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72Is There Potential in Potentiality?Philosophical Papers 41 (1): 129-147. 2012.Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 129-147, March 2012
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64Doubly good (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 15 (15): 57-57. 2001.A short review essay of Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness and Simon Blackburn's Being Good.
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39What's the Matter? Review of Derek Parfit, On What Matters — ERRATUMUtilitas 24 (3): 441-441. 2012.
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24Review of David Rodin, War and Self-Defense (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (5). 2005.
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IntroductionIn Ulrike Heuer & Gerald Lang (eds.), Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes From the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-16. 2012.
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44Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. Luck Egalitarianism: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. IBSN: 978-1-47257-043-7 , 978-1-47257-042-0 . £49.50 , £17.99Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1): 215-217. 2017.
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59How Far Can You Go With Quietism?Problema 4 3-37. 2010.Ronald Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs renews and amplifies his earlier attacks on metaethics. This article reviews the main lineaments of Dworkin’s anti-metaethical arguments and discusses, in detail, a number of issues which arise from them. First, it is suggested that Dworkin’s appraisal of what is doing most of the explanatory work in his account is largely askew. Second, it is claimed that Dworkin’s allegation that expressivism is self-defeating is wide of the mark, but that another charge …Read more
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143A dilemma for objective act-utilitarianismPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 3 (2): 221-239. 2004.Act-utilitarianism comes in two standard varieties: subjective act-utilitarianism, which tells agents to attempt to maximize utility directly, and objective act-utilitarianism, which permits agents to use non-utilitarian decision-making procedures. This article argues that objective actutilitarianism is exposed to a dilemma. On one horn of it is the contention that objective act-utilitarianism makes inconsistent claims about the rightness of acts. On the other horn of it is the contention th…Read more
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276The right kind of solution to the wrong kind of reason problemUtilitas 20 (4): 472-489. 2008.Recent discussion of Scanlon's account of value, which analyses the value of X in terms of agents' reasons for having certain pro-attitudes or contra-attitudes towards X, has generated the problem (WKR problem): this is the problem, for the buck-passing view, of being able to acknowledge that there may be good reasons for attributing final value to X that have nothing to do with the final value that X actually possesses. I briefly review some of the existing solutions offered to the WKR problem,…Read more
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309Punishment and the Rebalancing of StatusPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 4 (3): 53-67. 2014.Download
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173Nudging the responsibility objectionJournal of Applied Philosophy 25 (1). 2008.The ‘Responsibility Objection’ to Judith Thomson's famous argument for the permissibility of abortion challenges the relevance of her ‘Violinist Analogy’ to certain types of voluntary unwanted pregnancy, on the grounds that those pregnancies, even though they may be unwanted, are pregnancies for which the woman can be plausibly held responsible. This article considers the force of a number of recent objections to the Responsibility Objection, advanced by Harry Silverstein, David Boonin, and Jeff…Read more
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146Jobs, Institutions, and Beneficial RetirementRatio 27 (2): 205-221. 2013.According to Saul Smilansky's ‘Paradox of Beneficial Retirement’, many serving members of professions may have decisive integrity-based reasons for retiring immediately. The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement holds that a below-par performance in one's job does not require any outright incompetence, but may take a purely relational form, in which a good performance is not good enough if it would be improved upon by someone else who would be appointed instead. It is argued, in response, that jobs i…Read more
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28Review of N. Ann Davis, Richard keshen, Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and Humanity: Themes From the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (8). 2010.
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IntroductionIn Helen Frowe & Gerald R. Lang (eds.), How We Fight: Ethics in War, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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153Legitimating Torture?Criminal Law and Philosophy 11 (2): 331-349. 2017.Steinhoff defends the moral and legal permissibility of torture in a limited range of circumstances. This article criticizes Steinhoff’s arguments. The analogy between ordinary defensive violence and defensive torture which Steinhoff argues for is partly spoiled by the presence, within defensive torture, of opportunistic harm, in addition to eliminative harm. Steinhoff’s arguments that the mere legalization of defensive torture would not metastasize into a more full-fledged institutionalization …Read more
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52How Interesting is the “Boring Problem” for Luck Egalitarianism?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (3): 698-722. 2015.Imagine a two-person distributive case in which Ernest's choices yield X and Bertie's choices yield X + Y, producing an income gap between them of Y. Neither Ernest nor Bertie is responsible for this gap of Y, since neither of them has any control over what the other agent chooses. This is what Susan Hurley calls the “Boring Problem” for luck egalitarianism. Contrary to Hurley's relatively dismissive treatment of it, it is contended that the Boring Problem poses a deep problem for standard luck …Read more
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130What Does Ivan Ilyich Need To Be Rescued From?Philosophy 89 (2): 1-23. 2014.Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich describes how a man's exposure to imminent death allows him to secure redemption from a flawed life. Through close textual attention to Tolstoy's novella and extensive engagement with Frances Kamm's treatment of it, this article quarrels with this of Ivan's case, offering a sourer, more pessimistic view. It is argued that Ivan's reconciliation to death is facilitated by a series of mistakes he makes en route to his dying moments. Two more general lessons are dr…Read more
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70Luck Egalitarianism and the See-Saw ObjectionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 43 (1). 2006.None
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32Discrimination, Partial Concern, and ArbitrarinessIn Ulrike Heuer & Gerald Lang (eds.), Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes From the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 293. 2012.
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23Why Not Forfeiture?In Helen Frowe and Gerald Lang (ed.), How We Fight: Ethics in War, Oxford University Press. pp. 38-61. 2014.
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213Should Utilitarianism Be Scalar?Utilitas 25 (1): 80-95. 2013.Scalar utilitarianism, a form of utilitarianism advocated by Alastair Norcross, retains utilitarianism's evaluative commitments while dispensing with utilitarianism's deontic commitments, or its commitment to the existence or significance of moral duties, obligations and requirements. This article disputes the effectiveness of the arguments that have been used to defend scalar utilitarianism. It is contended that Norcross's central ‘Persuasion Argument’ does not succeed, and it is suggested, mor…Read more
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553Just Cause, Liability, and the Moral Inequality of CombatantsTheoretical and Applied Ethics 1 (4): 54-60. 2012.
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134Invigilating Republican LibertyPhilosophical Quarterly 62 (247): 273-293. 2012.Republican liberty, as recently defended by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, characterises liberty in terms of the absence of domination, instead of, or in addition to, the absence of interference, as favoured by Berlin-style negative liberty. This article considers several claims made on behalf of republican liberty, particularly in Pettit's and Skinner's recent writings, and finds them wanting. No relevant moral or political concern expressed by republicans, it will be contended here, fails …Read more
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory |