Philosophy 4090 Moral Puzzles (Winter 2024)

Course Instructor
Malcolm Murray

Moral Dilemmas

– Ruth Barcan Marcus, “Moral Dilemmas and Consistency,” The Journal of Philosophy 77/3 (1980): 121-136.

Terrance McConnell, “More on Moral Dilemmas,” The Journal of Philosophy, 83/6 (1986): 345–351.

Incest

– Jesse Prinz, “Emotionism,” Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 13-32, 47-49.

– Michael Huemer, “Revisionary Intuitionism,” Social Philosophy & Policy 25 (2008):

368-92. 

Blackmail

– Malcolm Murray, “Blackmail and Imprudence,” Morals and Consent (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2017), 285-304.

Trolley Problems

– Judith Jarvis Thomson “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem,The Monist 59/2 (1976): 204-217. 

  Alison McIntyre, “Doing Away with Double Effect,” Ethics, 111/2 (2001): 219–255.

  Frances Kamm, “The Doctrine of Triple Effect,” from Chapters 1 & 4 of Intricate Ethics (2007)

Future Persons

– Derek Parfit, “The Non-Identity Problem,” in Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984), 351-379 (ch 16). 

– Gregory Kavka, “The Paradox of Future Individuals,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11/2 (1982): 93-112.

Punishment

– Saul Smilansky, “Two Paradoxes about Justice and the Severity of Punishment” and “The Paradox of Non-Punishment,” 10 Moral Paradoxes (Oxford:  Blackwell, 2007), 33-41 and 51-58.

– Annette Dufner, “Should the Late Stage Demented be Punished for Past Crimes?Criminal Law and Philosophy 7/1 (2013): 137-150.

Moral Luck

– Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24-38.

– Andrew Latus, “Moral and Epistemic Luck,” Journal of Philosophical Research 25 (2000): 149-172.

 Ring of Gyges

– Richard Taylor, “Is Justice Good for its own Sake?Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 86-100.

– David Gauthier, “Three Against Justice: The Foole, The Knave, and the Lydian Shepherd,” in Moral Dealing: Contract, Ethics, and Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990), 129-149 (ch 6). 

Categoricty

– Philippa Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,Philosophical Review 81/3 (1972): 305-316.

– Richard Joyce, “Moral Fictionalism,” The Evolution of Morality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 206-231.

The Toxin Puzzle

– Gregory Kavka, “The Toxin Puzzle, Analysis, 43/1 (1983): 33-36

– David Gauthier, “Rethinking the Toxin Puzzle,” in Jules Coleman and Christopher Morris (eds) Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays For Gregory Kavka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 47-58.

The Is-Ought Problem

– John Searle “How to Derive Ought from Is,The Philosophical Review 73/1 (1964): 43-58.

Philippa Foot, “V: Moral Beliefs,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1): 83–104. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/59.1.83. ISSN 1467-9264.

Supererogation

– J. O. Urmson, “Saints and Heroes,” in A. I. Melden (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), 198-216.

– Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints,” The Journal of Philosophy 79/8 (1982): 419-439.