No Hands, No Paradox

Excerpt

Deep, often inchoate assumptions underlie our judgments about values. These assumptions need not cohere, either inter- or intrapersonally. Indeed, they often fail to. Among the deepest of these assumptions are ones about the fundamental units of moral concern and evaluation. One almost unconscious stream of thought pushes us towards focusing on the sorts of worlds that we bring about: right action must be that which produces the best consequences. This, of course, finds its most direct expression in such consequentialist moral theories as utilitarianism.¹ Another stream directs our attention to our acts themselves: right action is determined by the nature of what we do, and not be the consequences of what we do. Deontological moral theories codify this attitude about values.² The inchoate roots of these streams give rise to many more specific positions, articulated by lay people and moral theorists alike. Often enough, these differences in deep focus do not yield any practical differences: the best consequences are often tied to just those actions that we ought to do by the standards of action-centric ethics. However, sometimes the recommendations of specific forms of these deep positions diverge, leading to conflict. These points of conflict yield special opportunities for assessing the merits and problems of our deep assumptions about values. …