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This book is an accessible defence of the belief in objective morality. Most books on metaethics-the part of moral philosophy that investigates the existence and nature of morality-primarily discuss problems that particularly intrigue specialists in the field. Answering Moral Skepticism focuses instead on examining the worries about morality that are more likely to trouble ordinary reflective individuals.

"This book examines a variety of arguments that might be thought to support skepticism about the existence of morality, and it explains how these arguments can be answered by those who believe in objective moral truths. The focus throughout is on discussing questions that frequently trouble thoughtful and reflective individuals, including questions like the following: Does the prevalence of moral disagreement make it reasonable to conclude that there aren't really any moral facts at all? Is morality simply relative to particular societies and times? What could objective moral facts possibly be like? If there were moral facts, how could we ever come to know anything about them? Shouldn't belief in the theory of evolution undermine our confidence that our moral intuitions reliably reveal moral truths? Would moral facts ever actually explain anything at all? Can morality really have the motivating and rational force we normally take it to have? How can one possibly find a place for objective moral values in a scientific worldview? The book explores plausible answers to questions like these and it thus aims to show why the belief in objective morality remains an intellectually reasonable one"--

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Preliminaries -- 1.1 What Normative Ethics Is -- 1.2 What Normative Ethics Is Not -- 1.3 Defending Normative Theories -- 1.4 Factors and Foundations -- PART I FACTORS -- 2 The Good -- 2.1 Promoting the Good -- 2.2 Well-Being -- 2.3 The Total View -- 2.4 Equality -- 2.5 Culpability, Fairness, and Desert -- 2.6 Consequentialism -- 3 Doing Harm -- 3.1 Deontology -- 3.2 Thresholds -- 3.3 The Scope of the Constraint -- 3.4 Doing and Allowing -- 3.5 Intending Harm -- 4 Other Constraints -- 4.1 Lying -- 4.2 Promises -- 4.3 Special Obligations -- 4.4 Conventions -- 4.5 Duties to Oneself -- 5 Further Factors -- 5.1 Demanding Too Much -- 5.2 Options -- 5.3 Rights -- 5.4 Interaction -- PART 2 FOUNDATIONS -- 6 Teleological Foundations -- 6.1 Foundational Theories -- 6.2 Egoism -- 6.3 Virtues -- 6.4 Act Consequentialism -- 6.5 Rules -- 7 Deontological Foundations -- 7.1 Contractarianism -- 7.2 Universalizability -- 7.3 The Ideal Observer -- 7.4 Reflection -- 7.5 Foundational Pluralism -- 7.6 Possibilities -- Suggested Readings -- References -- About the Book and Author -- Index

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Thinking about Death -- 2. Dualism versus Physicalism -- 3. Arguments for the Existence of the Soul -- 4. Descartes' Argument -- 5. Plato on the Immortality of the Soul -- 6. Personal Identity -- 7. Choosing between the Theories -- 8. The Nature of Death -- 9. Two Surprising Claims about Death -- 10. The Badness of Death -- 11. Immortality -- 12. The Value of Life -- 13. Other Aspects of Death -- 14. Living in the Face of Death -- 15. Suicide -- 16. Conclusion: An Invitation -- Notes -- Suggestions for Further Reading -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.

Many proposed moral principles are such that it would be difficult or impossible to always correctly identify which act is required by that principle in a given situation. To deal with this problem, theorists typically offer various methods of determining what to do in the face of epistemic limitations, and we are then told that the right thing to do – given these limitations – is to perform the act identified by the given method. But since the method and the underlying principle can diverge, it would seem that in such cases we are being given contradictory advice: some particular act will be both right (since it is so identified by the favored method) and not right (since it does not conform to the underlying principle). Various attempts to resolve this apparent paradox are surveyed, but none are completely satisfactory.

This article discusses consequentialism and its use in determining morality in certain scenarios. It is often suggested consequentialism still permits too much, failing to condemn acts that intuitively it ought to condemn. Consequentialism condemns an act only if when that act makes a difference. Adapted from the source document.

Anyone who reflects on the way we go about arguing for or against moral claims is likely to be struck by the central importance we give to thinking about cases. Intuitive reactions to cases—real or imagined—are carefully noted, and then appealed to as providing reason to accept (or reject) various claims. When trying on a general moral theory for size, for example, we typically get a feel for its overall plausibility by considering its implications in a range of cases. Similarly, when we try to refine the statement of a principle meant to cover a fairly specific part of morality, we guide ourselves by testing the various possible revisions against a carefully constructed set of cases (often differing only in rather subtle ways). And when arguing against a claim, we take ourselves to have shown something significant if we can find an intuitively compelling counterexample, and such counterexamples almost always take the form of a description of one or another case where the implications of the claim in question seem implausible. Even when we find ourselves faced with a case where we have no immediate and clear reaction, or where we have such a reaction, but others don't share it and we need to persuade them, in what is probably the most common way of trying to make progress we consider various analogies and disanalogies; that is to say, we appeal to still other cases, and by seeing what we want to say there, we discover (or confirm) what it is plausible to say in the original case. In these and other ways, then, the appeal to cases plays a central and ubiquitous role in our moral thinking.

What are the limits of well-being? This question nicely captures one of the central debates concerning the nature of the individual human good. For rival theories differ as to what sort of facts directly constitute a person's being well-off. On some views, well-being is limited to the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. But other views push the boundaries of well-being beyond this, so that it encompasses a variety of mental states, not merely pleasure alone. Some theories then draw the line here, limiting well-being to the presence of the appropriately broadened set of mental states. But still others extend the limits of well-being even further, so that it is constituted in part by facts that are not themselves mental states at all; on such views, well-being is partly constituted by states of affairs that are "external" to the individual's experiences.In this essay, I want to explore some of this debate by focusing on a particular stretch of the dialectic. That is, I want to think hard about a particular connected series of arguments and counterarguments. These arguments – or, at least, the concerns they seek to express – emerge naturally in the give and take of philosophical discussion. Together they make up a rather simple story, whose plot, in very rough terms, is this: first there is an attempt to push the limits of well-being outward, moving from a narrow to a broader conception; then comes the claim that the resulting notion is too broad, and so we must retreat to a narrower conception after all.