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28On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethics and Politics (review)Review of Metaphysics 51 (3): 717-718. 1998.
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Justifying Terrorism: No Dogs or Philosophers AllowedDVD. forthcoming.Can the use of terror as a political weapon ever be justified? What are the political implications of the struggle to define the concept of "terrorism"? Was the attack on the USS Cole a terrorist act? What role do the intentions of the terrorist and the state of mind of the victims play? Does the modern concept of the nation-state necessarily require the radical devaluation of the use of terror for political ends? With Robert Rafalko, Philip Devine, and Scott Hibbard
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21Homicide RevisitedPhilosophy 55 (213): 329-347. 1980.Jonathan Glover and I, while not in such deep disagreement about the ethics of killing as to make all communication impossible, still disagree enough to make sustained confrontation worthwhile. At minimum, such confrontation should make it clear what are the most fundamental issues at stake in ethical arguments about various kinds of killing.
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52The Structure of Conventional MoralityInternational Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 243-256. 2005.In recent years, analytically trained philosophers have given extensive attention to various issues involved in the “culture wars,” including abortion, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, and assisted suicide. There are, however, moral judgments that virtually no one questions. Defenses of adult-child sex, for example, are rare. There is also “conventional immorality”—the breach of conventional moral standards within roughly defined limits that at least limit the resulting damage to third par…Read more
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25Against Superkitten EthicsInternational Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 429-436. 2011.I here criticize the use of science-fiction examples in ethics, chiefly, though not solely, by defenders of abortion. We have no reliable intuitions concerning such examples—certainly nothing strong enough to set against the strong intuition that infanticide is virtually always wrong.
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11Relativism, Nihilism, and God. 1989.This book presents a defense of the reality of God in the sense in which Nietzsche proclaimed His death. It explores various contemporary versions of Nietzsche's maxim God is dead and proposes an alternative to them. Philip E.Devine critically examines three views that, in one way or another, accept the death of God and take it as central to the intellectual life: pragmatism, which asserts that the only end of the intellectual life is the pursuit of worldly goods other than truth; relativism', w…Read more
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8Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 64 (1). 1990.
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25"Exists" and St. Anselm's ArgumentGrazer Philosophische Studien 3 (1): 59-70. 1977.This paper examines interpretations of the doctrine that "exists" is not a predicate (existence is not a property). None, it is concluded, is both true and a refutation of St. Anselm's "ontological" argument for the existence of God.
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14The Religious Significance of the Ontological ArgumentReligious Studies 11 (1). 1975.I discuss the religious implications of accepting the ontological argument as sound. in particular, i attempt to show in detail how the argument fails to validate religious belief
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55Creation and EvolutionReligious Studies 32 (3). 1996.I defend the coherence of Theistic Evolutionism, though I do not present any direct argument for either theism or (broadly Darwinian) evolution. I distinguish between evolution as a scientific theory, however well established, and evolutionism as a religion or ideology. I argue that the confusion between the two senses of evolutionism is bad for both biology and religion, and conclude by suggesting that, in Irving Kristol's words, 'our goal should be to have biology and evolution taught in a way…Read more
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15A fallacious argument against moral absolutesArgumentation 9 (4): 611-616. 1995.The denial of moral absolutes rests, I think, on a seductive but fallacious argument, which I shall attempt both to expound and to refute here. Human beings are highly complex creatures living in a highly complex world. Every human being is different from every other, every interaction or relationship between or among human beings is unique. Hence also every occasion for moral choice is also unique, and all those action kinds - be theyadultery, murder, rape, theft, ortorture on which moralists a…Read more
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139Abortion and Infanticide By Michael Tooley Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, 441 pp., £20.00 (review)Philosophy 59 (230): 545-. 1984.
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The species principle and the potential principleBioethics: Readings and Cases. New Jersey, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc. forthcoming.
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4Abortion and Infanticide By Michael Tooley Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, 441 pp., £20.00 (review)Philosophy 59 (230): 545-547. 1984.
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88Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (7). 1992.
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43Sex and Gender: A Spectrum of ViewsWadsworth Publishing. 2003.SEX AND GENDER: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS provides a medium for discussion and debate about today's most provocative issues concerning human sexuality and the relationships between masculinity and femininity. Including a spectrum of views that ranges from the stridently conservative to the progressively feminist, this anthology engages students in these subjects using a wider range of standpoints than is typical of such readers.
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10Natural law ethicsGreenwood Press. 1999.Presents a contemporary version of the natural law tradition as a valid approach to ethical problems.
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76What’s Wrong with Torture?International Philosophical Quarterly 49 (3): 317-332. 2009.Many of us want to say that there is an absolute—or at least a virtually absolute—prohibition on torturing people. But we live in a world in which firm moral restraints of all sorts are hard to defend. Neither contemporary conventional morality, nor any of the available moral theories, provides adequate support for the deliverances of the “wisdom of repugnance” in this area. Nor do they support casuistry capable of distinguishing torture from (sometimes legitimate) forms of rough treatment. I he…Read more
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22The Religious Significance of the Ontological Argument: PHILIP E.DEVINEReligious Studies 11 (1): 97-116. 1975.It seems clear that the ontological argument can no longer be dismissed as a silly fallacy. The dogma of the impossibility of necessary existence is seriously threatened by the case of necessary existential truths in mathematics, and as for the claim that the ontological argument must beg the question, since by mentioning God in the premise his existence is presupposed, it is undermined by the fact that we often refer to things—Hamlet for instance— we do not for a moment think exist. The doctrin…Read more
Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Law |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |