I continue my argument that Millian qualitative superiorities are infinite superiorities: one pleasant feeling, or type of pleasant feeling, is qualitatively superior to another in Mill's sense if and only if even a bit of the superior is more pleasant (and thus more valuable) than any finite quantity of the inferior, however large. This gives rise to a hierarchy of higher and lower pleasures such that a reasonable hedonist always refuses to sacrifice a higher for a lower irrespective of the finite amounts of each. Some indication of why this absolute refusal may be reasonable is provided in the course of outlining the content of the Millian hierarchy. It emerges that Mill's hedonistic utilitarianism has an extraordinary structure because it gives absolute priority over competing considerations to a code of justice that distributes equal rights and correlative duties for all. His utilitarianism also recognizes that certain aesthetic and spiritual pleasures may be qualitatively superior even to the pleasant feeling of security associated with the moral sentiment of justice. Thus, for instance, a noble individual may reasonably choose to waive his own rights so as to perform beautiful supererogatory actions that provide great benefits for others at the sacrifice of the right-holder's own vital interests.

It seems we have some obligation to aid some others, but it's unclear why, to whom, and to what extent. Many consequentialists claim that we are obligated to help everyone to the marginal utility point but they do so without examining why we are obligated to aid others at all. I argue that we must investigate the basis of our duty to aid others in order to determine the nature and extent of our obligation. Although some consequentialists, notably, Kagan, Singer and Unger, present arguments intended to justify some of consequentialism's most counter-intuitive demands, they take the less counter-intuitive demands for granted and justify the steeper demands on the basis of their relevant similarity to the more palatable ones. The result of this strategy is that many of consequentialism's steeper demands free-ride on a superficial similarity with less taxing demands. This allows consequentialism to broaden our obligations beyond the reach of justification. I examine three possible explanations of our duty to aid others, namely, intuition, fairness and self-interest, and argue that none of them justify consequentialism's runaway demands.

In the Formula of Humanity, Kant embraces the principle that it is wrong for us to treat others merely as means. For contemporary Kantian ethicists, this Mere Means Principle plays the role of a moral constraint: it limits what we may do, even in the service of promoting the overall good. But substantive interpretations of the principle generate implausible results in relatively ordinary cases. On one interpretation, for example, you treat your opponent in a tennis tournament merely as a means and thus wrongly when you try, through defeating him, to win first place. The article aims to develop a reconstruction of the Mere Means Principle that has more plausible implications than do rival reconstructions. It sets out a sufficient condition for an agent's treating another merely as a means. This condition is intended to be Kantian, but not necessarily one that Kant endorses.

This article argues for a certain picture of the rational formation of conditional intentions, in particular deterrent intentions, that stands in sharp contrast to accounts on which rational agents are often not able to form such intentions because of what these enjoin should their conditions be realized. By considering the case of worthwhile but hard-to-form ‘non-apocalyptic’ deterrent intentions (the threat to leave a cheating partner, say), the article argues that rational agents may be able to form such intentions by first simulating psychological states in which they have successfully formed them and then bootstrapping themselves into actually forming them. The article also discusses certain limits imposed by this model. In particular, given the special nature of ‘apocalyptic’ deterrent intentions (e.g. the ones supposedly involved in nuclear deterrence), there is good reason to think that these must remain inaccessible to fully rational and moral agents.

The traditional accounts of pain's intrinsic badness assume a false view of what pains are. Insofar as they are normatively significant, pains are not just painful sensations. A pain is a composite of a painful sensation and a set of beliefs, desires, emotions and other mental states. A pain's intrinsic properties can include inter alia depression, anxiety, fear, desires, feelings of helplessness and the pain's meaning. This undermines the traditional accounts of pain's intrinsic badness. Pain is intrinsically bad in two distinct and historically unnoticed ways. First, most writers hold that pain's intrinsic badness lies either in its unpleasantness or in its being disliked. Given my wider conception of pain, I believe it is both. Pain's first intrinsic evil lies in a conjunction of all the traditional candidates for its source. Pain's second intrinsic evil lies in the way it necessarily undermines the self-control necessary for intrinsic goods like autonomy.

Suppose the following: two groups of people require our aid but we can help only one group; there are more people in the first group than in the second group; every person in both groups has an equal claim on our aid; and we have a duty to help and no other special obligations or duties. I argue that there exists at least one fairness function, which is a function that measures the goodness of degrees of fairness, that implies that we should follow a procedure of proportional chances to determine which group to aid.

Instances of the argument-schema ‘Wouldn't it be nice if p, therefore, p’ are usually fallacious, but for a moral p they are not clearly as bad as they are elsewhere. I offer a diagnosis of this phenomenon, arguing that in some conditions – specified in terms of a logical property of the relevant normative operator – such arguments are actually valid (for a moral p).

The so-called Wrong Kind of Reason (WKR) problem for Scanlon's ‘buck-passing’ account of value has been much discussed recently. In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provides a highly useful critique of extant proposed solutions to the WKR problem and suggests a novel solution of his own. In this note I offer a critique of Lang's solution and respond to some criticisms Lang directs at a Brentano-style approach suggested by Sven Danielsson and me.

Both left libertarians, who support the redistribution of income and wealth through taxation, and right libertarians, who oppose redistributive taxation, share an important view: that, looming catastrophes aside, the state must never redistribute any part of our body or our person without our consent. Cécile Fabre rejects that view. For her, just as the undeservedly poor have a just claim to money from their fellow citizens in order to lead a minimally flourishing life (here Fabre sides with left libertarians), the undeservedly ‘medically poor’ have a just claim to help from fellow citizens in order to lead such a life. Such obligatory help may in principle involve even the supply of body parts for transplantation. The state ought to exact such resources from the medically rich whenever doing so would secure the prospect of a minimally flourishing life to the medically poor without denying that prospect to anyone else. Fabre criticizes Ronald Dworkin's belief in ‘a prophylactic line that comes close to making the body inviolate, that is, making body parts not parts of social resources at all’. For her, ‘Duties to help . . . do not stop at material resources: they involve the body . . . in invasive ways’ (p. 119).

It is hard to do justice, in a short reply, to Eyal's excellent review. Accordingly, I will focus on what I take to be its central claim – namely that I fail to give proper consideration to the extent to which the forced extraction of (live) body parts undermines individuals' opportunities for self-respect. According to Eyal, ‘body exceptionalism’ (the view that body parts, unlike material resources, are not appropriate subject matter for duties of justice) can be defended on the following grounds: ‘People usually see trespass into a person and into objects they associate with a person – especially into a person's body – as utterly disrespectful towards that person and her autonomy’ (pp. 236–7). And later: ‘Whether or not organ confiscation is truly disrespectful . . . its widespread and intractable perception as a humiliating violation counts heavily against it, because it can thwart opportunities for self-respect’ (p. 238).