-
11Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural Law. 1st Edition (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2004.In recent decades, the revival of natural law theory in modern moral philosophy has been an exciting and important development. Human Values brings together an international group of moral philosophers who in various respects share the aims and ideals of natural law ethics. In their diverse ways, these authors make distinctive and original contributions to the continuing project of developing natural law ethics as a comprehensive treatment of modern ethical theory and practice.
-
218The Beginning of ExistenceInternational Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2): 145-157. 2003.Central to recent debate over the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and over the origin of the universe in general, has been the issue of whether the universe began to exist and, if so, how this is to be understood. Adolf Grünbaum has used two cosmological models as a basis for arguing that the universe did not begin to exist according to either of them. Concentrating in this paper on the second (“open interval”) model, I argue that he is wrong on both counts. I give metaphysical considerations for r…Read more
-
138Finality revived: powers and intentionalitySynthese 194 (7): 2387-2425. 2017.Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of …Read more
-
9Response to commentaries: ‘Further clarity on cooperation and morality’Journal of Medical Ethics 43 (4): 204-205. 2017.I am grateful to Dr Stammers and Professor Vacek for their thoughtful commentaries on my paper.1 I will take their points one by one, though in no special order. Given the space available, I will confine myself to their most important remarks. Dr Stammers accuses me of aligning religion and conscience too closely.2 I agree with him that conscience is broader than religion and that the issue of conscientious objection should be framed so as to handle wholly non-religious ethical objections. I wro…Read more
-
75On the cardinality of the cardinal virtuesInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (3). 1999.This paper is a detailed study of what are traditionally called the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. I defend what I call the Cardinality Thesis, that the traditional four and no others are cardinal. I define cardinality in terms of three sub-theses, the first being that the cardinal virtues are jointly necessary for the possession of every other virtue, the second that each of the other virtues is a species of one of the four cardinals, and the third that many of t…Read more
-
146The world is not an asymmetric graphAnalysis 71 (1): 3-10. 2011.mix of the concrete and the abstract (if we include universals, laws, propositions and the like), but whichever of these is the case, the world is not purely abstract, as a formal structure is. One might claim, however, that the world is a structure1 in the sense that it instantiates a structure and is nothing else. In other words, all there is to the..
-
433Essence and PropertiesErkenntnis 75 (1): 85-111. 2011.The distinction between the essence of an object and its properties has been obscured in contemporary discussion of essentialism. Locke held that the properties of an object are exclusively those features that ‘flow’ from its essence. Here he follows the Aristotelian theory, leaving aside Locke’s own scepticism about the knowability of essence. I defend the need to distinguish sharply between essence and properties, arguing that essence must be given by form and that properties flow from form. I…Read more
-
148The non-identity of the categorical and the dispositionalAnalysis 69 (4): 677-684. 2009.1. Consider a circle. It has both a radius and a circumference. There is obviously a real distinction between the properties having a radius and having a circumference. This is not because, when confining ourselves to circles,1 having a radius can ever exist apart from having a circumference. A real distinction does not depend on that. Descartes thought that a real distinction between x and y meant that x could exist without y or vice versa, if only by the power of God. But Descartes was wrong. …Read more
-
17Concepts, dualism, and the human intellectIn Alessandro Antonietti, Antonella Corradini & E. Jonathan Lowe (eds.), Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Lexington Books. pp. 211--33. 2008.
-
114In this essay, I first set out the principles of change, paying particular attention to the need for a support for all changes and to the need for prime matter. I then discuss the nature of time, arguing that time is not actually composed of durationless instants but that instants can be understood as limits to an infinite process of potential division. I then give a definition of instants in terms of intervals and propose a way of modeling them. In the next section I bring together the two previou…Read more
-
2923This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that ‘decisional privacy’ ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of ‘commissioning parties’ to AR but a…Read more
-
53Human lives: critical essays on consequentialist bioethics (edited book)St. Martin's Press. 1997.This is a series of essays critical of the utilitarian bioethics now dominating contemporary discussion. Analysing questions of moral theory as well as applied ethics this book aims to supply essays on matters as diverse as beginning and end-of-life issues as well as animal rights, the act-omission distinction and the principle of double effect in caring in medical ethics.
-
52Temporal Parts and the Possibility of ChangePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (3): 686-708. 2004.Things change. If anything counts as a datum of metaphysics, that does. Change occurs in many ways: it can be accidental or substantial; essential or non-essential; intrinsic or extrinsic; subjective or objective. Changes can be physical, spatial, quantitative, qualitative, natural, artefactual, conceptual, linguistic. Events are arguably best defined as changes in an object or objects. All change is from something and into something, and hence is at least a two-term relation, involving a term f…Read more
-
48Disembodied Communication and Religious Experience: The Online ModelPhilosophy and Technology 25 (3): 381-397. 2012.Abstract The idea of disembodied communication has received widespread discussion in the context of the various kinds of online interaction. Electronic mail is probably the purest form of text-based communication where interlocutors are present in mind rather than body. I argue that this online model provides a way of understanding and defending the possibility of a certain kind of public religious experience, contra the many critics of the very coherence of genuine religious experience. I int…Read more
-
97Flat Error: Review of Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth (review)Quadrant. 1993.A review of Jeffrey Burton Russell's book that demonstrates conclusively that the idea the earth was flat is a founding myth in the history of science. Hardly *any* scholar ever believed it.
-
163in J. Haldane (ed.), Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002: 125-42).
-
54Reply to Sprigge on personal and impersonal identityMind 98 (January): 129-133. 1989.In "personal and impersonal identity" ("mind", 1988) timothy sprigge discusses reasons for a general suspicion of trans-temporal identity, and rejects what he says are the usual grounds given against the suspicion, providing instead his own reasons for rejecting it. he concludes that trans-temporal identity, including personal identity, is as genuine a case of identity as what he considers to be the paradigmatic case of identity. in this brief note i take issue with some of the basic elements of…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |