...in matters of this kind it is best for each to look after his own, like house insurance.) But this construction provides the agent with one thought too...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife. Perhaps others will have other feelings about this case. But the point is that somewhere (and...

...Williams overstates the significance of constitutive commitments when he writes (about the rescue case): "It might have been hoped by some (for instance, by...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife," as the latter reasoning "provides the agent with one thought too many" (ML 18). But the second...

...accordingly in such circumstances. Commenting on this hypothetical scenario, Williams writes: But this construction provides the agent with one thought too...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife.4'' Although the particular "construction" to which Williams refers is a rule utilitarian one...

...situations of this kind it is at least all right (morally permissible) to save one's wife. . . . But this construction provides the agent with one thought too...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife.5 On one natural reading of this passage, Williams is making a strong assumption: he is assuming,...

..."has one thought too many." Williams recommends that in such a situation the "motivating thought . . . would be the thought that it was his wife, not that...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife." Moral Luck, p. 18. I cannot empathize with this view. Suppose his wife is a highly objectionable...

...principle can legitimate his preference." "This construction," he elaborates in an oft-cited passage, "provides the agent with one thought too many: it...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's 14. But see Susan Wolf's "Morality and Partiality," Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1991): 243-259. "To...

...having determined that moral duty permits or requires him to. As Williams puts it, the latter scenario "provides the agent with one thought too many: it...that in situations of this kind it is permissible [or morally required] to save one's wife" (BAO Williams, Moral Luck [Cambridge: Cambridge University...

...stranger in an emergency, Williams (1981: 18) attacks universalist reasons for preferring the former: "It might have been hoped by some (for instance, by...situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife." " Gewirth (1988: 298). is that we want our argument for special devotion to friends, family,...

...führen kann, sich zu fragen, ob es ihm gestattet sei, seine eigene Frau zu retten. [But, VZ] this construction provides the agent with one thought too...been hoped by some (for instance, by his wife) that bis motivating thought, fully spelled out, would be the thought that it was his wife, not that it was...

...spelled out, would be [just] the thought that it was his wife." If he adds to this the further thought that in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife, Williams admonishes that the man is having "one thought too many." In other words, there is something...