Ingmar Persson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3698566 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ingmar Persson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ingmar |
| FAMILY NAME | Persson |
| SIGNATURE | PERSSON I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6452-9411 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
On the prospects of longtermism
This article objects to two arguments that William MacAskill gives in What We Owe the Future in support of optimism about the prospects of longtermism, that is, the prospects of positively influencing the longterm future. First, it grants that he is right that, whereas humans sometimes benefit others as an end, they rarely harm them as an end, but argues that this bias towards positive motivation is counteracted by the fact that it is practically…
What is special about conscientious objection
The deliverances of our conscience are heartfelt, but not necessarily reason‐based, moral convictions that concern our own behaviour. The fact that conscientious objections to a regulation, like a prohibition or obligation, express a heartfelt conviction that it is morally wrong to comply or morally permissible not to comply with the regulation provides a moral reason to respect the conviction because failing to do so is likely to cause objectors…
Reply to Bykvist and Campbell on Possible Beings
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Utilitarianism and the pandemic
There are no egalitarians in a pandemic. The scale of the challenge for health systems and public policy means that there is an ineluctable need to prioritize the needs of the many. It is impossible to treat all citizens equally, and a failure to carefully consider the consequences of actions could lead to massive preventable loss of life. In a pandemic there is a strong ethical need to consider how to do most good overall. Utilitarianism is an i…
The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we i…
Inclusive Ethics
The main aim of this book is, first, to defend the view that beings can be benefited (or harmed) by being caused to exist and so—since there are moral reasons to benefit—that these reasons can include reasons to cause beings to exist. Secondly, it is to put forward an extensive principle of egalitarian justice to the effect justice requires everyone to be equally well off, unless some autonomously choose to be worse off. A morality comprising the…
Parfit on Personal Identity: Its Analysis and (Un)importance
This article examines Derek Parfit's claim in Reasons and Persons that personal identity consists in non‐branching psychological continuity with the right kind of cause. It argues that such psychological accounts of our identity fail, but that their main rivals, biological or animalist accounts do not fare better. Instead it proposes an error‐theory to the effect that common sense takes us to be identical to our bodies on the erroneous assumption…
Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement
This text argues that the future of our species depends on radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our nature. Population growth and technological advances are threatening to undermine the conditions of worthwhile life on Earth forever. We need to modify to deal with this challenge.
Prioritarianism and Welfare Reductions
D erek P arfit has argued that egalitarianism is exposed to a levelling down objection because it implies, implausibly, that a change, which consists only in the better‐off sinking to the level of the worse‐off, is in one respect better, though it is better for nobody. He claims that, in contrast, the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse‐off have greater moral weight escapes this objection. This article contends, first, that prioritariani…
Rights and the Asymmetry Between Creating Good and Bad Lives
Why Levelling Down could be Worse for Prioritarianism than for Egalitarianism
A Consequentialist Distinction between What We Ought to Do and Ought to Try
G. E. Moore raised the question of whether consequentialists ought to maximize actual rather than expected value, and came down in favour of the former alternative. But rather recently Frank Jackson has presented an example which has been widely thought to clinch the case in favour of the alternative view. This article argues for a sort of compromise between these rival views, namely that while we ought to do what maximizes actual value, we ought…
Retreat of Reason: A Dilemma in the Philosophy of Life
The Act—Omission Doctrine and Negative Rights
The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life
In ancient Greece, philosophy was mainly concerned with guidance on how to live our lives, a philosophy of life. It was then typically assumed that a life in accordance with reason, a rational life, would also be the happiest or most fulfilling life. This book resumes this project, which has been largely neglected in contemporary philosophy. It tries to show, however, that the aim of leading a rational life is at odds not only with the aim of lea…
The Badness of Unjust Inequality
This paper argues, first, that an egalitarianism worth its salt must affirm that many states of inequality are unjust, and hence bad in themselves, because those who are worse off do not deserve to be worse off, nor are entitled only to less, nor have voluntarily chosen to be worse off. Secondly, it contends that the intrinsic goodness of a state of just equality does not consist in there being anything positively good about it, but merely in the…
Two Claims about Potential Human Beings
It seems that at conception something is formed which, due to its genetic make-up, has the potentiality to develop into a full-blown human being. Many believe that in virtue of this potentiality, this organism, the human zygote or early embryo, has in instrinsic value which makes it wrong to use or produce it merely as a means to some end, e.g., some scientific end such as to produce embryonic stem cells. Against this it is here argued, first, th…
Equality, Priority and Person-Affecting Value
Dancy on Desire and Internalism of Reasons
The objective of this paper is to critically assess some of Jonathan Dancy's views on reasons and motivation in Moral Reasons. It is argued, first, that his ‘gap’ theory of desire is untenable and that he would do better to adopt what he calls ‘pure ascriptionism’ which also denies that desires are motivational states distinct from beliefs. Second, the cognitivist theory of motivation is, however, less plausible than a conativist theory of motiva…
Our Identity and the Separability of Persons and Organisms
Les philosophes appartenant à la tradition lockienne considèrent qu'en tant que personnes ou sujets de pensée et d'expérience, nous sommes distincts de nos organismes humains. Cela conduirait, selon des théoriciens qui veulent plutôt nous identifier à ces organismes, à un dédoublement paradoxal des sujets en question. Les objectifs principaux de cet article sont, premièrement, de soutenir à l'encontre de cet argument que la séparabilité des perso…
Ambiguities in Feldman's Desert-adjusted Values
Fred Feldman has argued that consequentialists can answer the well-known ‘objection from justice’ by replacing the utilitarian axiology with one that makes the value of receiving pleasures and pains depend on how deserved it is. It is shown that this proposal is open to three interpretations: (1) the Fit-idea, which operates with the degree of fit between what recipients get and what they deserve; (2) the Merit-idea, which operates with the magni…
Feldman's Justicized Act Utilitarianism
In Confrontations with the Reaper Fred Feldman puts forward puts forward an ethical theory called ‘justicized act utilitarianism’, JAU, according to which an act is morally right if and only if it maximizes universal justice level, i.e., brings it about that as many as possible get what they deserve. It is here argued that JAU is exposed to objections under the force of which it either loses its special emphasis on justice or its utilitarian char…
Critical notice of Michael Smith: The Moral Problem 1
Peter Singer on Why Persons are Irreplaceable
In the preface to the second edition of his deservedly popular Practical Ethics , Peter Singer notes that one of the ‘two significant changes” of his ‘underlying ethical views” consists in dropping the tentative suggestion that ‘one might try to combine both the “total” and the “prior existence” versions of utilitarianism, applying the former to sentient beings who are not self-conscious and the latter to those who are” (pp. x–xi). On the total v…
The Groundlessness of Natural Rights
Today talk of rights is very much in vogue both in philosophical and popular ethics; so much so that it is common to find even philosophers unabashedly going straight to discussing what rights we have without touching on what their foundation might be. This is so in spite of there being a time-honoured tradition of scepticism about rights, conceived as ‘natural’ ones, going back at least to Jeremy Bentham. The present paper is intended as a contr…
The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life
In ancient Greece, philosophy was mainly concerned with guidance on how to live our lives, a philosophy of life. It was then typically assumed that a life in accordance with reason, a rational life, would also be the happiest or most fulfilling life. This book resumes this project, which has been largely neglected in contemporary philosophy. It tries to show, however, that the aim of leading a rational life is at odds not only with the aim of lea…
Equality, Priority and Person-Affecting Value
The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we i…
Two Claims about Potential Human Beings
It seems that at conception something is formed which, due to its genetic make-up, has the potentiality to develop into a full-blown human being. Many believe that in virtue of this potentiality, this organism, the human zygote or early embryo, has in instrinsic value which makes it wrong to use or produce it merely as a means to some end, e.g., some scientific end such as to produce embryonic stem cells. Against this it is here argued, first, th…
Our Identity and the Separability of Persons and Organisms
Les philosophes appartenant à la tradition lockienne considèrent qu'en tant que personnes ou sujets de pensée et d'expérience, nous sommes distincts de nos organismes humains. Cela conduirait, selon des théoriciens qui veulent plutôt nous identifier à ces organismes, à un dédoublement paradoxal des sujets en question. Les objectifs principaux de cet article sont, premièrement, de soutenir à l'encontre de cet argument que la séparabilité des perso…
Feldman's Justicized Act Utilitarianism
In Confrontations with the Reaper Fred Feldman puts forward puts forward an ethical theory called ‘justicized act utilitarianism’, JAU, according to which an act is morally right if and only if it maximizes universal justice level, i.e., brings it about that as many as possible get what they deserve. It is here argued that JAU is exposed to objections under the force of which it either loses its special emphasis on justice or its utilitarian char…
Ambiguities in Feldman's Desert-adjusted Values
Fred Feldman has argued that consequentialists can answer the well-known ‘objection from justice’ by replacing the utilitarian axiology with one that makes the value of receiving pleasures and pains depend on how deserved it is. It is shown that this proposal is open to three interpretations: (1) the Fit-idea, which operates with the degree of fit between what recipients get and what they deserve; (2) the Merit-idea, which operates with the magni…
Universalizability and the summing of desires
A theory of determinism. The mind, neuroscience, and life‐hopes
The indeterminacy and insignificance of personal identity
Hallden on the unity of the mind and the self
The Groundlessness of Natural Rights
Today talk of rights is very much in vogue both in philosophical and popular ethics; so much so that it is common to find even philosophers unabashedly going straight to discussing what rights we have without touching on what their foundation might be. This is so in spite of there being a time-honoured tradition of scepticism about rights, conceived as ‘natural’ ones, going back at least to Jeremy Bentham. The present paper is intended as a contr…
Critical notice of Michael Smith: The Moral Problem 1
Peter Singer on Why Persons are Irreplaceable
In the preface to the second edition of his deservedly popular Practical Ethics , Peter Singer notes that one of the ‘two significant changes” of his ‘underlying ethical views” consists in dropping the tentative suggestion that ‘one might try to combine both the “total” and the “prior existence” versions of utilitarianism, applying the former to sentient beings who are not self-conscious and the latter to those who are” (pp. x–xi). On the total v…
Feldman's Justicized Act Utilitarianism
In Confrontations with the Reaper Fred Feldman puts forward puts forward an ethical theory called ‘justicized act utilitarianism’, JAU, according to which an act is morally right if and only if it maximizes universal justice level, i.e., brings it about that as many as possible get what they deserve. It is here argued that JAU is exposed to objections under the force of which it either loses its special emphasis on justice or its utilitarian char…
Ambiguities in Feldman's Desert-adjusted Values
Fred Feldman has argued that consequentialists can answer the well-known ‘objection from justice’ by replacing the utilitarian axiology with one that makes the value of receiving pleasures and pains depend on how deserved it is. It is shown that this proposal is open to three interpretations: (1) the Fit-idea, which operates with the degree of fit between what recipients get and what they deserve; (2) the Merit-idea, which operates with the magni…
Dancy on Desire and Internalism of Reasons
The objective of this paper is to critically assess some of Jonathan Dancy's views on reasons and motivation in Moral Reasons. It is argued, first, that his ‘gap’ theory of desire is untenable and that he would do better to adopt what he calls ‘pure ascriptionism’ which also denies that desires are motivational states distinct from beliefs. Second, the cognitivist theory of motivation is, however, less plausible than a conativist theory of motiva…
Our Identity and the Separability of Persons and Organisms
Les philosophes appartenant à la tradition lockienne considèrent qu'en tant que personnes ou sujets de pensée et d'expérience, nous sommes distincts de nos organismes humains. Cela conduirait, selon des théoriciens qui veulent plutôt nous identifier à ces organismes, à un dédoublement paradoxal des sujets en question. Les objectifs principaux de cet article sont, premièrement, de soutenir à l'encontre de cet argument que la séparabilité des perso…
Equality, Priority and Person-Affecting Value
The Badness of Unjust Inequality
This paper argues, first, that an egalitarianism worth its salt must affirm that many states of inequality are unjust, and hence bad in themselves, because those who are worse off do not deserve to be worse off, nor are entitled only to less, nor have voluntarily chosen to be worse off. Secondly, it contends that the intrinsic goodness of a state of just equality does not consist in there being anything positively good about it, but merely in the…
Two Claims about Potential Human Beings
It seems that at conception something is formed which, due to its genetic make-up, has the potentiality to develop into a full-blown human being. Many believe that in virtue of this potentiality, this organism, the human zygote or early embryo, has in instrinsic value which makes it wrong to use or produce it merely as a means to some end, e.g., some scientific end such as to produce embryonic stem cells. Against this it is here argued, first, th…
The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life
In ancient Greece, philosophy was mainly concerned with guidance on how to live our lives, a philosophy of life. It was then typically assumed that a life in accordance with reason, a rational life, would also be the happiest or most fulfilling life. This book resumes this project, which has been largely neglected in contemporary philosophy. It tries to show, however, that the aim of leading a rational life is at odds not only with the aim of lea…
The Act—Omission Doctrine and Negative Rights
Why Levelling Down could be Worse for Prioritarianism than for Egalitarianism
A Consequentialist Distinction between What We Ought to Do and Ought to Try
G. E. Moore raised the question of whether consequentialists ought to maximize actual rather than expected value, and came down in favour of the former alternative. But rather recently Frank Jackson has presented an example which has been widely thought to clinch the case in favour of the alternative view. This article argues for a sort of compromise between these rival views, namely that while we ought to do what maximizes actual value, we ought…
Retreat of Reason: A Dilemma in the Philosophy of Life
Rights and the Asymmetry Between Creating Good and Bad Lives
Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement
This text argues that the future of our species depends on radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our nature. Population growth and technological advances are threatening to undermine the conditions of worthwhile life on Earth forever. We need to modify to deal with this challenge.
Prioritarianism and Welfare Reductions
D erek P arfit has argued that egalitarianism is exposed to a levelling down objection because it implies, implausibly, that a change, which consists only in the better‐off sinking to the level of the worse‐off, is in one respect better, though it is better for nobody. He claims that, in contrast, the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse‐off have greater moral weight escapes this objection. This article contends, first, that prioritariani…
Parfit on Personal Identity: Its Analysis and (Un)importance
This article examines Derek Parfit's claim in Reasons and Persons that personal identity consists in non‐branching psychological continuity with the right kind of cause. It argues that such psychological accounts of our identity fail, but that their main rivals, biological or animalist accounts do not fare better. Instead it proposes an error‐theory to the effect that common sense takes us to be identical to our bodies on the erroneous assumption…
Inclusive Ethics
The main aim of this book is, first, to defend the view that beings can be benefited (or harmed) by being caused to exist and so—since there are moral reasons to benefit—that these reasons can include reasons to cause beings to exist. Secondly, it is to put forward an extensive principle of egalitarian justice to the effect justice requires everyone to be equally well off, unless some autonomously choose to be worse off. A morality comprising the…
The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we i…
Sociology (20 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (16 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Law (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works)