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Anton Markoč

American University of Central Asia, General Education, Faculty Member

Harvard University, Philosophy, Fellow in Philosophy

Central European University, Philosophy, Alumnus

University of Rijeka, Center for Advanced Studies, Post-Doc

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Anton Markoč is Associate Professor of General Education Program at the American University of Central Asia. He holds a PhD and an MA in Philosophy from Central European University. In the past, he was a Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Rijeka. He specializes in ethics and has a keen interest in political philosophy and philosophy and literature.

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Books by Anton Markoč

Moralni kontraktualizam (Moral Contractualism, ed. and trans. by Anton Markoč. Belgrade and Novi Sad: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju and Akademska knjiga, 2018)

The volume provides an introduction to contemporary moral contractualism for audience in ex-Yugos... more The volume provides an introduction to contemporary moral contractualism for audience in ex-Yugoslavia. It contains my translations into Serbo-Croatian of T. M. Scanlon’s “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” and Derek Parfit’s “Justifiability to Each Person”, and my review article “Scanlon’s Contractualism as Ethics of Justifiability” (“Skenlonov kontraktualizam kao etika opravdivosti”), as an introduction.

Articles by Anton Markoč

Draining the pond: why Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor is self-defeating (Philosophical Studies, Vol. 177, No. 7, 2020, pp. 1953-1970.)

Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating.... more Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning child from a pond at the expense of ruining your shoes and that you ought to aid the world’s poor if you thereby do not sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance. Taking the latter principle seriously would lead you to let the child in front of you drown whenever you could thereby save more children in the developing world. Though Singer can defend the duty to aid the world’s poor starting from consequentialist principles requiring you to make things go best in the impartial sense, he cannot have it invoking the commonsense judgment about what you ought to do in the pond case. There is no sound path from commonsense morality to Singer’s principles of beneficence.

Intentions, Permissibility, and Choice (Res Publica, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2018, pp. 493-508.)

T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s rea... more T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s reasons for acting, are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions. According to one of his arguments in favor of that thesis, it can be permissible to act for one reason rather than another only if one can choose to act for a reason but, since that choice is impossible since believing as will is impossible, one can be permitted to act but one cannot be permitted to act for a reason. This paper aims to show that that argument is unsound. It first argues that the assumption that choosing an action is necessary for it being an object of a moral duty or permission cannot be made consistent with Scanlon’s idea that the same does not hold for an action being an object of blame. It then argues that even if direct control over forming beliefs is impossible, it is not impossible to choose one’s reason for action and, therefore, to be permitted or forbidden to act for it.

Considering Intentions in Decision Making: What Is So Odd about It? (Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2017, pp. 481–498.)

An influential objection to the view that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral p... more An influential objection to the view that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of actions states that if intentions were relevant to permissibility in such a way, one would have to take them into account in decision making, which would be odd (in some morally relevant sense of ‘oddness’). The paper outlines and assesses three candidates for the oddness: that considering intentions in decision making is an unordinary practice, that it is impossible or conceptually confused, and that it assigns intentions the weight as moral considerations that they intuitively do not have. The paper rejects the first two and shows that the third is probably what motivates most critics of the relevance of intentions who raise this objection. If this is correct, the objection is a non-starter as it assumes what it has to prove. Towards the end, it is argued that the objection does not serve as a plausible error theory either.

Skenlonov kontraktualizam: pregled debate (Theoria: časopis srpskog filozofskog društva, Vol. 60, No. 2, 2017, pp. 68-84)

Ova esej daje sažet prikaz kontraktualizma, uticajne etičke teorije američkog filozofa Tomasa Ske... more Ova esej daje sažet prikaz kontraktualizma, uticajne etičke teorije američkog filozofa Tomasa Skenlona (Thomas Scanlon). Skenlon je predstavio kontraktualizam u eseju “Kontraktualizam i utilitarizam” iz 1982, da bi ga kasnije razvio u knjizi “Što dugujemo jedni drugima” iz 1998. Kontraktualizam prvo razmatramo u kontekstu ugovornih teorija moralnosti. Zatim opisujemo njegove osobenosti kao metaetičke i normativne etičke teorije. Na kraju ukazujemo na najvažnije primjedbe ovoj teoriji, uz preporuke o uputnoj literaturu za buduće istraživače.

Intentions and Permissibility: A Confusion of Moral Categories? (Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2017, pp. 577–591.)

A common objection to the view that one’s intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral p... more A common objection to the view that one’s intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions is that it confuses permissibility with other categories of moral evaluation, in particular, with blameworthiness or character assessment. The objection states that a failure to distinguish what one is permitted to do from what kind of a person one is, or from what one can be held blameworthy for, leads one to believe that intentions are relevant to permissibility when in fact they are only relevant to blameworthiness or to character assessment. In this paper, I argue that this objection is mistaken. I defend two claims: first, that a confusion of moral categories is not the source of the view that intentions are relevant to permissibility and, second, that in conjunction with some other premises a confusion does not undermine that view.

Book reviews by Anton Markoč

Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon, edited by R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (Mind, Vol. 122, No. 488, 2013, pp. 1208–1213.)

PhD dissertation by Anton Markoč

It's Not the Thought that Counts: An Essay on the Irrelevance of Intentions to the Moral Permissibility of Actions (Central European University, 2016)

The dissertation is a defense of the view that intentions with which we act are non-derivatively ... more The dissertation is a defense of the view that intentions with which we act are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of our actions. What we intend might indicate what kind of people we are, or whether and why we should be open to praise or blame, but it is never a reason why we are morally permitted or forbidden to act. The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and similar moral principles are rejected. The most prominent arguments in favor of the irrelevance of intentions—those pointing to a category mistake, the impossibility of choosing intentions, or to the oddness of considering them in decision making or of intervening in actions of others due to them—are also shown to be flawed. The conclusion reached is that the strongest evidence for the irrelevance of intentions is negative, based on the failure of case-based, principle-driven, and theoretical justifications to the contrary.

Syllabi by Anton Markoč

Totalitarianism and the Human Condition (American University of Central Asia, 2020)

The course examines humanist responses to totalitarianism. It covers the phenomenologies of perpe... more The course examines humanist responses to totalitarianism. It covers the phenomenologies of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, the moral issues of humanity, evil, dignity, responsibility, etc. raised by the Nazi Camps and the Gulag, and totalitarianism more generally. Readings include texts by Primo Levi, Varlam Shalamov, Hannah Arendt, Jean Amery, Karl Jaspers, Theodor Adorno, Félix Guattari, and Giorgio Agamben. Films of Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Bernardo Bertolucci will be discussed in relation to the readings. There are no preconditions apart from high school knowledge about Nazism and Stalinism.

Moral Imagination Through Literature: F. M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (American University of Central Asia, 2019)

The course examines the multitude of values in our lives, the relations between them, and the mea... more The course examines the multitude of values in our lives, the relations between them, and the meaning they espouse through great works of fiction. After a brief encounter with philosophical defenses of studying moral philosophy through literature (Nussbaum, Diamond, Eaton, etc.), we shall embark on a close reading of one major philosophical novel, which for this semester is Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Students are expected to enrich and cultivate their moral imagination and sensibilities, unravel the intricacies of others’ moral psychologies, recognize and ponder on rival reasons for action, challenge their complacent moral judgments, and ultimately be able to distinguish morality from moralization. It is expected that students become familiar with some dominant metaethical and normative ethical views along the way. For this semester, special attention will be devoted to moral nihilism, utilitarianism, rational egoism, Nietzschean ethics and its misapplications, the role of love and grace in Christian morality, and the foundations of moral equality in a secular age.

Today's Moral Issues (American University of Central Asia, 2018-2019)

The course offers an introduction to three prominent moral controversies in today’s world: killin... more The course offers an introduction to three prominent moral controversies in today’s world: killing non-human sentient animals (for food, medical experimentation, etc.), killing human embryos and fetuses (abortion), and killing ill people (euthanasia). We shall discuss questions such as:

What is the value of human and animal lives?
May we kill animals for food?
Is speciesism similar to racism?
Does a human embryo have a greater right to protection than an adult chimpanzee?
When, if ever, is abortion justified?
Is fetus a person? Will it ever become one?
Does a person have an absolute right to decide what happens in and to their body?
When, if ever, may physicians assist their patients to die?
When, if ever, may they kill them without their consent?

This is a philosophy course, in particular a course in practical (applied) ethics. The course aims to unpack and assess the best contemporary philosophical arguments for competing answers to these and similar questions. We shall deal only with secular views or religion-inspired views that do not appeal to the supernatural. There will also be an opportunity to discuss normative ethical theories underlying these arguments, such as utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics, as well as the fundamental metaethical questions, such as what morality is and why we should care about it.

Contemporary Political Thought (American University of Central Asia, 2017-2018)

What is justice? What is freedom? Does equality matter? Why obey the law? Why democracy? These ar... more What is justice? What is freedom? Does equality matter? Why obey the law? Why democracy? These are some of the main questions which political theory deals with. This course gives a survey of the most important contemporary answers to such questions on an introductory level. It is does not cover the history of political thought or particular political ideologies apart from when their content intersects with contemporary political theory. The course aims to embody both Analytical and Continental traditions of political thought. It discusses contemporary philosophical defenses of liberalism, libertarianism, socialism, as well as the main trends in recent discussions on global justice, political obligation, democratic theory, and multiculturalism. The course ends with topics of nation, race, and biopower.

Ethical Theory (University of Donja Gorica, 2015)

How am I to live? What ought I to do? What’s morally right, and what’s wrong? Why be moral? These... more How am I to live? What ought I to do? What’s morally right, and what’s wrong? Why be moral? These are questions that occupy the minds of most people at one or another point in their lives. They are also some of the central questions which a philosophical discipline called ethics (or moral philosophy) aims to answer in a systematic manner. This is an introductory course to ethical theory: it deals with the most important contemporary answers to such questions. We shall not delve into applied ethics apart from discussing some practical implications of some ethical theories. We shall also discuss the history of ethics only to the extent that it helps us better understand some view or argument.

Moralni kontraktualizam (Moral Contractualism, ed. and trans. by Anton Markoč. Belgrade and Novi Sad: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju and Akademska knjiga, 2018)

The volume provides an introduction to contemporary moral contractualism for audience in ex-Yugos... more The volume provides an introduction to contemporary moral contractualism for audience in ex-Yugoslavia. It contains my translations into Serbo-Croatian of T. M. Scanlon’s “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” and Derek Parfit’s “Justifiability to Each Person”, and my review article “Scanlon’s Contractualism as Ethics of Justifiability” (“Skenlonov kontraktualizam kao etika opravdivosti”), as an introduction.

Draining the pond: why Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor is self-defeating (Philosophical Studies, Vol. 177, No. 7, 2020, pp. 1953-1970.)

Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating.... more Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning child from a pond at the expense of ruining your shoes and that you ought to aid the world’s poor if you thereby do not sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance. Taking the latter principle seriously would lead you to let the child in front of you drown whenever you could thereby save more children in the developing world. Though Singer can defend the duty to aid the world’s poor starting from consequentialist principles requiring you to make things go best in the impartial sense, he cannot have it invoking the commonsense judgment about what you ought to do in the pond case. There is no sound path from commonsense morality to Singer’s principles of beneficence.

Intentions, Permissibility, and Choice (Res Publica, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2018, pp. 493-508.)

T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s rea... more T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s reasons for acting, are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions. According to one of his arguments in favor of that thesis, it can be permissible to act for one reason rather than another only if one can choose to act for a reason but, since that choice is impossible since believing as will is impossible, one can be permitted to act but one cannot be permitted to act for a reason. This paper aims to show that that argument is unsound. It first argues that the assumption that choosing an action is necessary for it being an object of a moral duty or permission cannot be made consistent with Scanlon’s idea that the same does not hold for an action being an object of blame. It then argues that even if direct control over forming beliefs is impossible, it is not impossible to choose one’s reason for action and, therefore, to be permitted or forbidden to act for it.

Considering Intentions in Decision Making: What Is So Odd about It? (Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2017, pp. 481–498.)

An influential objection to the view that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral p... more An influential objection to the view that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of actions states that if intentions were relevant to permissibility in such a way, one would have to take them into account in decision making, which would be odd (in some morally relevant sense of ‘oddness’). The paper outlines and assesses three candidates for the oddness: that considering intentions in decision making is an unordinary practice, that it is impossible or conceptually confused, and that it assigns intentions the weight as moral considerations that they intuitively do not have. The paper rejects the first two and shows that the third is probably what motivates most critics of the relevance of intentions who raise this objection. If this is correct, the objection is a non-starter as it assumes what it has to prove. Towards the end, it is argued that the objection does not serve as a plausible error theory either.

Skenlonov kontraktualizam: pregled debate (Theoria: časopis srpskog filozofskog društva, Vol. 60, No. 2, 2017, pp. 68-84)

Ova esej daje sažet prikaz kontraktualizma, uticajne etičke teorije američkog filozofa Tomasa Ske... more Ova esej daje sažet prikaz kontraktualizma, uticajne etičke teorije američkog filozofa Tomasa Skenlona (Thomas Scanlon). Skenlon je predstavio kontraktualizam u eseju “Kontraktualizam i utilitarizam” iz 1982, da bi ga kasnije razvio u knjizi “Što dugujemo jedni drugima” iz 1998. Kontraktualizam prvo razmatramo u kontekstu ugovornih teorija moralnosti. Zatim opisujemo njegove osobenosti kao metaetičke i normativne etičke teorije. Na kraju ukazujemo na najvažnije primjedbe ovoj teoriji, uz preporuke o uputnoj literaturu za buduće istraživače.

Intentions and Permissibility: A Confusion of Moral Categories? (Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2017, pp. 577–591.)

A common objection to the view that one’s intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral p... more A common objection to the view that one’s intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions is that it confuses permissibility with other categories of moral evaluation, in particular, with blameworthiness or character assessment. The objection states that a failure to distinguish what one is permitted to do from what kind of a person one is, or from what one can be held blameworthy for, leads one to believe that intentions are relevant to permissibility when in fact they are only relevant to blameworthiness or to character assessment. In this paper, I argue that this objection is mistaken. I defend two claims: first, that a confusion of moral categories is not the source of the view that intentions are relevant to permissibility and, second, that in conjunction with some other premises a confusion does not undermine that view.

Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon, edited by R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (Mind, Vol. 122, No. 488, 2013, pp. 1208–1213.)

It's Not the Thought that Counts: An Essay on the Irrelevance of Intentions to the Moral Permissibility of Actions (Central European University, 2016)

The dissertation is a defense of the view that intentions with which we act are non-derivatively ... more The dissertation is a defense of the view that intentions with which we act are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of our actions. What we intend might indicate what kind of people we are, or whether and why we should be open to praise or blame, but it is never a reason why we are morally permitted or forbidden to act. The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and similar moral principles are rejected. The most prominent arguments in favor of the irrelevance of intentions—those pointing to a category mistake, the impossibility of choosing intentions, or to the oddness of considering them in decision making or of intervening in actions of others due to them—are also shown to be flawed. The conclusion reached is that the strongest evidence for the irrelevance of intentions is negative, based on the failure of case-based, principle-driven, and theoretical justifications to the contrary.

Totalitarianism and the Human Condition (American University of Central Asia, 2020)

The course examines humanist responses to totalitarianism. It covers the phenomenologies of perpe... more The course examines humanist responses to totalitarianism. It covers the phenomenologies of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, the moral issues of humanity, evil, dignity, responsibility, etc. raised by the Nazi Camps and the Gulag, and totalitarianism more generally. Readings include texts by Primo Levi, Varlam Shalamov, Hannah Arendt, Jean Amery, Karl Jaspers, Theodor Adorno, Félix Guattari, and Giorgio Agamben. Films of Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Bernardo Bertolucci will be discussed in relation to the readings. There are no preconditions apart from high school knowledge about Nazism and Stalinism.

Moral Imagination Through Literature: F. M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (American University of Central Asia, 2019)

The course examines the multitude of values in our lives, the relations between them, and the mea... more The course examines the multitude of values in our lives, the relations between them, and the meaning they espouse through great works of fiction. After a brief encounter with philosophical defenses of studying moral philosophy through literature (Nussbaum, Diamond, Eaton, etc.), we shall embark on a close reading of one major philosophical novel, which for this semester is Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Students are expected to enrich and cultivate their moral imagination and sensibilities, unravel the intricacies of others’ moral psychologies, recognize and ponder on rival reasons for action, challenge their complacent moral judgments, and ultimately be able to distinguish morality from moralization. It is expected that students become familiar with some dominant metaethical and normative ethical views along the way. For this semester, special attention will be devoted to moral nihilism, utilitarianism, rational egoism, Nietzschean ethics and its misapplications, the role of love and grace in Christian morality, and the foundations of moral equality in a secular age.

Today's Moral Issues (American University of Central Asia, 2018-2019)

The course offers an introduction to three prominent moral controversies in today’s world: killin... more The course offers an introduction to three prominent moral controversies in today’s world: killing non-human sentient animals (for food, medical experimentation, etc.), killing human embryos and fetuses (abortion), and killing ill people (euthanasia). We shall discuss questions such as:

What is the value of human and animal lives?
May we kill animals for food?
Is speciesism similar to racism?
Does a human embryo have a greater right to protection than an adult chimpanzee?
When, if ever, is abortion justified?
Is fetus a person? Will it ever become one?
Does a person have an absolute right to decide what happens in and to their body?
When, if ever, may physicians assist their patients to die?
When, if ever, may they kill them without their consent?

This is a philosophy course, in particular a course in practical (applied) ethics. The course aims to unpack and assess the best contemporary philosophical arguments for competing answers to these and similar questions. We shall deal only with secular views or religion-inspired views that do not appeal to the supernatural. There will also be an opportunity to discuss normative ethical theories underlying these arguments, such as utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics, as well as the fundamental metaethical questions, such as what morality is and why we should care about it.

Contemporary Political Thought (American University of Central Asia, 2017-2018)

What is justice? What is freedom? Does equality matter? Why obey the law? Why democracy? These ar... more What is justice? What is freedom? Does equality matter? Why obey the law? Why democracy? These are some of the main questions which political theory deals with. This course gives a survey of the most important contemporary answers to such questions on an introductory level. It is does not cover the history of political thought or particular political ideologies apart from when their content intersects with contemporary political theory. The course aims to embody both Analytical and Continental traditions of political thought. It discusses contemporary philosophical defenses of liberalism, libertarianism, socialism, as well as the main trends in recent discussions on global justice, political obligation, democratic theory, and multiculturalism. The course ends with topics of nation, race, and biopower.

Ethical Theory (University of Donja Gorica, 2015)

How am I to live? What ought I to do? What’s morally right, and what’s wrong? Why be moral? These... more How am I to live? What ought I to do? What’s morally right, and what’s wrong? Why be moral? These are questions that occupy the minds of most people at one or another point in their lives. They are also some of the central questions which a philosophical discipline called ethics (or moral philosophy) aims to answer in a systematic manner. This is an introductory course to ethical theory: it deals with the most important contemporary answers to such questions. We shall not delve into applied ethics apart from discussing some practical implications of some ethical theories. We shall also discuss the history of ethics only to the extent that it helps us better understand some view or argument.