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37Expressivist Relativism? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1): 183-188. 1998.
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37Book Review:Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. William L. Rowe (review)Ethics 103 (2): 389-. 1993.
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36Reply to HonnethEuropean Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 592-596. 2021.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 592-596, September 2021.
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35Hutcheson in the History of RightsJournal of Scottish Philosophy 20 (2): 85-101. 2022.Francis Hutcheson's An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, published in 1725, arguably contains the first broadly utilitarian theory of rights ever formulated. In this essay, I argue that, despite its subtlety, there are crucial lacunae in Hutcheson's theory. One of the most important, which Mill seeks to repair, is that his theory of rights lacks a conceptually necessary companion, namely, a corollary account of obligation. Hutcheson has no theory of fully deontic oblig…Read more
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34The authority of reasonPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 583-586. 2000.At the time of her death in 1996, Jean Hampton was working on a book on practical reason she had tentatively titled, A Theory of Reasons. The above volume consists of the materials she left, together with useful editorial clues to the state of their relative completeness. Computer file dates make it clear that Hampton was engaged in a significant revision of the text and had gotten as far as Chapter 3 of a nine-chapter book. Revisions of two-thirds of the text lay before her, and, as Richard Hea…Read more
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34Psychological consequences of the normativity of moral obligationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.An adequate moral psychology of obligation must bear in mind that although the “sense of obligation” is psychological, what it is a sense of, moral obligation itself, is not. It is irreducibly normative. I argue, therefore, that the “we” whose demands the sense of obligation presupposes must be an ideal rather than an actual “we.”
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33On Margaret Gilbert's Rights and DemandsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2): 499-504. 2023.
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33Reply to TerzisCanadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1). 1988.George Terzis makes several objections to claims and arguments I advanced in Impartial Reason. I cannot take them all up, but I would like to respond to some, which I shall group into three: whether reasons depend on norms applying to all rational agents; how the unity of agency relates to such norms; and the self-support condition. Since the objections concerning cut most deeply against the central thesis of Impartial Reason, I shall begin with them. Before I do that, however, I should make som…Read more
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31From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3): 695-701. 1994.
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29The Inference to the Best MeansCanadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (1). 1976.Some recent writers on practical reasoning have had it that reasoning about what to do differs in logical structure from theoretical reasoning. In particular, Anthony Kenny and G.E.M. Anscombe have argued that there are permissible inferences in practical reasoning which lack analogues in theoretical reasoning. Such discussions seem inevitably to draw their impetus from what Aristotle had to say on the topic, both in the Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere.
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29Morality, Authority, and Law: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics IOxford University Press. 2013.Stephen Darwall presents a series of essays that explore the view that morality is second-personal, entailing mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. He illustrates the power of the second-personal framework to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy
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28Berkeley's moral and political philosophyIn Kenneth P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, Cambridge University Press. pp. 311. 2005.
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28The Rejection of Consequentialism by Samuel Scheffler (review)Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 220-226. 1984.
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26Reasons, motives, and the demands of morality: An introductionIn Stephen L. Darwall (ed.), Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, Oxford University Press. pp. 305--312. 1997.
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25Human Morality’s AuthorityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (4). 1995.A central theme of Samuel Scheffler’s impressive Human Morality is that “a considered view of the relation between morality and the individual” requires distinguishing frequently confused issues concerning morality’s content, scope, authority, and deliberative role, and appreciating interrelations among these. He suggests a nice example of the latter. Some are inclined to believe morality lacks the overriding authority others claim it to have because they assume that morality’s content is string…Read more
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25Practical Skepticism and the Reasons for ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (2). 1978.At least since Descartes's Meditations philosophers in the West have been concerned to defend the rationality of our beliefs from the threat of epistemological skepticism. The idea that there might be nothing which we know, or more radically, which we have even the slightest reason to believe, is one that many philosophers have thought to be deserving of serious attention. It seems somewhat odd, therefore, that there has not been similar attention given to what one might call practical skepticis…Read more
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24Theories of EthicsIn R. G. Frey & Christopher Heath Wellman (eds.), A Companion to Applied Ethics, Blackwell. 2005.This chapter contains sections titled: Case Ethics Normative Ethical Theory Meta‐ethics Contractarianism/Contractualism Consequentialism Deontology Virtue Theory.
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23The Authority of ReasonPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 583. 2000.At the time of her death in 1996, Jean Hampton was working on a book on practical reason she had tentatively titled, A Theory of Reasons. The above volume consists of the materials she left, together with useful editorial clues to the state of their relative completeness. Computer file dates make it clear that Hampton was engaged in a significant revision of the text and had gotten as far as Chapter 3 of a nine-chapter book. Revisions of two-thirds of the text lay before her, and, as Richard Hea…Read more
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22Review: From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3). 1994.
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Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |