Utilitas
- Utilitas / Volume 21 / Issue 02 / June 2009, pp 222-224
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0953820809003495 (About DOI), Published online: 27 April 2009
Research Article
Wouldn't It Be Nice If p, Therefore, p (for a moral p)
DAVID ENOCHa1
a1 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem denoch@mscc.huji.ac.il
Abstract
Instances of the argument-schema ‘Wouldn't it be nice if p, therefore, p’ are usually fallacious, but for a moral p they are not clearly as bad as they are elsewhere. I offer a diagnosis of this phenomenon, arguing that in some conditions – specified in terms of a logical property of the relevant normative operator – such arguments are actually valid (for a moral p).
