Week 2: Consequentialism and Demandingness

Essay question

Is consequentialism too demanding?

Key readings

• Ashford, Elizabeth, Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 97, no. 8 (August, 2000), pp. 421-439.
• Railton, Peter, Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring, 1984), pp. 134-171.
• Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Consequentialism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring, 2014, sect. 6.
• Williams, Bernard, A Critique of Utilitarianism, in J. C. C. Smart & Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 93-118.

Further reading

• Hooker, Brad, The Demandingness Objection, in Timothy Chappell (ed.), The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays, New York: Palgrave, 2009, pp. 148-62.
• Kagan, Shelly, The Limits of Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 1-6, 231-270.
• MacAskill, William, Consequentialism and Demandingness (notes), Feb 2015
• Norcross, Alastair, The Scalar Approach to Utilitarianism, in Henry West (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Mill’s Utilitarianism, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 217-232.
• Singer, Peter, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1972), pp. 229-243.
• Sobel, David, The Impotence of the Demandingness Objection, Philosophers' Imprint, vol. 7, no. 8 (September, 2007).
• Unger, Peter, Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, ch. 2.

Exam questions

• In what sense, if any, is consequentialism alienating?