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41The aim of this paper is to analyse the concept of remorse from the perspective of moral philosophy. This perspective may be less familiar than other approaches in this anthology, such as those of forensic psychiatry or law. In what ways does moral philosophy claim to be able to illuminate the nature of the concept of remorse? First, by presenting an account of this concept and its structure within a more general account of the nature of moral thought. Second, by drawing on the resources of the …Read more
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39Morality, 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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38Fellow-feeling and the moral life * by Joseph Duke FilonowiczAnalysis 69 (4): 789-791. 2009.This monograph is a systematic defence of the views of key figures in the 18th-century sentimentalist tradition. It aims to explain, to borrow Thomas Nagel's phrase, the very possibility of altruism in a way that engages with contemporary meta-ethics. The details of the account are primarily taken from the work of Francis Hutcheson, although the work of Shaftesbury also receives extended consideration. The author argues that the basis of our admiration for disinterested altruism is simply an inn…Read more
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36Virtue ethics and an ethics of care: complementary or in conflict?Eidos: Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad Del Norte 14 132-151. 2011.Este artículo compara y contrasta la ética de la virtud con la del cuidado, a fin de determinar su mutua relación. Se afirma que existe una tradición en la ética de la virtud que enfatiza que la virtud es conocimiento, e igualmente se concentra en el altruismo. No existe oposición entre esta forma de virtud y la ética del cuidado. Además, hay objeciones de principio a generalizar la necesidad de relaciones asimétricas de una ética del cuidado con el caso de la justicia entendida como justicia re…Read more
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36This paper considers the problem posed for impartialism about reasons by the claim that practical reasoning is essentially first personal. This argument, first put forward by Bernard Williams, has an obscure rationale. Barry Stroud has suggested that in the only sense in which it is true it is misrepresents the issue which is that substituting in a particular identity to a conclusion true of anyone can change the degree of support for a practical conclusion. This paper develops a complementary l…Read more
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35The central concern of McKeever & Ridge’s paper is with whether or not the moral particularist can formulate a defensible distinction between default and non-default reasons. [McKeever & Ridge 2004] But that issue is only of concern to the particularist, they argue, because it allows him or her to avoid a deeper problem, an unacceptable “flattening of the normative landscape”. The particularist ought, McKeever & Ridge claim, to view this corollary of his or her position as a serious embarrassmen…Read more
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34Introduction: Consciousness in historical perspectivePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (3): 159-. 2003.
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30This paper critically analyses Brad Hooker's attempt to undercut pluralism by arguing that any plausible set of prima facie duties can be derived from a more fundamental rule consequentialist principle. It is argued that this conclusion is foreshadowed by the rationalist and epistemologically realist interpretation that Hooker imposes on his chosen methodology of reflective equilibrium; he is not describing pluralism in its strongest and most plausible version and a more plausible version of plu…Read more
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28Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning DemocracyOxford University Press USA. 2016.The first book length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. The author shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agen…Read more
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26The Demands of Democratic OwnershipAnalyse & Kritik 39 (2): 413-416. 2017.This paper considers an argument that justice as fairness requires liberal socialism as opposed to a property-owning democracy. It analyses the arguments for departing from Rawls’s principled agnosticism over the choice between liberal market socialism and property owning democracy. It questions the extension of Rawls’s fair value guarantee for the political liberties to all liberty and suggests an alternative interpretation of the kind of predistributive egalitarianism represented by a property…Read more
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25Practical Irrationality, Reflexivity and Sartre's Regress ArgumentTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 26 (3). 2007.
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20Thomas NagelRoutledge. 2008.In the first systematic study of the philosophy of Thomas Nagel, Alan Thomas discusses Nagel's contrast between the "subjective" and the "objective" points of view throughout the various areas of his wide ranging philosophy. Nagel's original and distinctive contrast between the subjective view and our aspiration to a "view from nowhere" within metaphysics structures the chapters of the book. A "new Humean" in epistemology, Nagel takes philosophical scepticism to be both irrefutable and yet to in…Read more
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19Review: Michael Bradie. The secret chain: evolution and ethics. Paul Thompson (ed.). Issues in evolutionary ethics (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2): 317-319. 1996.
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18Review of Onora O'Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (10). 2003.
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18Freeman on Property-Owning DemocracyPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.Download.
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16An adverbial theory of consciousnessPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (3): 161-185. 2003.Thomas Nagel's criterion for an acceptable theory of conscious awareness, that it address the question of “what it is like” to be a conscious subject has been misunderstood in the light of an implicit act/object model of conscious awareness. Kant's account of conscious experience is an adverbial theory precisely in the sense that it avoids such an act/object interpretation. An “objectualist” and an “actualist” construal of views of conscious awareness are contrasted. The idea of an adverbial the…Read more
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16Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning DemocracyOxford University Press. 2016.The first book-length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals, argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. It shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agent by an…Read more
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16Liberal Republicanism, and the Idea of an Egalitarian EthosIn M. O'Neill T. Williamson (ed.), Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 101. 2012.
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13On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy, by Philip Pettit (review)Ethics 127 (1): 302-306. 2016.
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13Internal governance imperatives for universitiesAfrican Journal of Business Ethics 4 (1): 25. 2014.
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11Nagel's `Paradox' of Equality and PartialityRes Publica 9 (3): 257-284. 2003.Thomas Nagel has argued that we are theoretically committed to both ethical pluralism and liberal egalitarianism in a way that seems plausible but that the combination leads through time to a deep-seated incoherence within our own moral and political outlook.This paper critically examines Nagel’s arguments for this conclusion. The paradox is centrally generated by the dual role of the impartial perspective in Nagel’s argument. This dual role is analysed and rejected as based on a mistake about o…Read more
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6Introduction: Consciousness in historical perspectivePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (3): 159-159. 2003.
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6IV*—Values, Reasons and PerspectivesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 (1): 61-80. 1997.Alan Thomas; IV*—Values, Reasons and Perspectives, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 97, Issue 1, 1 June 1997, Pages 61–80, https://doi.org/10.111.
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3Bernard Williams (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2007.This volume provides a systematic overview and comprehensive assessment of Bernard Williams' contribution to moral philosophy, a field in which Williams was one of the most influential of contemporary philosophers. The seven essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, examine his work on moral objectivity, the nature of practical reason, moral emotion, the critique of the 'morality system', Williams' assessment of the ethical thought of the ancient world, and his later adoption of…Read more
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1Rawls, Adam Smith and an Argument from Complexity to Property-owning DemocracyThe Good Society 21 (1): 4-20. 2012.This paper foregrounds one argument in Rawls’s work that is crucial to his case for one, determinate, form of political economy: a property-owning democracy. Section one traces the evolution of this idea from the seminal work of Cambridge economist James Meade; section two demonstrates how a commitment to a property-owning democracy flows from Rawls’s own principles; section three focuses on Rawls’s striking critique of orthodox welfare state capitalism. This all sets the stage for an argument,…Read more
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G Priest's Beyond The Limits Of Thought (review)Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 34 80-82. 1996.
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Property Owning Democracy, Liberal Republicanism, and the Idea of an Egalitarian EthosIn M. O'Neill T. Williamson (ed.), Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, Wiley-blackwell. 2012.It is argued that only the embedding of Rawlsian political liberalism within a republican framework secures the content of his view against Cohen's critique of Rawlsian special incentives. That content is fully specified in the form of a property-owning democracy; only this background set of institutions (or one functionally equivalent to it) will secure the stability of Rawls's egalitarian principles. A liberal-republicanism, rather than political liberalism alone, offers deeper grounding for o…Read more
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Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement develops a compelling explanation of the characteristic features of self-knowledge that involve the use of ‘I’ as subject. Such knowledge is immediate in the sense of non-inferential, is not evidentially grounded and is epistemically authoritative.1 A&E develops its distinctive explanation while also offering accounts of other features of self-knowledge that are often overlooked, such as the centrality of self-knowledge characterised in this way to the …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Value Theory |