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2Williams, B.-Making Sense of HumanityPhilosophical Books 39 91-104. 1998.This critical notice discusses five main themes of Williams's collection: (1) The “morality system” and blame: our ethical thought both misconceives and overemphasizes the practice of blaming. (2) The theorist’s predicament: how can a theorist of human practice coherently relate her theory to her own practice? (3) Psychological realism: a central constraint on a defensible ethical outlook is that it takes account of us as we are. (4) Culture and explanation: there is no culturally neutral fo…Read more
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42A theory of virtue: Excellence in being for the goodAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4). 2008.© 2008 Informa plc
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77Many writers have followed Peter Singer in drawing an analogy between assisting needy people at a distance and saving someone’s life directly. Arguments based on this analogy can take either a subsumptive or a non-subsumptive form. Such arguments face a serious methodological challenge.
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415Acts, Omissions, EmissionsIn Jeremy Moss (ed.), Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge University Press. pp. 148-64. 2015.What requirements does morality impose on us in relation to climate change? This question can be asked of individuals, of the entire global population, and of groups of various sizes in between. Given the case for accepting that we all collectively ought to be causing less climate-affecting pollution than we do, what follows from that about the moral status of the actions of members of the larger group? I examine two main ways in which moral requirements on group members can derive from requirem…Read more
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25Review of 'What's Wrong With Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment', by David Stove, edited by Andrew Irvine (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1). 2013.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-3, Ahead of Print
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177Public GoodsIn Lawrence C. Becker Charlotte B. Becker (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, Vol. III, Routledge. pp. 1413-16. 2007.Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.
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297International aid and the scope of kindnessEthics 105 (1): 99-127. 1994.This paper argues that it is morally wrong for the affluent not to contribute money or time to famine relief. It begins by endorsing an important methodological line of objection against the most prominent philosophical advocate of this claim, Peter Singer. This objection attacks his strategy of invoking a principle the acceptability of which is apparently based upon its conformity with "intuitive" moral judgements in order to defend a strongly counterintuitive conclusion. However, what follows …Read more
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33Book Reviews:Ethics Done Right: Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory (review)Ethics 119 (3): 581-585. 2009.
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210The Moral, the Personal and the PoliticalIn Igor Primoratz (ed.), Politics and Morality, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 54-75. 2008.What is the relation between moral reasons and reasons of “political necessity”? Does the authority of morality extend across political decision-making; or are there “reasons of state” which somehow either stand outside the reach of morality or override it, justifying actions that are morally wrong? This chapter argues that attempts to claim a contra-moral justification for political action typically suffer from a fundamental confusion – a confusion about the nature and expression of practical …Read more
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2Agency and PolicyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (1): 317-327. 2004.The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com.
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66The Context-Undermining of Practical ReasonsEthics 124 (1): 8-34. 2013.Can one fact deprive another of the status of a reason for action—a status the second fact would have had, but for the presence of the first? Claims of this kind are often made, but they face substantial obstacles. This article sets out those obstacles but then argues that there are at least three different ways in which this does happen
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27Book 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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186Moral Free RidingPhilosophy and Public Affairs 24 (1): 3-34. 1995.This paper presents a moral philosophical account of free riding, specifying the conditions under which failing to pay for nonrival goods is unfair. These conditions do not include the voluntary acceptance of the goods: this controversial claim is supported on the strength of a characterization of the kind of unfairness displayed in paradigm cases of free riding. Thus a "Principle of Fairness" can potentially serve as a foundation for political obligations. The paper also discusses the relatio…Read more
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288Decisions, Reasons and RationalityEthics 119 (1): 57-95. 2008.What difference do our decisions make to our reasons for action and the rationality of our actions? There are two questions here, and good grounds for answering them differently. However, it still makes sense to discuss them together. By thinking about the relationships that reasons and rationality bear to decisions, we may be able to cast light on the relationship that reasons and rationality bear to each other.
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84Moral Character and the Iteration ProblemUtilitas 7 (2): 289. 1995.Moral evaluation is concerned with the attribution of values whose distinction into two broad groups has become familiar. On the one hand, there are the most general moral values of lightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, and what ought to be or to be done. On the other, there is a great diversity of more specific moral values which these objects can have: of being a theft, for instance, or a thief; of honesty, reliability or callousness. Within the recent body of work attempting to restore to …Read more
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83As you were? Moral philosophy and the aetiology of moral experiencePhilosophical Explorations 9 (1). 2006.What is the significance of empirical work on moral judgement for moral philosophy? Although the more radical conclusions that some writers have attempted to draw from this work are overstated, few areas of moral philosophy can remain unaffected by it. The most important question it raises is in moral epistemology. Given the explanation of our moral experience, how far can we trust it? Responding to this, the view defended here emphasizes the interrelatedness of moral psychology and moral episte…Read more
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41The Limits of Kindness, by Caspar Hare: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. xi + 229, £25.00 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (4): 791-794. 2014.Garrett Cullity.
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210IntroductionIn Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and practical reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-27. 1997.
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185Public goods and fairnessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (1). 2008.To what extent can we as a community legitimately require individuals to contribute to producing public goods? Most of us think that, at least sometimes, refusing to pay for a public good that you have enjoyed can involve a kind of 'free riding' that makes it wrong. But what is less clear is under exactly which circumstances this is wrong. To work out the answer to that, we need to know why it is wrong. I argue that when free riding is wrong, the reason is that it is unfair. That is not itself a…Read more
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380Bernard WilliamsIn Brown Stuart (ed.), Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers, Vol. 2, Thoemmes Continuum. pp. 1132-8. 2005.Garrett Cullity.
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170Virtue ethics, theory, and warrantEthical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (3): 277-294. 1999.Are there good grounds for thinking that the moral values of action are to be derived from those of character? This virtue ethical claim is sometimes thought of as a kind of normative ethical theory; sometimes as form of opposition to any such theory. However, the best case to be made for it supports neither of these claims. Rather, it leads us to a distinctive view in moral epistemology: the view that my warrant for a particular moral judgement derives from my warrant for believing that I am a …Read more
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34Aretaic CognitivismAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 32 (4). 1995.This paper defends the claim that there is deontic knowledge - knowledge of rightness and wrongness - which can be inferred from aretaic knowledge - knowledge of the possession of virtue-attributes. In doing so, it seeks to address two forceful objections, identified at the outset. The first is that the only way of making the claim appear plausible is by assuming a practice of virtue-ascription which actually makes the reverse inference. The second objection is that there is that "aretaic cognit…Read more
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27Review of Deen K. Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.Garrett Cullity
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336Particularism 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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203Equality 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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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.