•  472
  •  469
    The Empowering Theory of Trust
    In Paul Faulkner & Thomas W. Simpson (eds.), The Philosophy of Trust, Oxford University Press. pp. 14-34. 2017.
  •  444
    The Republican Law of Peoples: A Restatement
    In Barbara Buckinx, Jonathan Trejo-Mathys & Timothy Waligore (eds.), Domination and Global Political Justice, Routledge. 2015.
  •  426
    Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sci…Read more
  •  422
    Republican Theory and Criminal Punishment
    Utilitas 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
  •  411
    Three Mistakes About Democracy
    In Keith Breen & Allyn Fives (eds.), Philosophy and Political Engagement: Reflection in the Public Sphere, Palgrave. pp. 187-199. 2016.
  •  393
    Democracy Before, In, and After Schumpeter
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 29 (4): 492-504. 2017.
    The classical model of democracy that Schumpeter criticizes is manufactured out of a variety of earlier ideas, not those of any one thinker or even one school of thought. His critique of the central ideals by which he defines the model--those of the common will and the common good--remains persuasive. People's preferences are too messy and too manipulable to allow us to think that mass democracy can promote those ideals, as he defines them. Should we endorse his purely electoral model of democra…Read more
  •  391
    Two Fallacies About Corporations
    In Subramanian Rangan (ed.), Performance and Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business, and Society, Oxford University Press. pp. 379-394. 2015.
    One of the most important challenges for political theory is to identify the extent to which corporations should be facilitated and restricted in law. By way of background to that challenge, we need to develop a view about the nature and potential of corporations and corporate bodies in general. This chapter discusses two fallacies that we should avoid in this exercise. One, a claim popular among economists, that corporate bodies are not really agents at all. The other, a claim associated with U…Read more
  •  377
    Desire Beyond Belief
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 77-92. 2004.
    David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewi…Read more
  •  369
    The Program Model, Difference-makers, and the Exclusion Problem
    In Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Huw Price (eds.), Making a Difference, Oxford University Press. pp. 232-50. 2017.
  •  351
    This chapter sketches what is considered the best interpretation of physicalism, rehearses the best way of defending it, and shows that the physicalism forthcoming is still going to be less than fully satisfying; it is going to leave us short of the satisfaction that might be expected from a philosophical theory. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first section gives an interpretation of physicalism in the spirit of Frank Jackson's; this involves a rich version under which the way…Read more
  •  338
    Reworking Sandel's republicanism
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 73-96. 1998.
  •  324
    In defense of folk psychology
    Philosophical Studies 59 (1): 31-54. 1990.
    It turned out that there was no phlogiston, no caloric fluid, and no luminiferous ether. Might it turn out that there are no beliefs and desires? Patricia and Paul Churchland say yes} We say no. In part one we give our positive argument for the existence of beliefs and desires.
  •  323
    Consciousness Incorporated
    Journal of Social Philosophy 49 (1): 12-37. 2018.
  •  308
    If language is to serve the basic purpose of communicating our attitudes, we must be constructed so as to form beliefs in those propositions that we truthfully assert on the basis of careful assent. Thus, other things being equal, I can rely on believing those things to which I give my careful assent. And so my ability to assent or dissent amounts to an ability to make up my mind about what I believe. This capacity, in tandem with a similar capacity in respect of other attitudes, supports three …Read more
  •  302
  •  299
    Legitimacy and Justice in Republican Perspective
    Current Legal Problems 65 59-82. 2012.
    Let justice be a feature of the social order imposed by a state and legitimacy a feature of how it is imposed: one that makes the imposition acceptable. This article argues that, so understood, legitimacy is quite a distinct concern from justice; that the core concern is with showing how state coercion is consistent with people’s being free citizens; that this does not require showing that the state exists by consensus or contract; that the best hope of satisfying the concern lies with arguing t…Read more
  •  298
    Practical unreason
    Mind 102 (405): 53-79. 1993.
    Some contemporary theories treat phenomena like weakness of will, compulsion and wantonness as practical failures but not as failures of rationality: say, as failures of autonomy or whatever. Other current theories-the majority see the phenomena as failures of rationality but not as distinctively practical failures. They depict them as always involving a theoretical deficiency: a sort of ignorance, error, inattention or illogic. They represent them as failures which are on a par with breakdowns …Read more
  •  298
    Justice: Social and Political
    In David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press. 2015.
  •  288
    Broome on reasoning and rule-following
    Philosophical Studies 173 (12): 3373-3384. 2016.
    John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning is a trail-blazing study of the nature of rationality, the nature of reasoning and the connection between the two. But it may be somewhat misleading in two respects. First, his theory of reasoning is consistent with the meta-propositional view that he rejects; it develops a broadly similar theory but in much greater detail. And while his discussion of rule-following helps to explain the role of rules in reasoning, it does not constitute a response to t…Read more
  •  288
    Joint actions and group agents
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (1): 18-39. 2006.
    University of Cologne, Germany Joint action and group agency have emerged as focuses of attention in recent social theory and philosophy but they have rarely been connected with one another. The argument of this article is that whereas joint action involves people acting together to achieve any sort of result, group agency requires them to act together for the achievement of one result in particular: the construction of a centre of attitude and agency that satisfies the usual constraints of cons…Read more
  •  258
  •  253
    How sensitive should you be to the testimony of others? You saw the car that caused an accident going through traffic lights on the red; or so you thought. Should you revise your belief on discovering that the majority of bystanders, equally well-equipped, equally well-positioned and equally impartial, reported that it went through on the green? Or take another case. You believe that intelligent design is the best explanation for the order of the living universe. Should you revise that belief on …Read more
  •  252
    Satisficing Consequentialism
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 58 (1): 139-176. 1984.