Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it's so good, why isn't it just obligatory?), Horton's All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm's Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi‐dimensional and comparative.

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Consequentialists think we always have to make things go best: if I can save five trapped workers only by throwing you in front of a runaway trolley, I have to do it. Indeed, if the only way to save them is for you to throw yourself, then you have to do it-so long as it's really for the best. 1 Deontologists disagree with this view in two ways. First, they believe in restrictions, which tend to make acts wrong even if their outcome is fabulous. For example, you have rights against harm, which restrict my choices by making it wrong for me to save the five at your expense.What about saving them at your own expense? You don't violate any rights by throwing yourself onto the tracks. But that kind of sacrifice doesn't seem obligatory; it seems optional. Deontologists express this by saying that you have a prerogative not to harm yourself. Prerogatives tend make it permissible, rather than wrong, to do acts with a suboptimal outcome.Restrictions and prerogatives appear to be intimately linked. I may not kill you; you may choose not to kill yourself. These don't sound like unrelated facts. Instead morality seems to be saying: when the question is whether to harm you, it is you who should get to decide. (Within reasonable limitsyou aren't attacking anyone, the stakes aren't stratospheric, etc.) But this leads deontologists to a dilemma. Without a common source for restrictions and prerogatives, their view is disunified. And yet it is hard to find a single source for both.1 I restrict my discussion to maximizing consequentialists ("satisficers" like Slote (1984a) believe in prerogatives), and set aside issues raised by uncertainty as well as by rule-centric theories (Hooker, 2000). Later I discuss "consequentializers" who believe in rights against harm.

There are plenty of classic paradoxes about conditional obligations, like the duty to be gentle if one is to murder, and about “supererogatory” deeds beyond the call of duty. But little has been said about the intersection of these topics. We develop the first general account of conditional supererogation, with the power to solve familiar puzzles as well as several that we introduce. Our account, moreover, flows from two familiar ideas: that conditionals restrict quantification and that supererogation emerges from a clash between justifying and requiring reasons.

Consequentialists say we may always promote the good. Deontologists object: not if that means killing one to save five. “Consequentializers” reply: this act is wrong, but it is not for the best, since killing is worse than letting die. I argue that this reply undercuts the “compellingness” of consequentialism, which comes from an outcome-based view of action that collapses the distinction between killing and letting die.

According to a familiar (alleged) requirement on practical reason, one must believe a proposition if one is to take it for granted in reasoning about what to do. This paper explores a related requirement, not on thinking but on acting-that one must accept a goal if one is to count as acting for its sake. This is the acceptance requirement. Though it is endorsed by writers as diverse as Christine Korsgaard, Donald Davidson, and Talbot Brewer, I argue that it is vulnerable to counterexamples, in which agents act in light of ends that they do not accept, but are still merely considering. For instance, a young professional may keep a job option open not because she definitely wants or intends to take it, but just because she is considering taking it. I try to show (1) that such examples are not easily resisted; (2) that they present challenges specifically for Brewer, Davidson, and especially Korsgaard; and (3) that the examples also raise fresh, non-partisan questions in action theory. What is considering, exactly? How could it fall short of acceptance while still guiding behavior? How can we act for an end before thinking it through?

In the classic Miners case, an agent subjectively ought to do what they know is objectively wrong. This case shows that the subjective and objective 'oughts' are somewhat independent. But there remains a powerful intuition that the guidance of objective 'oughts' is more authoritative-so long as we know what they tell us. We argue that this intuition must be given up in light of a monotonicity principle, which undercuts the rationale for saying that objective 'oughts' are an authoritative guide for agents and advisors.