If you're looking for something less bite-sized...

I've officially finished a draft of my ethics term paper. I plan for there to be quite a bit of revising in the next couple weeks, but it's now at the point where it can be digested and commented on. Much of the writing has been done late at night, so some sentences are suboptimally clear at this stage, but I think my ideas and arguments are pretty much where I want them to be. So if you're interested, check it out and let me know what you think. (For some reason, a direct link from here doesn't work... geocities doesn't like blogspot, perhaps... you'll have to copy and paste. Sorry about that. http://www.geocities.com/a_pirateking/consequentialism.pdf. The title is "Utilitarianism and Second-Order Moral Judgments", and its thesis is that if we distinguish first-order moral judgment (that act is wrong) with second-order judgment (we should criticize that actor), standard act-utilitarianism gives us a very plausible account of our intuitions about the structure of morality. In particular, utilitarianism has no trouble dealing with supererogation, "tragic dilemmas", and problems from uncertainty of consequences.