Intention and Permissibility

Inference of Intention and Permissibility in Moral Decision Making

The actions of a rational agent reveal information about its mental states. These inferred mental states, particularly the agent’s intentions, play an important role in the evaluation of moral permissibility. While previous computational models have shown that beliefs and desires can be inferred from behavior under the assumption of rational action they have critically lacked a third mental sta...

Borderline cases and permissibility

The paper explores the idea that when a proposition p is borderline, p is permissible: we can assert p, deny p or suspend judgement about p for all we know, nothing mandates one of these attitudes. The vagueness of p leaves open what we have to think of p. Recognition that p is borderline amounts to be tolerant toward any of three following attitudes on p: 1) hesitant acceptance of p (positive ...

Possibility and permissibility

We generalize permissibility (Brandenburger, 1992) to allow for any suitably defined model of preference and definition of possibility. We also prove that the generalized solution concept characterizes rationality, caution, and common “belief” of rationality and caution. JEL classification: C72; D81

On the permissibility of torture.

Consciousness and the Moral Permissibility of Infanticide

In this paper, we present a conditional argument for the moral permissibility of some kinds of infanticide. The argument is based on a certain view of consciousness and the claim that there is an intimate connection between consciousness and infanticide. In bare outline, the argument is this: it is impermissible to intentionally kill a creature only if the creature is conscious; it is reasonabl...