Rightness, Parsimony, and Consequentialism: A Response to Peterson

This paper argues against Martin Peterson in favour of the ‘standard view’ of rightness, according to which rightness does not come in degrees. It begins (section 1) with a defence of the standard view against the charge that it is committed to ‘deontic leaps’. It goes on (section 2) to claim that greater conceptual parsimony would allow Peterson to avoid certain problems involving equality and related matters that arise out of his conception of moral value, and that Peterson should take the same instrumentalist attitude towards the norms of practical rationality as he does towards the norms of common-sense morality. The paper closes (section 3) with some doubts about Peterson’s programme of consequentialization and its alleged advantages.