Utilitarianism is the idea that ethics is ultimately about what makes people's lives go better.
While utilitarian ideas remain highly influential in politics and culture, they are subject to …

1. Possibilists claim that what Smith ought to do now depends on two kinds of fact about
relevant agents' responses to his action. If the relevant agent is a different individual, what …

Pattern-based reasons are reasons for action deriving not from the features of our own
actions, but from the features of the larger patterns of action in which we might be …

Novelty—the value of saying something new—appears to be a good-making feature of a
philosophical contribution. Beyond this, however, novelty functions as a metric of success …

This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other
important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory …

As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of
how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in …

This paper examines the idea of an extended unit of action, which is the idea that the
reasons for or against an individual action can depend on the qualities of a larger pattern of …

Williams's famous story of Jim exemplifies a general class of dilemmas caused by
recalcitrant agents. Like Williams himself, most commentators have focused on Jim and the …

ON GOOD PEOPLE A NEW DEFENSE OF RULE-CONSEQUENTIALISM by RYAN JENKINS
BA Summa cum laude, Florida State University, 2008 A the Page 1 ON GOOD PEOPLE A …

Copyright statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules
to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has …