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129Wittgenstein and Irigaray: Gender and Philosophy in a Language (Game) of DifferenceHypatia 14 (2). 1999.Drawing Wittgenstein's and Irigaray's philosophies into conversation might help resolve certain misunderstandings that have so far hampered both the reception of Irigaray's work and the development of feminist praxis in general. A Wittgensteinian reading of Irigaray can furnish an anti-essentialist conception of "woman" that retains the theoretical and political specificity feminism requires while dispelling charges that Irigaray's attempt to delineate a "feminine" language is either groundlessl…Read more
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47Against the enclosure of the ethical commons: Radical environmentalism as an “ethics of place”Environmental Ethics 19 (4): 339-353. 1997.Inspired by recent anti-roads protests in Britain, I attempt to articulate a radical environmental ethos and, at the same time, to produce a cogent moral analysis of the dialectic between environmental destruction and protection. In this analysis, voiced in terms of a spatial metaphoric, an “ethics of place,” I seek to subvert the hegemony of modernity’s formal systematization and codification of values whilestill conserving something of modernity’s critical heritage: to reconstitute ethics in o…Read more
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16Cheney and the myth of postmodernismEnvironmental Ethics 15 (1): 3-17. 1993.I draw critical parallels between Jim Cheney’s work and various aspects of modernism, which he ignores or misrepresents. I argue, first, that Cheney’s history of ideas is appallingly crude. He amalgamates all past Western philosophical traditions, irrespective of their disparate backgrounds and complex interrelationships, under the single heading, modern. Then he posits a radical epistemological break between a deluded modernism—characterized as foundationalist, essentialist, colonizing, and tot…Read more
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135Repetition and difference: Lefebvre, le corbusier and modernity's (im)moral landscapeEthics, Place and Environment 4 (1). 2001.If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces its own social space, then modernity might be characterized by that (anti-)social and instrumental space epitomized and idealized in Le Corbusier's writings. This repetitively patterned space consumes and regulates the differences between places and people; it encapsulates a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same. Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of 'difference' can both help explain the op…Read more
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26Ethical difference(s): A response to maycroft on le corbusier and LefebvreEthics, Place and Environment 5 (3). 2002.This Article does not have an abstract
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28Desires... and Beliefs... of One's OwnIn Manuel Vargas (ed.), Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman, Oxford University Press. pp. 129-151. 2014.On one influential view, a person acts autonomously, doing what she genuinely values, if she acts on a desire that is her own, which is (on this account) a matter of it being appropriately ratified at a higher level. This view faces two problems. It doesn’t generalize, as it should, to an account of when a belief is an agent’s own, and does not let one distinguish between desires (and beliefs) happening to be one's own and their being the ones a person would need to have in order to be autonomou…Read more
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252The argument for internalism: Reply to MillerAnalysis 56 (3). 1996.Alexander Miller objects to the argument for moral judgement internalism that I provide in _The Moral Problem. Miller's objection suggests a misunderstanding of the argument. In this reply I take the opportunity to restate the argument in slightly different terms, and to explain why Miller's objection betrays a misunderstanding
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39Philosophy and commonsense: The case of weakness of willIn John O'Leary-Hawthorne & Michaelis Michael (eds.), Philosophy in Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 141--157. 1994.
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104Internalism’s WheelRatio 8 (3): 277-302. 1995.If an agent judges that she morally ought to PHI in certain circumstances C then, according to internalists, absent practical irrationality, she must be motivated, to some extent, to PHI in C. Internalists thus accept what I have elsewhere called the ‘practicality requirement on moral judgement’. There are many different theories about the nature and content of moral judgement that aspire to explain and capture the truth embodied in internalism, and these theories share little in common beyond t…Read more
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227The Possibility of Philosophy of ActionIn Jan Bransen & Stefaan Cuypers (eds.), Human Action, Deliberation and Causation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 17--41. 1998.This article was conceived as a sequel to “The Humean Theory of Motivation.” The paper addresses various challenges to the standard account of the explanation of intentional action in terms of desire and means-end belief, challenges that didn’t occur to me when I wrote “The Humean Theory of Motivation.” I begin by suggesting that the attraction of the standard account lies in the way in which it allows us to unify a vast array of otherwise diverse types of action explanation. I go on to consider…Read more
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119A theory of freedom and responsibilityIn Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and practical reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 293-317. 1997.
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Color, transparency, mind-independenceIn John J. Haldane & C. Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection, Oxford University Press. 1993.
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14‘It Makes My Skin Crawl...’: The Embodiment of Disgust in Phobias of ‘Nature’Body and Society 12 (1): 43-67. 2006.Specific phobias of natural objects, such as moths, spiders and snakes, are both common and socially significant, but they have received relatively little sociological attention. Studies of specific phobias have noted that embodied experiences of disgust are intimately associated with phobic reactions, but generally explain this in terms of objective qualities of the object concerned and/or evolutionary models. We draw on the work of Kolnai, Douglas and Kristeva to provide an alternative phenome…Read more
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3ConstitutivismIn Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 371-384. 2017.
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1571Global ConsequentialismIn Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason & Dale Miller (eds.), Morality, Rules and Consequences: A Critical Reader, Edinburgh University Press. 2000.
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38The reality of moral expectations: A note of cautionPhilosophical Explorations 3 (3). 2000.The actions that agents perform in social situations are often influenced by the moral justifications they are able to provide of their behaviour. Boltanski and Thévenot point out that this fact appears to be in tension with the standard models of social explanation which seek to explain behaviour in social situations in terms of self-interested motivations. In this note I consider this tension, and caution against reading too much into it.
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501Rational Capacities, or: How to Distinguish Recklessness, Weakness, and CompulsionIn Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 17-38. 2003.We ordinarily suppose that there is a difference between having and failing to exercise a rational capacity on the one hand, and lacking a rational capacity altogether on the other. This is crucial for our allocations of responsibility. Someone who has but fails to exercise a capacity is responsible for their failure to exercise their capacity, whereas someone who lacks a capacity altogether is not. However, as Gary Watson pointed out in his seminal essay ’Skepticism about Weakness of Will’, the…Read more
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288Beyond the error theoryIn Richard Joyce & Simon Kirchin (eds.), A World Without Values, Springer. 2010.Mackie's argument for the Error Theory is described. Four ways of responding to Mackie's argument—the Instrumental Approach, the Universalization Approach, the Reasons Approach, and the Constitutivist Approach—are outlined and evaluated. It emerges that though the Constitutivist Approach offers the most promising response to Mackie's argument, it is difficult to say whether that response is adequate or not.
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331Freedom in belief and desireJournal of Philosophy 93 (9): 429-449. 1996.People ordinarily suppose that there are certain things they ought to believe and certain things they ought not to believe. In supposing this to be so, they make corresponding assumptions about their belief-forming capacities. They assume that they are generally responsive to what they think they ought to believe in the things they actually come to believe. In much the same sense, people ordinarily suppose that there are certain things they ought to desire and do and they make corresponding assu…Read more
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46The explanatory role of being rationalIn David Sobel & Steven Wall (eds.), Reasons for Action, Cambridge University Press. pp. 58--80. 2009.Humeans hold that actions are movements of an agent's body that are suitably caused by a desire that things be a certain way and a belief on the agent's behalf that something she can just do, namely perform a movement of her body of the kind to be explained, has some suitable chance of making things that way (Davidson 1963). Movements of the body that are caused in some other way aren't actions, but are rather things that merely happen to agents.
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129Objectivity and moral realism: On the significance of the phenomenology of moral experienceIn John Haldane & Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection, Oxford University Press. pp. 235-256. 1993.
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165Evaluation, uncertainty and motivationEthical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (3): 305-320. 2002.Evaluative judgements have both belief-like and desire-like features. While cognitivists think that they can easily explain the belief-like features, and have trouble explaining the desire-like features, non-cognitivists think the reverse. I argue that the belief-like features of evaluative judgement are quite complex, and that these complexities crucially affect the way in which an agent's values explain her actions, and hence the desire-like features. While one form of cognitivism can, it turn…Read more
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16Reason and Value: Themes From the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (edited book)Clarendon Press. 2004.Reason and Value collects fifteen brand-new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics - including especially his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value - make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. The volume honours Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and will contribute to an enhanced appreciati…Read more
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59In defence of ethics and the a priori: A reply to Enoch, Hieronymi, and TannenbaumPhilosophical Books 48 (2): 136-149. 2007.