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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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158Some 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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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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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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1203Moral 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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1077Prospects for Temporal NeutralityIn Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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280Utilitarian 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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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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29Rational egoism and the separateness of personsIn J. Dancy (ed.), Reading Parfit, Blackwell. pp. 96--134. 1997.
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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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50Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and DutyPhilosophical Review 108 (4): 576. 1999.This collection of essays contains revised versions of papers delivered at a conference entitled “Duty, Interest, and Practical Reason: Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics” that was organized by Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994. One of the main aims of the conference was to bring together scholars on Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant to reevaluate the common view that Greek and Kantian ethics represent fundamentally opposed conceptions of ethical theory and…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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2Prolegomena to Ethics (edited book)Clarendon Press. 2003.A scholarly edition of a work by T.H. Green. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.
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416Millian principles, freedom of expression, and hate speechLegal Theory 7 (2): 119-157. 2001.Hate speech employs discriminatory epithets to insult and stigmatize others on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other forms of group membership. The regulation of hate speech is deservedly controversial, in part because debates over hate speech seem to have teased apart libertarian and egalitarian strands within the liberal tradition. In the civil rights movements of the 1960s, libertarian concerns with freedom of movement and association and equal opportunity pointed in t…Read more
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Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |