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470Freedom in Hobbes's Ontology and Semantics: A Comment on Quentin SkinnerJournal of the History of Ideas 73 (1): 111-126. 2012.
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166The recent debates about the nature of social freedom, understood in a broadly negative way, have generated three main views of the topic: these represent freedom respectively as non-limitation, non-interference and non-domination. The participants in these debates often go different ways, however, because they address different topics under common names, not because they hold different intuitions on common topics. Social freedom is sometimes understood as option-freedom, sometimes as agency-fre…Read more
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159Consequentialism and moral psychologyInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1). 1994.Consequentialism ought not to make an impact, explicit or implicit, on every decision. All it ought generally to enjoy is what I describe as a virtual presence in the deliberation that produces decisions. [...] The argument that we have conducted suggests that the virtuous agent ought in general to remain faithful to his or her instincts and ingrained habits, only occasionally breaking with them in the name of promoting the best consequences.
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223Rationality, Reasoning and Group AgencyDialectica 61 (4): 495-519. 2007.The rationality of individual agents is secured for the most part by their make-up or design. Some agents, however – in particular, human beings – rely on the intentional exercise of thinking or reasoning in order to promote their rationality further; this is the activity that is classically exemplified in Rodin’s sculpture of Le Penseur. Do group agents have to rely on reasoning in order to maintain a rational profile? Recent results in the theory of judgment aggregation show that under a range o…Read more
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112Practical belief and philosophical theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1). 1998.Philosophy invariably starts with the attempt to spell out ideas and beliefs that we already hold, whether on topics like time or causality, colour or value, consciousness or free will, democracy or justice or freedom. It may go well beyond such pre-philosophical assumptions in its further developments, regimenting them in unexpected ways, revising them on novel lines, even discarding them entirely in favour of other views. But philosophy always begins with the articulation of ordinary ideas and…Read more
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Embracing objectivity in ethicsIn Brian Leiter (ed.), Objectivity in Law and Morals, Cambridge University Press. pp. 234--86. 2001.
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Action and Interpretation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social SciencesPhilosophy and Rhetoric 13 (3): 219-221. 1980.
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Kelsen on Justice. A Charitable ReadingIn Richard Tur & William L. Twining (eds.), Essays on Kelsen, Clarendon Press. 1986.
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |