Some years ago, in what has since become a widely known and highly regarded essay, Gregory Kavka articulated what he called three “paradoxes of deterrence.” In brief, he claimed to have identified three quite plausible and eminently defensible moral claims, each of which, he argued, was logically inconsistent with some other very appealing moral claim; and he maintained, further, that what was to be learned from his reflections was that the latter three claims, though widely accepted by both philosophers and ordinary people, were not strictly (i.e., universally) true. Showing this was particularly important, Kavka felt, because the claims whose truth he wanted to call into question actually functioned, in many moral systems, as critically important “bridge principles” that were supposed to enable us to understand the connection, in a given system, between principles for morally assessing human actions and principles for morally assessing human agents and their psychological states.

I have discussed this famous essay at length elsewhere, trying to show in what respects I think Kavka was right in what he argued there and in what respects he may be wrong. In addition, I have tried to show, in a number of other essays, the implications, both for moral theory and for certain other areas of philosophy, of those parts of Kavka's doctrine that seem to me to be true.