•  30
    On People’s Terms. A Reply to Four Critiques
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 5 (2). 2015.
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  •  723
    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
  •  137
    Winch’s double-edged idea of a social science
    History of the Human Sciences 13 (1): 63-77. 2000.
    Peter Winch’s 1958 book The Idea of a Social Science contains two distinguishable sets of theses, one set bearing on the individual-level understanding of human beings, the other on the society-level understanding of the regularities and institutions to which human beings give rise. The first set of claims is persuasive and significant but the second is a mixed bunch: none is well established and only some are sound
  •  17
    Rights, constraints and trumps
    Analysis 46 (4): 8-14. 1986.
  •  712
    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
  •  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
  •  15
  •  31
    5 Neuroscience and Agent-Control
    In Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid & G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 77. 2007.
  •  51
    Two Sources of Morality
    Social Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 102. 2001.
    This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse. Instead, I am concerned with the less frequently posed concept-centered question of where in human experience moral terms or concepts are grounded — that is, where in experience the moral becomes salient to…Read more
  • Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice
    with John Braithwaite
    Law and Philosophy 10 (2): 221-234. 1991.
  •  2
    Review (review)
    Theory and Decision 12 (2): 207-214. 1980.
  •  51
    Contractualism and Consequentialism
    with T. M. Scanlon
    Theoria 66 (3): 228-236. 2000.
  •  141
    Substantive moral theory
    Social Philosophy and Policy 25 (1): 1-27. 2008.
    Philosophy can serve two roles in relation to moral thinking: first, to provide a meta-ethical commentary on the nature of moral thought, as the methodology or the philosophy of science provides a commentary on the nature of scientific thought; and second, to build on the common presumptions deployed in people's moral thinking about moral issues, looking for a substantive moral theory that they might support. The present essay addresses the nature of this second role; illustrates it with substan…Read more
  •  47
    Collective persons and powers
    Legal Theory 8 (4): 443-470. 2002.
  • The power of a democratic public
    In Reiko Gotoh & Paul Dumouchel (eds.), Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
  •  2
    Freedom in the spirit of sen
    In Christopher W. Morris (ed.), Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
  •  6
    Review: Slote on Consequentialism (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 36 (144). 1986.
  •  28
  •  394
    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
  •  182
    In Hobbes, freedom of choice requires nonfrustration: the option you prefer must be accessible. In Berlin, it requires noninterference: every option, preferred or unpreferred, must be accessible—every door must be open. But Berlin’s argument against Hobbes suggests a parallel argument that freedom requires something stronger still: that each option be accessible and that no one have the power to block access; the doors should be open, and there should be no powerful doorkeepers. This is freedom …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
  •  1272
    Freedom as antipower
    Ethics 106 (3): 576-604. 1996.
  •  326
    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
  •  55
    The Determinacy of Republican Policy: A Reply to McMahon
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (3): 275-283. 2006.
  •  237
    According to republican theory, we are free persons to the extent that we are protected and secured in the same fundamental choices, on the same public basis, as one another. But there is no public protection or security without a coercive state. Does this mean that any freedom we enjoy is a superficial good that presupposes a deeper, political form of subjection? Philip Pettit addresses this crucial question in On the People's Terms. He argues that state coercion will not involve individual sub…Read more