Right- and wrong-making features ("moral grounds") play important normative roles, e.g. in morally apt or virtuous motivation. They have, however, been systematically misidentified. Canonical statements of our moral theories tend to summarize, rather than directly state, the full range of moral grounds posited by the theory. Further work is required to "unpack'' a general criterion of rightness and identify the features that are of ground-level moral significance. Focusing on the simple example of utilitarianism, I show how careful attention to the ground level can drastically influence how we think of our moral theories.
I'm testing out the PhilPeople "sessions" feature with this paper, so you're welcome to comment over there if you also want to try it out. (Blogged or emailed suggestions are also always welcome, of course!)
P.S. It seems PhilPeople automatically "invites" everyone you make a session visible to (which in this case was my entire PhilPeople "peer network"). So apologies to anyone who receives an unwanted email invitation -- I didn't intend that to happen!
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