May 02, 2012
Why Not Utilitarianism?
A lot of very smart non-philosophers are attracted to some form of utilitarianism. Some of these people, like Ilya Somin and Mike Rappaport are generally sympathetic to the idea of…
All posts in: Consequentialism
April 17, 2012
BHL, Liberal-tarianism and Complicated Theories: A Reply to Doherty and Seavey
Brian Doherty has written a nice, thoughtful essay, “Can Libertarians Learn to Love Social Justice?” where he reviews some of the recent discussion about BHL and traditional-L over at Cato…
April 03, 2012
John Stuart Mill’s “Awful” Philosophy?
Bryan Caplan has recently argued that some of Mill’s arguments in On Liberty are “awful” and “cringeworthy” . But the arguments that he offers in support of this claim don’t…
March 22, 2012
Milton Friedman’s Classical Liberalism
Inspired by Pete Boettke’s semi-recent post, I’ve just finished re-reading Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. It is a great work articulating and defending liberalism “in its original sense.” It is…
February 27, 2012
Economists, Why So Consequentialist?
Economists are frequently (a) subjectivists about value and (b) consequentialists. (a) and (b) are in tension. Brief dialectical summary: Non-Consequentialist Philosopher: What should we do? Typical Economist: Maximize utility! Philosopher:…
February 15, 2012
Contractualism
I think the right political theory is some form of contractualism. In this post, I will explain what I mean by contractualism and address some common but confused objections to…