other virtues, such as veracity and courage, are discussed, and the chapter ends with a critical account of Sidgwick’s pessimistic final judgement on the morality of common sense. It is concluded that, though there is much to learn from Sidgwick’s examination of common sense, his criticisms are flawed by a failure to recognize the role that a capacity for individual judgement can play within an ethical theory.

The Introduction surveys the argument of the book which is an exercise in moral revisionism. Common-sense morality features the act-omission doctrine which is analyzed as consisting in a theory of negative rights and a conception of responsibility as being based on causality. It is argued that these be replaced by reasons of beneficence and a conception of responsibility as based on what is under the influence of practical reasons. Since reasons of beneficence are weaker than reasons of rights, the revised morality will be less authoritative. It will also be less authoritative because practical reasons are desire-dependent and, thus, cannot be universally binding. The question is whether this revised morality will be authoritative enough to command our compliance which seems necessary for us to cope with the greatest moral problems of our time, such as aid to developing countries and anthropogenic climate change.

The Conclusion summarizes the moral revision that the book has argued for. Common-sense morality features the act-omission doctrine which was traced to a theory of negative rights and a conception of responsibility as being based on causality. It was argued that these be replaced by reasons of beneficence and a conception of responsibility as based on what is under the influence of practical reasons. Since reasons of beneficence are weaker than reasons of rights, the revised morality will be less authoritative. It will also be less authoritative because practical reasons are desire-dependent and, thus, cannot be universally binding. The question is whether this revised morality will be authoritative enough to command our compliance which seems necessary for us to cope with the greatest moral problems of our time, such as aid to developing countries and anthropogenic climate change.

If it is in one way in people's interest that there be constraints on killing (because it gives them a more sublime and elevated status), is it still possible for them to agree ex ante to alienate those rights for the sake of other interests they have? Can we do away with constraints protecting an individual not because it is for the greater good of others, but because ex ante it is in his own interest for there to be no constraints? This is the question that prompts Ch. 11. Both agent‐focussed objections and victim‐focussed objections to agreements to use oneself at one time for one's own good at another time are addressed, although the emphasis is on victim‐focussed reasons against such agreements, and on the limits to a strategy of founding morality on agreements and allowing duties to be overridden by agreements. The outline is plotted of the types of agreements permitted by ‘common‐sense morality.’

According to Agnosticism with a capital A, even if one doesn’t see how any known reason would justify God in permitting all the evil in the world and even if one lacks warrant for theism, one should not infer that there probably is no reason that would justify God. After all, even under those conditions, one should be in doubt about whether or not known goods constitute a representative sample of all goods. Agnosticism has previously been defended against the charge that it leaves one in doubt about whether or not one is obligated to intervene to prevent horrific suffering that can be prevented at no risk (Howard-Snyder, 2009). In light of this defense, Chapter 20 argued that Agnosticism is at odds with common-sense morality’s insistence that one has an obligation to intervene in such cases. This chapter argues that the moral principle Chapter 20 imputes to common sense is false and that a moral principle much more in keeping with common sense is compatible with Agnosticism and this chapter’s defense of it.

This chapter builds towards a wider theory combining a version of common sense morality with a particular rule consequentialist justification. It asks whether the most plausible principles of common sense morality can all be given some further justification, which may appeal to some feature that these principles have in common. On one plausible hypothesis, the best principles of common sense morality are also the principles whose acceptance would on the whole make things go best. We might justifiably accept this hypothesis. The two parts of this theory, furthermore, would achieve more by being combined. Rule consequentialism would be strengthened if this theory supports that seems to be the best version of common sense morality. This version of Common Sense Morality would be similarly strengthened if it can be plausibly supported in this rule consequentialist way.

Explains why C cannot be directly self‐defeating. Theories are agent‐relative if they give different agents different aims. Two such theories are S and Common Sense Morality, or M. It is often true that, if each of several people does what would be best for themselves, that would be worse for all these people. In such cases, S is directly collectively self‐defeating. In moral analogues of such cases, M is similarly self‐defeating. The chapter describes how these problems can have political, psychological, or moral solutions.