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228Ethics and practical reason (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1997.These thirteen new, specially written essays by a distinguished international line-up of contributors, including some leading contemporary moral philosophers, give a rich and varied view of current work on ethics and practical reason. The three main perspectives on the topic, Kantian, Humean, and Aristotelian, are all well represented. Issues covered include: the connection between reason and motivation; the source of moral reasons and their relation to reasons of self-interest; the relation of …Read more
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36The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about whether something has a moral attribute. The thing assessed might be an action, person, institution or state of affairs, and the attribute might either be general (such as rightness or badness) or specific (such as loyalty or injustice). If I engage in this activity and make up my mind, then the result will be the formation of a psycholo…Read more
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258Stupid GoodnessIn Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.In Paradise Lost, Satan’s first sight of Eve in Eden renders him “Stupidly good”: his state is one of admirable yet inarticulate responsiveness to reasons. Turning from fiction to real life, I argue that this is an important moral phenomenon, but one that has limits. The essay examines three questions about the relation between having a reason and saying what it is – between normativity and articulacy. Is it possible to have and respond to morally relevant reasons without being able to articulat…Read more
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516Weighing reasonsIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.What is involved in weighing normative reasons against each other? One attractive answer offers us the following Simple Picture: a fact is a reason for action when it bears to an action the normative relation of counting in its favour; this relation comes in different strengths or weights; the weights of the reasons for and against an action can be summed; the reasons for performing the action are sufficient when no other action is more strongly supported, overall; the reasons are decisive when …Read more
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432Moral Virtues and Responsiveness for ReasonsIn Stewart Braun & Noell Birondo (eds.), Virtue's Reasons: New Essays on Virtue, Character, and Reasons, Routledge. pp. 11-31. 2017.Moral discourse contains judgements of two prominent kinds. It contains deontic judgements about rightness and wrongness, obligation and duty, and what a person ought to do. As I understand them, these deontic judgements are normative: they express conclusions about the bearing of normative reasons on the actions and other responses that are available to us. And it contains evaluative judgements about goodness and badness. Prominent among these are the judgements that evaluate the quality of our…Read more
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362Compromised humanitarianismIn Keith Horton & Chris Roche (eds.), Ethical Questions and International NGOs: An Exchange between Philosophers and NGOs, Springer. pp. 157-73. 2010.The circumstances that create the need for humanitarian action are rarely morally neutral. The extremes of deprivation and want that demand a humanitarian response are often themselves directly caused by acts of war, persecution or misgovernment. And even when the direct causes lie elsewhere—when suffering and loss are caused by natural disaster, endemic disease or poverty of natural resources—the explanations of why some people are afflicted, and not others, are not morally neutral. It is those…Read more
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380Demandingness and Arguments from PresuppositionIn Timothy Chappell (ed.), The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 8-34. 2009.Garrett Cullity.
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59Concern, Respect, and CooperationOxford University Press. 2018.Three things often recognized as central to morality are concern for others’ welfare, respect for their self-expression, and cooperation in worthwhile collective activity. When philosophers have proposed theories of the substance of morality, they have typically looked to one of these three sources to provide a single, fundamental principle of morality – or they have tried to formulate a master-principle for morality that combines these three ideas in some way. This book views them instead as th…Read more
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335Particularism and moral theory: Particularism and presumptive reasons: Garrett CullityAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1). 2002.Weak particularism about reasons is the view that the normative valency of some descriptive considerations varies, while others have an invariant normative valency. A defence of this view needs to respond to arguments that a consideration cannot count in favour of any action unless it counts in favour of every action. But it cannot resort to a global holism about reasons, if it claims that there are some examples of invariant valency. This paper argues for weak particularism, and presents a fram…Read more
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21Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James GriffinAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (4): 538-540. 2002.Book Information Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin. Edited by Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2000. Pp. xii + 316. Hardback, £35.
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202Equality and globalizationIn Keith Horton and Haig Patapan (eds), Reconceiving Equality in a More Global World, Routledge. pp. 6-22. 2007.Garrett Cullity.
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162The Moral Demands of AffluenceOxford University Press on Demand. 2004.Given that there is a forceful case for thinking that the affluent are morally required to devote a substantial proportion of what they have to helping the poor, Garrett Cullity examines, refines and defends an argument of this form. He then identifies its limits.
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4642BeneficenceIn Richard Ashcroft Angus Dawson & Heather Draper John McMillan (eds.), Principles of Health Care Ethics, Wiley. pp. 19-26. 2007.Garrett Cullity.
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63Sympathy, discernment, and reasonsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1). 2004.According to "the argument from discernment", sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation--because the only morally non-arbitrary one--involves treating an action's rightness as your reason for performing it. …Read more
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247Demandingness, "Ought", and Self-ShapingIn Michael Kuhler Marcel van Ackeren (ed.), The Limits of Moral Obligation: Moral Demandingness and Ought Implies Can, Routledge. pp. 147-62. 2016.Morality, it is commonly argued, cannot be extreme in the demands it makes of us, because “ought” implies “can”, and normal human psychology places limits on the extent to which most of us are capable of devoting our lives to the service of others. To evaluate this argument, we need to distinguish different uses of “ought” and “can”. Having distinguished these uses, we find that there is more than one defensible version of the principle that “ought” implies “can”. However, these distinctions can…Read more
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103Pyrrhic pyrrhonism (review)Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 720-731. 2008.Journal compilation © 20098 The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly
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469Asking Too MuchThe Monist 86 (3). 2003.Most of us think that it can be wrong not to help someone in chronic need — someone whose life you could easily save, say. And many of us find it hard to see how the remoteness of needy people, either physical, social or psychological, should make a difference to this. Maybe it makes a difference to how wrong it is not to help, but it is hard to see how it can make a difference to whether not helping is wrong.
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320Pooled beneficenceIn Michael Almeida (ed.), Imperceptible Harms and Benefits, Kluwer. pp. 9-42. 2000.There can be situations in which, if I contribute to a pool of resources for helping a large number of people, the difference that my contribution makes to any of the people helped from the pool will be imperceptible at best, and maybe even non-existent. And this can be the case where it is also true that giving the same amount directly to one of the intended beneficiaries of the pool would have made a very large difference to her. Can non-contribution to the pool be morally justified on this gr…Read more
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19Conflicts of interest in divisions of general practiceJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (12): 715-717. 2006.Community-based healthcare organisations manage competing, and often conflicting, priorities. These conflicts can arise from the multiple roles these organisations take up, and from the diverse range of stakeholders to whom they must be responsive. Often such conflicts may be titled conflicts of interest; however, what precisely constitutes such conflicts and what should be done about them is not always clear. Clarity about the duties owed by organisations and the roles they assume can help iden…Read more
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20The Moral Demands of AffluenceTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 67 (3): 598-600. 2005.Garrett Cullity.
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260Beneficence, rights and citizenshipAustralian Journal of Human Rights 9 85-105. 2006.What are we morally required to do for strangers? To answer this question – a question about the scope of requirements to aid strangers – we must first answer a question about justification: why are we required to aid them (when we are)? The main paper focuses largely on answering the question about justification, but does so in order to arrive at an answer to the question about scope. Three main issues are discussed. First, to what extent should requirements of beneficence – requirements to be…Read more
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8Sympathy, Discernment, and ReasonsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1): 37-62. 2004.According to “the argument from discernment”, sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation–because the only morally non‐arbitrary one–involves treating an action's lightness as your reason for performing it. Th…Read more
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58Agency and policyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (3). 2004.The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com