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25Review of Peter A. French: Collective and Corporate Responsibility (review)Ethics 96 (3): 636-638. 1984.
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76Just too different: normative properties and natural propertiesPhilosophical Studies 177 (1): 263-286. 2020.Many normative nonnaturalists find normative naturalism to be completely implausible. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree, provided they are realists, that there are normative properties, such as moral ones. Naturalists hold that these properties are similar in all metaphysically important respects to properties that all would agree to be natural ones, such as such as meteorological or economic ones. It is this view that the nonnaturalists I have in mind find to be hopeless. They hold that norm…Read more
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94Pejorative Verbs and the Prospects for a Unified Theory of SlursAnalytic Philosophy 61 (2): 130-151. 2020.Analytic Philosophy, EarlyView.
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51Perl and Schroeder’s presuppositional error theoryPhilosophical Studies 176 (6): 1473-1493. 2019.Ronald Dworkin charges that the error theory is a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards that are appropriately used in evaluating first-order theories. Perl and Schroeder contend that a “presuppositional error theory” can avoid Dworkin’s charge. On the presuppositional view, moral sentences, such as, “It is wrong to torture babies,” have a false presupposition. Perhaps, for example, they presuppose that there are objectively prescriptive moral standards. Thi…Read more
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98Normative naturalism and normative nihilism: Parfit's dilemma for naturalismIn Simon Kirchin (ed.), Reading Parfit: On What Matters, Routledge. 2017.The fundamental issue dividing normative naturalists and non-naturalists concerns the nature of normativity. Non-naturalists hold that the normativity of moral properties and facts sets them apart from natural properties and facts in an important and deep way. As Derek Parfit explains matters, the normative naturalist distinguishes between normative concepts and the natural properties to which these concepts refer and also between normative propositions and the natural facts in virtue of which s…Read more
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176How to avoid begging the question against evolutionary debunking argumentsRatio 32 (4): 231-245. 2019.Evolutionary debunking arguments aim to undercut the epistemological status of our evaluative beliefs on the basis of the genesis of our belief-forming tendencies. This paper addresses the issue whether responses to these arguments must be question-begging. It argues for a pragmatic understanding of question-beggingness, according to which whether an argument is question-begging depends on the argumentative context. After laying out the debunking argument, the paper considers a variety of respon…Read more
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158Just too different: normative properties and natural propertiesPhilosophical Studies 177 (1): 263-286. 2020.Many normative nonnaturalists find normative naturalism to be completely implausible. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree, provided they are realists, that there are normative properties, such as moral ones. Naturalists hold that these properties are similar in all metaphysically important respects to properties that all would agree to be natural ones, such as such as meteorological or economic ones. It is this view that the nonnaturalists I have in mind find to be hopeless. They hold that norm…Read more
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100A semantic challenge to non-realist cognitivismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4): 569-591. 2018.Recently, some philosophers have attempted to escape familiar challenges to orthodox nonnaturalist normative realism by abandoning the robust metaphysical commitments of the orthodox view. One such view is the ‘Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism’ or ‘Non-Realist Cognitivism’ proposed by Derek Parfit and a few others. The trouble is that, as it stands, Non-Realist Cognitivism seems unable to provide a substantive non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. The paper cons…Read more
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83Realist-expressivism and the fundamental role of normative beliefPhilosophical Studies 175 (6): 1333-1356. 2018.The goal of this paper is to show that a cognitivist–externalist view about moral judgment is compatible with a key intuition that motivates non-cognitivist expressivism. This is the intuition that normative judgments have a close connection to action that ordinary “descriptive factual beliefs” do not have, or, as James Dreier has suggested, that part of the fundamental role of normative judgment is to motivate. One might think that cognitivist–externalist positions about normative judgment are …Read more
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11Review of David Copp: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Disarmament (review)Ethics 98 (3): 610-612. 1988.
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193. Capitalism versus Democracy: The Marketing of Votes and the Marketing of Political PowerIn John Douglas Bishop (ed.), Ethics and Capitalism, University of Toronto Press. pp. 81-101. 2000.
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14Moral Differences: Truth, Justice and Conscience in a World of ConflictPhilosophical Review 103 (4): 723. 1994.
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5The Iterated-Utilitarianism of J.S. MillCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 5 (n/a): 75-98. 1979.The interpretation of the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill has been a matter of controversy at least since J.O. Urmson published his well known paper over twenty-five years ago. Urmson attributed to Mill a form of “rule-utilitarianism”, contrasting his reading with the “received view” on which Mill held a form of “act-utilitarianism”. Since then, the interpretive problem has typically been seen to be that of determining which of these two types of theory should be attributed to Mill, or, at le…Read more
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29Title from title page of source document
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International justice and the basic needs principleIn Gillian Brock & Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 39--54. 2005.According to the basic needs principle, a state in favorable circumstances must enable its members to meet their basic needs throughout a normal life-span. Applied to the international situation, I argue, this principle implies that a global state would have a duty to enable subordinate states to meet their members‘ needs. In the absence of a global state, existing states have a duty to work to create a system of institutions that would enable each state to meet its members‘ needs. Near the conc…Read more
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84The Concept of a SocietyDialogue 31 (2): 183-. 1992.The concept of a society is central to several areas of philosophy, including social and political philosophy, philosophy of social science and moral philosophy. Yet little attention has been paid to the concept and we do not have an adequate philosophical account of it. It is a concept that is difficult to explain systematically, and it is subject to distortion or simple-minded attacks whenever it plays a major role in a philosophical theory. Methodological individualists have raised metaphysic…Read more
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895The wrong answer to an improper question?Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 33. 2010.A philosopher who asks “Why be moral?” is asking a theoretical question about the force of moral reasons or about the normative status of morality. Two questions need to be distinguished. First, assuming that there is a morally preferred way to live or to be, is there any (further) reason to be this way or to act this way? Second, if moral considerations are a source of reasons, why is this, and what is the significance of these reasons? This question asks for a ‘grounding’ of morality. The p…Read more
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312Toward a pluralist and teleological theory of normativityPhilosophical Issues 19 (1): 21-37. 2009.No Abstract
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27International Justice and the Basic Needs PrincipleProtoSociology 26 150-166. 2009.According to the basic needs principle, a state in favorable circumstances must enable its members to meet their basic needs throughout a normal life-span. Applied to the international situation, I argue, this principle implies that a global state would have a duty (ceteris paribus) to enable subordinate states to meet their members‘ needs. In the absence of a global state, existing states have a duty (ceteris paribus) to work to create a system of institutions that would enable each state to me…Read more
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570Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral RealismSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 1-43. 2001.Moral realism and antirealist-expressivism are of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, a cognitive state of mind; she has or expresses a belief that represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or…Read more
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59Four Epistemological Challenges to Ethical Naturalism: Naturalized Epistemology and the First-Person PerspectiveCanadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (sup1): 30-74. 2000.(2000). Four Epistemological Challenges to Ethical Naturalism: Naturalized Epistemology and the First-Person Perspective. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 30, Supplementary Volume 26: Moral Epistemology Naturalized, pp. 30-74.
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144On the agency of certain collective entities: An argument from "normative autonomy"Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (1). 2006.
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198What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal TheoryDialogue 23 (2): 249-269. 1984.An account of the ontological nature of collectives would be useful for several reasons. A successful theory would help to show us a route through the thicket of views known as “methodological individualism”. It would have a bearing on the plausibility of legal positivism. It would be relevant to the question whether collectives are capable of acting. The debate about the ontology of collectives is therefore important for such fields as the theory of action, social and political philosophy, the …Read more
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University of California, DavisDepartment of Philosophy
Davis, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |