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154Two kinds of organic unityThe Journal of Ethics 2 (4): 299-320. 1998.This paper distinguishes two interpretations of G. E. Moore''s principle of organic unities, which says that the intrinsic value of a whole need not equal the sum of the intrinsic values its parts would have outside it. A holistic interpretation, which was Moore''s own, says that parts retain their values when they enter a whole but that there can be an additional value in the whole as a whole that must be added to them. The conditionality interpretation, which has been defended by Korsgaard, sa…Read more
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134Asymmetries In ValueNoûs 44 (2): 199-223. 2010.Values typically come in pairs. Most obviously, there are the pairs of an intrinsic good and its contrasting intrinsic evil, such as pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, and desert and undesert, or getting what one deserves and getting its opposite. But in more complex cases there can be contrasting pairs with the same value. Thus, virtue has the positive form of benevolent pleasure in another’s pleasure and the negative form of compassionate pain for his pain, while desert has the positive form …Read more
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131Right act, virtuous motiveIn Heather Battaly (ed.), Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 58-72. 2010.Abstract: The concepts of virtue and right action are closely connected, in that we expect people with virtuous motives to at least often act rightly. Two well-known views explain this connection by defining one of the concepts in terms of the other. Instrumentalists about virtue identify virtuous motives as those that lead to right acts; virtue-ethicists identify right acts as those that are or would be done from virtuous motives. This essay outlines a rival explanation, based on the "higher-le…Read more
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115Two kinds of satisficingPhilosophical Studies 59 (1). 1990.Michael Slote has defended a moral view that he calls "satisficing consequentialism." Less demanding than maximizing consequentialism, it requires only that agents bring about consequences that are "good enough." I argue that Slote's characterization of satisficing is ambiguous. His idea of consequences' being "good enough" admits of two interpretations, with different implications in (some) particular cases. One interpretation I call "absolute-level" satisficing, the other "comparative" satisfi…Read more
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112The Three Faces of FlourishingSocial Philosophy and Policy 16 (1): 44. 1999.To my knowledge, the term “flourishing” was introduced into contemporary philosophy in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 article “Modern Moral Philosophy.” In this article and in much of the writing subsequent to it, the concept of flourishing seems to have three principal facets, or to be associated with three philosophical views
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107A Kantian Theory of Welfare?Philosophical Studies 130 (3): 603-617. 2006.Two main foundations have been proposed for the side-constraints that deontologists think make it sometimes wrong to do what will have the best effects. Thomist views agree with consequentialism that the bearers of value are always states of affairs, but hold that alongside the duty to promote good states are stronger duties not to choose against them.1 Kantian views locate the relevant values in persons, saying it is respect for persons rather than for any state that makes it wrong to kill, lie…Read more
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106Normative ethics: back to the futureIn Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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106Liability and Just CauseEthics and International Affairs 21 (2): 199-218. 2007.This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan's "Just Cause for War". It defends a more permissive, and more traditional view of just war liability against McMahan's claims.
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103Virtue as Loving the GoodSocial Philosophy and Policy 9 (2): 149. 1992.In a chapter of The Methods of Ethics entitled “Ultimate Good”, Henry Sidgwick defends hedonism, the theory that pleasure and only pleasure is intrinsically good, that is, good in itself and apart from its consequences. First, however, he argues against the theory that virtue is intrinsically good. Sidgwick considers both a strong version of this theory — that virtue is the only intrinsic good — and a weaker version — that it is one intrinsic good among others. He tries to show that neither vers…Read more
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102Vices as Higher-Level EvilsUtilitas 13 (2): 195-212. 2001.This paper sketches an account of the intrinsic goodness of virtue and intrinsic evil of vice that can fit within a consequentialist framework. This treats the virtues and vices as higher-level intrinsic values, ones that consist in, respectively, appropriate and inappropriate attitudes to other, lower-level values. After presenting the main general features of the account, the paper illustrates its strengths by showing how it illuminates a series of particular vices. In the course of doing so, …Read more
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101Aristotle on Virtue: Wrong, Wrong, and WrongIn Julia Peters (ed.), Aristotelian Ethics in Contemporary Perspective, Routledge. pp. 9-26. 2012.In his chapter ‘Aristotle on Virtue: Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong’, Thomas Hurka advances penetrating criticisms of some of the core theses of the Aristotelian approach to virtue. Hurka challenges the Aristotelian tendency to blur the distinction between the good and the right by making the virtues, which are constitutive of a person’s goodness, objects of praise or blame. He puts into question the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean and the idea that vice can always be explained in terms of either exc…Read more
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90Underivative duty: Prichard on moral obligation: Thomas HurkaSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 111-134. 2010.This paper examines H.A. Prichard's defense of the view that moral duty is underivative, as reflected in his argument that it is a mistake to ask “Why ought I to do what I morally ought?”, because the only possible answer is “Because you morally ought to.” This view was shared by other philosophers of Prichard's period, from Henry Sidgwick through A.C. Ewing, but Prichard stated it most forcefully and defended it best. The paper distinguishes three stages in Prichard's argument: one appealing to…Read more
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90Rights and Capital PunishmentDialogue 21 (4): 647-660. 1982.Discussions of the morality of capital punishment, and indeed discussions of the morality of punishment in general, usually assume that there are two possible justifications of punishment, a deterrence justification associated with utilitarianism and other consequentialist moral theories, and a retributive justification associated with deontological moral theories. But now that rights-based theories are attracting the increasing attention of moral philosophers it is worth asking whether these th…Read more
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87Moore's moral philosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica of 1903 is often considered a revolutionary work that set a new agenda for 20 th-century ethics. This historical view is hard to sustain, however. In metaethics Moore's non naturalist position was close to that defended by Henry Sidgwick and other late..
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74Five questions about normative ethicsIn Jesper Ryberg & Thomas S. Peterson (eds.), Normative Ethics: Five Questions, Automatic Press/vip. 2007.in Thomas S. Petersen and Jesper Ryberg, eds., Normative Ethics: 5 Questions.
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74On Audi's Marriage of Ross and KantIn Mark Timmons, John Greco & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Rationality and the Good: Critical Essays on the Ethics and Epistemology of Robert Audi, Oxford University Press. pp. 64-72. 2007.As its title suggests, Robert Audi’s The Good in the Right1 defends an intuitionist moral view like W.D. Ross’s in The Right and the Good. Ross was an intuitionist, first, in metaethics, where he held that there are self-evident moral truths that can be known by intuition. But he was also an intuitionist in the different sense used in normative ethics, since he held that there are irreducibly many such truths. Some concern the intrinsic goods, which are in turn plural, so there are prima facie d…Read more
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74The Parallel Goods of Knowledge and AchievementErkenntnis 85 (3): 589-608. 2020.This paper examines what it takes to be the intrinsic human goods of knowledge and achievement and argues that they are at many points parallel. Both are compounds, and of parallel elements: belief, justification, and truth in the one case, and intentional pursuit, competence, and success in the other. Each involves a Moorean organic unity, so its full presence or value requires a connection between its elements: an outside-in connection, where what makes a belief true helps explain why it’s jus…Read more
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72George Sher, Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics:Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and PoliticsEthics 109 (1): 187-190. 1998.
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71Satisficing theories, whether of rationality or morality, do not require agents to maximize the good. They demand only that agents bring about outcomes that are, in one or both of two senses, “good enough.” In the first sense, an outcome is good enough if it is above some absolute threshold of goodness; this yields a view that I will call absolute-level satisficing. In the second sense, an outcome is good enough if it is reasonably close to the best outcome the agent could bring about; this lead…Read more
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71Proportionality and necessityIn Larry May & Emily Crookston (eds.), War: Essays in Political Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2008.to appear in Larry May, ed., War and Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
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67The Rejection of Consequentialism Samuel Scheffler Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pp. viii, 129Dialogue 23 (1): 165-167. 1984.
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67Underivative duty: British moral philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.These ten new essays by leading contemporary philosophers constitute the first collective study of a group of British moral philosophers active between the ...
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61Review of Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (1). 2009.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |