Philosophy 290-7

This seminar will probe two of the most central questions in moral philosophy: How do various considerations conspire to make it the case that I wrong you by X-ing, and what special significance, if any, does the fact that I wrong you by X-ing have? Suppose that I would wrong you by failing to aid you, which I can easily do. It might seem straightforward why I would wrong you: because I would set back your interests needlessly. But, for one thing, what then is the significance, if any, of the further fact that it wrongs you, over and above setting back your interests needlessly? For another thing, it seems that this in any event cannot be the whole answer. For if you consent to my not aiding you, my failure to aid you no longer wrongs you, even though it remains the case that it sets back your interests needlessly. For yet another thing, there are cases in which I wrong you even though, or so it seems, my action does not set back any interest of yours. Arthur Ripstein gives the example of harmlessly sleeping in your bed while you are at work. Such cases lead some to a “two-level” view, such as David Hume’s account of the “artificial virtues,” rule utilitarianism, or contractualism, according to which my X-ing wrongs you, roughly, because of the interests that would be set back by a social practice of permitting such actions. Such cases lead others, most notably (the incoming White’s Chair at Oxford) David Owens, to suggest that you have “deontic interests” in its being the case that I wrong you by X-ing. And such cases lead still others, such as Ripstein himself, to deny that the fact that I wrong you by X-ing is to be explained in terms of interests at all.

Authors we read may include, among others, David Hume, John Rawls, Judith Thomson, Frances Kamm, T.M. Scanlon, Jay Wallace, Derek Parfit, Brad Hooker, Arthur Ripstein, and David Owens.