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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.
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 |