In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry. In the second and third lectures he takes up the kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, critiques by Michael Bratman, John Broome, and F. M. Kamm, and Gibbard's responses.

Allan Gibbard is Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, and is Member of the American Philosophical Society, Membre Titulaire of the Institut International de Philosophie, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the Econometric Society. He is the author of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (1990), Thinking How to Live (2003), and numerous articles both in ethical theory and in such fields as theory of social choice, decision theory, evolutionary moral psychology, philosophy of mind and language, and epistemology.

• List of Contributors;


• Introduction, Barry Stroud;


• Reconciling Our Aims, Allan Gibbard:


• I. Insight, Consistency, and Plans for Living


• II. Living Together: Economic and Moral Argument


• III. Common Goals and the Ideal Social Contract;


• Appendix: The Harsanyi-like Result;


• Comments: Normative Thinking and Planning, Individual and Shared, Michael Bratman;


• Comments on Allan Gibbard, John Broome;


• Should You Save This Child? Gibbard on Intuitions, Contractualism, and Strains of Commitment, F. M. Kamm;


• Reply to Commentators, Allan Gibbard


• Bibliography


• Index