He also had other adjunct and visiting appointments, including the University of Edinburgh 1974-5 and being a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.

He advances the following five-concept account of harm: He maintains that commonsense morality is far more concerned with prohibiting (and discouraging) evil than with requiring (or encouraging) people to enhance goods or benefits.

However, if we adopt the principle of impartiality, whereby we apply the rules without regard to who gains or loses, we extend these prohibitions to others.

[11] To determine whether a moral rule applies in a certain case or whether there is an exception, Gert advises people to follow what he calls the "two step procedure.

"[9] The first step is to ascertain all morally relevant information about the scenario at hand in order to make a justified evaluation.

[9] An example of this would be if you were to consider violating rule #9 (breaking the law) in order to run a red light.

You evaluate the scenario and notice that there are no cars around and running the red light will not cause any harm, however, you do not want other people to know that they can run red lights too, because that would lead to more car accidents, which is indirectly causing pain and death.

Moral ideals, according to Gert, are objectives to lessen the amount of harm or evil in the world.

These differ from moral rules, which are requirements that people avoid performing certain kinds of actions which produce harms to others.

Examples of moral ideals are the objectives of reducing the incidence of domestic violence or of breast cancer.

Although his moral system shares similarities to deontology, rule utilitarianism, and contractarianism, Gert does not ally himself with any of those positions.

[14] He also writes, "my view has been characterized as Kant with consequences, as Mill with publicity, and as Ross with a theory.