In contrast to the vast literature on retributive theories of punishment, discussions of private revenge are rare in moral philosophy. This article reviews some examples, from both classical and recent writers, finding uncertainty and equivocation over the ethical significance of acts of revenge, and in particular over their possible resemblances, in motive, purpose or justification, to acts of lawful punishment. A key problem for the coherence of our ethical conception of revenge is the consideration that certain acts of revenge may be just (at least in the minimal sense that the victim of revenge has no grounds for complaint against the revenger) and yet be generally agreed to be morally wrong. The challenge of explaining adequately why private revenge is morally wrong poses particular difficulty for purely retributive theories of punishment, since without invoking consequentialist reasons it does not seem possible adequately to motivate an objection to just and proportionate acts of revenge.

Mill's aim in chapter 3 of Utilitarianism is to show that his revisionary moral theory can preserve the kind of authority typically and traditionally associated with moral demands. One of his main targets is the idea that if people come to believe that morality is rooted in human sentiment then they will feel less bound by moral obligation. Chapter 3 emphasizes two claims: (1) The main motivation to ethical action comes from feelings and not from beliefs and (2) Ethical feelings are highly malleable. I provide a critical examination of Mill's use of these claims to support his argument that Utilitarianism can preserve morality's authority. I show how the two claims, intended to form a significant rebuttal to the worry about Utilitarianism, can in fact be combined to raise powerful skeptical concerns. I explain how Mill evades the skepticism, and why contemporary philosophers who lack Millian optimism about human nature find it harder to avoid the skeptical outcome.

Consider Lives for Headaches: there is some number of headaches such that the relief of those headaches is sufficient to outweigh the good life of an innocent person. Lives for Headaches is unintuitive, but difficult to deny. The argument leading to Lives for Headaches is valid, and appears to be constructed out of firmly entrenched premises. In this article, I advocate one way to reject Lives for Headaches; I defend a form of lexical superiority between values. Based on an inquiry into the notion of human well-being, I argue that no amount of headaches is sufficient to outweigh the disvalue of the loss of a good life. Though this view has been thought subject to devastating objections, these objections are not dispositive against the form of value superiority I advance here.

In ‘Is Virtue Its Own Reward?’ Wayne Sumner argues that (1) as a matter of necessity, virtue is intrinsically prudentially rewarding, and (2) if all else is equal, the virtuous will fare better than the non-virtuous. In this article, I reproduce and criticize those arguments. I offer several objections to the argument for the first thesis; each objection makes the same basic point: contrary to what Sumner assumes, certain contingent facts over and above a person's being virtuous have to obtain if virtue is to issue in any prudential reward. I object to Sumner's second thesis by arguing that moral neutrality can be at least as welfare-enhancing as moral virtuosity. Finally, I argue that even if virtue were intrinsically rewarding in the way Sumner envisions, it would still be impossible to determine a priori whether adopting a virtuous lifestyle would be prudentially rational.

A recurring objection confronting utilitarianism is that its dictates require information that lies beyond the bounds of human epistemic wherewithal. Utilitarians require reliable knowledge of the social consequences of various policies, and of people's preferences and utilities. Agreeing partly with the sceptics, I concur that the general rules of thumb offered by social science do not provide sufficient justification for the utilitarian legislator to rationally recommend a particular political regime, such as liberalism. Actual data about human preference-structures and utilities is required to bridge this evidentiary gap. I offer two arguments to support the availability of such information. First, I contend that ordinary human beings have a clear method of epistemic access to reliable information about commensurable preference-structures. Second, in an attempt to shift the onus of philosophic argument, I show that the utilitarian legislator's requirements do not differ in kind from those implicitly called upon by the sceptical deontic liberal.

In ‘The Scalar Approach to Utilitarianism’ Alastair Norcross argues that scalar consequentialism is the most plausible form of consequentialism, but his arguments are flawed: he is simply mistaken when he suggests that there is a problem with deriving absolutes like right and wrong from gradable properties such as goodness; he cannot justify his claim that the choice of a threshold will always be arbitrary; and his ‘no significant difference’ argument only shows that the consequentialist doesn't care about permissibility. Furthermore, I argue that, although Norcross was right to claim that a scalar theory can be action-guiding (to an extent), he was mistaken to think that ‘Abolishing the notion of “ought” will not seriously undermine the action-guiding nature of morality.’ If anything can be said in favour of scalar consequentialism, it is only that it is the most honest form of consequentialism, because it doesn't pretend to care about permissibility.