•  91
    The basic liberties
    In Matthew H. Kramer, Claire Grant, Ben Colburn & Antony Hatzistavrou (eds.), The legacy of H.L.A. Hart: legal, political, and moral philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
    We have two ways of talking about liberty or freedom, one in the singular, the other in the plural. We concern ourselves in the singular mode with how far someone is free to do or not to do certain things, or with how far someone is a free person or not a free person. But, equally, we concern ourselves with the plural question as to how far the person enjoys the liberties that we take to be important or basic. What are those plural liberties, however? What does it take for something to count as …Read more
  •  27
    On People’s Terms. A Reply to Four Critiques
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 5 (2). 2015.
    Download.
  •  175
    Terms, things and response-dependence
    European Review of Philosophy 3 55-66. 1998.
  •  732
    Deliberative Democracy and the Discursive Dilemma
    Philosophical Issues 11 (1): 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
  •  723
    Group agents have been represented as expressive fictions by those who treat ascriptions of agency to groups as metaphorical; as pragmatic fictions by those who think that the agency ascribed to groups belongs in the first place to a distinct individual or set of individuals; and as theoretical fictions by those who think that postulating group agents serves no indispensable role in our theory of the social world. This paper identifies, criticizes and rejects each of these views, defending a str…Read more
  •  163
    In a recent discussion of Amartya Sen's concept of the capabilities of people for functioning in their society – and the idea of targeting people's functioning capabilities in evaluating the society – G. A. Cohen accuses Sen of espousing an inappropriate, ‘athletic’ image of the person (Cohen, 1993, pp. 24–5). The idea is that if Sen's formulations are to be taken at face value, then life is valuable only so far as people actively choose most facets of their existence: if they fare well in the m…Read more
  •  199
    A republican right to basic income?
    Basic Income Studies 2 (2). 2007.
    The basic income proposal provides everyone in a society, as an unconditional right, with access to a certain level of income. Introducing such a right is bound to raise questions of institutional feasibility. Would it lead too many people to opt out of the workforce, for example? And even if it did not, could a constitution that allowed some members of the society to do this – at whatever relative cost – prove acceptable in a society of mutually reciprocal, equally positioned members? I assume …Read more
  •  31
    5 Neuroscience and Agent-Control
    In David Spurrett, Don Ross, Harold Kincaid & Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 77. 2007.
  •  42
    Trust, Reliance, and the Internet1
    In M. J. van den Joven & J. Weckert (eds.), Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 161. 2008.
    Trusting someone in an intuitive, rich sense of the term involves not just relying on that person, but manifesting reliance on them in the expectation that this manifestation of reliance will increase their reason and motive to prove reliable. Can trust between people be formed on the basis of Internet contact alone? Forming the required expectation in regard to another person, and so trusting them on some matter, may be due to believing that they are trustworthy; to believing that they seek est…Read more
  •  6
    Prisons, Politicians and Democracy
    In Joseph Dunne, Attracta Ingram, Frank Litton & Fergal O'Connor (eds.), Questioning Ireland: Debates in Political Philosophy and Public Policy, Institute of Public Administration. pp. 155. 2000.
  • Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice
    with John Braithwaite
    Law and Philosophy 10 (2): 221-234. 1991.
  •  2
    Freedom in the spirit of sen
    In Christopher W. Morris (ed.), Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
  •  385
    Reworking Sandel's republicanism
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 73-96. 1998.
  •  51
    Contractualism and Consequentialism
    with T. M. Scanlon
    Theoria 66 (3): 228-236. 2000.
  •  49
    The Inescapability of Consequentialism
    In Ulrike Heuer & Gerald R. Lang (eds.), Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 41. 2012.
  •  47
    Collective persons and powers
    Legal Theory 8 (4): 443-470. 2002.
  •  1277
    Freedom as antipower
    Ethics 106 (3): 576-604. 1996.
  •  110
    Review: On thinking how to live: A cognitivist view (review)
    Mind 115 (460): 1083-1106. 2006.
    Allan Gibbard’s strategy in his new book is to begin by describing a psychology of thinking and planning that certain agents might instantiate, then to argue that this psychology involves an ‘expressivism’ about thought that bears on what to do, and, finally, to try to show that ascribing that same psychology to human beings would explain the way we deploy various concepts in practical and normative deliberation. The idea is to construct an imaginary normative psychology, purportedly conforming t…Read more
  •  28
  •  35
    My thanks to the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also had the benefit of an exchange with Christopher McMahon. 1. Christopher McMahon, “The Indeterminacy of Republican Policy,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2005): 67–93, at p. 89. All parenthetical references in the text are to this article.
  •  397
    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
  •  4
    Penser en société: essais de métaphysique sociale et de méthodologie
    Presses Universitaires de France - PUF. 2004.
    À quoi servent les explications du comportement humain qui nous présentent comme des êtres rationnels animés par des motifs égoïstes, si, en réalité, nous agissons la plupart du temps conformément à des motifs qui ne le sont pas? À quoi servent les explications fonctionnalistes des institutions humaines qui les présentent comme ayant été retenues au cours de l'histoire de nos sociétés en raison de leurs avantages adaptatifs, si, en réalité, il n'existe aucune histoire documentée des mécanismes d…Read more
  •  55
    Discourse theory and republican freedom
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 6 (1): 72-95. 2003.
    This essay outlines some of the main issues that arise in the theory of freedom and, in particular, those that divide the liberal conception of freedom as non-interference from the republican conception of freedom as non-domination. It goes on to explore the idea that discourse theory provides reasons for favouring the republican conception. Discourse theory is taken for these purposes to be a theory that subsumes, but goes beyond decision theory. It accepts the decision-theoretic view that huma…Read more
  •  204
    Restrictive consequentialism
    with Geoffrey Brennan
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (4). 1986.
    paper offers both explication and defence. Standard consequentialism is a theory of decision. It attempts to identify, for any set of alternative options, that which it is right that an agent should..