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Answers to Five Questions on Normative Ethics”

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why were you initially drawn to normative ethics

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“Answers to Five Questions on Normative Ethics”

Peter Vallentyne

in Normative Ethics: Five Questions edited by Jesper Ryberg and Thomas S. Petersen

(Automatic Press/VIP, 2007), pp. 195-204

1) Why were you initially drawn to normative ethics?

I came late to philosophy and even later to normative ethics. When I started my undergraduate

studies at the University of Toronto in 1970, I was interested in mathematics and languages. I

soon discovered, however, that my mathematical talents were rather meager compared to the

truly talented. I therefore decided to study actuarial science (the applied mathematics of risk

assessment for insurance and pension plans) rather than abstract math. After two years, however,

I dropped out of university, went to work for a life insurance company, and started studying on

my own for the ten professional actuarial exams. When not studying, I would often go to the

public library and I was drawn to the philosophy section—although I had no idea of what

philosophy was about. I there saw Logical Positivism, edited by A.J. Ayer. I was interested in

logical thinking and I also favored an optimistic attitude towards life (!) and so I thought that the

book might be interesting. I checked it out and was absolutely enthralled with the writings of

Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel and others (if I’m remembering correctly). Of

course, I didn’t really understand much of what they were doing, but I did see that they were

addressing important problems in a systematic and rigorous manner. I liked it!

I then went on to read most of Bertrand Russell’s books and realized that I had a deep interest in

philosophy. Eventually, I returned to university—this time at McGill University in Montreal—

, and completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics and philosophy. After a fantastic year

traveling around Greece, I went to the University of Pittsburgh intending to study philosophy of

language, philosophy of logic, or philosophy of science. The following year, however, David

Gauthier arrived at Pitt and I was exposed to his work and that of John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and

John Harsanyi. I was very excited by the applications of the theories of rational and social choice

to the foundations of moral theory and I decided to focus on moral philosophy. Initially, my

focus was on ethical theory (and consequentialism in particular). Later, I became interested in

liberty and equality in political philosophy (and left-libertarianism in particular).

2) What example(s) from your work (or the work of others) illustrates the role that

normative ethics ought to play in moral philosophy?

I don’t really know how to answer this question. So, let me first make some general comments

on moral methodology and then identify what I take some of my main contributions to normative

ethics to be.

I believe that all the main areas of moral philosophy—metaethics, normative ethics, and

applied ethics, for example—can be fruitfully investigated prior to resolution of issues in the

other areas. Of course, ideally, we’d resolve the metaethical issues before addressing normative

ethics (so that we know what we are talking about!) and ideally the latter would be resolved

before addressing applied issues (so that we know what the correct moral principles are!). Given,

however, that the issues continue to be highly contested, we can’t simply wait for the more basic

issues to be resolved. We can fruitfully explore the more derivative issues even if we have to

revisit them when more progress is made in more basic issues. Indeed, sometimes the tentative

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