The Dep of Philosophy is delighted to welcome Mattias Gunnemyr (GU/LU) to the Higher seminar in practical philosophy. He will give a self-contained talke titled

Collective Harms and The Strength of Reasons

Abstract. The inefficacy argument says that no one has an outcome-related reason to act in a certain way if this does not make any difference to the outcome. Glover (1975), Nefsky (2017) and others disagree and argue that you might have such reasons. This raises the question of how weighty they are. Against Glover, Parfit (1984) argues, in essence, that such reasons have no weight. When in competition with the tiniest reason to do something else that could make a difference for the better, such reasons always lose. The objection generalizes to the other approaches. Against this, I suggest the strength of such reasons is a function of the badness of the outcome and the difference in security the act would make to the outcome in the relevant possibility horizon, and propose they might be weighty enough to outweigh other reasons. I also show where Parfit’s argument goes astray and explain why it might seem compelling.

Welcome