Assigned Readings

Week 1

Nozick - The Experience Machine

Parfit - What Makes Someone's Life Go Best?

Week 2

Nagel - Death

Purves - The Badness of Death

Benatar - Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence

Week 3

Parfit - The Non-Identity Problem

Boonin - How to Solve the Non-Identity Problem

Norcross - Harming in Context

Week 4

Bradley - Doing Away With Harm

Week 5

Kamm, Kant, Ross, Williams, Woollard - Nonconsequentialism

Rachels - Active and Passive Euthanasia

Tooley - An Irrelevant Consideration

Kagan, Thomson, Foot - Killing and Letting Die

Week 6

Bennett - Negation and Abstention (read only sections 1-5)

Quinn - The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing

McMahan - Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid

Week 8

Flanigan - A Defense of Compulsory Vaccination

Woollard - COVID-19, Lockdowns, and the Doing-Allowing Distinction

Singer - The Singer Solution to World Poverty

Vance - Causal Relevance, Permissible Omissions, and Famine Relief

Week 9

Aquinas, Kant, Foot, Fitzpatrick - Intro to the DDE

Bennett - Intended as a Means

Nelkin & Rickless - So Close, But So Far (read sections 1-3 for Wednesday and section 6 for Friday)

Fitzpatrick - The Problem of Closeness (read sections 1-4 for Friday and section 6 for Monday)

Week 10

Quinn - The Doctrine of Double Effect

Thomson - The Trolley Problem

Kamm - The Doctrine of Triple Effect

Week 11

Thomson - Turning the Trolley

Kagan - Intending Harm

Week 12

Hanna - Doing, Allowing, and the Moral Relevance of the Past

Huemer - A Paradox for Weak Deontology

Kamm - The Intransivity Paradox

Horton - The All or Nothing Problem

Pummer - All or Nothing, But If Not All, Next Best or Nothing

Week 13

Parfit - Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics

Week 14

Vance - Justifying Subsistence Emissions (you may skip section 3)

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