Hallvard Lillehammer

Birkbeck, University of London · Department of Philosophy

The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) died tragically young, but had already established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Besides groundbreaking work in philosophy, particularly in logic, language, and metaphysics, he created modern decision theory and made substantial contributions to mathematics an...

The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter-century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established...

The Trolley Problem is one of the most intensively discussed and controversial puzzles in contemporary moral philosophy. Over the last half-century, it has also become something of a cultural phenomenon, having been the subject of scientific experiments, online polls, television programs, computer games, and several popular books. This volume offer...

This paper addresses the question of the ethical significance of the theory of evolution in W. R. Sorley’s The Ethics of Naturalism (1st Edition 1885; 2nd Edition 1904). Sorley’s treatment is compared with that of his more influential contemporary, Henry Sidgwick, as well as with other works of the same period. The relevance of Sorley’s treatment f...

According to one influential view, requirements to elicit consent for medical interventions and other interactions gain their rationale from the respect we owe to each other as autonomous, or self-governing, rational agents. Yet, the popular presumption that consent has a central role to play in legitimate intervention extends beyond the domain of...

The aims of this paper are fourfold. The first aim is to characterize two distinct forms of circumstantial moral luck and illustrate how they are implicitly recognized in pre‐theoretical moral thought. The second aim is to identify a significant difference between the ways in which these two kinds of circumstantial luck are morally relevant. The th...

In this paper, I do three things. First, I say what I mean by a ‘companions in guilt’ argument in meta-ethics. Second, I distinguish between two kinds of argument within this family, which I call ‘arguments by entailment’ and ‘arguments by analogy’. Third, I explore the prospects for companions in guilt arguments by analogy. During the course of th...

The so‐called argument from queerness is one of two arguments against the existence of objective values put forward by J. L. Mackie in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong , the other being his argument from relativity. By the term “objective value” Mackie primarily means moral goodness, rightness and wrongness, and duties and obligations, but he...

Philosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form. Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A, by showing that...

According to moral error theory, morality is something invented, constructed or made; but mistakenly presents itself to us as if it were an independent object of discovery. According to moral constructivism, morality is something invented, constructed or made. In this paper I argue that constructivism is both compatible with, and in certain cases e...

This chapter traces the development of a particular current of thought known by the label ‘pragmatism’ during the last part of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first, and latterly associated with the work of Simon Blackburn and Huw Price. Three questions are addressed. First, how did this current of thought actually develop?...

According to moral error theory, morality is something invented, constructed or made; but mistakenly presents itself to us as if it were an independent object of discovery. According to moral constructivism, morality is something invented, constructed or made. In this paper I argue that constructivism is both compatible with, and in certain cases e...

In this chapter I critically discuss the dismissal of the philosophical significance of facts about human evolution and historical development in the work of W. D Ross. I address Ross’s views about the philosophical significance of the emerging human sciences of his time in two of his main works, namely The Right and the Good and The Foundations of...

The so-called “argument from queerness” is one of two arguments against the existence of objective values put forward by J. L. Mackie in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, the other being the “argument from relativity.” By the term “objective value,” Mackie primarily means moral goodness, rightness and wrongness, and duties and obligations, but...

Philosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form. Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A, by showing that...

Indifference is sometimes said to be a virtue. Perhaps more frequently it is said to be a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper presents a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically significant forms of indifference in terms of how...

This paper traces the development of a particular current of thought known under the label ‘pragmatism’ during the last part of the Twentieth Century and at the beginning of the Twenty-first, and latterly associated with the work of Simon Blackburn and Huw Price. Three questions are addressed. First, how did this current of thought actually develop...

In recent years there has been a growing interest among mainstream Anglophone moral philosophers in the empirical study of human morality, including its evolution and historical development. This chapter compares these developments with an earlier point of contact between moral philosophy and the moral sciences in the early decades of the Twentieth...

Indifference is sometimes described as a virtue. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically acceptable forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either...

Indifference is often described as a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically problematic forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either more...

Book synopsis: Assisted reproduction challenges and reinforces traditional understandings of family, kinship and identity. Sperm, egg and embryo donation and surrogacy raise questions about relatedness for parents, children and others involved in creating and raising a child. How socially, morally or psychologically significant is a genetic link be...

According to some, taking moral testimony is a potentially decent way to exercise one's moral agency. According to others, it amounts to a failure to live up to minimal standards of moral worth. What's the issue? Is it conceptual or empirical? Is it epistemological or moral? Is there a ‘puzzle’ of moral testimony; or are there many, or none? I argu...

Bart Streumer argues that it is not possible for us to believe the error theory, where by ‘error theory’ he means the claim that our normative beliefs are committed to the existence of normative properties even though such properties do not exist. In this paper, we argue that it is indeed possible to believe the error theory. First, we suggest a cr...

This paper explores the prospects of different forms of moral error theory. It is argued that only a suitably local error theory would make good sense of the fact that it is possible to give and receive genuinely good moral advice.

Philosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form (Mackie 1977: 39). Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A...

The so-called “argument from queerness” is one of two arguments against the existence of objective values put forward by J. L. Mackie in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), the other being his “argument from relativity” (see Mackie, J. L.; Disagreement, Moral). By the term “objective value,” Mackie primarily means moral goodness, rightnes...

Book synopsis: Unmatched in scholarship and scope, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics is the definitive single-source reference work on Ethics, available both in print and online. Comprises over 700 entries, ranging from 1000 to 10,000 words in length, written by an international cast of subject experts Is arranged across 9 fully cross-refer...

Unmatched in scholarship and scope, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics is the definitive single-source reference work on Ethics, available both in print and online. Comprises over 700 entries, ranging from 1000 to 10,000 words in length, written by an international cast of subject experts Is arranged across 9 fully cross-referenced volumes i...

Book synopsis: Presents new research on autonomy with reference to mental disorder Offers a comprehensive and systematic discussion of central concepts in three major disciplines: philosophy, psychiatry, and law Guides the reader in topical debates of considerable complexity, and clarifies the underlying connections between these debates Promotes...

Intuitions are widely assumed to play an important evidential role in ethical inquiry. In this paper I critically discuss a recently influential claim that the epistemological credentials of ethical intuitions are undermined by their causal pedigree and functional role. I argue that this claim is exaggerated. In the course of doing so I argue that...

This cutting-edge volume of original essays features a diverse, international team of prominent scholars examining issues of morality and justice within a global perspective. The chapters are grouped according to an integrative design that progresses from normative principles to normative theories to normative applications. Applications chapters ad...

Book synopsis: The Continuum Companion to Ethics offers the definitive guide to a key area of contemporary philosophy. The book covers all the fundamental questions asked by meta-ethics and normative ethical theory. Fourteen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the f...

The physical dimensions of a book are sometimes a misleading guide to its philosophical importance.1 T. M. Scanlon’s Moral Dimensions is one such book. Although it is modest in size and refreshingly brief, it manages to include serious proposals for how to rethink each of three different issues at the heart of ethical thought, namely the nature of...

Darwin’s treatment of morality in The Descent of Man has generated a wide variety of responses among moral philosophers. Among these is the dismissal of evolution as irrelevant to ethics by Darwin’s contemporary Henry Sidgwick; the last, and arguably the greatest, of the Nineteenth Century British Utilitarians. This paper offers a re-examination of...

This paper is about the relationship between two widely accepted and apparently conflicting claims about how we should understand the notion of ‘reason giving’ invoked in theorising about reasons for action. According to the first claim, reasons are given by facts about the situation of agents. According to the second claim, reasons are given by en...

The paper explicates a set of criteria the joint satisfaction of which is taken to qualify moral judgements as cognitive. The paper examines evidence that some moral judgements meet these criteria, and relates the resulting conception of moral judgements to ongoing controversies about cognitivism in ethics.

This paper argues that there are reasonable grounds for scepticism about the idea of a uniquely integrated account of the ethics of human reproduction on either partialist or impartialist terms.

Does the ethical value of a work of art ever contribute to its aesthetic value? I argue that when conventionally interpreted as a request for a conceptual analysis the answer to this question is indeterminate. I then propose a different interpretation of the question on which it is understood as a substantial and normative question internal to the...

In a series of articles, Donald Davidson has argued that the objectivity of value is entailed by the objectivity of propositional attitude ascriptions. In this paper I explore the scope and limits of Davidson’s argument with particular reference to his claim that there would be convergence among the values of enlightened agents who fully understood...

This is a systematic study of 'companions in guilt' arguments in moral philosophy. Lillehammer distinguishes between two distinct forms of these, which he calls 'arguments by entailment' and 'arguments by analogy' respectively. For each strategy, Lillehammer examines three of its most prominent manifestations in contemporary ethical thought.

One influential form of subjectivism about ethics and value consists in denying the coherence or validity of a certain type of rationally inescapable norm of action. In the terms of a distinction historically associated with the work of Immanuel Kant, this form of subjectivism denies the coherence or validity of so-called categorical imperatives of...

In the preceding pages I have examined a number of the most prominent companions in guilt arguments in contemporary meta-ethics. Each argument has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, there are some issues where the arguments I have examined are jointly suggestive of more general conclusions about the scope and limits of this...

Critics of ethical objectivity often make much of the claim that ethical facts and properties play no part in our best empirical explanations of how the world works (c.f. Mackie 1977, 1–49; Harman 1977, 3–10). In this respect, ethics is said to differ from other branches of thought, such as physics, chemistry, biology, or even psychology. Partly on...

One of the most common grounds for scepticism about ethical objectivity is the apparently different ways in which ethical and scientific claims are responsive to evidence and criticism. The comparative obscurity of notions like ‘ethical proof, ‘ethical experiment’, ‘ethical observation’, or even ‘ethical knowledge’ is often put forward as grounds f...

Philosophers hunt in packs. The obvious advantage of this is that the spread of collective attention promotes in-depth illumination of different areas of inquiry. The obvious downside is a tendency to one-sidedness and partiality. Different packs fail to communicate at the cost of missing out on illuminating insight, whether of general philosophica...

Some arguments for the subjectivity of value are premised on the absence of any reference to values in the objective world as described by the natural sciences. According to these arguments, it is a necessary condition for the existence of objective values that values form part of what John Mackie called ‘the fabric of the world’ (Mackie 1977, 15)....

According to one version of objectivism about value, ethical and other evaluative claims have a fixed truth-value independently of who makes them or the society in which they happen to live (c.f. Davidson 2004, 42). Subjectivists about value deny this claim. According to subjectivism so understood, ethical and other evaluative claims have no fixed...

Much contemporary work on objectivity in ethics is formulated in explicitly ontological terms. Thus, one of the most widely discussed arguments for subjectivism in contemporary meta-ethics, namely John Mackie’s so-called argument from queerness, is meant to undermine the objectivity of ethical thought by showing that the idea of an objective ethica...

The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) died tragically young, but had already established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Besides groundbreaking work in philosophy, particularly in logic, language, and metaphysics, he created modern decision theory and made substantial contributions to mathematics an...

The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) died tragically young, but had already established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Besides groundbreaking work in philosophy, particularly in logic, language, and metaphysics, he created modern decision theory and made substantial contributions to mathematics an...

It is natural to think the evaluation of reproductive decisions is subject to the same ethical standards that apply to relations between existing persons. If so, prospective parents should be able to extrapolate from the latter to the former when thinking about whether to have children, how to have children, what sort of children to have, and so on...

ABSTRACT The paper explores the consequences of adopting a moral error theory targeted at the notion of reasonable convergence. I examine the prospects of two ways of combining acceptance of such a theory with continued acceptance of moral judgements in some form. On the first model, moral judgements are accepted as a pragmatically intelligible fic...

This paper formulates a conception of the philosopher-bioethicist as a genuine expert, with a legitimate role to play in practical bioethical debate, on the grounds of division of labour. On this conception, although bioethicists do not have special access to a distinct realm of philosophical fact from which others are excluded, the involvement of...

The paper distinguishes three strategies by means of which empirical discoveries about the nature of morality can be used to undermine moral judgements. On the first strategy, moral judgements are shown to be unjustified in virtue of being shown to rest on ignorance or false belief. On the second strategy, moral judgements are shown to be false by...

In his recent book , John Keown puts forward two slippery slope arguments against the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. One of these arguments claims that a defender of voluntary euthanasia is logically committed to the permissibility of non-voluntary euthanasia. This paper seeks to show that Keown’s argument either rests on a logical confusion...

This paper concerns a prima facie tension between the claims that (a) agents have normative reasons obtaining in virtue of the nature of the options that confront them, and (b) there is a non-trivial connection between the grounds of normative reasons and the upshots of sound practical reasoning. Joint commitment to these claims is shown to give ri...

Evaluation de la doctrine des raisons internes de l'action et de la croyance, a la lumiere de la notion de parcours deliberatif. Examinant le modele sub-humeen de l'action rationnelle, l'A. conclut a l'absence d'un lien motivationnel entre l'internalisme et le desir de l'agent moral.

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative...

The thesis deals with issues within the theory of content for moral judgements. A theory of content should specify what kinds of judgement moral judgements are and what is necessary in order to grasp and to make a moral judgement. In Chapter I I specify what kinds of judgements I will deal with. I call these Moral Evaluative Judgements. In Chapter...