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210Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community*: DAVID O. BRINKSocial Philosophy and Policy 16 (1): 252-289. 1999.It is common to regard love, friendship, and other associational ties to others as an important part of a happy or flourishing life. This would be easy enough to understand if we focused on friendships based on pleasure, or associations, such as business partnerships, predicated on mutual advantage. For then we could understand in a straightforward way how these interpersonal relationships would be valuable for someone involved in such relationships just insofar as they caused her pleasure or ca…Read more
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379Self-Love and AltruismSocial Philosophy and Policy 14 (1): 122-157. 1997.Whether morality has rational authority is an open question insofar as we can seriously entertain conceptions of morality and practical reason according to which it need not be contrary to reason to fail to conform to moral requirements. Doubts about the authority of morality are especially likely to arise for those who hold a broadly prudential view of rationality. It is common to think of morality as including various other-regarding duties of cooperation, forbearance, and aid. Most of us also…Read more
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41Review: Engstrom & Whiting, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics (review)Philosophical Review 108 (4): 576-582. 1999.
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174Principles and Intuitions in Ethics: Historical and Contemporary PerspectivesEthics 124 (4): 665-694. 2014.This essay situates some recent empirical research on the origin, nature, role, and reliability of moral intuitions against the background of nineteenth-century debates between ethical naturalism and rational intuitionism. The legitimate heir to Millian naturalism is the contemporary method of reflective equilibrium and its defeasible reliance on moral intuitions. Recent doubts about moral intuitions—worries that they reflect the operation of imperfect cognitive heuristics, are resistant to unde…Read more
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9Legal Interpretation, Objectivity and MoralityIn Brian Leiter (ed.), Objectivity in Law and Morals, Cambridge University Press. pp. 12--65. 2001.
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159Some Forms and Limits of ConsequentialismIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. 2006.All forms of consequentialism make the moral assessment of alternatives depend in some way on the value of the alternatives, but they form a heterogeneous family of moral theories. Some employ subjective assumptions about value, while others employ objective assumptions. Some assess the value of alternatives directly, while others assess value indirectly. Some direct agents to maximize value, while others direct agents to satisfice. Some, such as utilitarianism, are impartial and concerned to pr…Read more
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124Rawlsian Constructivism In Moral TheoryCanadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1): 71-90. 1987.Since his article, ‘Outline for a Decision Procedure in Ethics,’ John Rawls has advocated a coherentist moral epistemology according to which moral and political theories are justified on the basis of their coherence with our other beliefs, both moral and nonmoral. A moral theory which is maximally coherent with our other beliefs is in a state which Rawls calls ‘reflective equilibrium’. In A Theory of Justice Rawls advanced two principles of justice and claimed that they are in reflective equili…Read more
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1354Fairness and the Architecture of ResponsibilityOxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 1 284-313. 2013.This essay explores a conception of responsibility at work in moral and criminal responsibility. Our conception draws on work in the compatibilist tradition that focuses on the choices of agents who are reasons-responsive and work in criminal jurisprudence that understands responsibility in terms of the choices of agents who have capacities for practical reason and whose situation affords them the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. Our conception brings together the dimensions of normative …Read more
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1204Moral realism and the sceptical arguments from disagreement and queernessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (2). 1984.This Article does not have an abstract
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113Making a Necessity of Virtue (review)Philosophical Review 109 (3): 428-434. 2000.Recent moral philosophy has seen a revival of interest in the concept of virtue, and with it a reassessment of the role of virtue in the work of Aristotle and Kant. This book brings that reassessment to a new level of sophistication. Nancy Sherman argues that Kant preserves a notion of virtue in his moral theory that bears recognizable traces of the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions, and that his complex anthropology of morals brings him into surprising alliance with Aristotle. She develops her …Read more
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726Externalist moral realismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 24 (S1): 23-41. 1986.SOME THINK THAT MORAL REALISTS CANNOT RECOGNIZE THE PRACTICAL OR ACTION-GUIDING CHARACTER OF MORALITY AND SO REJECT MORAL REALISM. THIS FORM OF ANTI-REALISM DEPENDS UPON AN INTERNALIST MORAL PSYCHOLOGY. BUT AN EXTERNALIST MORAL PSYCHOLOGY IS MORE PLAUSIBLE AND ALLOWS THE REALIST A SENSIBLE EXPLANATION OF THE ACTION-GUIDING CHARACTER OF MORALITY. CONSIDERATION OF THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF MORALITY, THEREFORE, DOES NOT UNDERMINE AND, INDEED, SUPPORTS MORAL REALISM
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Self-realization and the common good : Themes in T.h. GreenIn Maria Dimova-Cookson & W. J. Mander (eds.), T.H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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1079Prospects for Temporal NeutralityIn Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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281Utilitarian morality and the personal point of viewJournal of Philosophy 83 (8): 417-438. 1986.Consideration of the objection from the personal point of view reveals the resources of utilitarianism. The utilitarian can offer a partial rebuttal by distinguishing between criteria of rightness and decision procedures and claiming that, because his theory is a criterion of rightness and not a decision procedure, he can justify agents' differential concern for their own welfare and the welfare of those close to them. The flexibility in utilitarianism's theory of value allows further rebuttal o…Read more
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125Legal Positivism and Natural Law ReconsideredThe Monist 68 (3): 364-387. 1985.Legal positivism and natural law theory have traditionally been construed as mutually exclusive theories about the relationship between morality and the law. Although I endorse a good deal of this traditional wisdom, I shall argue that we can and should construe LP and NL as complementary theories. So construed, they not only are compatible but also state important truths.
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16Skorupski, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mill (review)Review of Metaphysics 53 (4): 960-963. 2000.
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29Rational egoism and the separateness of personsIn J. Dancy (ed.), Reading Parfit, Blackwell. pp. 96--134. 1997.
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750Responsibility, Incompetence, and PsychopathyIn The Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas. 2013.This essay articulates a conception of responsibility and excuse in terms of the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing and explores its implications for insanity, incompetence, and psychopathy. The fair opportunity conception factors responsibility into conditions of normative competence and situational control and factors normative competence into cognitive and volitional capacities. This supports a conception of incompetence that recognizes substantial impairment of either cognitive or voliti…Read more
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102Objectivity and dialectical methods in ethicsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 42 (2). 1999.A cognitivist interpretation of moral inquiry treats it, like other kinds of inquiry, as aiming at true belief. A dialectical conception of moral inquiry represents the justification for a given moral belief as consisting in its intellectual fit with other beliefs, both moral and nonmoral. The essay appeals to semantic considerations to defend cognitivism as a default metaethical view; it defends a dialectical conception of moral inquiry by examining Sidgwick's ambivalence about the probative va…Read more
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4Sidgwick and the Rationale for Rational EgoismIn Bart Schultz (ed.), Essays on Henry Sidgwick, Cambridge University Press. 1992.
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Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |