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The ‘Two Hats’ Problem in Consequentialist Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

D. Goldstick
D. Goldstick
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

A largely deontological conscience will probably optimize consequences. But Bernard Williams objects to the ‘imposed and illusory dissociation’, if one therefore embraces indirect consequentialism, of ‘the theorist in oneself from the self whose dispositions are being theorized’. Admittedly the strategy is painful, and a counsel of imperfection at best. But it need not be psychologically impossible, inconsistent, or even self-deceptive, given ethical cognitivism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 108 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn., London, 1907, p. 490Google Scholar .

2 Ibid., p. 489.

3 Ibid., n.

4 Sen, Amartya and Williams, Bernard, in their editors' introduction to Utilitarianism and Beyond, Cambridge, 1982, p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, 1985, p. 110Google Scholar .

6 Williams, Bernard, Moral Luck, Cambridge, 1981, p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 Williams, Bernard, Problems of the Self, Cambridge, 1973, p. 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 Regarding the sort of ‘agent-regret’ felt, e.g., by a driver who has innocently run over a child, , Williams comments, ‘it would be a kind of insanity never to experience sentiments of this kind towards anyone’ (Moral Luck, p. 29)Google Scholar .