ABSTRACT
People differ in terms of their moral worth. Some people are saints, others are vile sinners, and most fall various places in between. This chapter examines what it is that makes one individual more or less morally deserving than another. It explores about such desert sensitive moral theories is the worry that they may be logically unfit, by virtue of their very sensitivity to considerations of desert. Actually, it seems that there are several regress problems that face desert sensitive moral theories. The moral theory contains exactly one moral obligation (or its equivalent), namely, an obligation to give people what they deserve. The chapter concludes that desert sensitive theories can indeed escape the problem of indeterminacy, as well as the problem of instability, provided that they accept the view that one’s status turns only on whether or not one has the motive of duty.
