ABSTRACT
No decision is more important for practical ethics than that by which we come to embrace or reject utilitarianism. For although non-utilitarian principles are apparently deeply embedded in our ordinary morality, theoretical justification often seems hard to find; and some common intuitions are in danger of being disregarded on theoretical grounds. I want to consider two of these intuitions, and to defend them. The first is that there is a morally relevant distinction between what we do and what we allow to happen, and the second that there is a similarly relevant distinction between what we aim at and what we foresee as the result of what we do. I believe it is rather generally thought that the moral relevance of these distinctions is impossible to maintain. I shall, however, deny this, arguing that both differences are defensibly as well as widely recognised in the moral judgments we ordinarily make.
