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Remember the fifties? That was, among other things, when it was outré for moral philosophers acutally to use moral discourse and de rigueur to theorize about its use. It was when we all read Stevenson and Hare and learned to believe that moral judgments had no truth values and were used to express emotion or to issue imperatives. It was when we came to realize that all previous moral philosophy rested on the mistake of supposing that moral judgments were propositions. How remote it all seems now. Today we write about social justice, sex, death, politics as though there were no question this might be improper. We no longer have the time and patience for the idler and more distant questions of the metalevel. It is correct certainly to call this progress but at a certain price. We tired of the old questions but we never learned how to answer them. The very grip of the noncognitivist fad made illuminating answers unlikely. Perhaps now that the fad is buried and forgotten we can go back to the issues and deal with them in a more fruitful manner.

As little as a decade ago most moral philosophers still believed that the exercise of their craft did not include defending positions on actual moral problems. More recently they have come to their senses, one happy result being a spate of articles in the last few years on the subject of abortion.1 These discussions have contributed much toward an understanding of the abortion issue, but for the most part they have «not attempted a full analysis of the morality of abortion.2 Such an analysis is too large a task for a single paper, but a sketch of it will be undertaken here, the details to be filled in elsewhere.3 The moral problem which abortion poses results from some familiar biological and social contingencies. Because homo sapiens is a mammal the young of the species are carried by the female during the period of initial

In the situations canvassed I have argued that (a) the dominant aim of the utilitarian will be the establishment of a fair procedure, (b) under radical uncertainty cooperation will constitute his best bet, and (c) when he knowsthat all others will cooperate it is still an open question whether he will slack, and if under some conditions he does so he does not then act unfairly. It is wise to bear in mind, however, that an enormous number of possible situations, mostly mixtures of the pure cases, simply have not been considered. It is not inconceivable that in one of them the utilitarian will clearly act unfairly; I am inclined to think not, but the possibility is not entirely ruled out.

This is a book built round an argument. Several variants of the argument are offered, and I shall consider but one of them. It is directed against the following act utilitarian principle:AU: An act is right if and only if it would have best consequences (i.e. consequences at least as good as those of any alternative act open to the agent)The argument may be freely rendered as follows. Suppose that we have an agent, Smith, in a society, S, such that the following conditions are satisfied:C1: Smith accepts AU and attempts always to act in accordance with itC2: Smith is rational: he understands the implications of accepting AU and applies AU correctlyC3: No other person in S accepts AUC4: All others in S know that C1 and C2 obtainC5: All others in S are rational: they understand the implications of Smith's accepting AUC: All others in S are tolerant of Smith's accepting AU: they do not criticize him for acting in accordance with itC7: Smith knows that C3 – C6 obtainC1 – C7 collectively define the position of an act utilitarian in a non-act utilitarian society, with certain assumptions as to rationality and tolerance. Then the thesis is that under C1 – C7 Smith will sometimes fail to do the act with best consequences. His very acceptance and correct application of AU (under the other conditions) conspire to prevent the production of certain good consequences which would otherwise be possible.