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342Moral realism, moral relativism and moral rules (a compatibility argument)Synthese 117 (2): 251-274. 1998.
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Control, consequence and compatibilismIn T. Childers (ed.), Between Words and Worlds, Filosofia. pp. 143-56. 2000.
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264Conditionalization, cogency, and cognitive valueBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4): 533-541. 1997.Why should a Bayesian bother performing an experiment, one the result of which might well upset his own favored credence function? The Ramsey-Good theorem provides a decision theoretic answer. Provided you base your decision on expected utility, and the the experiment is cost-free, performing the experiment and then choosing has at least as much expected utility as choosing without further ado. Furthermore, doing the experiment is strictly preferable just in case at least one possible outcome …Read more
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38The core of the truthmaker research program is that true propositions are made true by appropriate parts of the actual world. This idea seems to give realists their best shot at capturing a robust account of the dependence of truth on the world. For a part of the world to be a truthmaker for a particular it must suffice for, or necessitate, the truth of the proposition. There are two extreme and unsatisfactory truthmaker theories. At one extreme any part of the world (up to and including the who…Read more
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2Truthlikeness and ValueIn Pihlstrom S. (ed.), Approaching Truth: Essays in Honour of Ilkka Niiniluoto, College Publications. pp. 225-40. 2008.
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12Is Science Progressive (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2): 272-276. 1987.
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139Harmony, purity, truthMind 103 (412): 451-472. 1994.David Lewis has argued against the thesis he calls "Desire as Belief", claiming it is incompatible with the fundamentals of evidential decision theory. I show that the argument is unsound, and demonstrate that a version of desire as belief is compatible with a version of causal decision theory.
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A decision theoretic argument against human embryo experimentationIn M. Fricke (ed.), Essays in honor of Bob Durrant, University of Otago Press. pp. 111-27. 1986.
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475Moral uncertainty and human embryo experimentationIn K. W. M. Fulford, Grant Gillett & Janet Martin Soskice (eds.), Medicine and Moral Reasoning, Cambridge University Press. pp. 3--144. 1994.Moral dilemmas can arise from uncertainty, including uncertainty of the real values involved. One interesting example of this is that of experimentation on human embryos and foetuses, If these have a moral stauts similar to that of human persons then there will be server constraitns on what may be done to them. If embryous have a moral status similar to that of other small clusters of cells, then constraints will be motivated largely by consideration for the persons into whom the embryos may dev…Read more
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217Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearancesIn Russ Shafer Landau & Russ Shafer-Landau (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics (Volume 11), Oxford University Press. pp. 74-101. 2016.According to Fitting Attitude theorists, for something to possess a certain value it is necessary and sufficient that it be fitting (appropriate, or good, or obligatory, or something) to take a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. The idea seems obvious for thick evaluative attributes, but less obvious for the thin evaluative attributes—like goodness, betterness, and degrees of value. This paper is an extended argument for the thesis that the fitting response to the thin evaluative at…Read more
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