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260Responsibility incorporatedEthics 117 (2): 171-201. 2007.The Herald of Free Enterprise, a ferry operating in the English Channel, sank on March 6, 1987, drowning nearly two hundred people. The official inquiry found that the company running the ferry was extremely sloppy, with poor routines of checking and management. “From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness.”1 But the courts did not penalize anyone in what might seem to be an appropriate measure, failing to identify individuals in the company or on the ship i…Read more
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28AUTHOR: The following queries have arisen during the editing of your manuscript. Please answer the queries by making the necessary corrections on the CATS online corrections form. Once you have added all your corrections, please press the SUBMIT button.
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42The Consequentialist PerspectiveIn M. Baron, P. Pettit & M. Slote (eds.), Three Methods of Ethics, Blackwell. 1997.
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724Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1997.This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and d…Read more
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433Freedom 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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162The 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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166The consequentialist can recognise rightsPhilosophical Quarterly 38 (150): 42-55. 1988.consequentialist, even being a utilitarian, allows one still to recognise rights.' I believe that these efforts are well motivated, for I think that any moral doctrine is suspect if one of its effects is to make agents unable to take one another's rights seriously
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152Looks as powersPhilosophical Issues 13 (1): 221-52. 2003.Although they may differ on the reason why, many philosophers hold that it is a priori that an object is red if and only if it is such as to look red to normal observers in normal conditions.
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51I approach these questions in the step-by-step, unnuanced manner of the philosopher. In the first section, I characterise the republican tradition in its broad historical sweep, drawing on an earlier book on republicanism, and then, in the second section, I give an account of what the system of culture should be..
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110Practical 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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14'A Definition of Physicalism ', Analysis, Vol. 53, 1993, pp. 213-23. 'A Problem for Expressivists ' (with Frank Jackson), Analysis, Vol. 58, 1998, pp. 239-51. 'A Sensible Perspectivism ' in Maria Baghramian and Attracta Ingram, eds., Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity , New York, Routledge, 2000, pp. 60-82.
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Kelsen on Justice. A Charitable ReadingIn Richard Tur & William L. Twining (eds.), Essays on Kelsen, Clarendon Press. 1986.
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156Consequentialism 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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23The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and RespectOxford University Press. 2015.Philip Pettit offers a new insight into moral psychology. He shows that attachments such as love, and certain virtues such as honesty, require their characteristic behaviours not only as things actually are, but also in cases where things are different from how they actually are. He explores the implications of this idea for key moral issues.
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61On Thinking How to Live: A Cognitivist View (review)Mind 115 (460). 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 …Read more
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75‘By political thcory," ]0hn Plamcnatz wrote, "I d0 not mean explanations of how governments function; I mean systematic thinking about the purposes of govcrnmcnt."l Political theory is a normative disciplinc, designed t0 let us evaluate rather than explain; in this it resembles moral or ethical theory. What distinguishes it among normative disciplines is that it is designed to facilitate in particular the evaluation of government or, if that is something more general, the statc.2 We are to ident…Read more
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19Instituting a research ethic: Chilling and cautionary talesBioethics 6 (2). 1992.I want to sound a warning note and suggest some changes that are needed in the practice of ethical review. It is easy to assume that with a policy as high-minded as the policy of reviewing research on human beings, the only difficulties will be the obstacles put in its way by recalcitrant and unreformed paries: by the special-interest groups affected. But this is not always true of high-minded policies and it is not true, in particular, of the policy of reviewing research. Ethical review is enda…Read more
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1Brian Barry, "The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in 'A Theory of Justice', by John Rawls"Theory and Decision 4 (3/4): 379. 1974.
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3Chapter three. Using words to ratiocinateIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 42-54. 2009.
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57Esteem, ldentifiability and the InternetAnalyse & Kritik 26 (1): 139-157. 2004.The desire for esteem, and the associated desire for good reputation, serve an important role in ordinary social life in disciplining interactions and supporting the operation of social norms. The fact that many Internet relations are conducted under separate dedicated e-identities may encourage the view that Internet relations are not susceptible to these esteem-related incentives. We argue that this view is mistaken. Certainly, pseudonyms allow individuals to moderate the effects of disesteem-…Read more
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |