Williams's claim that practical reasons are internal reasons is analysed and interpreted as a neutral analysis, not distinctively Humean, of constraints on the concept of a practical reason. It is argued that within these constraints it remains possible to defend the impartiality of moral reasons. A reflective account of such reasons can be given in ‘pragmatic’ rather than ‘semantic’ terms. Paralleling a revisionary strategy towards Kant's theoretical philosophy, a higher order disposition to accept only reasons that can be put to others without the prospect of reasonable rejection is argued to be the internalization of a relativized a priori principle.

This article develops an unconventional perspective on the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill in at least four areas. First, it is shown that both authors conceived of utility as irreducibly multi-dimensional, and that Bentham in particular was very much aware of the ambiguity that multi-dimensionality imposes upon optimal choice under the greatest happiness principle. Secondly, I argue that any attribution of intrinsic worth to any form of human behaviour violates the first principles of Bentham's and Mill's utilitarianism, and that this renders both authors immune to the claim by G. E. Moore that they committed a ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Thirdly, in light of these contentions, I find no flaw in Mill's ‘proof of utility’. Fourthly, I use the notion of intrapersonal utility weights to provide an interpretation of Mill's qualitative hedonism that is entirely consistent with his value monism.

The distinction between killing and letting die is too simple. A third category – preventing people from being saved – must also be recognized. Like killing, preventing a person from being saved is a species of doing harm; like killing, it infringes one of the victim's negative rights. Yet preventing a person from being saved is morally on a par with letting die, which infringes one of the victim's positive rights. It follows that we cannot explain the moral inequivalence of killing and letting die by saying, as so many have, that negative rights are more stringent than positive rights. A more promising strategy is suggested at the end of the article.

A largely deontological conscience will probably optimize consequences. But Bernard Williams objects to the ‘imposed and illusory dissociation’, if one therefore embraces indirect consequentialism, of ‘the theorist in oneself from the self whose dispositions are being theorized’. Admittedly the strategy is painful, and a counsel of imperfection at best. But it need not be psychologically impossible, inconsistent, or even self-deceptive, given ethical cognitivism.

Bentham's dictum, ‘everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one’, is frequently noted but seldom discussed by commentators. Perhaps it is not thought contentious or exciting because interpreted as merely reminding the utilitarian legislator to make certain that each person's interests are included, that no one is missed, in working the felicific calculus. Since no interests are secure against the maximizing directive of the utility principle, which allows them to be overridden or sacrificed, the dictum is not usually taken to be asserting fundamental rights that afford individuals normative protection against the actions of others or against legislative policies deemed socially expedient. Such non-conventional moral rights seem denied a place in a utilitarian theory so long as the maximization of aggregate happiness remains the ultimate standard and moral goal.

It is impermissible to violate a constraint, even if by doing so a greater number of violations of the very same constraint were to be prevented. Most find this puzzling. But what makes the impermissibility of such minimizing violations puzzling? This article discusses some recent answers (by Scheffier, Kamm and Nagel) to this question. The article's first aim is to make clear in what way these answers differ. The second aim is to evaluate the answers, along with Kamm's and Nagel's proposed solutions of what they see as the puzzle of constraints. The main thesis of the article is this: because defenders of constraints are not committed to any conception of valuable states of affairs, constraints do not conflict with maximizing rationality; but neither can they be accounted for in terms of impersonal values.