University of Pittsburgh
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1972
CV
New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
  •  34
    Reason and Value
    with E. J. Bond
    Philosophical Review 94 (2): 286. 1985.
  •  33
    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.”
  •  32
    Reply to Honneth
    European Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 592-596. 2021.
    European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 592-596, September 2021.
  •  31
    From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3): 695-701. 1994.
  •  30
    Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 99 (1): 49-53. 2002.
  •  30
    Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    A panoramic book by a leading moral philosopher with significant things to say about developments in modern moral philosophy.
  •  30
    The Moral Problem
    Philosophical Quarterly 46 (185): 508-515. 1996.
  •  30
    The actor and the spectator
    Philosophia 7 (1): 197-203. 1977.
  •  29
    Ought, Reasons, and Morality
    Journal of Philosophy 86 (4): 208-214. 1989.
  •  28
    The Rejection of Consequentialism by Samuel Scheffler (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 220-226. 1984.
  •  28
    On Margaret Gilbert's Rights and Demands
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2): 499-504. 2023.
  •  28
    Review: Smith's Moral Problem (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 46 (185). 1996.
  •  27
    Reason, Judgment, and the Desire to Be Rational
    Journal of Philosophy 80 (9999): 652-653. 1983.
  •  27
    Reply to Terzis
    Canadian 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
  •  26
    Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition
    with Jean Hampton
    Philosophical Review 98 (3): 401. 1989.
  •  26
    Hutcheson in the History of Rights
    Journal 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
  •  25
    The authority of reason
    Philosophical 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
  •  25
    Reply to Scheffler
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (2). 1982.
  •  24
    The Inference to the Best Means
    Canadian 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.
  •  23
    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
  •  22
    Theories of Ethics
    In 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.
  •  21
    Practical Skepticism and the Reasons for Action
    Canadian 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
  •  21
    Harm to Others
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (4): 691-694. 1987.
  •  21
    Human Morality’s Authority
    Philosophy 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