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The Supererogatory, and How to Accommodate It

Dorsey, Dale
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Abstract
Many find it plausible to posit a category of supererogatory actions. But the supererogatory resists easy analysis. Traditionally, supererogatory actions are characterized as actions that are morally good, but not morally required; actions that go ‘beyond’ the call of our moral obligations. As I shall argue in this article, however, the traditional analysis can be accepted only by a view with troubling consequences concerning the structure of the moral point of view. I propose a different analysis that is extensionally correct, avoids the problems of the traditional view, and, incidentally, also defuses any objection to act-consequentialism, or any other first-order moral theory, on grounds that it cannot accommodate the supererogatory.
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This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8984941&fileId=S095382081200060X
Date
2013-08
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Cambridge University Press
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Citation
Dale Dorsey. (2013). The Supererogatory, and How to Accommodate It. Utilitas 25(3):355-382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S095382081200060X
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