Table of Contents

1. Why I Am Not a Utilitarian
1.1 Utilitarianism: The good, the bad, and the ugly
1.2 The plan for the rest of the book
1.3 My aims
1.4 Objective oughts and objective reasons
1.5 Conventions that I will follow throughout the book

2. Consequentialism and Moral Rationalism
2.1 The too-demanding objection: How moral rationalism leads us to reject utilitarianism
2.2 The argument against utilitarianism from moral rationalism
2.3 How moral rationalism compels us to accept consequentialism
2.4 What is consequentialism?
2.5 The presumptive case for moral rationalism
2.6 Some concluding remarks

3. The Teleological Conception of Practical Reasons
3.1 Getting clear on what the view is
3.2 Clearing up some misconceptions about the view
3.3 Scanlon's putative counterexamples to the view
3.4 Arguments for the view

4. Consequentializing Commonsense Morality
4.1 How to consequentialize
4.2 The deontic equivalence thesis
4.3 Beyond the deontic equivalence thesis: How consequentialist theories can do a better job of accounting for our considered moral convictions than even some nonconsequentialist theories can
4.4 The implications of the deontic equivalence thesis
4.5 An objection

5. Dual-Ranking Act-Consequentialism: Reasons, Morality, and Overridingness
5.1 Some quick clarifications
5.2 Moral reasons, overridingness, and agent-centered options
5.3 Moral reasons, overridingness, and supererogation
5.4 A meta-criterion of rightness and how it leads us to adopt dual-ranking act-consequentialism
5.5 Norcross's objection
5.6 Splawn's objection
5.7 Violations of the transitivity and independence axioms

6. Imperfect Reasons and Rational Options
6.1 Kagan's objection: Are we sacrificing rational options to get moral options?
6.2 Imperfect reasons and rational options
6.3 Securitism
6.4 Securitism and the basic belief
6.5 Securitism's suppositions and implications

7. Commonsense Consequentialism
7.1 The best version of act-utilitarianism: commonsense utilitarianism
7.2 Securitist consequentialism and the argument for it
7.3 Commonsense consequentialism and how it compares with traditional act-consequentialism
7.4 What has been shown and what remains to be shown

About the Author

Douglas W. Portmore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University. His research focuses mainly on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two, but he also writes on wellbeing, posthumous harm, and the nonidentity problem.

Reviews

"It is well worth the reader's time to accompany Portmore on this journey to the heart of consequentialism and back again: the overall strategy is ingenious, and the arguments are as rigorous as they are provocative. Both the debates within consequentialism and those between consequentialists and their critics are advanced, and Portmore provides the reader with a wealth of new philosophical tools to advance them still further."--Paul Hurley, Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews
"This is a really great book: an encompassing work of systematizing moral philosophy in the classic style. Ambitious theorizing of this scale and consequence is a rare treat in the contemporary landscape, so Portmore's thorough development of a comprehensive moral theory will serve as a model for much work to come. The view outlined in these pages is repeatedly insightful and illuminating, and forms a coherent package worthy of admiration. An important
contribution to the field."--Mark Schroeder, University of Southern California
"The main contribution of the book is in arguing for a particular account of the structure of practical reasons, the upshot of which is a much more commonsensical account of consequentialism than is standardly offered...In sum, this a very rich book, an important contribution to the consequentialist literature, but more broadly, an important contribution to our understanding of practical reason in general." -- Mind