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3615What Is Special About Human Rights?Ethics and International Affairs 25 (3): 369-83. 2011.Despite the prevalence of human rights discourse, the very idea or concept of a human right remains obscure. In particular, it is unclear what is supposed to be special or distinctive about human rights. In this paper, we consider two recent attempts to answer this challenge, James Griffin’s “personhood account” and Charles Beitz’s “practice-based account”, and argue that neither is entirely satisfactory. We then conclude with a suggestion for what a more adequate account might look like – what …Read more
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517Constructivism and the normativity of practical reasonIn Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.Constructivists hold that truths about practical reasons are to be explained in terms of truths about the correct exercise of practical reason (rather than vice versa). But what is the normative status of the correctness-defining standards of practical reason? The problem is that constructivism appears to presuppose the truth of two theses that seem hard to reconcile. First, for constructivism to be remotely plausible, the relevant standards must be genuinely (and not merely formally or minimall…Read more
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6The authority of social normsIn Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.
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59Beyond Pettit's neo-Roman republicanism: towards the deliberative republicCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (1): 16-42. 2002.
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1109“The Thing To Do” Implies “Can”Noûs 50 (1): 61-72. 2016.A familiar complaint against the principle that “ought” implies “can” is that it seems that agents can intentionally make it the case that they cannot perform acts that they nonetheless ought to perform. I propose a related principle that I call the principle that “the thing to do” implies “can.” I argue that the principle that “the thing to do” implies “can” is implied by important but underappreciated truths about practical reason, and that it is not vulnerable to the familiar complaint agains…Read more
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4541Promises 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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1392Democracy 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.
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 |