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56Georgios Varouxakis, mill on nationality (london: Routledge, 2002), pp. IX + 169Utilitas 16 (2): 231-233. 2004.
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211The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2014.Utilitarianism, the approach to ethics based on the maximization of overall well-being, continues to have great traction in moral philosophy and political thought. This Companion offers a systematic exploration of its history, themes, and applications. First, it traces the origins and development of utilitarianism via the work of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and others. The volume then explores issues in the formulation of utilitarianism, including act versus rule utilitaria…Read more
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81Utilitarianism and the Headache That Just Won't Go AwaySouthwest Philosophy Review 22 (2): 147-149. 2006.
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84Mill, rule utilitarianism, and the incoherence objectionIn Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller & D. Weinstein (eds.), John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, Oxford University Press. pp. 94. 2011.
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42Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion , pp. xvii + 419 (review)Utilitas 26 (1): 124-127. 2014.
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96Actual–Consequence Act Utilitarianism and the Best Possible HumansRatio 16 (1). 2003.After critiquing some earlier attempts (including those of Marcus Singer and Frances Howard–Snyder) to ground objections to actual–consequence act utilitarianism (ACAU) on human cognitive limitations, I present two new objections with this same foundation. Both start with the observation that, because human cognitive abilities are not up to the task of reliably recognizing utility–maximizing actions, any agents who are recognizably human – including the best possible humans, morally speaking – a…Read more
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88Reactive Attitudes and the Hare–Williams Debate: Towards a New Consequentialist Moral PsychologyPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (254): 39-59. 2014.Bernard Williams charges that the moral psychology built into R. M. Hare’s utilitarianism is incoherent in virtue of demanding a bifurcated kind of moral thinking that is possible only for agents who fail to reflect properly on their own practical decision making. I mount a qualified defence of Hare’s view by drawing on the account of the ‘reactive attitudes’ found in P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Against Williams, I argue that the ‘resilience’ of the reactive attitudes ensures that…Read more
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13Mill’s Conception of Pleasure: Meeting West in the MiddleSouthwest Philosophy Review 31 (1): 157-166. 2015.
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176Hooker on Rule-Consequentialism and VirtueUtilitas 25 (3): 421-432. 2013.In Ideal Code, Real World, Brad Hooker proposes an account of the relation between his rule-consequentialism and virtue according to which the virtues (1) have intrinsic value and (2) are identical with the dispositions that are of the ideal code. While it is not clear whether Hooker actually intends to endorse this account or only intends to moot it for discussion, I argue that for him to adopt it would be a mistake. Not only would this mean that his moral theory was no longer properly a conseq…Read more
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40Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2000.What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. Th…Read more
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49Mill's `socialism'Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2 (2): 213-238. 2003.Insofar as John Stuart Mill can be accurately described as a socialist, his is a socialism that a classical liberal ought to be able to live with, if not to love. Mill's view is that capitalist economies should at some point undergo a `spontaneous' and incremental process of socialization, involving the formation of worker-controlled `socialistic' enterprises through either the transformation of `capitalistic' enterprises or creation de novo. This process would entail few violations of core libe…Read more
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2John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 19 (6): 447-451. 1999.
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42Atomists, liberals and civic republicans: Taylor on the ontology of citizenshipAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4). 2001.(2001). Atomists, Liberals and Civic Republicans: Taylor on the Ontology of Citizenship. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 79, No. 4, pp. 465-478.
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59R. M. Hare, Sorting Out Ethics, Oxford, Clarendon Proess, 1997, pp. vii + 191 (review)Utilitas 12 (2): 241. 2000.
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3Mill's Division of MoralityIn Leonard Kahn (ed.), Mill on Justice, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 70. 2012.
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42Axiological actualism and the converse intuitionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1). 2003.In 'Axiological Actualism' Josh Parsons argues that 'axiological actualism', which is 'the doctrine that ethical theory should refrain from assigning levels of welfare, or preference orderings, or anything of the sort to merely possible people', lends plausibility to 'the converse intuition'. This is the proposition that 'the welfare a person would have, were they actual, can give us a reason not to bring that person into existence'. I show that Parsons's argument delivers less than he promises.…Read more
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37In “’But It Would Be Wrong,’” Stephen Darwall advances a mixed view regarding “deontic buck-passing.” He holds that a wrong action’s “wrong-making features” are our reasons for reactive attitudes like blame; with respect to these reasons, the action’s wrongness “passes the buck” to these features. Yet the action’s being wrong is itself an additional reason for the agent not to do the action, Darwall contends, a “second-personal” moral reason. So with respect to reasons for action, the buck doesn…Read more
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87On Millgram on millUtilitas 16 (1): 96-108. 2004.In a recent article in Ethics, Elijah Millgram presents a novel reconstruction of J. S. Mill's ‘proof’ of the principle of utility. Millgram's larger purpose is to critique instrumentalist approaches to practical reasoning. His reading of the proof makes Mill out to be an instrumentalist, and Millgram thinks that the ultimate failure of Mill's argument usefully illustrates an inconsistency inherent in instrumentalism. Yet Millgram's interpretation of the proof does not succeed. Mill is not an in…Read more
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John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (review)Philosophy in Review 19 447-451. 1999.
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83Brown on Mill’s moral theory: A critical responsePolitics, Philosophy and Economics 9 (1): 47-66. 2010.In this article, I argue that the reading of Mill that D.G. Brown presents in ‘Mill’s Moral Theory: Ongoing Revisionism’ is inconsistent with several key passages in Mill’s writings. I also show that a rule-utilitarian interpretation that is very close to the one developed by David Lyons is able to account for these passages without difficulty
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41John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.The 'Art of Life' is John Stuart Mill's name for his account of practical reason. In this volume, eleven leading scholars elucidate this fundamental, but widely neglected, element of Mill's thought. Mill divides the Art of Life into three 'departments': 'Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Æsthetics'. In the volume's first section, Rex Martin, David Weinstein, Ben Eggleston, and Dale E. Miller investigate the relation between the departments of morality and prudence. Their papers ask whether Mill …Read more
Norfolk, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |