Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to mlyoung57. In your first reply, you write: “when we justify our actions to each other morally, we are trying to show that our actions are not patient-objectionable (do not warrant resentment on the part of the patient). If so, why isn…

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My last post concerned the Scanlonian contractualist idea that the wrongness of wrong action is constituted by the action not being justifiable to others. I criticized this idea on the grounds that justifying to others presupposes the existence of the justifiability-independent and entailed-by-wrongness (or more specifically partially-wrongness-constituting) normative feature of the action warranting resentment (and…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. It might be helpful to distinguish (i) (more “Kantian”) views according to which something like a formal rational requirement yield moral wrongness or obligation from (ii) (less “Kantian”) views accord…

I basically agree with what’s been said so far. I think I can guess why Scanlon rejects utilitarianism, but is there a way of summarizing his objections to the other view he’s trying to avoid, the one you described as…. various Kanti…