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1005More Seriously Wrong, More Importantly RightJournal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (1): 41-58. 2019.Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of different views about what…Read more
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611A Surprisingly Common DilemmaJournal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1): 74-84. 2019.This paper discusses a dilemma that’s arises for a surprising number of ethical views and that's generated by a thesis they share: they all hold that it's a necessary condition for a thing to have an ethical property like rightness or goodness that it be accompanied by the belief that it has that property (see e.g. Kant (on one reading), Dworkin, Kymlicka, Sidgwick, Sumner, Dorsey). If the required belief is read one way, these views make it necessary, for a thing to be right or good, that it be…Read more
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313Right Act, Virtuous MotiveMetaphilosophy 41 (1-2): 58-72. 2010.The concepts of right action and virtuous motivation are clearly 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 paper outlines a rival explanation, based on the “higher…Read more
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172Indirect Perfectionism: Kymlicka on Liberal NeutralityJournal of Political Philosophy 3 (1): 36-57. 1995.
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17Review of Gabriele Taylor, Deadly Vices (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (4). 2007.
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482More seriously wrongJournal of the American Philosophical Association 5 41-58. 2019.Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of different views about what…Read more
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185Value theoryIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 357--379. 2006.This chapter surveys a variety of views about which states of affairs are intrinsically good, that is, in themselves or apart from their consequences. It considers the claims to intrinsic value of such states of individuals as pleasure, the fulfillment of desire, knowledge, achievement, moral virtue, and personal relationships; the different ways such goods can be compared and aggregated both within and across individual lives; and the possibility, given a principle of “organic unities,” of good…Read more
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48Desert: Individualistic and holisticIn Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Desert and justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 45--45. 2003.Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.
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93Rights 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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59I became interested in normative ethics in my last term as a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Toronto. Influenced by a traditional conception of the discipline, I’d till then studied mostly history of philosophy, with a special interest in, of all things, Hegel. But seeing the value of a balanced philosophy program, I enrolled in an ethics seminar in the winter of 1975. I’d studied the ethics of Plato, Leibniz, Hegel, and others in my history courses, but this was my first exposure …Read more
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68Underivative 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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191Moore in the middleEthics 113 (3): 599-628. 2003.The rhetoric of Principia Ethica, as of not a few philosophy books, is that of the clean break. Moore claims that the vast majority of previous writing on ethics has been misguided and that an entirely new start is needed. In its time, however, the book’s claims to novelty were widely disputed. Reviews in Mind, Ethics, and The Journal of Philosophy applauded the clarity of Moore’s criticisms of Mill, Spencer, and others, but said they were “not altogether original,” had for the most part “alread…Read more
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122Two 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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40The consequences of warIn N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen & Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and humanity: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Glover, Oxford University Press. 2010.to appear in N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen, and Jeff McMahan, eds., Ethics and Humanity: Themes From the Writing of Jonathan Glover (New York: Oxford University Press).
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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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63Review of Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (1). 2009.
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181Value and population sizeEthics 93 (3): 496-507. 1982.Just because an angel is better than a stone, it does not follow that two angels are better than one angel and one stone. So said Aquinas (Summa contra Gentiles III, 71), and the sentiment was echoed by Leibniz. In section 118 of the Theodicy he wrote: "No substance is either absolutely precious or absolutely contemptible in the sight of God. It is certain that God attaches more importance to a man than to a lion, but I do not know that we can bc sure that he prefers one man to an entire species…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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113The 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
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |