Main description:

Fred Feldman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is widely recognized for his subtle defense of hedonistic consequentialism and for his plain-spoken and exact philosophical style. This book collects new and original articles from an international team of scholars to celebrate his philosophical contributions. The three main topics of the book - moral goodness, moral rightness and the ethical and metaphysical puzzles posed by death - are topics that have occupied Professor Feldman throughout his philosophical career. Each contribution advances the state of the art in analytical ethics and metaphysics through critical analysis of previous work and the formulation of new positions. As a collection, these essays represent a sustained reflection on the merits and limitations of a whole, integrated research program in moral philosophy: hedonistic consequentialism.

Contents:

Contents: Introduction, Jason R. Raibley. Part I The Good: Desert as fit: an axiomatic analysis, Gustaf Arrhenius; Incomparability and measurement of value, Erik Carlson; Indeterminate desert, Shelly Kagan; Indeterminate value, basic value, and summation, Noah M. Lemos; Feldman's hedonism, L.W. Sumner. Part II The Right: Feldman, rule-consequentialism, and desert, Brad Hooker; Adjusting utility for justice: a reexamination of the connections between desert and intrinsic value, Owen McLeod; What consequentialism is not, Ingmar Persson; The relevance of risk to wrongdoing, Michael J. Zimmerman. Part III Life and Death: Dispositions toward counterfactuals in ethics, Earl Conee; Earlier birth and later death: symmetry through thick and thin, John Martin Fischer; Revivifying Aristotle on life, Gareth B. Matthews; The Lucretian argument, Jeff McMahan; Reassessing immortality: the Makropulos case revisited, Jay F. Rosenberg. Bibliography; Index.