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Doing the Best We Can: An Essay in Informal Deontic Logic

by Fred Feldman
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Current price ₹7,345.00
Original price ₹11,299.00
Original price ₹11,299.00
Original price ₹11,299.00
(-35%)
₹7,345.00
Current price ₹7,345.00

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Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9789027721648
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Springer
  • Publisher Imprint: Springer
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 246
  • Original Price: EUR 99.99
  • Language: English
  • Edition: 1986
  • Item Weight: 563 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Several years ago I came across a marvelous little paper in which Hector-Neri Castaneda shows that standard versions of act utilitarian- l ism are formally incoherent. I was intrigued by his argument. It had long seemed to me that I had a firm grasp on act utilitarianism. Indeed, it had often seemed to me that it was the clearest and most attractive of normative theories. Yet here was a simple and relatively uncontrover- sial argument that showed, with only some trivial assumptions, that the doctrine is virtually unintelligible. The gist of Castaneda's argument is this: suppose we understand act utilitarianism to be the view that an act is obligatory if and only if its utility exceeds that of each alternative. Suppose it is obligatory for a certain person to perform an act with two parts - we can call it 'A & B'. Then, obviously enough, it is also obligatory for this person to perform the parts, A and B. If act utilitarianism were true, we appar- ently could infer that the utility of A & B is higher than that of A, and higher than that of B (because A & B is obligatory, and the other acts are alternatives to A & B).

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