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483Republican Theory and Criminal PunishmentUtilitas 9 (1): 59. 1997.Suppose we embrace the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination: freedom as immunity to arbitrary interference. In that case those acts that call uncontroversially for criminalization will usually be objectionable on three grounds: the offender assumes a dominating position in relation to the victim, the offender reduces the range or ease of undominated choice on the part of the victim, and the offender raises a spectre of domination for others like the victim. And in that case, so it appea…Read more
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99Motion blindness and the knowledge argumentIn Peter Ludlow, Yujin Nagasawa & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), There's Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument, Mit Press. pp. 105--142. 2004.In a now famous thought experiment, Frank jackson asked us t0 imagine an omniscient scientist, Mary, who is coniincd in a black-and-white room and then released into the world 0f color . Assuming that she is omniscicnt in respect of all physical facts—roughiy, all the facts available to physics and all the facts that they in turn Hx or determine-physicalism would suggest that there is no new fact Mary can discover after emancipation; physicalism holds that all facts are physical in the relevant …Read more
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91Rawls’s political ontologyPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 4 (2): 157-174. 2005.The background thesis is that an implicit ontology of the people and the relation between the people and the state often shapes how we think in normative terms about politics. This article attempts to defend that thesis in relation to Rawls. The argument is that the rejection of an image of the people as a group agent connects with his objection to utilitarianism and the rejection of an image of the people as a mere aggregate connects with his objection to libertarianism. Rawls, it is argued, ho…Read more
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170There are three major issues which crop up in the discussion of metaphor among philosophers of language. They are: whether metaphor is cognitive, whether it is descriptive, and whether it is innovative. Those who deny that metaphor is cognitive are a group more often imagined than encountered, but if they existed they would consign the study of metaphor to affective stylistics, stressing the ornamentative and related effects which the phenomenon is likely to have.‘ Those who admit that metaphor …Read more
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557Freedom: psychological, ethical, and politicalCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (4): 375-389. 2015.Freedom is sometimes cast as the psychological ideal that distinguishes human beings from other animals; sometimes as the ethical ideal that distinguishes some human beings from others; and sometimes as the political ideal that distinguishes some human societies from others. This paper is an attempt to put the three ideals in a common frame, revealing their mutual connections and differences.
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7Why and how philosophy mattersIn Robert E. Goodin & Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis, Oxford University Press. pp. 35. 2006.
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57Liberty and leviathanPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 4 (1): 131-151. 2005.Hobbes made a distinctive contribution to the discussion of freedom on two fronts. He persuaded later, if not immediate, successors that it is only the exercise of a power of interference that reduces peoples freedom, not its (unexercised) existence - not even its existence in an arbitrary, unchecked form. Equally, he persuaded them that the exercise of a power of interference always reduces freedom in the same way, whether it occurs in a republican democracy, purportedly on a non-arbitrary b…Read more
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9Chapter eight. The commonwealth of ordered wordsIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 115-140. 2009.
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135Three conceptions of democratic controlConstellations 15 (1): 46-55. 2008.The idea of control or power is central to the notion of democracy, since the ideal is one of giving kratos to the demos: giving maximal or at least significant control over government to the people. But it turns out that the notion of kratos or control is definable in various ways and that as the notion is differently understood, so the ideal of democracy is differently interpreted. In this little reflection, I distinguish between three different notions of popular control, arguing that only on…Read more
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55Two Republican TraditionsIn Andreas Niederberger & Philipp Schink (eds.), Republican democracy: liberty, law and politics, Edinburgh University Press. 2013.The early nineteenth century saw the demise of the Italian-Atlantic tradition of republicanism and the rise of classical liberalism. A distinct Franco-German tradition of republicanism emerged from the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, which differs from the older way of thinking associated with neo-republicanism. This chapter examines the key differences between the Italian-Atlantic and Franco-German traditions of republicanism and places them in a historical context. It first co…Read more
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133Just freedom: a moral compass for a complex worldW.W. Norton & Company. 2014.An esteemed philosopher discusses his theory of universal freedom, describing how even those who are members of free societies may find their liberties curtailed and includes tests of freedom including the eyeball test and the tough-luck test.
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4ReferencesIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 169-176. 2009.
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180ConsequentialismDartmouth Publishing Company. 1991.This work deals with all aspects of consequentialism, encompassing utilitarianism, alienation and the demands of morality, restrictive consequentialism, alternative actions, an objectivist's guide to subjective value, recent work on the limits of obligation and more.
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77democratic approach which sets it in contrast to liberal democratic theories. This is pursued by contrasting the different interpretations of the ideal of equal respect..
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14Decision Theory, Political Theory and the Hats HypothesisIn Fred D'Agostino & I. C. Jarvie (eds.), Freedom and Rationality: Essays in Honor of John Watkins, Reidel. pp. 23--34. 1989.
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37Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 1997.This authoritative collection of the seminal texts in post-war political philosophy has now been updated and expanded. Reprints key articles, mainly unabridged, touching upon the nature of the state, democracy, justice, rights, liberty, equality and oppression. Includes work from politics, law and economics, as well as from continental and analytic philosophy. Now includes thirteen additional texts, taking account of recent developments in the field and reflecting the most pressing concerns in i…Read more
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6IndexIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 177-183. 2009.
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2On Phenomenology as a Methodology of PhilosophyIn Wolfe Mays & Stuart C. Brown (eds.), Linguistic analysis and phenomenology, Bucknell University Press. pp. 241--255. 1972.
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18X*—Social Holism and Moral Theory: A Defence of Bradley's ThesisProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86 (1): 173-198. 1986.Philip Pettit; X*—Social Holism and Moral Theory: A Defence of Bradley's Thesis, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages.
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226Deliberative Democracy and the Discursive DilemmaNoûs 35 (s1): 268-299. 2001.Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend t…Read more
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157The hidden economy of esteemEconomics and Philosophy 16 (1): 77-98. 2000.A generation of social theorists have argued that if free-rider considerations show that certain collective action predicaments are unresolvable under individual, rational choice – unresolvable under an arrangement where each is free to pursue their own relative advantage – then those considerations will equally show that the predicaments cannot be resolved by recourse to norms (Buchanan, 1975, p. 132; Heath, 1976, p. 30; Sober and Wilson, 1998, 156ff; Taylor, 1987, p. 144). If free-rider consid…Read more
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235A Republican Law of PeoplesEuropean Journal of Political Theory 9 (1): 70-94. 2010.Assuming that states will remain a permanent feature of our world, what is the ideal that we should hold out for the international order? An attractive proposal is that those peoples that are already organized under non-dominating, representative states should pursue a twin goal: first, arrange things so that they each enjoy the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination in relation to one another and to other multi-national and international agencies; and second, do everything possible and p…Read more
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