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  1. Christian Academic Books/
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Doing the Best We Can

An Essay in Informal Deontic Logic

by Fred Feldman

  • Hardback
  • 246 pages
  • Publisher: Springer
  • 15.6 x 23.4 x 1.7 cm

£88.10

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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).
Doing the Best We Can and Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert
Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and DesertDoing the Best We Can

  • Author

    Fred Feldman

  • Book Format

    Hardback

  • Publisher

    Springer

  • Published

    April 1986

  • Edition

    1986 ed.

  • Weight

    550g

  • Page Count

    246

  • Dimensions

    15.6 x 23.4 x 1.7 cm

  • ISBN

    9789027721648

  • ISBN-10

    9027721645

  • Eden Code

    4671385

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