17 Oct
2025
17 Oct
'25
5:49 p.m.
Dear all,
Simon-Pierre Cheverie-Cossette is visiting the KiC project next week and
will give a talk in the Neues Institutsgebäude, Hörsaal 2I, at 1.15-2.45
pm on Action for Ethicists.
Simon-Pierre is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of
Neuchâtel and works on topics in moral philosophy and moral psychology.
You can find the abstract below. You can learn more about his work here
(http://en.spchevariecossette.info/).
Everyone is welcome!
Best wishes,
Paulina (Sliwa)
"Action for Ethicists"
Philosophers have traditionally conceived of actions as events
which are somehow intentional. Recently, several have claimed that
actions are instead causings of events. Since the view does not
reference intention, some ethicists might frown. They shouldn’t.
The causing view offers at least four advantages for ethical
theorising. (1) It makes better sense of the means-to-end relation.
For, the view neither says that means are identical to ends nor
that specific ways of Φing are means of Φing (as Anscombe and
Davidson must ultimately accept).
(2) It yields a very clean classification of conduct: to act is to
cause a change; to omit is not to cause a change; to prevent is to
cause the absence of a change; to let something happen is not to
cause the absence of a change. (3) This classification is in turn
helpful for the debate in ethics about doing and allowing harm. It
helps assess tricky cases of doctors unplugging patients and raises
new questions about ways of bringing harm about. (4) The causing
view makes questions of responsibility and agency distinct in a
helpful way. It helps dispelling the illusion that the only true
objects of our responsibility are our acts.
---
Univ-Prof. Paulina Sliwa
Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy
Director of Training, FWF Cluster of Excellence "Knowledge in Crisis"
Institute of Philosophy
University of Vienna