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14Metaethics and EthicsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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42ReasonsContinuum. 2012.When we say we 'act for a reason', what do we mean? And what do reasons have to do with being good or bad? Introducing readers to a foundational topic in ethics, Eric Wiland considers the reasons for which we act. You do things for reasons, and reasons in some sense justify what you do. Further, your reasons belong to you, and you know the reasons for which you act in a distinctively first-personal way. Wiland lays out and critically reviews some of the most popular contemporary accounts of h…Read more
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115Good advice and rational actionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (3): 561-569. 2000.This paper launches a new criticism of Michael Smith’s advice model of internalism. Whereas Robert Neal Johnson argues that Smith’s advice model collapses into the example model of internalism, the author contends that taking advice seriously pushes us instead toward some version of externalism. The advice model of internalism misportrays the logic of accepting advice. Agents do not have epistemic access to what their fully rational selves would advise them to do, and so it is necessary for a mo…Read more
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106The Incoherence Objection in Moral TheoryActa Analytica 25 (3): 279-284. 2010.J.J.C. Smart famously complained that rule utilitarianism is incoherent, and that rule utilitarians are guilty of rule worship . Much has been said about whether Smartâs complaint is justified, but I will assume for the sake of argument that Smart was on to something. Instead, I have three other goals. First, I want to show that Smartâs complaint is a specific instance of a more general objection to a moral theoryâwhat I will call the Incoherence Objection. Second, I want to illustrate how…Read more
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62On Indirectly Self-defeating Moral TheoriesJournal of Moral Philosophy 5 (3): 384-393. 2008.Derek Parfit has notably argued that while a moral theory should not be directly self-defeating, there is nothing necessarily wrong with a moral theory that is only indirectly self-defeating. Here I resist this line of argument. I argue instead that indirectly self-defeating moral theories are indeed problematic. Parfit tries to sidestep the oddities of indirectly self-defeating theories by focusing on the choice of dispositions rather than actions. But the very considerations that can make it i…Read more
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136How Indirect Can Indirect Utilitarianism Be?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2): 275-301. 2007.Most act‐utilitarians now reject the direct utilitarianism of Bentham. They do so because they are convinced of what I call the paradox of utilitarianism—the thought that one cannot maximize happiness if one is trying to maximize happiness. Instead, they adopt some form of indirect utilitarianism (IU), arguing that the optimal decision procedure may differ markedly from the criterion of rightness for actions. Here I distinguish between six different versions of indirect utilitarianism, arguing t…Read more
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21Personal Identity and Quasi-ResponsibilityIn A. van den Beld (ed.), Moral Responsibility and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 77--87. 2000.