The resonance constraint holds that something can benefit someone only if it bears a connection to her favoring attitudes. It is widely taken as a decisive reason to reject objective views of well-being since they do not guarantee such a connection. I aim to show that this is a mistake and that felt-quality hedonism about well-being can in fact meet the constraint. First, I argue that the typical way of putting the constraint is misguided in its demandingness. I then introduce alternatives and argue that the most plausible among them are compatible with felt-quality hedonism. I proceed to show that the same considerations which animate traditional resonance concerns motivate another kind of resonance which the hedonist is well-positioned to accommodate. One upshot is that the constraint does not provide us with a reason to favor subjective views of well-being, as they are traditionally formulated, over objective ones.

I explore and defend the unusual view that the replacement of matter taking place in the human body undermines egoistic reasons, and that we therefore have little or no basis for long-term egoistic concern. I begin by arguing that you should not have egoistic concern for a replica, i.e. a person resulting from a complete and sudden replacement of matter. I then argue that when it comes to egoistic concern, replication is not relevantly different from the slower and more gradual form of replacement found in human metabolism: if the former undermines egoistic reasons, so does the latter. I grant that the resulting view is, in some respects, hard to accept, but I conclude that we should at least treat it as a serious possibility.

David Phillips (2011) and Thomas Hurka (2014a, 2014b) argue that Sidgwick’s critique of deontology contains three serious flaws. First, it has no force against moderate deontologies composed of prima facie duties rather than unconditional duties. Second, Sidgwick’s preferred principles fail to meet the very criteria by which he rejects deontological principles. Third, Sidgwick’s employment of his key maxim of Rational Benevolence equivocates between all-things-considered and other-things-equal formulations. I defend Sidgwick against all three criticisms. (1) While some of Sidgwick’s arguments apply only to absolute deontology, others apply to moderate versions as well. (2) Although Sidgwick’s preferred principles do not fare perfectly against his criteria, they still fare better than the deontological principles. (3) The suggestion that Sidgwick relies on an all-things-considered formulation of Rational Benevolence is based on a misunderstanding of the structure of his argument. The upshot is that Sidgwick’s overarching line of argument is stronger than recent critics suggest.

Can desires be irrational? This paper focuses on the possibility that desires might be irrational because they fail to cohere with other mental states of the person in question. Recent literature on structural irrationality has largely neglected structural requirements on desire, and this paper begins to rectify that neglect. This paper endorses various rational requirements on desire, but primarily focuses on the instrumental requirement to desire the means to our ends. It explains how this requirement should be understood, and defends it from numerous objections, such as the worry that there are no real instrumental desires but only combinations of ultimate desires and beliefs, and the worry that it would require us to desire even very foolish means to our ends.

Critical-Level Utilitarianism entails one of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion, depending on the critical level. Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism is a version of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where it is indeterminate which well-being level is the critical level. Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where additions of lives in a range of well-being between the good and the bad lives make the resulting outcome incomparable to the original outcome. These views avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, they avoid the Sadistic Conclusion, and they agree on all outcome comparisons not involving indeterminacy or incomparability. So it may seem unclear whether we have any reason to favour one of these theories over the other. But I argue that Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism still entails the disjunction of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion, which is also repugnant. By contrast, Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism does not entail this conclusion.

In an earlier note in this journal, I located a contradiction in On Liberty. On the one hand, Mill describes piecework as a self-regarding “private concern” between employees and employers, one that does not harm other workers. On the other, he says that the competitors in economic markets harm each other. But workers compete in the labor market, and Mill does not deny that for some workers to accept payment by the piece may set back the interests of others. Jonathan Riley’s recent reply fails to demonstrate that Mill does not contradict himself. Riley’s argument depends on showing that in On Liberty Mill is presupposing that employers are employing a very specific model of piecework, one which Riley claims is self-regarding. However, Riley fails to establish that Mill is making this presupposition. Moreover, an employer’s choice to adopt piecework would not be self-regarding even if they did employ Riley’s model.