ABSTRACT
However, the connection between views expressed in the present book about morality and what might be said, along parallel lines, about (individual) rationality is not limited to the two analogies mentioned above. Imagine a pair of examiners who have just had the unenviable task of telling a dissertation candidate that his dissertation is unacceptable and requires the most extensive revision of aims and methods in order to stand a chance of acceptance. However, this is a case of rational luck only if we imagine that the conjecturing examiner does not attribute his lack of paranoia, his relative non-irrationality, to some sort of intuitiveness on his part in the original situation where he made his conjecture. Sidgwick, of course, provided, and laid great emphasis on providing, moral-psychological (and metaphysical) underpinnings for his defence (to the extent it was a defence) of utilitarianism, and this aspect of Sidgwick’s work has been an inspiration to philosophers of many different persuasions.
