-
160Circumscribed autonomy: Children, care, and custodyIn Uma Narayan & Julia J. Bartkowiak (eds.), Having and Raising Children: Unconventional Families, Hard Choices, and the Social Good, Pennsylvania State University Press. 1998.For many people the idea that children are autonomous agents whose autonomy the parents should respect and the state should protect is laughable. For them, such an idea is the offspring of idle academics who never had, or at least never seriously interacted with, children. Autonomy is the province of full fledged rational adults, not immature children. It is easy to see why many people embrace this view. Very young children do not have the experience or knowledge to make informed decisions about…Read more
-
36
-
77Animal Rights and Human WrongsIn Nigel Dower (ed.), Ethics and the Environment, . 1989.Are there limits on how human beings can legitimately treat non-human animals? Or can we treat them just any way we please? If there are limits, what are they? Are they sufficiently strong, as some people supp ose, to lead us to be vegetarians and to seriously curtail, if not eliminate, our use of non-human animals in `scientific' experiments designed to benefit us? To fully appreciate this question let me contrast it with two different ones: Are there limits on how we can legitimately treat roc…Read more
-
132The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and ReligionPhilosophical Psychology 28 (3): 452-465. 2015.Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind seeks to explain why it is difficult for liberals and conservatives to get along. His aim is not just explanatory but also prescriptive. Once we understand that the differences between disputants spring from distinct moral views held by equally sincere people, then we will no longer have reason for deep political animus. Conservatives and Liberals have distinct moral views and they understand human nature differently. He claims that these differences are best …Read more
-
357Licensing Parents RevisitedJournal of Applied Philosophy 27 (4): 327-343. 2010.Although systems for licensing professionals are far from perfect, and their problems and costs should not be ignored, they are justified as a necessary means of protecting innocent people's vital interests. Licensing defends patients from inept doctors, pharmacists, and physical therapists; it protects clients from unqualified lawyers. We should protect people who are highly vulnerable to those who are supposed to serve them, those with whom they have a special relationship. Requiring professio…Read more
-
353Ethics in Practice: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2013.The fourth edition of _Ethics in Practice_ offers an impressive collection of 70 new, revised, and classic essays covering 13 key ethical issues. Essays integrate ethical theory and the discussion of practical moral problems into a text that is ideal for introductory and applied ethics courses. A fully updated and revised edition of this authoritative anthology of classic and contemporary essays covering a wide range of ethical and moral issues Integrates ethical theory with discussions of pract…Read more
-
124World HungerIn Christopher Wellman (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics, Blackwell. 2005.W e are watching television, and an advertisement for UNICEF, OXFAM, or the Christian Children’s Fund interrupts our favorite show. We grab our remotes and quickly flip to another channel. Perhaps we mosey to the kitchen for a snack. Maybe we just sit, trying not to watch. These machinations may banish these haunting images of destitute, starving children from our TVs and our thoughts, but they do not alter the brutal facts: millions of people in the world are undernourished; thousands die each …Read more
-
167Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (edited book)Blackwell. 1999.Ranging from moral realism to virtue ethics, this superb volume presents a complete state-of-the-art survey of ethical theory. Written by an international assembly of leading moral philosophers, each of the twenty-one newly-commissioned papers develop the main tenets, arguments, themes, and problems of the main normative and meta-ethical philosophical outlooks.
-
156The physician's conscienceAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (12). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
-
81Animal models in biomedical research: Some epistemological worriesPublic Affairs Quarterly 7 (2): 113-130. 1993.
-
251024The Greatest Vice?Journal of Practical Ethics 4 (2): 1-24. 2016.History teems with instances of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Some wrongs are perpetrated by individuals; most ghastly evils were committed by groups or nations. Other horrific evils were established and sustained by legal systems and supported by cultural mores. This demands explanation. I describe and evaluate four common explanations of evil before discussing more mundane and psychologically informed explanations of wrong-doing. Examining these latter forms helps isolate an additional factor whi…Read more
-
University of South FloridaEmeritus Professor of Philosophy and Emeritus Cole Chair In Ethics
Knoxville, TN, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
| Applied Ethics |
| Normative Ethics |
| Philosophy of Law |
| Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
| Applied Ethics |
| Normative Ethics |
| Social and Political Philosophy |
| Philosophy of Law |