My Views

Below, I list some of my more important philosophical views and cite the works in which I discuss them. Although I risk coming off as pretentious, I do this for two main reasons. First, this list helps me keep consistent. For many years, I’ve tried to develop a coherent picture of morality, practical reasons, and the relations between the two. And I’ve found that keeping a list of all my positions has been helpful in making sure everything fits together within a coherent whole. 

Second (and this is why I’m making this public), I think that this list will help readers make sense of my views. Making sense of my views has proven difficult, as I accept a set of views that many take to be mutually incompatible. For instance, I accept both deontology and act consequentialism despite the fact that many take these two to be logical contraries, if not logical contradictories. I see myself as an act consequentialist in that I hold that what makes an act morally right is that its outcome (or prospect) ranks higher, evaluatively speaking, than that of every alternative. Yet, contrary to most act consequentialists, I accept that there are agent-centered restrictions, agent-centered options, and supererogatory acts. And I see myself as a deontologist in that I believe that there are agent-centered restrictions that are ultimately grounded in our duty to adopt an attitude of respect toward autonomous beings. 

So, unlike many others, I believe that we have duties not only to perform certain actions, but also to form certain reasons-responsive attitudes—that is, to form certain beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions. Thus, I think that we not only have a duty to refrain from treating autonomous beings as mere means, but also a duty to regard such beings as ends in themselves and to respect them accordingly. And we have a duty to adopt certain ends, such as the end of promoting the happiness of others, and to do so even if we don’t foresee ever having the opportunity to promote these ends. Furthermore, I think that we have a duty to form certain intentions, such as the intention to cooperate with others on the condition that they're willing to cooperate with us. And I hold that we must form this conditional intention even if there’s no point in our doing our part in any collective enterprise given that not enough others are willing to do their parts in this enterprise. In any case, here are my views.

1. Attitudism: Our most fundamental duties are duties to have and to form certain reasons-responsive attitudes (e.g., certain beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions). I call these attitude-regulating duties that prescribe (or proscribe) reasons-responsive attitudes noetic duties—the word ‘noetic’ deriving from the Greek word ‘νοητόν’ (or ‘noētón’), meaning ‘intelligible’ or ‘the object of the operation of the mind/intellect’. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. 

2. Telicism: Our telic duties (also known as imperfect duties) are more fundamental than our praxic duties (also known as perfect duties). I call action-regulating duties that prescribe (or proscribe) actions praxic duties—the word ‘praxic’ deriving from the Greek word ‘πρᾶξῐς’ (or ‘prâxis’), meaning ‘action’, ‘activity’, or ‘practice’. And I call end-regulating duties that prescribe (or proscribe) ends telic duties—the word ‘telic’ deriving from the Greek word ‘τέλος’ (or ‘télos’), meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Thus, telicism holds that our duty to adopt certain ends (such as the end of helping others) is more fundamental than our duty to perform certain actions (such as the act of saving the child drowning in Singer's shallow pond case). And although having an end E doesn't necessitate taking every favorable opportunity to promote E, it does necessitate taking advantage of such opportunities sufficiently often to count as having that end, where what counts as sufficiently often depends both on what your other legitimate ends are and on what limitations there are on your time, resources, and opportunities for promoting your legitimate ends. What's more, having an end E necessitates your taking advantage of any golden opportunities to promote E, a golden opportunity being one that is such a particularly good and exceptionally rare opportunity that you couldn't count as having this end while passing up such an opportunity to promote it. Thus, our duties to perform certain actions derive from our duties to have certain ends such that we have a duty to perform an available act if and only if our performing that act is necessary for us to count as having those obligatory ends. What's more, if we are required to perform a given act, it's because our performing it is necessary for us to count as having those obligatory ends. Note, then, that performing certain actions is neither necessary nor sufficient for fulfilling a telic duty. First, action is not sufficient, for our telic duties require us to have certain ends such that we must not only perform certain acts when certain opportunities arise, but also perform them with the motives and intentions that are constitutive of having such ends. Second, action is not necessary, because someone who lacks the time, resources, or opportunities to pursue their obligatory ends will not be required to do anything to pursue them. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

3. Having an End: To have an end E involves more than just having the desire that E be promoted or that you promote it. Having an end necessitates being committed to promoting it insofar as your time, resources, and opportunities allow you to do so without neglecting your other ends. Thus, what’s required of you vis-à-vis promoting E depends on what your other legitimate ends are, what you’ve already done to promote E and these other ends, what you plan on doing to promote E and these other ends, and what limits there are on your time, resources, and opportunities for promoting them are. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

4. Telic Preferentialism: Our legitimate ends determine which prospects/outcomes we should prefer. For any subject S and any two of their prospects/outcomes P1 and P2, whether they ought to prefer P1 to P2 just depends on what their legitimate ends are. (One's legitimate ends include one's obligatory ends -- that is, the ends that one is required to have -- plus one's discretionary ends -- that is, the optional ends that one has in fact adopted.) See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

5. Telic Indeterminacy and Fluidity: Ends are often indeterminate such that what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them is often indeterminate in various ways. Indeed, there are at least three ways for such indeterminacy to arise: (1) the end itself could be indeterminate (e.g., my end is to build a tall building, but it's indeterminate what counts as a tall building), (2) the time by which the end is to be achieved is left indeterminate (e.g., my end is to finish the degree, but it's left indeterminate by when), or (3) the degree to which the end should be achieved is left indeterminate (e.g., my end is to get in better shape, but it's left indeterminate how much better). Such indeterminate ends are typically fluid (such that what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them changes as we (a) further specify them, (b) get a better sense of what’s involved in pursuing and/or achieving them, and (c) re-evaluate our commitments to pursuing and/or achieving them), wide-ranging (such that there are a wide range of courses of actions that count as pursuing them and a wide range of end states that count as achieving them), and are boundary-indeterminate (such that the boundaries of these ranges in what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them are fuzzy). See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

6. Telic Competition: Ends must compete with one another for one’s limited time, resources, and opportunities for pursuing them. Moral ends must compete with non-moral ends and vice versa. Obligatory ends must compete with discretionary ends. Ends compete based on the strength of the commitment that we should have with respect to each of them. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

7. Telic Pluralism: There is a plurality of pursuit-worthy ends, and it’s impractical to adopt every pursuit-worthy end. There are just too many. So, we must choose which to adopt. There is also a plurality of obligatory (pursuit-mandatory) ends. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

8. Telic Discretionism: Because there are more pursuit-worthy ends than one could possibly pursue, some ends are discretionary. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

9. Telic Temporal Extensionism: Our ends are typically something that can be achieved only by performing a series of acts over time, and, in many instances, it doesn’t matter when we perform an act in that series so long as we perform the entire series. The pursuit of ends thus involves planning and policy-making. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

10. Telic Obligationism: Some ends are obligatory. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

11. Telic Relativism: Some of the ends that agents are morally required to have as well as some of the ends that agents are morally permitted to have are agent-relative. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

12. Telic-Praxis Nexus: Having a telic duty is not a duty to take every favorable opportunity to pursue the ends in question. There is only a duty to pursue them sufficiently often, which entails a duty to pursue any golden opportunities. For golden opportunities are opportunities that are too good to pass up and still count as genuinely committed to pursuing that end. What counts as sufficiently often depends on the relative strength of the end in question, what one has already done in its pursuit, what one plans to do in its pursuit, what other ends one has and their relative strengths, what limits there are on one’s time, resources, and opportunities for pursuing them. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

13. Act Consequentialism: The ultimate ought-making feature of an act is that its prospect/outcome evaluatively outranks that of every available alternative, and the ultimate permissibility-making feature of an act is that its prospect/outcome is not evaluatively outranked by that of any available alternative. To evaluatively rank a set of prospects or outcomes is to rank them in terms of something such as their overall goodness, their fittingness for being desired, their goodness for the agent, their goodness for others besides the agent, or some combination of such things. And, as I see it, the relevant evaluative ranking is to be understood in terms of the ends (and, derivatively, the preferences) that the agent should have. And, thus, act consequentialism holds that the preferences that we should have determine what we should do. We should act to bring about the possible world that, of all those that we are capable of actualizing through our actions, is the one that we ought to desire most to be actual. See chapters 4–7 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

14. Commonsense Consequentialism: This is a form of act consequentialism that generates many, if not all, of our commonsense moral verdicts. It holds: (a) For any subject S and any maximal option M1, S’s performing M1 is morally permissible if and only if there is no alternative maximal option M2 such that S has both more moral reason and more reason, all things considered, to desire the prospect of her M2-ing than to desire the prospect of her M1-ing. (b) For any subject S and any non-maximal option N, S’s performing N is morally permissible if and only if there is some permissible maximal option M such that S’s M-ing entails S’s N-ing. (c) And when the left-hand side of one of these bi-conditionals is true, it is so in virtue of the right-hand side’s being true. (For any subject S and any two of her options φ and ψ, S’s φ-ing entails S’s ψ-ing if and only if S doesn’t have the option of φ-ing without ψ-ing. A maximal option is a maximally evaluatively specific option—that is, an option that is entailed only by evaluatively equivalent options (which, of course, includes itself). A non-maximal option is an option that’s not a maximal option.) See chapter 7 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

15. Kantsequentialism (short for 'Kantian act-consequentialism'): This is the view that accepts the following five core tenets: (1) Maximalist Act-Consequentialism: The fundamental right-making feature of a maximal option is having a prospect that is not evaluatively outranked by that of any alternative maximal option. And the fundamental right-making feature of a non-maximal option is being entailed by a permissible maximal option. (2) Rationalism about Options: For any φ, a subject has, as of time t, the option of φ-ing at some later time tʹ if and only if they have, as of t, rational control over whether they’ll φ at tʹ. (3) Ranking Dualism: The prospect of one option evaluatively outranks that of another if and only if the agent in question has both more morally requiring reason and more reason, all things considered, to prefer the one to the other. (4) Telic Preferentialism: A subject’s ends determine what reasons, if any, they have for preferring one prospect to another. Specifically, a subject has more morally requiring reason to prefer one prospect to another if and only if their obligatory ends favor the one over the other. And a subject has more reason, all things considered, to prefer one prospect to another if and only if their legitimate (that is, their obligatory and discretionary) ends favor the one over the other. (5) Kantian Telicism: A subject’s legitimate ends include all their discretionary ends (say, mastering kung fu or traveling the world) as well as the following four obligatory ends: (a) never being disrespectful of a person's humanity, (b) the well-being of every other sentient being, (c) the maximization of the impersonal good, and (d) the minimization of the risk of any personal or impersonal disaster. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. 

16. The Grounding of Our Practical Obligations on Kantsequentialism: Some things (e.g., philosophical inquiry) have the kind of value that makes certain ends (e.g., that of writing a philosophical monograph) pursuit-worthy but not pursuit-compulsory, and other things (e.g., persons) have the kind of value that makes certain other ends (e.g., that of respecting people’s humanity/autonomy) pursuit-compulsory and not just pursuit-worthy. (The kind of value that persons have and that makes the end of respecting their humanity pursuit-compulsory is that of being valuable as ends in themselves.) And this grounds the following obligation: Given the value of some things, there are some ends that we are required to adopt; these are our obligatory ends. Also, given the value of other things, there are other ends that we are permitted, but not required, to set for ourselves. Those that we are both permitted but not required to have but have in fact set for ourselves are our discretionary ends. And this, in turn, grounds the following obligation: We are required to prefer the prospect of our performing one maximal option to that of our performing some alternative maximal option if and only if the one is a better gamble given our legitimate ends (that is, our obligatory ends plus our discretionary ends). And this, in turn, grounds the following obligation: We are required to perform a given maximal option if and only if we are required to prefer its prospect to that of every alternative maximal option. And this, in turn, grounds the following obligation: We are required to perform a given (maximal or non-maximal) option if and only if we are required to perform a maximal option that entails our performing it. (A maximal option is a maximally evaluatively specific option—that is, an option that is entailed only by evaluatively equivalent options (which, of course, includes itself). A non-maximal option is an option that’s not a maximal option.) See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

17. Deontology: There are agent-centered restrictions that are ultimately grounded in our duty to respect persons and their capacity for making rational, autonomous decisions -- decisions based on their reasons as opposed to their natural impulses. (There is an agent-centered restriction against a subject’s performing an act of a certain type if and only if there are some possible circumstances in which it would be impermissible for them to perform an act of that type even though their doing so would both minimize the total instances of actions of that type and have no other morally relevant implications [Scheffler 1985, p. 409]. I use the word 'person' as a technical term meaning ‘a being with a rational nature’—that is, a being who is free in the sense of being capable of employing their reason both to make their own decisions and to set their own ends.) See chapter 7 of Opting for the Best, "Consequentializing Constraints: A Kantian Approach," and chapter 1 of The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism.

18. The Teleological Conception of Action: It is through our intentional actions that we attempt to affect the way the world goes. If we do one thing, the world will (or will likely) go one way. And if we do another, it will (or will likely) go another way. Thus, whenever we act intentionally, we act with the aim of making the world go one way rather than another. The aim needn’t be anything having to do with the causal consequences of the act. The aim could be nothing more than to perform the act in question. One could, for instance, run solely with the aim of running. But the fact remains that, for every intentional action, there is some end at which the agent aims.  For what distinguishes an intentional action—that is, an intentional movement of the mind or body—from an unintentional movement of the mind or body is that only in the case of the former is there an agent with an end that they thereby aim to achieve. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

19. The Teleological Conception of Reasons for Action: An agent has a non-derivative reason to perform an act only if they have a reason to want to achieve an end that will (or will likely) thereby be achieved. And, if there is such a reason, it’s because they have a reason to want to achieve this end. Consequently, its strength is strictly proportional to the strength of the agent’s reason for wanting the outcome in which this end is achieved to obtain. (As I argue in PORTMORE 2019, different sorts of options must be handled differently. There is a reason to perform a maximal option if and only if performing it will, or will likely, achieve an end that the agent has reason to want to be achieved. And this reason is a non-derivative reason. By contrast, there is a reason to perform a non-maximal option if and only if it is entailed by a maximal option that the agent has a (non-derivative) reason to perform. And this reason to perform the non-maximal option is a derivative reason.) See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

20. Value Concretism: The fundamental bearers of final value include concrete entities, such as persons. Thus, persons are not merely instrumentally valuable, nor are they merely receptacles for the realization of value. (This is not to be explained but accommodated.) See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

21. Deep Value Pluralism: Value is deeply pluralistic. Not only are there a plurality of things that are valuable (e.g., pleasure, friendship, humanity, achievement, understanding, etc.), but there are also many different kinds of value (e.g., final, moral, prudential, conditional, irreplaceable, instrumental, etc.), many different bearers of value (e.g., events, persons, states of affairs, etc.), many different ways of being valuable (e.g., by being useful, beautiful, honorable, interesting, etc.), many different ways of valuing (e.g., using, admiring, promoting, respecting, exemplifying, appreciating, etc.), and many different grounds for valuing something more or less (e.g., intensity, duration, special ties, agential involvement, etc.). See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

22. Rightness Monism: What makes a theory of rightness monistic is that it holds that there is a non-tautology-making feature, F, such that an act is right iff (and ultimately because) it is F. That is, there is a non-tautology-making feature, F, that is distinctive and common to all right acts, and this is what ultimately makes each of them right.

23. Moral Rationalism: Moral requirements are requirements of reason such that, if an agent is morally required to φ, then they are (unqualifiedly) required to φ—that is, they are required by reason to φ. See Morality and Practical Reasons.

24. Attitude Inclusivism: In addition to our having moral obligations to voluntarily perform, and to refrain from performing, certain acts, we have moral obligations to non-voluntarily form, and refrain from forming, certain attitudes. In other words, attitudes, and not just actions, matter morally. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

25. The Separateness of Persons: When an agent inflicts, say, a severe harm on one person to prevent several others from each being inflicted with some mild harm, there is no composite entity who suffers anything as bad as a series of mild harms. There are only these other individual persons who each suffer a mild harm. Given this, inflicting a severe harm on one person to prevent several others from each being inflicted with a mild harm is not morally equivalent to inflicting a severe harm on oneself to prevent oneself from having to suffer a series of mild harms that are, in the aggregate, worse than that severe harm. That is, there is something morally objectionable about the former (an interpersonal tradeoff) that is lacking in the latter (an intrapersonal tradeoff). See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

26. The Maximizing Conception of Choiceworthy Action: If one ought to have a certain set of ends, and if one has a choice between two options, one of which will better achieve these ends than the other (or one that represents a better gamble with respect to achieving them), then one ought to choose to perform it rather than the other. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

27. Maximalism: The fundamental right-making feature of a maximal option is having feature F. And the fundamental right-making feature of a non-maximal option is being entailed by a permissible maximal option (that is, a maximal option that has feature F). [A maximal option is an option that is entailed only by evaluatively equivalent options (which, of course, includes itself). A non-maximal option is an option that is not a maximal option.] See Opting for the Best. 

28. Moral Comparativism (Non-Absolutism): Besides those types of acts that are, by definition, wrong (e.g., wrongful killings), there are no types of acts whose deontic statuses are independent of how they compare with the available alternatives. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

29. The Self-Other Asymmetry: Although the mere fact that S’s φ-ing would promote someone else’s pleasure is itself a moral reason for S to φ, the mere fact that S’s φ-ing would promote S’s own pleasure is not itself a moral reason for S to φ. See Commonsense Consequentialism.

30. Morality Is Not Exclusively Act-Orientated: In addition to our having moral obligations to perform, and to refrain from performing, certain voluntary acts, we have moral obligations to form, and to refrain from forming, certain reasons-responsive attitudes (e.g., beliefs, desires, and intentions). In other words, attitudes, and not just actions, matter morally. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

31. The Sometimes-Overridden Ubiquity of the Duty of Beneficence: While the duty of beneficence is a ubiquitous force in our lives in that there is always a moral reason to benefit others that has a strength that’s strictly proportional to the extent of that benefit, the force of this reason is sometimes overridden by the force of the reasons that we have to promote our own interests. For we are morally permitted to balance the concern that we must have for the interests of others with the proportionally greater concern that we have for our own interests. Thus, the duty of charity/beneficence is, most fundamentally, a telic duty (that is, a duty to have an end)—specifically, it’s the duty to have the happiness of others as a serious, major, continually relevant, life-shaping end. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

32. The Directedness of Certain Kinds of Moral Obligations: Some moral obligations are directed obligations, which have three key features: (1) they are owed to specific people who will be wronged if they are violated, (2) they give rise to a duty of moral repair whenever they are (justifiably or unjustifiably) infringed upon, and (3) they are—when not inalienable—waivable by those to whom they are owed. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

33. Directed Duties to Non-Persons: We have directed duties to non-persons. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

34. The Highly Personal Character of Morality: According to Benthamite utilitarianism, the only morally significant relation in which others stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action. Admittedly, they do stand in this relation to me, and this relation is morally significant. But they may also stand to me in the relation of patient to agent, child to parent, friend to friend, promisee to promiser, and the like; and these are also morally relevant. [This is paraphrased from W. D. Ross.] See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

35. Moral Indeterminism: There is sometimes no determinate fact about an act’s deontic status. For instance, there is no precise number n such that we are morally permitted to intentionally kill an innocent person as a mere means to saving n lives but not as a mere means to saving n − 1 lives. Thus, there is a number n such that it is indeterminate whether it is morally permissible to intentionally kill an innocent person as a mere means to saving n lives. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

36. Agent-Centered Restrictions: Agents are sometimes prohibited from making the world as impersonally good as they can. There are agent-centered restrictions that prohibit them from performing certain types of acts even in some circumstances in which doing so would maximize the impersonal good. (There is an agent-centered restriction on performing an act of a given type if and only if there are some possible circumstances in which it would be impermissible for one to perform an act of that type even though doing so would both minimize the total instances of actions of that type and have no other morally relevant implications.) See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

37. Agent-Centered Options: Agents are not always required to make the world as impersonally good as they can. They are, in certain instances, morally permitted either to make things better overall but worse for themself (or others) or to make things better for themself (or others) but worse overall. These are agent-centered options, and they come in two varieties: agent-favoring options and agent-sacrificing options. The former are options either to make things better overall but worse for themself or to make things better for themself but worse overall. The latter are options either to make things better overall but worse for others or to make things better for others but worse overall. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

38. Supererogationism: There exists an act φ and a subject S such that S’s φ-ing is morally supererogatory, where S’s φ-ing is morally supererogatory if and only if S goes above and beyond the call of moral duty in φ-ing. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

39. The Basic Belief: In many typical choice situations, the relevant reasons do not morally or unqualifiedly require performing one particular act-type, but instead morally and unqualifiedly permit performing any of a variety of different act-types, such as gardening, watching TV, volunteering for Oxfam, reading the newspaper, or working on a book. See Commonsense Consequentialism.

40. The Duty to Respect Persons: Our most fundamental duty toward persons is to respect them and their humanity. And respect is an attitude, not an action. But, like all attitudes, this attitude is associated with certain motivational tendencies. These include a disposition not to interfere with their autonomous decisions, to inquire with an open mind as to the reasons for their decisions, to try to reason with them rather than coerce or manipulate them when we fear that they will make bad decisions, and to hold them accountable when they do make bad decisions. Most importantly, though, respect for a person disposes us to refrain from treating them as a mere means. But, because autonomy is the sort of end that’s to be esteemed when present rather than the sort that’s to be brought about when absent (in Kant’s terminology, a self-standing end rather than an end to be effected), respecting someone’s autonomy entails our striving to be respectful in the way we ourselves treat persons rather than striving to maximize the overall total instances in which people are treated with respect. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

41. The Mere Means Principle: It is, other things being equal, morally wrong to treat a person as a mere means. [An agent treats a person as a means if and only if they behave toward them in a certain way for the sake of realizing some end, intending the presence, participation, or destruction of them or some aspect of them to contribute to that end’s realization. An agent treats a person as a mere means if and only if all the following hold: (a) they treat them as a means, (b) they have not given their free and informed consent to being treated in this way, and (c) they could reasonably refuse to give their free and informed consent to being treated in this way. To treat someone as a mere means is to treat them in a way that’s indicative of one’s failure to value them as more than just a means to one’s own ends. A person could reasonably refuse to give their free and informed consent to being treated in a certain way if they pose no threat to anyone and the strongest personal reasons that they can offer against their being treated in this way are at least as strong as the strongest personal reasons that anyone else can offer for their being treated in this way. The personal reasons that a person can offer for (or against) someone’s (either themself or some other) being treated in a certain way are just the reasons they have for preferring (or dis-preferring) the prospect of this someone’s being treated in this way to the prospect of this someone’s not being treated in this way. See de Marneffe (2013, p. 51).] See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

42. Aggregationism: Well-being aggregates both intrapersonally and interpersonally. Thus, just as it is five times better, personally speaking, to have five times the amount of well-being, it is five times better, impersonally speaking, for five people to have a certain amount of well-being than it is for just one person to have that amount of well-being. Nevertheless, the value of persons is such that we have a strong moral reason to refrain from treating any person as a mere means as well as a strong moral reason to give each person an equal say in determining which of two groups of people we save when we are unable to save both groups. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.  

43. A Special Responsibility: Agents have a special responsibility for their own actions and commitments, a responsibility that’s greater than whatever responsibility they have for the actions and commitments of others. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

44. The Relevance of Risk: Risk matters morally. It’s not just whether an agent, say, murders someone that matters morally. Whether they risk murdering someone also matters morally. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

45. Risk of Disaster Aversion: We should be particularly averse to the risk of disaster. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

46. A Kantian Account of the Value of Persons and Their Humanity: Persons are beings with humanity. And our humanity is our rational nature—that is, our capacity for employing reason to set and pursue our own ends (including our own final ends) and to thereby act independently of both our natural impulses and the various social pressures imposed on us by custom, religion, tradition, political authority, etc. Thus, we can via the exercise of our rational nature free ourselves from these influences, determining for ourselves whether to pursue—and whether it’s even worthwhile to pursue—the ends that our natural impulses and social pressures would otherwise compel us to pursue. The proper response to humanity is respect, not promotion. This is because humanity is the sort of end that’s to be esteemed when present rather than the sort that’s to be brought about when absent (in Kant’s terminology, a self-standing end rather than an end to be effected). The value of humanity gives us no reason to bring more persons (that is, beings with humanity) into existence. It gives us reason only to respect the humanity of those people who do exist. We respect their humanity by appropriately adjusting our ends and restraining our conduct. Since humanity has unconditional value, the only way for a person to lose their dignity is by losing their humanity and, thus, ceasing to be a person. Thus, a person can’t lose the value associated with their humanity by becoming evil, performing bad deeds, or even losing the potential for future happiness. We are, then, to respect the humanity of persons irrespective of their deeds, usefulness, or moral character. Also, persons have irreplaceable (non-fungible) value—or what Kant calls ‘dignity’. The loss of one person’s life is not compensable by the creation or preservation of another person’s life in the way that the loss of one dollar bill is compensable by the creation or preservation of another dollar bill. Thus, there’s something to regret in the former case, even if not in the latter. Lastly, persons have objective value in that their value is not contingent on anyone’s actually valuing them. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

47. Non-Fungibility of Persons: Persons have irreplaceable (non-fungible) value—or what Kant calls ‘dignity’. The loss of one person’s life is not compensable by the creation or preservation of another person’s life in the way that the loss of a one-dollar bill is compensable by the creation or preservation of another one-dollar bill. Thus, there’s something to regret in the former case, even if not in the latter. Persons are not mere receptacles for the realization of value. 20 people each with one unit of well-being is not exchangeable/compensable for 1 person with 20 units of well-being in the way that 20 one-dollar bills is exchangeable/compensable for 1 twenty-dollar bill. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

48. The Relevance of Humanity: Bentham (1979) claims: “The question is not, Can they reason?, …but, Can they suffer?” But that a being has a rational nature whereby they can set and pursue their own ends is morally relevant over and above their sentience. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

49. Persons as an Ultimate Source of Moral Duty: In some instances, the ultimate rationale for an act’s being right or wrong lies with the value of persons and how its performance constitutes an adequate or inadequate response to their value. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

50. Earnest Consequentializing and the Intuitive Argument for Consequentializing: (1) On the one hand, there is something intuitively compelling about utilitarianism: its act-consequentialism. (2) On the other hand, standard versions of non-consequentialism avoid most, if not all, of the counterintuitive deontic verdicts associated with utilitarianism. Still, they do so at the cost of abandoning act-consequentialism. (3) Thus, by consequentializing standard versions of non-consequentialism, we can produce a consequentialist counterpart theory that retains what’s most compelling about utilitarianism while avoiding most, if not all, of the counterintuitive deontic verdicts associated with it. (4) And, in doing so, nothing nearly as compelling is lost. Therefore, (5) by consequentializing standard versions of non-consequentialism, we can produce a theory that’s more intuitively attractive than both utilitarianism and standard versions of non-consequentialism. See "Consequentializing."

51. The Coherentist Procedure for Consequentializing: On this procedure, we don’t just adopt whatever ranking of outcomes is necessary to ensure that the resulting consequentialist counterpart theory will be perfectly co-extensive with the target non-consequentialist theory. Instead, we hold constant the idea that one act is morally better than another if and only if its outcome outranks that of the other while revising, in light of each other and in light of our various background beliefs, both our pre-theoretical judgments about whether one outcome outranks another and our pre-theoretical judgments about whether the act that produces the one is morally better than the act that produces the other. And we do this until we reach wide reflective equilibrium—a state in which we have arrived at an acceptable coherence among our entire set of beliefs (see Daniels 2020). And it may be that, to reach wide reflective equilibrium, we must reject some of the target non-consequentialist theory’s deontic verdicts rather than adopt the ranking of outcomes needed to consequentialize them. See "Consequentializing."

52. Commonsense Morality: It is not the case that agents are in every situation morally required to maximize the impersonal good. Indeed, there are two general types of situations in which an agent is not morally required to maximize the impersonal good. First, there are those situations in which the agent is prohibited from doing so because doing so would, say, involve treating someone as a mere means – such prohibitions are known as agent-centered restrictions. Second, there are those situations in which the agent is permitted to maximize the impersonal good but also has the option of doing something else instead – such prerogatives are known as agent-centered options. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

53. End/Desire Objectivism: For any subject S and any act available to her φ, S has a reason to φ if and only if her φ-ing would serve (or likely serve) to further either some end/desire that she permissibly has or some end/desire that she’s required to have (that is, one that’s not rationally contingent). And if S has a reason (that is, an unqualified reason) to φ, it’s ultimately due to the fact that her φ-ing would serve (or likely serve) to further some end/desire that she’s rationally required to have. Thus, some ends are objectively worthy of pursuit/realization such that we're required to adopt them and then pursue them as is feasible given our resources, opportunities, and other permissible ends. See chapter 3 of Morality and Practical Reasons. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

54. Obligatory Ends: Agents are required to adopt certain ends, such as the following: (1) RESPECT FOR PERSONS. (2) CONCERN FOR THE WELL-BEING OF OTHER SENTIENT BEINGS. (3) APPRECIATION OF THE IMPERSONAL GOOD. And (4) ACUTE AVERSION TO THE RISK OF DISASTER. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

55. Indeterminism about End-Pursuit and End-Achievement: We are permitted (and, sometimes, even required) to adopt indeterminate ends, such that what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them is often indeterminate in various ways. Thus, there can be many distinct sets of acts performed over time that will all count as pursuing that end over that time period. Indeed, there are at least three ways for such indeterminacy to arise: (1) the end itself could be indeterminate (e.g., my end is to build a tall building, but it's indeterminate what counts as a tall building), (2) the time by which the end is to be achieved is left indeterminate (e.g., my end is to finish the degree, but it's left indeterminate by when), or (3) the degree to which the end should be achieved is left indeterminate (e.g., my end is to get in better shape, but it's left indeterminate how much better). Such indeterminate ends are typically fluid (such that what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them changes as we (a) further specify them, (b) get a better sense of what’s involved in pursuing and/or achieving them, and (c) re-evaluate our commitments to pursuing and/or achieving them), wide-ranging (such that there are a wide-range of courses of actions that count as pursuing them and a wide-range of end states that count as achieving them), and are boundary-indeterminate (such that the boundaries of these ranges in what counts as pursuing and/or achieving them are fuzzy). See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

56. Conceptual Connection between Immorality and Blameworthiness: As a matter of conceptual necessity: for any subject S and any option of theirs φ, if S is morally required to φ, then S would be blameworthy for responsibly (that is, freely, attributively, and knowledgeably) refraining from φ-ing. See chapter 2 of Commonsense Consequentialism and chapter 5 of Morality and Practical Reasons.

57. Conceptual Connection between Blameworthiness and a Lack of Sufficient Reason: As a matter of conceptual necessity: for any subject S and any option of theirs φ, if S would be blameworthy for responsibly (that is, freely, attributively, and knowledgeably) refraining from φ-ing, then S is not normatively/rationally permitted to refrain from φ-ing—that is, S does not have sufficient reason, all things considered, to refrain from φ-ing. See chapter 2 of Commonsense Consequentialism and chapter 5 of Morality and Practical Reasons.

58. Ought-Most-Reason View: For any subject S and any option of hers φ, S ought to φ if and only if S has most reason to φ—that is, if and only if S has more reason to φ than to perform any alternative option. See chapter 6 of Opting for the Best.

59. ‘Ought’-Implies-‘Option’ View: For any S and any φ, if S ought to φ, then S has the option to φ. (As I see it, this is tautological, because I'm using the word ‘option’ as a term of art with a stipulative definition. By stipulation, an option is just whatever is eligible for deontic status such that, necessarily, an event has a deontic status only if it’s an option for some subject. Or, to put things a bit more carefully, an option for a subject, S, just is any member of the set such that, for any possible event e, S’s e-ing can have a deontic status only if it is a member of this set.) See chapter 1 of Opting for the Best.

60. The Response Constraint: For any option φ, any subject S, and any proposition p, the fact that p constitutes a reason for S to φ only if both (a) S has the capacity to know or otherwise adequately cognize this fact and (b) her adequately cognizing this fact could, via the exercise of her rational capacities, directly cause her to φ—that is, without causing her to form the intention to do something that will, in turn, cause her to φ. See chapter 1 of Opting for the Best.

61. The Denial of Normative Pluralism: Not only is there what we ought to do in various qualified senses (e.g., what we legally, morally, or prudentially ought to do), but there is also what we just plain ought to do, all things considered. See chapter 2 of Morality and Practical Reasons.

62. The Limits of Moral Obligation: As moral rationalism implies, morality cannot require us to do something that we lack decisive reason, all things considered, to do. But, also, morality cannot require us to do something that we could do only by responding inappropriately to our reasons -- e.g., it cannot require us to believe what our evidence suggests is false even if our having this belief would be morally preferable. See chapter 5 of Opting for the Best, chapter 2 of Commonsense Consequentialism, and chapter 5 of Morality and Practical Reasons.

63. Normative Teleology: For any subject S and any option that they have as of time t, the extent to which ϕ is good (or bad) ultimately and solely depends on the extent to which they ought, as of t, to prefer (or disprefer) its prospect to those of its alternatives given what ultimately matters (or, as I now think of it, given what ends both she permissibly has and is required to have). Thus, on teleology, the evaluative ranking of outcomes/prospects is prior to the rightness of options. See chapters 7–8 of Opting for the Best.

64. Restriction-Accepting Theories Should Be Teleological: This is because teleology is much better equipped to deal with risk, thresholds, uncertainty, and indeterminacy. See chapters 7–8 of Opting for the Best and "Consequentializing Constraints: A Kantsequentialist Approach" at https://philpapers.org/archive/PORCCA-4.pdf. 

65. Consequentialism: A theory is consequentialist if and only if it is sufficiently similar to classical utilitarianism in the relevant respects. See chapter 1 of The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism.

66. Deontic Equivalence Thesis: For any remotely plausible nonconsequentialist theory, there is a substantive version of consequentialism that is deontically equivalent to it, yielding the exact same set of moral verdicts in every possible world. Thus, every remotely plausible nonconsequentialist theory can be consequentialized. See chapters 1–3 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

67. The Compelling Idea: Classical utilitarianism's compelling idea is what explains (1) why utilitarianism has persevered despite its implications being so wildly at odds with our most firmly held moral convictions; (2) why it tends ‘to haunt even those of us who will not believe in it’ (Foot, 1985, p. 196), and (3) why ‘the move to rule utilitarianism seems to be an unsatisfactory answer to the problem of reconciling utilitarianism with common moral opinion’ (Foot, 1985, p. 198).” And I believe that classical utilitarianism's compelling idea is just act-consequentialism -- the idea that the ultimate ought-making feature of an act is that its prospect/outcome evaluatively outranks that of every available alternative. Furthermore, I believe that we're compelled to accept this idea given two other compelling ideas: (a) the idea that an act’s deontic status is determined by the agent’s reasons for and against performing it, such that, if a subject, S, is morally required to φ, then S has most reason to φ (i.e., moral rationalism) and (b) the idea that agent’s reasons for and against φ-ing are determined by her reasons for and against preferring its outcome to those of the available alternatives, such that, if S has most reason to φ, then, of all the outcomes that S could bring about, S has most reason to desire that φ’s outcome obtains (i.e., the teleological conception of practical reasons). See chapters 1–2 of Commonsense Consequentialism. Alternatively, one might see the maximizing conception of choiceworthy action as act consequentialism's compelling idea. Note, however, that, in earlier works, I had misidentified the compelling idea first as the “idea that it is always permissible to bring about the best available state of affairs” (Portmore 2005, p. 95) and then subsequently as the idea that it is always permissible to act so as to bring about the outcome that one has reason to prefer above all other available alternatives (Portmore 2007, p. 50). [Classical utilitarianism is the conjunction of the following four claims: (1) Act Consequentialism: For any subject S and any of S’s options φ, what ultimately determines the moral permissibility of S’s φ-ing is how its prospect ranks relative to those of the available alternatives on the relevant evaluative ranking of S’s options, such that S’s φ-ing is morally permissible if and only if its prospect ranks sufficiently high up on that ranking. (Strictly speaking, this is comparative act consequentialism.) (2) Maximization: For any subject S and any of S’s options φ, the prospect of S’s φ-ing ranks sufficiently high up on the relevant evaluative ranking of S’s options if and only if there is no alternative option ψ such that ψ’s prospect ranks higher than φ’s. (3) Welfarism: A prospect P1 ranks higher than a prospect P2 on the relevant evaluative ranking of S’s options if and only if P1’s total sum of expected aggregate welfare is greater than that of P2’s. (4) Quantitative Hedonism: P1’s total sum of expected aggregate welfare is greater than that of P2’s if and only if P1’s total sum of expected aggregate hedonic utility is greater than that of P2’s. (The aggregate hedonic utility of a state affairs equals the total sum of hedons it contains minus the total sum of dolors it contains, where a hedon is a unit for measuring the intensity and duration of an episode of pleasure and a dolor is a unit for measuring the intensity and duration of an episode of pain. The greater the intensity or duration of an episode of pleasure (or pain), the greater the number of hedons (or dolors) that the episode contains. And these units are such that, for any number n, n hedons minus n dolors equals exactly zero aggregate hedonic utility.)]

68. Dual-Ranking Act Consequentialism: For any subject S and any act (or, at least, any maximal act) available to her φ, S is morally permitted to φ if and only if there is no available alternative act ψ such that S has both more moral reason and more reason, all things considered, to desire the prospect of her ψ-ing than to desire the prospect of her φ-ing. And if S is morally permitted to φ, then it’s in virtue of the fact that there is no available alternative (maximal) act ψ such that S has both more moral reason and more reason, all things considered, to desire the prospect of her ψ-ing than to desire the prospect of her φ-ing. (For any subject S with the option of φ-ing in circumstances C, a moral reason for S to φ in C is any fact that will, absent its morally favouring force being defeated, make it the case that she morally ought to φ in C.) See chapter 5 of Commonsense Consequentialism. [This can be seen as version of satisficing act consequentialism according to which the prospect of S's φ-ing ranks sufficiently high up on the relevant evaluative ranking of S's options if and only if there is no available alternative act ψ such that S has both more moral reason and more reason, all things considered, to desire the prospect of her ψ-ing than to desire the prospect of her φ-ing.]

69. Deontic Inheritance: For any subject S with the option of φ-ing, if S is permitted (or required or ought) to φ, and their φ-ing entails their ψ-ing, then they are permitted (or required or ought) to ψ. See chapters 4–5 of Opting for the Best.

70. Reasons inheritance: For any subject S and any two of her options φ and ψ, if S has a T (or most T) reason to φ and S’s φ-ing entails S’s ψ-ing, then S has a T (or most T) reason to ψ. See chapters 4–6 of Opting for the Best.

71. Evaluative Non-Inheritance: It is not the case that: for any subject S and any two of her options φ and ψ, if φ is S’s best option and S’s φ-ing entails S’s ψ-ing, then ψ is also S’s best option. See chapters 4–5 of Opting for the Best.

72. Supererogation Non-Inheritance: It is not the case that: for any subject S and any two of her options φ and ψ, if S’s φ-ing is supererogatory and S’s φ-ing entails S’s ψ-ing, then S's ψ-ing is supererogatory. See chapters 4–5 of Opting for the Best.

73. Maximalism about Statuses: (ought) For any maximal option M, a subject ought to M if and only if M is her best maximal option. And, for any non-maximal option N, she ought to N if and only if there is a maximal option that she is ought to perform whose performance entails N-ing. (permi) For any maximal option M, a subject is permitted to M if and only if M is one of her sufficiently good maximal options. And, for any non-maximal option N, she is permitted to N if and only if there is a maximal option that she is permitted to perform whose performance entails N-ing. (super) For any maximal option Mx, a subject’s Mx-ing is supererogatory if and only if there is an alternative maximal option My such that: (a) she is both permitted to Mx and permitted to My, and (b) her Mx-ing is better than her My-ing. And, for any non-maximal option Nx, her Nx-ing is supererogatory if and only if both: (a) in Nx-ing, she does not merely minimally or merely partially satisfy some necessary condition for performing a permissible maximal option and (b) there is an alternative non-maximal option Ny such that: (i) she is both permitted to Nx and permitted to Ny, and (ii) her Nx-ing is better than her Ny-ing. (The relevant deontic statuses are the objective ones. Also, I leave implicit the relevant grounding clauses. For instance, I leave implicit that, if a subject ought to M, this is in virtue of the fact that M is her best maximal option.) See chapters 4–6 of Opting for the Best. Note that, on this view, morally supererogatory acts are both morally and rationally optional. 

74. Maximalism about Reasons – (a-reason) For any subject S and any maximal option of hers M, S has a reason (or a T reason—where ‘T’ stands for some adjective, such as ‘moral’ or ‘prudential’, that refers to some type of normative domain) to M if and only if there is something good (or something T good) about S’s M-ing. And, for any subject S and any non-maximal option of hers N, S has a reason (or a T reason) to N if and only if there is a maximal option Mx such that S has a reason (or a T reason) to Mx and S’s Mx-ing entails S’s N-ing. (more-reason) For any subject S and any two of her maximal options Mx and My, S has more reason (or more T reason) to Mx than to My if and only if Mx is better (or T better) than My. And, for any subject S and any two of her non-maximal options Nx and Ny, S has more reason (or more T reason) to Nx than to Ny if and only if the best maximal option that entails her Nx-ing is better (or T better) than the best maximal option that entails her Ny-ing. (most-reason) For any subject S and any maximal option of hers M, S has most reason (or most T reason) to M if and only if M is S’s best (or T best) maximal option. And, for any subject S and any non-maximal option of hers N, S has most reason (or most T reason) to N if and only if there is a maximal option Mx such that S has most reason (or most T reason) to Mx and S’s Mx-ing entails S’s N-ing. See chapters 6 of Opting for the Best.

75. Rationalism about Options: For any φ, a subject has, as of time t, the option of φ-ing at some later time tʹ if and only if they have, as of t, rational control over whether they’ll φ at tʹ. [A Tentative Proposal: A subject has, as of time t, rational control over whether they’ll φ at some later time tʹ if and only if they have, as of t, the relevant rational capacities and whether they’ll φ at tʹ just depends (and in the right way) on whether and how they exercise these capacities at t—holding fixed everything that doesn’t depend on whether or how they exercise them at t. And they have, as of t, the relevant rational capacities with respect to whether they’ll φ at tʹ if and only if they are at t inherently so structured that they would, under a suitably wide range of circumstances, adequately cognize the facts that count for and against their φ-ing at tʹ and as a result come to φ at tʹ or not, depending on whether these facts give them decisive reason to φ at tʹ.] See chapters 2–3 of Opting for the Best.

76. Synchronic View about Options: A subject S has at time t the option of φ-ing at some later time tʹ if and only if whether she will φ at tʹ depends (in the right way) merely on how she exerts her control at t (holding fixed everything that doesn’t depend on how she exerts her control at t). See chapters 2–3 of Opting for the Best.

77. Complete Control View about Options: A subject S has at time t the option of φ-ing at some later time tʹ if and only if, holding everything else fixed, whether she ϕs at tʹ  just depends on how she exercises her control at t such that the objective probability that she’ll ϕ at tʹ will be 1 if she exercises her control in certain ways at t and will be 0 otherwise. See chapters 2–3 of Opting for the Best.

78. The Denial of Subjectivism: It is not the case that: for any subject S and any act available to her φ, S has a reason (that is, an unqualified reason) to φ if and only if her φ-ing would serve to satisfy some rationally contingent pro-attitude of hers. Nor is it the case that: if S has a reason (that is, an unqualified reason) to φ, it’s ultimately due to the fact that her φ-ing would serve to satisfy some rationally contingent pro-attitude of hers.

79. The Denial of Moral Reasons Being Morally Overriding: It is not the case that: for any subject S and any two acts available to her φ and ψ, if S has more moral reason to φ than to ψ, then S is not morally permitted to perform ψ. That is, one is not always morally required to do what one has most moral reason to do. (For any subject S with the option of φ-ing in circumstances C, a moral reason for S to φ in C is any fact that will, absent its morally favoring force being defeated, make it the case that she morally ought to φ in C. Likewise, a moral reason against S’s φ-ing in C is any fact that will, absent its morally disfavoring force being defeated, make it the case that she morally ought not to φ in C.) See chapter 3 of Morality and Practical Reasons.

80. The Denial of Moral Reasons Being Rationally Overriding: It is not the case that: for any subject S and any two acts available to her φ and ψ, if S has more moral reason to φ than to ψ, then S is not normatively permitted to perform ψ. That is, one is not always rationally/normatively required to do what one has most moral reason to do. See chapter 4 of Morality and Practical Reasons and chapter 5 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

81. More-Justifying-Strength Thesis: Every non-moral reason is such that its moral justifying strength (which is greater than zero) exceeds its moral requiring strength (which is zero). Thus, non-moral reasons can, and sometimes do, prevent moral reasons, even those with considerable moral requiring strength, from generating moral requirements, and they do so without generating a moral requirement to do what they (these non-moral reasons) favour our doing instead. See chapter 4 of Morality and Practical Reasons and chapter 5 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

82. The Denial of Utilitarianism: It is not the case that: an act is morally permissible if and only if it maximizes aggregate utility. See chapter 1 of Commonsense Consequentialism.

83. Not-for-Naught View: The redemption of one’s self-sacrifices in itself contributes to one’s welfare—the closer that one’s self-sacrifices come to being fully redeemed, the greater the contribution their redemption makes to one’s welfare. See “Welfare, Achievement, and Self-Sacrifice” at http://www.jesp.org/index.php/jesp/article/view/22.

84. Principle of Rationalist Moral Harmony: A moral theory is correct if and only if the agents who satisfy it, whoever and however numerous they may be, are guaranteed to produce the morally best world that they could together produce by each of them, at present, responding appropriately to their reasons. On this view, agents must be disposed to do their parts with respect to any morally good collective enterprise in which there is a sufficient number of others doing their parts to ensure its success (and this is so even if their own individual contribution would make no difference to its success or the quality of its outcome), but agents needn't be disposed to do their parts with respect to a possible collective enterprise in which there isn't a sufficient number of others doing their parts to ensure its success and their own individual contribution would make no difference to its success or the quality of its outcome. See chapter 5 of Opting for the Best.

85. Direct Accountability for Our Reasons-Responsive Attitudes (e.g., our beliefs, desires, and intentions): We are directly accountable for (and only for) our reasons-responsive attitudes. (For a subject to be accountable -- that is, responsible in the accountability sense -- for having φ-ed is for her to be praiseworthy or blameworthy for having φ-ed, thereby making her the appropriate target of either retributive attitudes -- such as guilt and indignation -- or meritorious attitudes -- such as [deontic] pride and admiration -- in virtue of her having φ-ed. When a subject is responsible for having φ-ed, but not in virtue of being responsible for anything else, she is directly responsible for having φ-ed.) See chapters 2–3 of Opting for the Best.

86. The Concerns View: A right act has moral worth if and only if it issues from an appropriate set of concerns (or ends) and the knowledge (or, at least, the rational belief) that this is what would best further those concerns, where this set includes all and only pertinent concerns, each of which must be both qualitatively and quantitively appropriate, which in turn is determined by what the agent’s ultimate moral concerns should be. See "Moral Worth and Our Ultimate Moral Concerns" at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORMWA-2. 

87. The Incoherence Objection: A moral theory should not be incoherent -- that is, its criterion of rightness should never permit an agent to act in a way that she knows won’t optimally advance the ultimate moral concerns that it prescribes for her. See "Moral Worth and Our Ultimate Moral Concerns" at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORMWA-2.   

88. A Comprehensive Account of Blame: For any action φ, any subject S, and any potential target T (where T may or may not be identical to S), S blames T for having seemingly φ-ed if and only if both of the following conditions are met: (Condition 1) S has some set of mental states that represents T (a) as having φ-ed, (b) as having violated a legitimate demand in φ-ing, and (c) as not having suffered all the guilt, regret, and remorse that she deserves to suffer in the recognition that she has violated this legitimate demand, and (Condition 2) S feels, as a result of these representations, disapproval of, or disappointment in, T for having seemingly φ-ed. See “A Comprehensive Account of Blame” at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORACA. 

89. Deserved Guilt: A person who is blameworthy for having violated a legitimate demand deserves to suffer guilt, regret, and/or remorse in the belief that they've violated this legitimate demand. But note that this does not imply that this person deserves to suffer in other ways. Nor does it imply that it would be better if this person suffers in this way than if this person suffers not at all. Rather, it implies only that it would be better if this person, who is blameworthy, suffers in this way than if, other things being equal, some other person who is not blameworthy suffers in this way. 

90. Practical Obligations Are Intention-Guiding: For all actions x and all subjects S, if S is obligated to do x, then she is obligated to intend to do something that entails her doing x. (And I hold that someone can intend to do something that entails her doing x without her having this conscious before her mind just as someone can believe that Washington was the first president of the United States without her having this conscious before her mind.) See chapter 1 of Opting for the Best.

91. The Consistency Requirement on Beliefs and Intentions: Assuming both that when someone intends to ϕ the propositional content of her intention is the proposition that she ϕs and that when someone believes that p the propositional content of her belief is the proposition that p, the requirement is as follows: A subjects is rationally/normatively required to be such that the set consisting of the propositional contents of all her beliefs and all her intentions is logically consistent ( J. Ross 2009, p. 244). See chapter 1 of Opting for the Best.

92. Joint Satisfiability: For any ɸ, any ψ, and any subject S, If S is both obligated to ϕ and obligated to ψ, then she has the option of both ϕ-ing and ψ-ing. See chapter 1 of Opting for the Best.

93. The Fittingness of Blame Is a Matter of the Correctness of Its Representations: It is fitting to blame X for φ-ing (that is, X is blameworthy for φ-ing) if and only if blaming X for φ-ing represents p as being the case and p is the case. See “A Comprehensive Account of Blame” at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORACA.

94. Desert: Someone deserves something (say, X) if and only if, as a matter of justice and in virtue of her prior activities or possessed characteristics, she merits X in the sense that entails that the world in which she gets X and merits X in this sense is, other things being equal, non-instrumentally better than the world in which she gets X but doesn’t merit X in this sense. See “A Comprehensive Account of Blame” at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORACA.

95. A Mental State's Representational Content: To determine how a mental state of a certain kind represents its object we must first do some empirical work to discover such things as what typically elicits mental states of this kind, what normally attenuates them, what their phenomenology is like, what interpretation of their representational content rings true to those who possess them, and what sorts of act tendencies and patterns of attention are generally associated with them. Then, in light of this empirical data, we are to give an interpretation into natural language of how someone who possesses this kind of state represents its intentional object. This articulation of the representation will be propositional in its content such that a state of this kind will count as accurate in its representations if and only if the associated proposition is true. See “A Comprehensive Account of Blame” at https://philpapers.org/rec/PORACA.

96. Intuitionism: For any subject S and any proposition P, if S has the intuition that P (that is, if it intellectually seems to S that P), then, in the absence of defeaters, S has at least some justification for believing that P. In at least some instances, this justification will be sufficient for knowledge. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

97. Phenomenal Conservatism: For any subject S and any proposition p, if it seems to S that p and they believe that p as a result, then they are, absent defeaters, thereby justified (to some degree) in believing that p—at least, provided both that (a) they have a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of p and that (b) it’s reasonable for them to believe that whatever justification this seeming state might provide for their belief that p is completely independent of any other justification that they have for believing that p. (1) The degree of non-inferential justification this seeming provides for S (absent defeaters) does not depend on whether their seemings are reliable. Rather, it depends solely on how strongly it seems to them that p. (2) If the seeming is sufficiently strong, it will, absent defeaters, be sufficient justification for S’s knowing that p. (3) Defeaters are absent if S has neither any evidence that not-p nor any evidence that their seemings are, in these sorts of instances, unreliable. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

98. Normative Realism: Normative judgments purport to report facts about certain objective features of the world and some of these judgments (i.e., those that accurately report these features) are true, and not merely conceptually so. 

99. Normative Nonnaturalism: Normative facts and properties are non-natural facts and properties -- that is, normative facts and properties are neither identical nor reducible to natural facts and properties (that is, facts and properties that are either observable or inferrable from the observable via methods acceptable to the empirical sciences). 

100. Evaluator Relativism: Agents should evaluate worlds/outcomes/prospects from their own personal point of view, not from the point of view of the universe.

101. The Self-Other Asymmetry: Although the fact that an agent’s φ-ing would promote someone else’s hedonic utility is always a moral reason for them to φ that has a strength that’s strictly proportional to the amount of hedonic utility that would thereby be produced for that someone, the fact that their φ-ing would promote their own hedonic utility is not always a moral reason for them to φ that has a strength that’s strictly proportional to the amount of hedonic utility that would thereby be produced for themself. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

102. The Duty to Rescue: Imagine that you encounter the following situation as described by Peter Singer (2019, 3): “On your way to work, you pass a small pond. Children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool, though, and it’s early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep her head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull her out, she seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for her, and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work.” In this situation, you are morally required to wade in and rescue the child. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

103. The Bayesian Data-Fitting Principle: The more inaccurate data we expect there to be in some collection of data, the less willing we should be to accept an explanation that accommodates all that data at the cost of being less like we had reason to expect the correct explanation to be like prior to our collecting this data. See Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends.

104. Dual Evaluationism: What agents ought to do is a function of both what’s morally best and what’s best, all things considered.

See also https://philpeople.org/profiles/douglas-w-portmore/views.