Arts and Humanities Commons^™

In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multi-dimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multi-dimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis – he calls it DEGREE – that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. This goes against the orthodoxy according to which – Peterson calls this RESOLUTION – each act is always either …