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4540Promises and TrustIn Hanoch Sheinman (ed.), Promises and Agreements: Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press. 2011.In this article we develop and defend what we call the “Trust View” of promissory obligation, according to which making a promise involves inviting another individual to trust one to do something. In inviting her trust, and having the invitation accepted (or at least not rejected), one incurs an obligation to her not to betray the trust that one has invited. The distinctive wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating this obligation. We begin by explicating the core notion o…Read more
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212Promises beyond assurancePhilosophical Studies 144 (2). 2009.Breaking a promise is generally taken to involve committing a certain kind of moral wrong, but what (if anything) explains this wrong? According to one influential theory that has been championed most recently by T.M. Scanlon, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating an obligation that one incurs to a promisee in virtue of giving her assurance that one will perform or refrain from performing certain acts. In this paper, we argue that the “Assurance View”, as we call it, …Read more
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66Feasibility in action and attitudeIn T. Rønnow-Rasmussen B. Petersson J. Josefsson D. Egonsson (ed.), Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz, . 2007.The object of this paper is to explore the intersection of two issues. The first concerns the role that feasibility considerations play in constraining normative claims – claims, say, about what we (individually and collectively) ought to do and to be. The second concerns whether normative claims are to be understood as applying only to actions in their own right or also non-derivatively to attitudes. In particular, we argue that actions and attitudes may be subject to different feasibility cons…Read more
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1391Democracy as a Modally Demanding ValueNoûs 47 (2): 504-521. 2013.Imperialism seems to be deeply antithetical to democracy. Yet, at least one form of imperialism – what I call “hands-off imperialism" – seems to be perfectly compatible with the kind of self-governance commonly thought to be the hallmark of democracy. The solution to this puzzle is to recognize that democracy involves more than self-governance. Rather, it involves what I call self-rule. Self-rule is an example of what Philip Pettit has called a modally demanding value. Modally demanding values a…Read more
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72The difficulty of tolerance, by T. M. Scanlon. Cambridge university press, 2003, IX + 273 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 21 (2): 326-333. 2005.
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192A deliberative model of contractualismPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (2): 183-208. 2008.Despite an impressive philosophical pedigree, contractualism (or contractarianism) has only been properly developed in two ways: by appeal to the idea of an instrumentally rational bargain or contract between self-interested individuals (Hobbesian contractualism) and by appeal to the idea of a substantively reasonable agreement among individuals who regard one another as free and equal persons warranting equal moral respect (Kantian contractualism). Both of these existing models of contractualis…Read more
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489The motivation questionPhilosophical Studies 173 (12): 3413-3430. 2016.How does it happen that our beliefs about what we ought to do cause us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do? This is what John Broome calls the "motivation question." Broome’s answer to the motivation question is that we can bring ourselves, by our own efforts, to intend to do what we believe we ought to do by exercising a special agential capacity: the capacity to engage in what he calls enkratic reasoning. My aim is to evaluate this answer. In doing so, I shall focus on three core as…Read more
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614Ability and Volitional IncapacityJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (3): 1-8. 2016.The conditional analysis of ability faces familiar counterexamples involving cases of volitional incapacity. An interesting response to the problem of volitional incapacity is to try to explain away the responses elicited by such counterexamples by distinguishing between what we are able to do and what we are able to bring ourselves to do. We argue that this error-theoretic response fails. Either it succeeds in solving the problem of volitional incapacity at the cost of making the conditional an…Read more
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78Introduction: Practical reasoning and normativityPhilosophical Explorations 12 (3): 223-225. 2009.This volume brings together previously unpublished papers by leading scholars that deal with the theme of practical reasoning and normativity. The volume includes contributions by Michael Bratman, Donald Bruckner, David Enoch, Elijah Millgram, Andrew Reisner, François and Laura Schroeter, Mark Schroeder, and William White.
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Law |
Philosophy of Social Science |