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230Because I Want ItSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 129-153. 2001.How can an agent's desire or will give him reasons for acting? Not long ago, this might have seemed a silly question, since it was widely believed that all reasons for acting are based in the agent's desires. The interesting question, it seemed, was not how what an agent wants could give him reasons, but how anything else could. In recent years, however, this earlier orthodoxy has increasingly appeared wrongheaded as a growing number of philosophers have come to stress the action-guiding role of…Read more
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188“But it would be wrong”Social Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 135-157. 2010.Is the fact that an action would be wrong itself a reason not to perform it? Warranted attitude accounts of value suggest about value, that being valuable is not itself a reason but to the reasons for valuing something in which its value consists. Would a warranted attitude account of moral obligation and wrongness, not entail, therefore, that being morally obligatory or wrong gives no reason for action itself? I argue that this is not true. Although warranted attitude theories of normative conc…Read more
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49The inventions of autonomyEuropean Journal of Philosophy 7 (3). 1999.Book reviewed in this article:J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy
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28Human 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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62Pleasure as Ultimate Good in Sidgwick’s EthicsThe Monist 58 (3): 475-489. 1974.The notion of pleasure lies at the very heart of Sidgwick’s moral philosophy. For Sidgwick holds not merely that pleasure is a good, but that ultimately it is the only good. And hence it is the good of pleasure which grounds his utilitarianism.
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40Book Review:Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. William L. Rowe (review)Ethics 103 (2): 389-. 1993.
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5Responsibility within RelationsIn Brian Feltham & John Cottingham (eds.), Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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31From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3): 695-701. 1994.
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112Welfare and Rational CarePrinceton University Press. 2002.What kind of life best ensures human welfare? Since the ancient Greeks, this question has been as central to ethical philosophy as to ordinary reflection. But what exactly is welfare? This question has suffered from relative neglect. And, as Stephen Darwall shows, it has done so at a price. Presenting a provocative new "rational care theory of welfare," Darwall proves that a proper understanding of welfare fundamentally changes how we think about what is best for people.Most philosophers have as…Read more
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46Morality and PrincipleIn David Bakhurst, Margaret Olivia Little & Brad Hooker (eds.), Thinking about reasons: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Dancy, Oxford University Press. pp. 168. 2013.
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55Desires, Reasons, and CausesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 436-443. 2003.Jonathan Dancy’s Practical Reality makes a significant contribution to clarifying the relationship between desire and reasons for acting, both the normative reasons we seek in deliberation and the motivating reasons we cite in explanation. About the former, Dancy argues that, not only are normative reasons not all grounded in desires, but, more radically, the fact that one desires something is never itself a normative reason. And he argues that desires fail to figure in motivating reasons also, …Read more
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43The Social and the SociablePhilosophical Topics 42 (1): 201-217. 2014.Beginning from Kant’s famous idea that “unsociable sociability” stimulates human progress and civilization, the essay investigates Kant’s categories of the “unsociable” and the “sociable,” and argues that the fundamental difference between them is that the former presuppose a social perspective that is third personal, whereas the latter is always a second-personal affair, instantiated when people relate to one another in various ways, or manifest the disposition to do so. Kant’s “unsociable” att…Read more
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49Respect, Concern, and MembershipIn Hans Bernhard Schmid, Christoph Henning & Dieter Thomä (eds.), Social Capital, Social Identities: From Ownership to Belonging, De Gruyter. pp. 93-104. 2014.
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660Consequentialism (edited book)Blackwell. 2003.Consequentialism collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics.
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11How Should Ethics Relate to (the Rest of) Philosophy?: Moore's LegacySouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 1-20. 2003.
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26Practical 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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74The Development of EthicsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 131-147. 2011.This Article does not have an abstract
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55Under Moore's SpellUtilitas 10 (3): 286. 1998.As David Wiggins points out, although Ross is best known for opposing Moore's consequentialism, Ross comes very close to capitulation to Moore when he accepts, as required by beneficence, a prima facie duty to maximize the good. I argue that what lies behind this is Ross's acceptance of Moore's doctrine of agent-neutral intrinsic value, a notion that is not required by, but is indeed is in tension with, beneficence as doing good to or for others
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54Scheffler on Morality and Ideals of the PersonCanadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (2). 1982.Scheffler's paper divides into two parts. In the first, he argues that Parfit's argument from the complex view of personal identity neither can, nor is intended to, establish any moral theory; in particular, it cannot establish utilitarianism. Rather, Parfit's aim must have been simply to weaken our attachment to non-utilitarian theories. In discovering that the only philosophically respectable view of personal identity holds it to consist simply in bodily or psychological continuities and conne…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |