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43Reason at Work: Introductory Readings in PhilosophyCengage Learning. 1996.REASON AT WORK is designed for Introduction to Philosophy courses where the instructor prefers to use a collection of readings to introduce the broad divisions of the discipline. This edition includes sixty-two readings organized into the six major branches of philosophical inquiry: Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Mind.
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64Who Knew?: Responsiblity Without AwarenessOxford University Press USA. 2009.To be responsible for their acts, agents must both perform those acts voluntarily and in some sense know what they are doing. Of these requirements, the voluntariness condition has been much discussed, but the epistemic condition has received far less attention. In Who Knew? George Sher seeks to rectify that imbalance. The book is divided in two halves, the first of which criticizes a popular but inadequate way of understanding the epistemic condition, while the second seeks to develop a more ad…Read more
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71DesertPrinceton University Press. 1987."--Jeffrie Murphy, The Philosophical Review (forthcoming)
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46Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and PoliticsCambridge University Press. 1997.Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters, elevating their tastes, or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary aim is to articulate a conception of the good that i…Read more
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427Justifying reverse discrimination in employmentPhilosophy and Public Affairs 4 (2): 159-170. 1975.
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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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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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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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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |