Alastair Norcross

Alastair Norcross is an Associate Professor of philosophy specializing in normative ethics, applied ethics, and political philosophy.

In 2007, he transferred to University of Colorado at Boulder from Rice University, where he had been since 2002, after teaching for ten years at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he was the Easterwood Associate Professor of Philosophy. Before that, he taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, while finishing his Ph.D. at Syracuse University in 1991.

In ethics, Norcross defends a version of act utilitarianism known as scalar utilitarianism, which is the theory that there are no right or wrong actions, only better or worse actions ranked along a continuum from the action (or actions) that contributes most to overall utility to the action (or actions) that contributes the least.

• (2006) 'Scalar Act-Utilitarianism'. In Henry R. West (ed.) Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism. ISBN 978-1-4051-1949-8
• (2006) 'Reasons Without Demands: Rethinking Rightness'. In Jamie Dreier (ed.) Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory. ISBN 978-1-4051-0179-0
• (2005) 'Peacemaking Philosophy or Appeasement? Sterba's Argument for Compromise'. International Journal of Applied Philosophy,19:2.
• (2005) 'Contextualism for Consequentialists'. Acta Analytica, 20(2).
• (2005) 'Harming in Context'. Philosophical Studies, 123 (1-2).
• (2004) 'Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal cases'. Philosophical Perspectives 18.
• (2003) 'Killing and Letting Die'. In R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics: 451-463.
• (2002) 'Contractualism and Aggregation'. Social Theory and Practice, 28 (2): 303-314.
• (1999) 'Intransitivity and the Person-Affecting Principle'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LIX (3): 769-776.
• (1998) 'Great Harms from Small Benefits Grow: How Death can be Outweighed by Headaches'. Analysis: 152-158.