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59Is artefactualness a value-relevant property of living things?Synthese 185 (1): 89-102. 2012.Artefacts are often regarded as being mere things that possess only instrumental value. In contrast, living entities (or some subset of them) are often regarded as possessing some form of intrinsic (or non-instrumental) value. Moreover, in some cases they are thought to possess such value precisely because they are natural (i.e., non-artefactual). However, living artefacts are certainly possible, and they may soon be actual. It is therefore necessary to consider whether such entities should be r…Read more
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78Beware of Averages: A Response to John Nolt's 'How Harmful are the Average American's Greenhouse Gas Emissions?'Ethics, Policy and Environment 14 (1): 31-33. 2011.In ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’ John Nolt correctly points out that the claim that an individual's contribution to total atmospheric greenhouse gas leve...
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164Enhancing justice?NanoEthics 2 (3): 277-287. 2008.This article focuses on the follow question: Are human enhancement technologies likely to be justice impairing or justice promoting? We argue that human enhancement technologies may not be inherently just or unjust, but when situated within obtaining social contexts they are likely to exacerbate rather than alleviate social injustices.
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77The external goods approach to environmental virtue ethicsEnvironmental Ethics 25 (3): 279-293. 2003.If virtue ethics are to provide a legitimate alternative for reasoning about environmental issues, they must meet the same conditions of adequacy as any other environmental ethic. One such condition that most environmental ethicists insist upon is that an adequate environmental ethic provides a theoretical platform for consistent and justified critique of environmentally unsustainable practices and policies. The external goods approach seeks to establish that any genuinely virtuous agent will be…Read more
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248Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism: Why Environmental Ethicists Should be Virtue-Oriented Ethicists (review)Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1-2): 167-183. 2009.Many environmental problems are longitudinal collective action problems. They arise from the cumulative unintended effects of a vast amount of seemingly insignificant decisions and actions by individuals who are unknown to each other and distant from each other. Such problems are likely to be effectively addressed only by an enormous number of individuals each making a nearly insignificant contribution to resolving them. However, when a person’s making such a contribution appears to require sacr…Read more
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38A Response to Martin Calkins's “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology”Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (2): 319-327. 2005.Martin Calkins proposes the “combined use of casuistry and virtue ethics as a way for both sides to move ahead on [the] pressing issue [of agricultural biotechnology].” However, his defense of this methodology relies on a set of mistaken, albeit familiar, claims regarding the normative resources of virtue ethics: (1) virtue ethics is egoistic; (2) virtue ethics cannot defend any particular account of the virtues as the objectively correct ones and is therefore inextricably relativistic; (3) virt…Read more
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42The Value of Artefactual OrganismsEnvironmental Values 21 (1). 2012.Synthetic biology makes use of genetic and other materials derived from modern biological life forms to design and construct novel synthetic organisms. Artificial organisms are not constructed from parts of existing biological organisms, but from non-biological materials. Artificial and synthetic organisms are artefactual organisms. Here we are concerned with the non-instrumental value of such organisms. More specifically, we are concerned with the extent to which artefactual organisms have natu…Read more
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23Review of G. Comstock, Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology (review)Environmental Values 12 (3): 403-405. 2003.
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24Review of Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, and John Weckert, eds., Nanoethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Nanotechnology.1 (review)American Journal of Bioethics 8 (8): 70-71. 2008.
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106Intuitus and ratio in Spinoza's ethical thoughtBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (1). 2005.(2005). Intuitus and Ratio in Spinoza's Ethical Thought. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 73-90. doi: 10.1080/0960878042000317591
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14Book Review: Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case against Agricultural Biotechnology (review)Environmental Values 12 (3): 403-405. 2003.
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92Virtue and respect for nature: Ronald Sandler's character and environment (review)Ethics, Place and Environment 11 (2). 2008.Ron Sandler's Character and Environment is a very welcome addition to the growing literature on virtue-based approaches to environmental ethics. In the book...
Areas of Interest
1 more
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Biology |
Value Theory, Miscellaneous |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |