Peter Unger

"The Preservationist holds that, to save others from suffering truly serious losses, like the loss of life or limb, often its wrong to lie, and to cheat, and to steal, even though nobody will ever suffer much from your doing any of that. By contrast, the Liberationist holds that, when necessary to lessen serious suffering, then, provided nobody suffers seriously in consequence of your so doing, its always morally good to do all those unruly things and more."

"Here, we may well distinguish between Extreme Liberationism and Open Liberationism. So, as regards stealing, for example, the Extreme view holds that ... not only is it good to steal, but its wrong not to do so. By contrast, Open Liberationism holds that its at least good to steal and, while its open to the (epistemic) possibility that its wrong not to do so, its also open to the possibility that its not wrong. While Im inclined to think that, in the end, even the Extreme view is correct, in this book its enough to argue for Open Liberationism."

"[O]rdinarily, and in most philosophical works, too, we take it that each individual experience is perfectly private to, or is enjoyed only by, just that very individual [...]. But, for both so many philosophers and so many philosophically innocent thinkers, that may be no more than an enormously widespread and deeply ingrained error. In point of fact, the real situation may be that each of these experientially similar individuals is similarly related to the very same single experience [...] with me and all my overlappers, it really may be that each of us is having—in the way of having quite peculiar to experiences—on and the same individual experience."