Scanlon on Substantive Responsibility

Scanlon on Substantive Responsibility*

WHAT role do a person’s opportunities to choose play in the justification of social arrangements? We need to answer this question in order to arrive at a theory of substantive responsibility, which tells us the way in which a person’s claims on others, others’ claims on her, and the quality of her situation should depend on the opportunities she has and the choices she makes. To get a handle on...

Scanlon on Double Effect

In this new book Moral Dimensions, T. M. Scanlon (2008) explores the ethical significance of the intentions and motives with which people act. According to Scanlon, these intentions and motives do not have any direct bearing on the permissibility of the act. Thus, Scanlon claims that the traditional Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) is mistaken. However, the way in which someone is motivated to a...

Scanlon On Social and Material Inequality

Tim Scanlon’s famous and important paper ‘The Diversity of Objections to Inequality’ sets out five reasons why those sympathetic to equality may object to inequality. This paper shows the origin of this approach to inequality in Scanlon’s earlier work, and its persistence in his later work. It also compares Scanlon’s position to earlier egalitarian writers, such as R.H. Tawney, and antiegalitar...

The impact of the Scanlon Plan on retail store performance

Thomas Scanlon , Moral Dimensions : Permissibility , Meaning , Blame

In Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame, Thomas Scanlon challenges moral philosophers with a subtle analysis of how permissibility, meaning and blame are to be understood. Scanlon’s challenge is significant not only because he is a moral philosopher of considerable stature but because his analysis proceeds with an unusual degree of care. Scanlon employs a number of novel distinction...