Thomas Schmidt: Moral Equivalences and Ethical Theories

Colloquium lecture by Thomas Schmidt (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), organized by the Department of Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy

In everyday moral thinking and talking, as well as in ethical theorizing, we often invoke judgements with the content that there are no morally relevant differences between two actions – or, as I will be saying, that the actions in question are morally equivalent.  

My overall aim in this talk is to show that moral equivalence judgements are independent both from singular moral judgements and from moral principles, and that this makes them a distinctive and interesting resource in ethical theorizing, the theoretical power of which has been underestimated in the literature. First, equivalence judgements are...(continue reading...)