In his 1995 'Mind' paper, Fred Feldman claims that our central philosophical way of thinking about the connections between responsibility and desert and between time and desert is misguided. I believe that we have the resources to handle Feldman's doubts, and maintain the conceptual connection between responsibility and desert. My detailed interpretation of the connection between responsibility and desert satisfies our intuitions concerning Feldman's examples, and accords with the general structure of our thought concerning justice, insofar as it involves desert. I also briefly consider the issue of time and desert.

In 'Mind' of January 1996 I proposed an outline of a theory of responsibility and desert, which I claimed both a) enables us to see responsibility as a condition for desert even in the major apparent counter-examples such as those proposed by Fred Feldman; and b) represents the ordinary way of seeing the connection between responsibility and desert better than previous formulations. Behind this proposal lies a crucial distinction between 'two ways' in which responsibility can be a condition for desert. From Feldman's reply in the same issue it seems that this crucial distinction was not sufficiently brought out in my paper. This I attempt to do here.

All ethical systems seem to call for more ethical sensitivity. The dangers to personal life of too much ethical sensitivity have received much attention lately, in attempts to limit the demands of morality. But the ethical dangers of ethical sensitivity have hardly been noticed. I argue that, in a number of different ways, too much ethical sensitivity can be ethically harmful. The normative, the psychological and the pragmatic pictures are far more complex than is commonly realised.

I argue, counter-intuitively, that under certain conditions many people are under some moral requirement to attempt to bring children into being (in order to raise them). There is only rarely a strict obligation to have children, but more moderate, inclining moral considerations in favour of having children, have a place in our moral world. I begin by considering a large number of arguments of favour and against the possibility of an obligation to have children. Then I examine when the weight of one set of arguments is greater. And I conclude by pointing out some general lessons from the discussion.

The serious moral condemnation and legal penalization of blackmail has often been considered paradoxical. This practice, after all, often simply combines two fairly innocuous elements; asking for money or other favors, and threatening to do something which one is "allowed" to do. Michael Clark has recently argued that previous discussions of this issue were fundamentally mistaken, and that there is no paradox about blackmail. The relation between the two elements, Clark argues, brings forth something new, and thus there is nothing paradoxical about the fact that "in themselves" the elements which make up the practice of blackmail are permissible. I argue for the paradoxality of blackmail in a different way, which considers the practice as a whole, and is not based only on the permissibility of the elements of ordinary blackmail when taken separately.

I consider Thomas Nagel's treatment of the issue of the grounds for compensation, i.e., of what counts as a basis for the obligation to compensate people in a (more or less ideal) political system, in his recent "Equality and Impartiality". I argue that on the issue of compensation Nagel is unconvincing, and that he reflects here much of liberal thinking. It emerges that a consistent egalitarianism must see the grounds for compensation in very wide way, and this radically affects the acceptability of such a position.

I argue that utilitarianism has serious difficulties in accommodating the central human need of maintaining one's identity, over a long period of time. There is no clear reason in utilitarian terms for remaining oneself, and there might well be good reason for transforming oneself into someone else. If my arguments are convincing being a utilitarian becomes, if not incoherent, then at least very unattractive for most human beings.

Cynicism has a bad reputation. The cynic is not only after teaching us something new about morality, but seeks to unmask it, claiming that it derives from illicit and undeclared motivations. I explore whether there is anything we can learn from cynicism about morality, particularly about the content of morality. I distinguish between three basic forms of skepticism and the parallel forms of cynicism. I then examine four examples of suggestive ethical cynicism. Finally, I try to see in which areas ethical cynicism is likely to be more enlightening.

TBA

Hard determinism is commonly thought to have grave moral consequences. Without attempting to fully deny this, I explore a previously unnoticed apparent ethical advantage of a belief in hard determinism. The lack of concern with personal desert which accompanies belief in hard determinism seems to make possible a form of purer morality' than ordinary morality. In the process I briefly consider some perplexities of Kantianism, the personal' difficulty of being a hard determinist, and the question as to whether non- utilitarian ethical considerations are possible with hard determinist premises.

On the assumption that we are able to justify the institution of punishment, when people may be punished? Christopher New has recently argued that, despite our intuitions to the contrary, there is in principle nothing which forbids punishment' before the offense has been committed, i.e., prepunishment'. The issue, he argues, is only epistemological. I explore the challenge presented by New, and argue that prepunishment is deeply ethically unacceptable. The problem with prepunishment derives, in the end, from the widely recognized need to respect persons and from the unacceptability of the punishment' of the innocent.

At the core of the free will debate lies the Compatibility Question', the question of whether there can be moral responsibility in a deterministic world; or in a world without libertarian free will. Compatibilists affirm and incompatibilists deny such a possibility. This question is almost invariably discussed under an Assumption of Exclusiveness', the assumption that one must be either a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. After giving various examples of the prevalence of this assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy, I attempt to show why it is mistaken. And I try to indicate how the acceptance of the Assumption of Exclusiveness' has hindered progress in the free will debate. I conclude by outlining a Dualistic' position with regard to the Compatibility Question', a position which attempts to extract the significant insights both of compatibilism and of hard determinism, while avoiding their inadequacies.