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109Rights, Moral Values and Natural Facts: a reply to Mary Midgley on the problem of child-abuseJournal of Applied Philosophy 9 (1): 99-104. 1992.Mary Midgley asserts that my argument concerning the problem of child-abuse was inappropriately framed in the language of rights, and neglected certain pertinent natural facts. I defend the view that the use of rights-talk was both apposite and did not misrepresent the moral problem in question. I assess the status and character of the natural facts Midgley adduces in criticism of my case, concluding that they do not obviously establish the conclusions she believes they do. Finally I briefly res…Read more
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Child Protection: An Holistic ViewAustralian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 7 (2). 2005.
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Sebastian Gardner, Irrationality and the Philosophy of PsychoanalysisRadical Philosophy. forthcoming.
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280Wrongful LifePhilosophy 79 (3): 403-420. 2004.I argue that it is wrong deliberately to bring into existence an individual whose life we can reasonably expect will be of very poor quality. The individual's life would on balance be worth living but would nevertheless fall below a certain threshold. Additionally the prospective parents are unable to have any other child who would enjoy a better existence. Against the claims of John Harris and John Robertson I argue that deliberately to conceive such a child would not be to exercise the right t…Read more
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Constitutionalism and Democracy; Debating the Constitution; Associative Democracy; Common Sense: A New Constitution for Britain (review)Radical Philosophy 71. 1995.
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312Freedom Not to be Free: The Case of the Slavery Contract in J. S. Mill's on LibertyPhilosophical Quarterly 40 (161): 453-465. 1990.
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102The morality of embryo use - by Louis M. GueninJournal of Applied Philosophy 26 (2): 212-214. 2009.No Abstract.
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62Liberalism and the Defence of Political ConstructivismContemporary Political Theory 3 (1): 115-117. 2004.
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122Applying Philosophy: A Response to O’NeillJournal of Applied Philosophy 26 (3): 238-244. 2009.abstract I consider the putative originality of applied philosophy and seek to defend a version of it often called 'bottom up'. I review ways in which imagined cases may cause us to reconsider our normative commitments, and endorse a general attentiveness to the matter of how the world is and how it might reasonably be imagined. This is important if practical philosophers want to form the correct normative judgements, to be able to recognize the sui generis character of some moral theorising in …Read more
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137Political Disagreement, Legitimacy, and CivilityPhilosophical Explorations 4 (3): 207-222. 2001.For many contemporary liberal political philosophers the appropriate response to the facts of pluralism is the requirement of public reasonableness, namely that individuals should be able to offer to their fellow citizens reasons for their political actions that can generally be accepted.This article finds wanting two possible arguments for such a requirement: one from a liberal principle of legitimacy and the other from a natural duty of political civility. A respect in which conversational res…Read more
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101Democratic procedures and liberal consensus by George Klosko oxford university press, 2000, £27.50Philosophy 75 (4): 613-626. 2000.
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27JUSTICE David ArchardIn Guillaume de Stexhe & Johan Verstraeten (eds.), Matter of breath: foundations for professional ethics, Peeters. pp. 3--147. 2000.
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126Letting babies dieJournal of Medical Ethics 33 (3): 125-126. 2007.Prolonging neonatal lifeThe paradox that medicine’s success breeds medicine’s problems is well known to readers of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Advances in neonatal medicine have worked wonders. Not long ago, extremely premature birth babies, or those born with very serious health problems, would inevitably have died. Today, neonatologists can resuscitate babies born at ever-earlier stages of gestation. And very ill babies also benefit from advances in neonatal intensive care. Infant lives can…Read more
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102Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction – By Stephen WilkinsonJournal of Applied Philosophy 28 (1): 101-104. 2011.
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475Insults, Free Speech and OffensivenessJournal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2): 127-141. 2013.This article examines what is wrong with some expressive acts, ‘insults’. Their putative wrongfulness is distinguished from the causing of indirect harms, aggregated harms, contextual harms, and damaging misrepresentations. The article clarifies what insults are, making use of work by Neu and Austin, and argues that their wrongfulness cannot lie in the hurt that is caused to those at whom such acts are directed. Rather it must lie in what they seek to do, namely to denigrate the other. The causi…Read more
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Queen's University, BelfastSchool of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and PoliticsRetired faculty