Consequentialism

By McNaughton, David; Rawling, Piers

Consequentialism assesses the rightness or wrongness of actions in terms of the value of their consequences. The most popular version is act-consequentialism, which states that, of all the ...

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is sometimes taken to be a moral view according to which acts are to be assessed solely by the value of their consequences, in contrast to deontological ...

Deontological ethics

By McNaughton, David; Rawling, Piers

Deontology asserts that there are several distinct duties. Certain kinds of act are intrinsically right and other kinds intrinsically wrong. The rightness or wrongness of any particular act ...

Deontological ethics

Deontology is often defined by contrasting it with one of its chief competitors, consequentialism. In its simplest form, consequentialism claims that we only have one moral duty: to ...

Shaftesbury, Third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper) (1671–1713)

By McNaughton, David

Shaftesbury, whose influence on eighteenth-century thought was enormous, was the last great representative of the Platonic tradition in England. He argued that by natural reason we can see ...

Ross, William David (1877–1971)

By McNaughton, David

W.D. Ross was a British ancient and moral philosopher. In terms of his moral thinking, he was a pluralist, who held that there are several distinct moral considerations ...