Speaker: Caleb Perl

You shouldn’t scapegoat someone innocent to prevent five killings. But maybe you should scapegoat someone innocent when the numbers get large enough – if, say, scapegoating would save a million, or a billion. That is, there might be thresholds where the numbers start to matter. This paper pioneers a new justification for thresholds, which rests on a formulation of rule consequentialism that I've developed elsewhere. The resulting account aims to vindicate ordinary moral convictions as arising from an intelligible concern for what makes our lives go best.

Please note that these seminars are open to the public and in person only.