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David Phillips , Sidgwickian Ethics (Oxford : University Press , 2011), pp. xii + 163.
Sidgwickian Ethics is a very good book for approaching Sidgwick's problem of the dualism of practical reason. David Phillips starts, in his introduction, with a good description of the problematic issues in Sidgwickian ethics. He says at the outset that Sidgwick is a non-naturalist rather than an error theorist. The problem of Sidgwick's relationship to utilitarianism and egoism is exposed in a clear way. It is obvious that, for Phillips, Sidgwick tried desperately to circumvent the problem of the dualism of practical reason.
Phillips makes numerous interesting contentions, including the claim that Sidgwick overestimates the success of having reconciled utilitarianism and intuitionism and underestimates the compatibility of his criterial argument with common sense. In the second chapter, Sidgwick's metaethics is developed and analysed. Sidgwick's concept of moral epistemology is then explained in the third chapter, which introduces the two main problems treated by Phillips, namely utilitarianism versus dogmatic intuitionism (chapter 4) and utilitarianism versus egoism (chapter 5).
For Phillips, Sidgwick is right to think that non-naturalism supports intuitionism, though Sidgwick is wrong to see it as justifying intuitionism. Intuitively trying to justify any non-naturalistic normative theory is exceedingly problematic. Phillips then shows how Sidgwick tries to avoid such difficulties by basing utilitarianism on individualism and common sense grounded in part on basic rights, including especially the right to freedom from interference (Methods of Ethics, book III, ch. IV, §4).
Phillips discusses Sidgwick's famous criterial argument at length, claiming accurately that while utilitarianism meets the four criteria establishing it as a fundamental moral axiom, common-sense morality fails to satisfy these criteria. Phillips therefore concludes that Sidgwick's use of common sense morality to supplement the validity of utilitarianism is...