Morality by Degrees

In Morality by Degrees Alastair Norcross articulates and defends a radical new approach to ethical theory. Consequentialist theories of the right connect the rightness and wrongness (and related notions) of actions with the intrinsic goodness and badness of states of affairs consequential on<br>those actions. The most popular such theory is maximization which is said to demand of agents that they maximize the good that they do the best they can at all times. Thus it may seem that consequentialist theories are overly demanding and relatedly that they cannot accommodate the phenomenon<br>of going above and beyond the demands of duty. However a clear understanding of consequentialism leaves no room for a theory of the right at least not at the fundamental level of the theory. A consequentialist theory such as utilitarianism is a theory of how to rank outcomes and derivatively<br>actions which provides reasons for choosing some actions over others. It is thus a purely scalar theory with no demands that certain actions be performed and no fundamental classification of actions as right or wrong. However such notions may have pragmatic benefits at the level of application <br>since many people find it easier to guide their conduct by simple commands rather than to think in terms of reasons of varying strength to do one thing rather than another. A contextualist semantics for various terms such as right permissible harm when combined with the scalar approach to<br>consequentialism allows for the expression of truth-apt propositions with sentences containing such terms.