Volume 28, Number 2
August 2024
ARTICLE

Moral Demandingness and Modal Demandingness

Volume 28, Number 2, August 2024, Pages 151–170
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v28i2.3130
PDFPDF
MP3

Abstract

My aim is to propose a better way to understand moral demandingness: a counterfactual view that requires us to consider the demands that moral theories make across other possible worlds. Seemingly, the demandingness of any moral theory or principle should be evaluated in terms of that theory’s general demandingness. This, in turn, implies that we ought to be concerned about the possible demandingness of moral theories and not just about how demanding they actually are. This counterfactual view might also have some surprising implications about how demanding commonsense morality really is. After all, commonsense morality might be extremely demanding in many possible worlds. This consideration, in turn, risks undermining the commonsense moral theorist’s ability to make purely cost-based demandingness objections against consequentialism, giving us strong reasons to worry about the purely cost-based demandingness objection’s viability in general.
Copyright © 2024 Kyle York
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
|

When Enough Is Not Enough: Satisficing and Moral Efficiency

Konstantin Weber

Rethinking Demandingness: Why Satisficing Consequentialism and Scalar Consequentialism Are Not Less Demanding Than Maximizing Consequentialism

Spencer Case

A Defense of the Cautionary Approach to Supererogation

Alfred Archer and Seyyed Mohsen Eslami

Three Kinds of Prioritarianism

Carlos Soto

Evolution, Utilitarianism, and Normative Uncertainty: The Practical Significance of Debunking Arguments

Andreas L. Mogensen and William MacAskill

Utilitarianism, Altruism, and Consent

Christopher J. G. Meacham

The Ambitions of Consequentialism

Brian McElwee

Objectivism and Prospectivism About Rightness

Elinor Mason

A Counterexample to Parfit’s Rule Consequentialism

Jacob Nebel

Chance, Epistemic Probability and Saving Lives: Reply to Bradley

Michael J. Almeida

What Is Wrong with Kamm’s and Scanlon’s Arguments Against Taurek

Tyler Doggett

Consequentialism, Constraints, and the Good-Relative-to: A Reply to Mark Schroeder

Jussi Suikkanen

Portico