Recall that you have two paper options: (1) two modest papers, approximately 8-10 pages in length -- the first due February 19 and the second due around March 17 -- and (2) a single, longer paper, approximately 16-20 pages, to be written in two drafts -- the draft due around March 4 and the revision due around March 17.  Here I list some possible paper topics.  Some might be better suited for a short paper and some might be better suited for a long paper, but most could be adpated (narrowed or expanded) to work for either purpose.  These are only sample paper topics.  I'm happy to have you choose your own topic; I ask only that if you do so that you discuss and approve your topic with me in advance.  If you have any questions about what readings would be appropriate for a given paper topic, do not hesitate to ask me.  Whether writing on a topic of your own choosing or on one of these, feel free to come talk with me about your ideas for the paper.

1. Explain and assess Moore's attack on Sidgwick's egoism and his (Sidgwick's) assumptions about personal or relative good.  Does Moore understand the view that he is criticizing?  Is the conception of impersonal or agent-neutral value with which Moore works more defensible?

2. Are external reasons impossible?  Explain and assess Williams's defense of internal reasons?  What is the significance of an internalist constraint on practical reason?

3. Explain and assess some one or some family of idealized desire conceptions of the personal good (e.g. Mill, Brandt, Railton, Lewis, McDowell, Wiggins).  How exactly should we understand the relevant idealization?  Is that kind of idealization coherent?  Is it attractive?  Do our assessments depend on whether the views in question have reductive aspirations?

4. In "The Authority of Desire" Stampe defends the per se authority of desire by appeal to an analogy between the role of perception in theoretical reasoning and the role of desire in practical reasoning.  Explain and assess this defense of the authority of desire.

5.  Explain and assess the way in which Aristotelian perfectionism depends upon his appeal to the human function in Nicomachean Ethics i 7?  How does that argument rely on his claims in De Anima? What sort of perfectionist ideal does such an argument support?  Does Aristotle's argument conflate "the good man" and "the good for man"?

6. Mill's assumptions about happiness in Utilitarianism and On Liberty are hard to fit into a coherent overall theory.  He says he's a hedonist.  But he also defends the intrinsic superiority of higher pleasures.  These he identifies with the preferences of a competent judge.  And much of what he says about the content of happiness suggests a sort of perfectionist conception of the good.  Reconstruct Mill's main claims and see how far they can be reconciled with one another.

7. In the Prolegomena to Ethics T.H. Green tries to build a perfectionist ethical theory from some Kantian claims about moral personality.  Reconstruct and asses Green's perfectionism.

8. In Perfectionism Hurka attempts to justify perfectionist ideals by appeal to claims about a human essence.  Does he attempt to derive perfectionist ideals from biological foundations?  If so, how successful is he in providing a justification of perfectionist ideals that have plausible content?

9. Kantians typically assume that rational nature and the ability to set ends serve as both the foundation and content of practical reason.  In "The Value of Rational Nature" Regan argues that rational nature cannot be the ultimate condition of all values and that rational nature must be supplemented by other objective goods.  Explain and assess Regan's critique of the Kantian claim about rational nature.

10.  Egoism and prudence are hybrid claims about practical reason; they are neutral about the correct distribution of benefits and harms across time, but biased about the correct distribution of benefits and harms across people.  Can this hybrid character be justified, or must we accept a purebred conception that is either fully neutral, such as utilitarianism, or fully biased?  Sidgwick raises this worry.  Nagel defends a fully neutral conception, and Parfit defends a fully relative conception.

11. In Reasons and Persons Parfit describes a clever case (My Past or Future Operations) in which it seems that we have a robust preference for greater rather than lesser pain, provided the greater pain is in the past.  Is the preference incompatible with temporal neutrality, and, if so, what does that show about the significance of temporal neutrality?

12. The Epicureans argue that we should not fear death, because, among other reasons, our death involves our future nonexistence.  But why should we fear our future nonexistence any more than we fear our prenatal nonexistence?  Since we don't regret the latter, it's irrational to fear the former.  How stable is this symmetry argument, and what does it show about temporal neutrality?  Could I, and, if so, should I, regret my prenatal nonexistence?

13. Temporal neutrality appears to counsel that one be even-handed in conflicts between one's current ideals and the ideals that one will have in the future.  Is this sort of even-handedness desirable, or even possible?  Does temporal neutrality conflict with authenticity?

14. In part III of Reasons and Persons Parfit defends a form of psychological reductionism about personal identity, which he thinks implies that one's relation to one's distant future self is more like one's relation to other people than one originally thought.  He argues that psychological reductionism, therefore, undermines the sort of temporally neutrality associated with prudence.  Behavior that we previously thought of as grossly imprudent can no longer be criticized the same way, though perhaps now it can be criticized by appeal to the harm principle.  Does psychological reductionism have these revisionary implications for prudence?

15. In "Moral Relativism Defended" Harman appeals to rationalist assumptions about morality and instrumentalist assumptions about practical reason to defend a form of moral relativism.  How plausible is this view, and is it the best way of understanding the relationship between morality and practical reason?

16.  If we start with prudential or instrumental assumptions about practical reason, how far can we go in justifying other-regarding moral demands?  Here is might be best to focus on a single author and text, such as Plato's Gorgias or Republic, Hobbes's Leviathan, Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation or Frank's Passions within Reason, or Gauthier's Morals by Agreement.

17. In "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" Foot uses an analogy between morality and etiquette to challenge Kantian rationalism and to suggest that morality could be a system of hypothetical imperatives.  Is her attack on Kantian rationalism plausible?  Is her form of anti-rationalism attractive?

18. Reconstruct and assess Kant's claims about the way in which moral requirements are requirements of practical reason.  Can Kant show that familiar other-regarding duties enjoy rational authority that is supreme?

19. How, if at all, can Aristotle show that familiar other-regarding traits, such as justice, are genuine virtues that contribute to the agent's own eudaimonia?  How, if at all, is his discussion of friendship relevant to answering this question?

20. In The Possibility of Altruism Nagel argues that the failure to recognize the demands of altruism involves a form of solipsism akin to that involved in the failure to recognize the demands of prudence.  How does this defense of altruism work?  Is altruism rationally inescapable in the way prudence is?

21.  In The Sources of Normativity Korsgaard describes a kind of dialectical progression through various flawed conceptions of the sources of normativity that culminates in a Kantian conception of rational nature as a source of normativity that recognizes an element of truth in each of the earlier conceptions.  Korsgaard's own Kantian conception attaches rational significance to the agent's own "practical identity" and to other-regarding demands.  Can the Kantian conception recognize the rational significance of these items, and can it treat rational nature as the condition of other values?  (Cf. question #9.)

22. To what extent do traditional doubts about the authority of other-regarding moral demands depend upon a sharp contrast between self and others?  How might accepting reductionist views about personal identity affect our views about how to answer these doubts? (Parfit and Brink)