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20Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 1 (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.This is the inaugural volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields.
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166Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for ActionSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 218. 2001.These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive…Read more
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55Reply to RobertsonPhilosophical Papers 32 (2): 185-191. 2003.Philosophical Papers Vol.32(2) 2003: 185-191
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638Self-Ownership and the Conflation ProblemIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, . forthcoming.Libertarian self-ownership views in the tradition of Locke, Nozick, and the left-libertarians have supposed that we enjoy very powerful deontological protections against infringing upon our property. Such a conception makes sense when we are focused on property that is very important to its owner, such as a person’s kidney. However, this stringency of our property rights is harder to credit when we consider more trivial infringements such as very mildly toxic pollution or trivial risks such havi…Read more
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62Practical reasons and mistakes of practical rationalityPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 94 (1): 299-321. 2007.
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216Instrumental Rationality: Not Dead YetJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (1): 1-13. 2005.No abstract
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272Backing Away from Libertarian Self-OwnershipEthics 123 (1): 32-60. 2012.Libertarian self-ownership views have traditionally maintained that we enjoy very powerful deontological protections against any infringement upon our property. This stringency yields very counter-intuitive results when we consider trivial infringements such as very mildly toxic pollution or trivial risks such having planes fly overhead. Maintaining that other people's rights against all infringements are very powerful threatens to undermine our liberty, as Nozick saw. In this paper I consider t…Read more
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211The Limits of the Explanatory Power of DevelopmentalismJournal of Moral Philosophy 7 (4): 517-527. 2010.Richard Kraut's neo-Aristotelian account of well-being, Developmentalism, aspires to explain not only which things are good for us but why those things are good for us. The key move in attempting to make good on this second aspiration involves his claim that our ordinary intuitions about what is good for a person can be successfully explained and systematized by the idea that what benefi ts a living thing develops properly that living thing's potentialities, capacities, and faculties. I argue th…Read more
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60Michael J. Zimmerman, The Concept of Moral Obligation:The Concept of Moral ObligationEthics 109 (2): 468-470. 1999.
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214Review of mark Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (4). 2009.I assess Schroeder's book Slaves of the Passions and isolate some grounds for concerns about the overall position.
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8Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.This is the fourth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory.
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1153Well-Being as the Object of Moral ConsiderationEconomics and Philosophy 14 (2): 249. 1998.The proposal I offer attempts to remedy the inadequacies of exclusive focus on well-being for moral purposes. The proposal is this: We should allow the agent to decide for herself where she wants to throw the weight that is her due in moral reflection, with the proviso that she understands the way that her weight will be aggregated with others in reaching a moral outcome. I will call this the "autonomy principle." The autonomy principle, I claim, provides the consequentialist's best prospect for…Read more
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502Morality and virtue: An assessment of some recent work in virtue ethicsEthics 114 (3): 514-554. 2004.This essay focuses on three recent books on morality and virtue, Michael Slote's 'Morals from Motives', Rosalind Hursthouse's 'On Virtue Ethics', and Philippa Foot's 'Natural Goodness'. Slote proposes an "agent-based" ethical theory according to which the ethical status of acts is derivative from assessments of virtue. Following Foot's lead, Hursthouse aims to vindicate an ethical naturalism that explains human goodness on the basis of views about human nature. Both Hursthouse and Slote take vir…Read more
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97Parfit's Case Against SubjectivismIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, volume 6, Oxford University Press. 2011.I argue that Parfit's On What Matters does not make a compelling case against subjective accounts of reasons for action.
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53Morality, Normativity, and Society, David Copp. Oxford University Press, 1995, xii + 262 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 14 (2): 349. 1998.
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759Subjectivism and blameCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (5). 2007.My favorite thing about this paper is that I think I usefully explicate and then mess with Bernard Williams's attempt to explain how his internalism is compatible with our ordinary practices of blame. There are a surprising number of things wrong with Williams's position. Of course that leaves my own favored subjectivism in a pickle, but still...
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38From Valuing to Value: A Defense of SubjectivismOxford University Press. 2016.David Sobel defends subjectivism about well-being and reasons for action: the idea that normativity flows from what an agent cares about, that something is valuable because it is valued. In these essays Sobel explores the tensions between subjective views of reasons and morality, and concludes that they do not undermine subjectivism.
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494Advice for Non-analytical NaturalistsIn Simon Kirchin (ed.), Reading Parfit, Routledge. pp. 153-171. 2017.We argue that Parfit's "Triviality Objection" against some naturalistic views of normativity is not compelling. We think that once one accepts, as one should, that identity statements can be informative in virtue of their pragmatics and not only in virtue of their semantics, Parfit's case against naturalism can be overcome.
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66Sumner on WelfareDialogue 37 (3): 571-. 1998.In this paper I criticize the way Sumner marks the subjective/objective divide and the way he argues for subjective views of well-being.
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157Desires, Motives, and Reasons: Scanlon’s Rationalistic Moral PsychologySocial Theory and Practice 28 (2): 243-76. 2002.
Syracuse, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |