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649Future Harms and Current OffspringEthics, Policy and Environment 14 (1): 23-26. 2011.By providing an explicit estimate of the harms caused by personal greenhouse gas emissions, John Nolt (in his “How Harmful are the Average American’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions?”) hopes to undermine tendencies to downplay these emissions and their impacts on global climate change. He estimates that an average American would be responsible for one two-billionth of the suffering or death of two billion people (over 1000 years). He treats this as equivalent to being responsible for the suffering or …Read more
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1007Virtue theory and ideal observersPhilosophical Studies 109 (3). 2002.Virtue theorists in ethics often embrace the following characterizationof right action: An action is right iff a virtuous agent would performthat action in like circumstances. Zagzebski offers a parallel virtue-basedaccount of epistemically justified belief. Such proposals are severely flawedbecause virtuous agents in adverse circumstances, or through lack ofknowledge can perform poorly. I propose an alternative virtue-based accountaccording to which an action is right (a belief is justified) fo…Read more
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446Qualified agent and agent-based virtue ethics and the problems of right actionIn S. van Hooft, N. Athanassoulis, J. Kawall, J. Oakley & L. van Zyl (eds.), The handbook of virtue ethics, Acumen Publishing. 2014.An on-going question for virtue ethics is whether it stands as a truly distinctive approach to ethics. In particular, there has been much discussion of whether virtue ethics can provide a viable understanding of right action, one that is a genuine rival to familiar consequentialist and deontological accounts. In this chapter I examine two prominent approaches to virtue ethics, (i) qualified agent and (ii) agent-based virtue ethics, and consider whether either can provide an adequate account of r…Read more
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895On Behalf of Biocentric Individualism: A Response to Victoria DavionEnvironmental Ethics 30 (1): 69-88. 2008.Victoria Davion in “Itch Scratching, Patio Building, and Pesky Flies: Biocentric Individualism Revisited” takes biocentric individualism to task, focusing in particular on my paper, “Reverence for Life as a Viable Environmental Virtue.” Davion levels a wide-range of criticisms, and concludes that we humans would be better off putting biocentric individualism aside to focus on more important issues and positions. Worries raised by Davion can be defended by elaborating on the position laid out in …Read more
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2088In Defense of the Primacy of the VirtuesJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 3 (2): 1-21. 2009.In this paper I respond to a set of basic objections often raised against those virtue theories in ethics which maintain that moral properties such rightness and goodness (and their corresponding concepts) are to be explained and understood in terms of the virtues or the virtuous. The objections all rest on a strongly-held intuition that the virtues (and the virtuous) simply must be derivative in some way from either right actions or good states of affairs. My goal is to articulate several dis…Read more
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132Christopher Bennett, What is This Thing Called Ethics? (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (4): 589-592. 2012.A short book review of "What is this Thing Called Ethics?".
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545The epistemic demands of environmental virtueJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1-2): 109-28. 2009.To lead an environmentally virtuous life requires information—about morality, environmental issues, the impacts of our actions and commitments, our options for alternatives, and so on. On the other hand, we are finite beings with limited time and resources. We cannot feasibly investigate all of our options, and all environmental issues (let alone moral issues, more broadly). In this paper I attempt to provide initial steps towards addressing the epistemic demands of environmental virtue. In the …Read more
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1264On the Moral Epistemology of Ideal Observer TheoriesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (3): 359-374. 2006.: In this paper I attempt to defuse a set of epistemic worries commonly raised against ideal observer theories. The worries arise because of the omniscience often attributed to ideal observers – how can we, as finite humans, ever have access to the moral judgements or reactions of omniscient beings? I argue that many of the same concerns arise with respect to other moral theories (and that these concerns do not in fact reveal genuine flaws in any of these theories), and further, that we can a…Read more
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386Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism (review)Review of Metaphysics 59 (1): 204-205. 2005.A short review of Russ Shafer-Landau's Moral Realism: A Defence.
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772Grounded knowledge, place and epistemic virtueEthics, Place and Environment 8 (3). 2005.A response to Christopher Preston's book "Grounding Knowledge" (2003). I first argue that Preston’s work strongly suggests that epistemologists would do well to re-examine and pay greater attention to ‘knowledge how’. Second, I briefly consider several of Preston’s proposals (concerning the importance of place to our cognitive lives) through the lens of contemporary virtue epistemology and suggest how Preston’s work might inform and shape theorizing in this area. Finally, I turn to a set of pot…Read more
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1698Virtue theory, ideal observers, and the supererogatoryPhilosophical Studies 146 (2): 179-96. 2008.I argue that recent virtue theories (including those of Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton) face important initial difficulties in accommodating the supererogatory. In particular, I consider several potential characterizations of the supererogatory modeled upon these familiar virtue theories (and their accounts of rightness) and argue that they fail to provide an adequate account of supererogation. In the second half of the paper I sketch an alternative virtue-based characterization of supererogatio…Read more
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460Rethinking GreedIn Allen Thompson Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (ed.), Human Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future, The Mit Press. pp. 223-39. 2012.In this paper I attempt to clarify the nature of the vice of greed, focusing on what can be called “modest greed”. Agents who are modestly greedy do not long for material goods or wealth with intense desires. Rather, they have quite modest desires, but ones whose satisfaction they pursue excessively relative to other goods. Greed - including modest greed - emerges as a particularly troubling and problematic vice.
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2691Reverence for Life as a Viable Environmental VirtueEnvironmental Ethics 25 (4): 339-358. 2003.There have been several recent defenses of biocentric individualism, the position that all living beings have at least some moral standing, simply insofar as they are alive. I develop a virtue-based version of biocentric individualism, focusing on a virtue of reverence for life. In so doing, I attempt to show that such a virtuebased approach allows us to avoid common objections to biocentric individualism, based on its supposed impracticability (or, on the other hand, its emptiness).
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892On ComplacencyAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 43 (4): 343-55. 2006.This paper begins by drawing attention to inadequacies in common characterizations of the vice of complacency. An alternative account is presented that avoids these flaws. The distinctive nature of complacency is then clarified by contrasting it with related vices, including apathy, resignation, akrasia, excessive pride, and hypocrisy.
Hamilton, New York, United States of America
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