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17Rights and UtilitarianismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (sup1): 137-160. 1979.Few questions about utilitarianism have been more vexed than that of its relation to rights. It is commonplace to hold that there are nonutilitarian rights, rights not founded on considerations of utility. And it is even thought that the very notion of rights is inherently incapable of being significantly employed within the utilitarian framework. In the present paper, I wish to consider both of these matters. I propose to give reasons—mostly not really new—for rejecting the stronger, conceptual…Read more
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Hudson, William E. The Libertarian Illusion. Washington: CQ Press, 2008 (review)Reason Papers 30 113-120. 2008.
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17A Theory of Reasons for Action. By David A. J. Richards. Oxford and Toronto: Oxford University Press. 1971. xiv, 370. $15.50 (review)Dialogue 12 (1): 116-120. 1973.
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35Pornography: The Other Side F. M. Christensen New York: Praeger, 1990, x + 188 pp. US$19.95 (review)Dialogue 35 (2): 420-424. 1996.
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37The Medical Minimum: ZeroJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (6): 558-571. 2011.The question is what the mandated medical minimum for all should be. The correct answer is zero. That is to say, the government should not be forcing anyone to pay for anyone. The most popular arguments within the liberal framework, presumed to be shared by all, are briefly surveyed. Health care is provided by someone to someone else, and that someone else should either be paying for it, or recognize that someone is providing it charitably to him or her. Compelling someone else to pay for it is …Read more
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17Morals and MarxDialogue 22 (3): 523-534. 1983.There are fourteen original papers in this substantial volume devoted to the general problem of the relation of Marxism, or at least Marxism as found in the works of Marx, and moral theory. The questions are, in Nielsen's words, “whether there should be or even could be a Marxist moral theory and if there could be a Marxist moral theory, what sort of a moral theory it should be”. Why does he not include the question what Marx's moral theory is? For a few of these writers do think that Marx had s…Read more
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21Alan Gewirth's foundationalism and the well-being stateJournal of Value Inquiry 31 (4): 485-502. 1997.
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Timo Airaksinen and Martin A. Bertman, eds., Hobbes: War among Nations (review)Philosophy in Review 11 3-5. 1991.
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26Kerrey and CalleyInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 16 (2): 153-162. 2002.In the Vietnam war, Lieutenant Calley, claiming to be following orders, ordered the killing of several hundred women, children, and elderly people in the village of My Lai. In 1969, Lieutenant (later Senator) Kerrey led a small group of SEALs in the dead of night on a dangerous military venture. In course, a dozen or so innocent villagers were either shot in crossfire or killed intentionally because there seemed a real chance that they would inform the enemy, endangering themselves and the missi…Read more
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60Discussion-review: Evolutionary biology, altruism, and moral theoryBiology and Philosophy 15 (2): 259-274. 2000.
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31Semantics, Future Generations, and the Abortion ProblemSocial Theory and Practice 3 (4): 461-485. 1975.
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66Justice in health careJournal of Value Inquiry 40 (2-3): 371-384. 2006.In this discussion, we will consider arguments against the view that one person is entitled to medical care at the expense of another person, just because the one person might be able to extend it to the other. We all accept the view that we are entitled to nonviolence from each other, which in the medical case is roughly that we are entitled to other people not making us sick, at least insofar as this is something they can readily avoid. But how are we also entitled to their help in making us w…Read more
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127On a Case for Animal RightsThe Monist 70 (1): 31-49. 1987.Down through the past decade and more, no philosophical writer has taken a greater interest in the issues of how we ought to act in relation to animals, nor pressed more strongly the case for according them rights, than Tom Regan, in many articles, reviews, and exchanges at scholarly conferences and in print. Now, in The Case for Animal Rights we have a substantial volume in which Regan most fully and systematically presents his case for a strong panoply of rights for animals. The argument is di…Read more
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299Collective responsibilityThe Journal of Ethics 6 (2): 179-198. 2002.The basic bearer of responsibility is individuals, because that isall there are – nothing else can literally be the bearer of fullresponsibility. Claims about group responsibility therefore needanalysis. This would be impossible if all actions must be understoodas ones that could be performed whether or not anyone else exists.Individuals often act by virtue of membership in certain groups;often such membership bears a causal role in our behavior, andsometimes people act deliberately in order to …Read more
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12Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice: Essays on Moral and Political PhilosophyRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice is a collection of essays of the moral and political philosophy of Jan Narveson. The essays in this collection share a consistent theme running through much of Narveson's moral and political philosophy, namely that politics and morals stem from the interests of individual people, and have no antecedent authority over us. The essays in this collection, in various ways and as applied to various aspects of the scene, argue that the ultimate and true point o…Read more
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341We Don’t Owe Them a Thing!The Monist 86 (3): 419-433. 2003.The discovery that people far away are in bad shape seems to generate a sense of guilt on the part of many articulate people in our part of the world, even though they are no worse off now that we’ve heard about them than they had been before. I will take it as given that we are certainly responsible for evils we inflict on others, no matter where, and that we owe those people compensation. Not all similarly agree that it is not in general our duty to make other people better off, and therefore …Read more
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35Reason and Morality in the Age of Nuclear DeterrenceAnalyse & Kritik 10 (2): 206-232. 1988.The argument in this paper is that although rationality and morality are distinguishable concepts, there is nevertheless a rational morality, a set of principles, namely, which it is rational of all to require of all. The argument of this paper is that such a morality would certainly issue in a general condemnation of aggressive war. (Whether this also makes it irrational for States to engage in such activities is another, and not entirely settled, matter). Correlatively, it would issue in a str…Read more
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University of WaterlooDepartment of Philosophy
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |