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1046How Theories of Well-Being Can Help Us HelpJournal of Practical Ethics 2 (2): 1-19. 2014.Some theories of well-being in philosophy and in psychology define people’s well-being in psychological terms. According to these theories, living well is getting what you want, feeling satisfied, experiencing pleasure, or the like. Other theories take well-being to be something that is not defined by our psychology: for example, they define well-being in terms of objective values or the perfection of our human nature. These two approaches present us with a trade-off: The more we define we…Read more
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422Constructivism and wise judgmentIn James Lenman & Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 195. 2012.In this paper I introduce a version of constructivism that relies on a theory of practical wisdom. Wise judgment constructivism is a type of constructivism because it takes correct judgments about what we have “all-in” reason to do to be the result of a process we can follow, where our interest in the results of this process stems from our practical concerns. To fully defend the theory would require a comprehensive account of wisdom, which is not available. Instead, I describe a constructivist …Read more
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39Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Christine Swanton) (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2): 494-497. 2006.Christine Swanton’s Virtue Ethics is a welcome addition to the newly flourishing field of virtue ethics. Swanton defends a rich and multifaceted virtue ethical theory that differs in interesting ways from the current paradigm, Aristotelian virtue ethics. The richness of her theory is, in part, dictated by her methodology: wide reflective equilibrium. Taking this methodology seriously, she draws on a wide range of scholarship not just in philosophy but also in psychiatry, psychology, sociology, a…Read more
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69Beyond the Experience Machine: how to build a theory of well-beingIn Matthew C. Haug (ed.), Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, Routledge. pp. 398. 2013.
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26Justifying Reasons for Valuing: An Argument Against the Social AccountSouthern Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 141-158. 1999.
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87Full information and ideal deliberationJournal of Value Inquiry 31 (3): 329-338. 1997.When we are confronted with choices we take to be important, choices that affect our more important ends or goals, we usually attempt to judge what would be best for us. We reflect on what is best for us when we have to decide such things as which college to attend, whether to go to graduate school or law school, whether to marry, or whether to take our parents in when they need care. When we make such decisions, we think about what will contribute to the best life for us. In thinking about the …Read more
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88Wisdom revisited: a case study in normative theorizingPhilosophical Explorations 14 (3): 277-295. 2011.Extensive discussions of practical wisdom are relatively rare in the philosophical literature these days. This is strange given the theoretical and practical importance of wisdom and, indeed, the etymology of the word "philosophy." In this paper, we remedy this inattention by proposing a methodology for developing a theory of wisdom and using this methodology to outline a viable theory. The methodology we favor is a version of wide reflective equilibrium. We begin with psychological research on …Read more
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1264Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in PhilosophyHypatia 27 (4): 949-957. 2012.The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philos…Read more
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2The reflective life: Wisdom and happiness for real peopleIn Lisa Bortolotti (ed.), Philosophy and Happiness, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 215--32. 2009.
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24Cultural differences and philosophical accounts of well-beingJournal of Happiness Studies 5 293-314. 2004.In cross-cultural studies of well-being psychologists have shown ways in which well-being or its constituents are tailored by culture (Arrindell et. al. 1997, Diener and Diener 1995, Kitayama et. al. 2000, Oishi & Diener 2001, Oishi et. al. 1999). Some psychologists have taken the fact of cultural variance to imply that there is no universal notion of well-being (Ryan and Deci, 2001, Christopher 1999). Most philosophers, on the other hand, have assumed that there is a notion of well-being that h…Read more
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40Well-being, Wisdom and Thick Theorizing: on the Division of Labor between Moral Philosophy and Positive PsychologyIn Simon Kirchin (ed.), Thick Concepts, Oxford University Press. pp. 217. 2013.
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40Facing the Facts and Living Well: Comments on Neera Badhwar, Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile LifeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (1): 219-226. 2016.
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84Virtue and practical deliberationPhilosophical Studies 111 (2): 147-172. 2002.The question of how to reason well is an important normative question,one which ultimately motivates some of our interest in the more abstracttopic of the principles of practical reason. It is this normative questionthat I propose to address by arguing that given the goal of an importantkind of deliberation, we will deliberate better if we develop certainvirtues. I give an account of the virtue of stability and I argue thatstability makes reasoners reason better. Further,I suggest at the end of …Read more
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89Practical Reason and the Stability StandardEthical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (3): 339-354. 2002.In this paper I argue that one of the standards that governs practical reasoning is the stability standard. The stability standard, I argue, is a norm that is constitutive of practical reasoning: insofar as we do not take violations of this norm to be relevant considerations, we do not count as engaged in reasoning at all. Furthermore, I argue that it is a standard we can explicitly employ in order to deliberate about our ends or desires themselves. Importantly, this standard will not require th…Read more
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59Julia driver, uneasy virtue (cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2001), pp. VII + 134Utilitas 17 (3): 350-351. 2005.
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1Critical NoticesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2): 494-497. 2006.Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. CHRISTINE SWANTON.