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566Review of G.E.Moore’s Ethical Theory by Brian Hutchinson (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 543-547. 2004.The history of philosophy can be seen either as a contribution to history or a contribution to philosophy or perhaps as a bit of both. Hutchinson fail on both counts. The book is bad: bad in itself (since it quite definitely ought not to be) and bad as a companion to Principia (since it sets students a bad example of slapdash, lazy and pretentious philosophizing and would tend to put them off reading Moore). As a conscientious reviewer I ploughed through every page and I have to say that I rese…Read more
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798Identifying GoodnessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1). 2012.The paper reconstructs Moore's Open Question Argument (OQA) and discusses its rise and fall. There are three basic objections to the OQA: Geach's point, that Moore presupposes that ?good? is a predicative adjective (whereas it is in fact attributive); Lewy's point, that it leads straight to the Paradox of Analysis; and Durrant's point that even if 'good' is not synonymous with any naturalistic predicate, goodness might be synthetically identical with a naturalistic property. As against Geach, I …Read more
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2983Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom RevisitedIn Olli Loukola (ed.), Secrets and Conspiracies, Brill. 2022.Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic ‘oughts’ that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. I argue that the policy of systematically doubting or disbelieving conspiracy theories would be both a political disaster and the epistemic equivalen…Read more
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4524Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional WisdomEpisteme 4 (2): 219-232. 2007.Abstract Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the beliefforming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of selfmutilat…Read more
Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Social Science |
20th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |