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15Social and Political Philosophy: Contemporary ReadingsCengage Learning. 1999.[TofC cont.] Social ideals: Justice, A utilitarian theory of justice / J.S. Mill, Egalitarianism with changed motivation / G. Cohen; Equality, Multidimensional equality / M. Walzer, Equality of capacity / A. Sen; Liberty, rights, property, and self-ownership, A defense of the primacy of liberty rights / L. Lomasky, Atomism and the primacy of rights / C. Taylor -- Social institutions: Education, Educating about familial values / W. Galston, For vouchers and parental choice / M. Friedman; Family, …Read more
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7Effort and imaginationIn Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Desert and justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 205--217. 2003.Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.
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17Health Care and the 'Deserving Poor'Hastings Center Report 13 (1): 9-12. 1983.The idea that some poor persons "deserve" to be helped while others do not has long been influential in the USA. In the nineteenth century, "paupers" were relegated to poorhouse and subjected to onerous conditions for relief, while the blind, the deaf-mute, and others were helped in much less humiliating ways. A similar distinction underlay the categories of the comprehensive social Security Act of 1935; and its continuation has motivated various attempts to revise the welfare system by redrawin…Read more
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39Armstrong and the interdependence of the mentalPhilosophical Quarterly 27 (July): 227-235. 1977.
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70Kripke, cartesian intuitions, and materialismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (2): 227-38. 1977.In his influential “Naming and Necessity,” Saul Kripke has deployed a new sort of analytical apparatus in support of the classical Cartesian argument that minds and bodies must be distinct because they can be imagined separately. In the initial section of this paper, I shall first paraphrase Kripke's version of that argument, and then suggest a way in which even one who accepts all of its philosophical presuppositions may avoid its conclusion. In the second section, I shall defend this suggestio…Read more
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55Blameworthy Action and CharacterPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2): 381-392. 2002.A number of philosophers from Hume on have claimed that it does not make sense to blame people for acting badly unless their bad acts were rooted in their characters. In this paper, I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this claim. The claim is false, I argue, if it is taken to mean that agents can only be blamed for bad acts when those acts are manifestations of character paws. However, what is both true and important is the weaker claim that an act is not blameworthy unless it is ro…Read more
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63Punishment as Societal DefensePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (2): 548-550. 1999.Phillip Montague’s point of departure is a simple but illuminating way of conceptualizing the fact that creates the need for punishment—namely, that each society contains some people who will wrongfully kill or injure others unless held in check by a system of penalties. This fact, Montague argues, in effect confronts each society with a forced choice: either allow potential criminals to inflict harm on others, or else prevent them from doing so by maintaining a system of punishment that will ha…Read more
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72Subsidized abortion: Moral rights and moral compromisePhilosophy and Public Affairs 10 (4): 361-372. 1981.
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19On event-identityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 52 (1). 1974.This Article does not have an abstract
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104Kantian fairnessPhilosophical Issues 15 (1). 2005.It is widely thought to be unfair to hold people responsible, or to blame or punish them, for wrongful acts or omissions that are beyond their control. Because this principle is often taken to support incompatibilism, and because it has led many to deny the possibility of moral luck, we might expect its normative underpinnings to have been carefully scrutinized. However, surprisingly, they have not. In the current paper, I will try to fill this gap by first reconstructing, and then criticizing, …Read more
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44Ethics: Essential Readings in Moral Theory (edited book)Routledge. 2012.Ethics: Essential Readings in Moral Theory is an outstanding anthology of the most important topics, theories and debates in ethics, compiled by one of the leading experts in the field. It includes sixty-six extracts covering the central domains of ethics: why be moral? the meaning of moral language morality and objectivity consequentialism deontology virtue and character value and well-being moral psychology applications: including abortion, famine relief and consent. Included are both classica…Read more
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198Real-world luck egalitarianismSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (1): 218-232. 2010.Luck egalitarians maintain that inequalities are always unjust when they are due to luck, but are not always unjust when they are due to choices for which the parties are responsible. In this paper, I argue that the two halves of this formula do not fit neatly together, and that we arrive at one version of luck egalitarianism if we begin with the notion of luck and interpret responsible choice in terms of its absence, but a very different version if we begin with the notion of responsible choice…Read more
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32Predicting PerformanceSocial Philosophy and Policy 5 (1): 188. 1987.Equal opportunity requires that persons be selected for desirable positions on the basis of their qualifications. To assess an applicant's qualifications, we must both predict how well he would perform if chosen, and compare his projected performance with that of his rivals. Since we lack direct access to future performance, all such predictions must be based on some past– or present-tense information about the applicants, together with some relevant supporting information. But is any and every …Read more
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41My Profession and Its DutiesThe Monist 79 (4): 471-487. 1996.Much that is written about professional ethics concerns the requirements imposed by specific roles. We are often told what professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers should do—or, alternatively, what a good doctor, lawyer, or teacher will do. In this paper, I shall try to clarify these claims as they pertain to one particular role—that of a faculty member at a college or university—by asking what special requirements the role imposes, and why faculty members are obligated to live up to…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |