Where Did I Go Wrong?

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Michael Zimmerman, Professor and Philosophy Pre-Law Concentration Advisor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: The list is long of those who, in the history of ethics, have advocated the thesis that what one ought to do is the best that one can do. This thesis has had its detractors, of course. I wish, however, not to defend it against external attacks but to adjudicate a dispute internal to it. The dispute concerns what have come to be called actualism and possibilism. In the first section, I shall argue that actualism has a number of unacceptable implications; in the second section, I shall defend possibilism against the charge that it has a number of unacceptable implications. In this way, I shall attempt to show the superiority of possibilism over actualism. Then, in the final section, I shall elaborate on possibilism's account of where it is that an agent goes wrong when he does go wrong.

Additional Information

Publication
Philosophical Studies, 59 (1990): 55-77
Language: English
Date: 1990
Keywords
wrong, ethics, actualism, possibilism

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