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70Judging justice: an introduction to contemporary political philosophyRoutledge and Kegan Paul. 1980.Social life In order to get our discussion going we need to develop a picture of what social life involves. Political evaluation, the central theme of our ...
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79The Possibility of Special DutiesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (4). 1986.In common-sense morality, certain special obligations loom large. These are duties which are laid upon agents, be they individuals or groups, in virtue of their distinctive identities, relationships or histories: because of who they are, how they are linked to others or what they have done in the past. The particularistic basis of these obligations means that no one but the agent in question is engaged by such a duty. It is that agent's alone.These special obligations include duties towards ones…Read more
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2ContentsIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. 2009.
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100Parmenides and SartrePhilosophical Studies (Dublin) 17 (n/a): 161-184. 1968.As the first ontologist, Parmenides has a special place in the history of philosophy, not only because of his originality, but also because of the greatness of his particular attempt in the philosophy of being. His stature is such that any later attempt in the inquiry into being must measure itself against his achievement. His famous philosophical poem, which we have in fragments, is a permanent challenge to later philosophers. Thus Plato could describe Parmenides as ‘a man to be respected and a…Read more
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113Rules, reasons, and norms: selected essaysClarendon Press. 2002.Pettit presents a selection of essays touching upon metaphysics, philosophical psychology, and the theory of rational regulation. The first part of the book discusses the rule-following character of thought. The second considers how choice can be responsive to different sorts of factors, while still being under the control of thought. The third examines the implications of this view of choice and rationality for the normative regulation of social behavior.
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On behalf of the Australian Health Ethics Committee. Towards a consensual culture in the ethical review of research, Medical Journal of Australia, 1998; vol. 168, pp. 79-82; and Cribb R,'Ethical regulation a. nd humanities research in Australia: problems and consequences' (review)Monash Bioethics Review 23 (3): 39-57. 2004.
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InhaltsverzeichnisIn Philip Pettit & Christopher Hookway (eds.), Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften, De Gruyter. 1982.
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20The Virtual Reality of Homo EconomicusThe Monist 78 (3): 308-329. 1995.The economic explanation of individual behaviour, even behaviour outside the traditional province of the market, projects a distinctively economic image on the minds of the agents involved. It suggests that, in regard to motivation and rationality, they conform to the profile of homo economicus. But this suggestion, by many lights, flies in the face of common sense; it conflicts with our ordinary assumptions about how we each feel and think in most situations, certainly most non-market situation…Read more
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30On People’s Terms. A Reply to Four CritiquesPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 5 (2). 2015.Download.
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702Deliberative Democracy and the Discursive DilemmaPhilosophical 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
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689Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical FictionsErkenntnis 79 (S9): 1641-1662. 2014.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
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199A 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
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315 Neuroscience and Agent-ControlIn 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.
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42What price fame? Tyler Cowen, Harvard university press, 2000, 248 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 17 (2): 275-294. 2001.
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7Chapter six. Words and the warping of appetiteIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 84-97. 2009.
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90Rational choice, functional selection and empty black boxesJournal of Economic Methodology 7 (1): 33-57. 2000.In order to vindicate rational-choice theory as a mode of explaining social patterns in general - social patterns beyond the narrow range of economic behaviour - we have to recognize the legitimacy of explaining the resilience of certain patterns of behaviour: that is, explaining, not necessarily why they emerged or have been sustained, but why they are robust and reliable. And once we allow the legitimacy of explaining resilience, then we can see how functionalist theory may also serve us well …Read more
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2Freedom in the spirit of senIn Christopher W. Morris (ed.), Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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90The basic libertiesIn Matthew H. Kramer (ed.), 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
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1Liberal/communitarianism : Macintyre's mesmeric dichotomyIn John Horton & Susan Mendus (eds.), After Macintyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Macintyre, University of Notre Dame Press. 1994.
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82RepublicanismMind 109 (435): 640-644. 2000.The long republican tradition is characterized by a conception of freedom as non‐domination, which offers an alternative, both to the negative view of freedom as non‐interference and to the positive view of freedom as self‐mastery. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of the conception, displays its many attractions and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at the sorts of political and civil institution…Read more
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161Symposium on Amartya Sen's philosophy: 1 capability and freedom: A defence of SenEconomics and Philosophy 17 (1): 1-20. 2001.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
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