What Matters and How it Matters:

A Choice-Theoretic Representation of Moral Theories

Franz Dietrich & Christian List
In the Philosophical Review 126(4): 421-479 (2017)

Abstract
We present a new “reason-based” approach to the formal representation of moral
theories, drawing on recent decision-theoretic work. We show that any moral
theory within a very large class can be represented in terms of two parameters:
(i) a specification of which properties of the objects of moral choice matter
in any given context, and
(ii) a specification of how these properties matter.
Reason-based representations provide a very general taxonomy of moral theories,
as differences among theories can be attributed to differences in their two key
parameters. We can thus formalize several distinctions, such as between
consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories, between universalist and
relativist theories, between agent-neutral and agent-relative theories, between
monistic and pluralistic theories, between atomistic and holistic theories, and
between theories with a teleological structure and those without.
Our analysis builds on, but moves beyond, the existing debate on whether all
moral theories can be consequentialized. Reason-based representations also shed
light on an important but under-appreciated phenomenon: the
“underdetermination of moral theory by deontic content”.

A preprint is available at:

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/75232/1/List_What%20matters%20and%20how%20it%20matters_2017.pdf

The official published version is available at:

http://philreview.dukejournals.org/content/126/4/421.full.pdf+html

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