-
41Comments on George Schedler, "Should Peter Singer Become an Ethical Meat Eater?"Southwest Philosophy Review 21 (2): 159-162. 2005.
-
54Against Friendship between CountriesJournal of International Political Theory 5 (1): 59-74. 2009.The idea that countries (or nations or peoples) should sometimes be friends is embedded in everyday talk about international relations and receives sophisticated defences in recent works by P. E. Digeser and Catherine Lu. The idea relies upon an analogy between interactions between persons and interactions between countries — an analogy that this article argues to be ontologically and ethically dubious. Persons and countries are very different entities, meriting very different kinds of treatment…Read more
-
478Virtue ethics is self-effacingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2). 2007.An ethical theory is self-effacing if it tells us that sometimes, we should not be motivated by the considerations that justify our acts. In his influential paper 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories' [1976], Michael Stocker argues that consequentialist and deontological ethical theories must be self-effacing, if they are to be at all plausible. Stocker's argument is often taken to provide a reason to give up consequentialism and deontology in favour of virtue ethics. I argue that this …Read more
-
2Making nonsense of loyalty to countryIn Boudewijn de Bruin & Christopher F. Zurn (eds.), New waves in political philosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
-
655Friendship and BeliefPhilosophical Papers 33 (3): 329-351. 2004.I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer
-
I restate the view defended in my ‘Patriotism as Bad Faith’, offer a different argument for it, and respond to some objections from Steve Nathanson and Keith Horton.
-
123An Interpretation of Plato's CratylusPhronesis 45 (4): 284-305. 2000.Plato's main concern in the "Cratylus," I claim, is to argue against the idea that we can learn about things by examining their names, and in favour of the claim that philosophers should, so far as possible, look to the things themselves. Other philosophical questions, such as that of whether we should accept a naturalist or a conventionalist theory of namng, arise in the dialogue, but are subordinate. This reading of the "Cratylus," I say, explains certain puzzling facts about the dialogue's st…Read more
-
237WelfarismPhilosophy Compass 4 (1): 82-95. 2009.Welfarism is the view that morality is centrally concerned with the welfare or well-being of individuals. The division between welfarist and non-welfarist approaches underlies many important disagreements in ethics, but welfarism is neither consistently defined nor well understood. I survey the philosophical work on welfarism, and I offer a suggestion about how the view can be characterized and how it can be embedded in various kinds of moral theory. I also identify welfarism's major rivals, and…Read more
-
425Motives to Assist and Reasons to Assist: the Case of Global PovertyJournal of Practical Ethics 3 (1): 37-63. 2015.The principle of assistance says that the global rich should help the global poor because they are able to do so, and at little cost. The principle of contribution says that the rich should help the poor because the rich are partly to blame for the plight of the poor. This paper explores the relationship between the two principles and offers support for one version of the principle of assistance. The principle of assistance is most plausible, the paper argues, when formulated so as to identify o…Read more
-
15Chapter 5. My Response to Your ValueIn Partiality, Princeton University Press. pp. 113-156. 2013.
-
337Four Theories of Filial DutyPhilosophical Quarterly 56 (223). 2006.Children have special duties to their parents: there are things that we ought to do for our parents, but not for just anyone. Three competing accounts of filial duty appear in the literature: the debt theory, the gratitude theory and the friendship theory. Each is unsatisfactory: each tries to assimilate the moral relationship between parent and child to some independently understood conception of duty, but this relationship is different in structure and content from any that we are likely to sh…Read more
-
A longer version of the virtue ethics paper. I go on to argue that virtue ethics faces special problems in explaining why self-effacement (even if inevitable) is regrettable, and say that the real worries about self-effacement can be navigated quite nicely by a certain form of consequentialism.
-
38Chapter 1. Special Relationships and Special ReasonsIn Partiality, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-30. 2013.
-
27Review of Diane Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (11). 2008.
-
30On what is the war on terror?In Timothy Shanahan (ed.), Human Rights Review, Open Court. pp. 48-60. 2005.
-
41Fiduciary Duties and Moral BlackmailJournal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2). 2017.In meeting legal or professional fiduciary obligations, a fiduciary can sometimes come to share a special moral relationship with her beneficiary. Special moral relationships produce special moral obligations. Sometimes the obligations faced by a fiduciary as a result of her moral relationship with her beneficiary go beyond the obligations involved in the initial fiduciary relationship. How such moral obligations develop is sometimes under the control of the beneficiary, or of an outside party. …Read more
-
Victoria University of WellingtonSchool of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International RelationsRegular Faculty
Parkville, Victoria, Australia