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47Moral Justification in ContextThe Monist 76 (3): 360-378. 1993.Traditionally, work in epistemology has been dominated by two general approaches: foundationalism and coherentism. Epistemological contextualism, which has its roots in the writings of pragmatists like Dewey and in the later Wittgenstein, represents an alternative to the dominant views, but an alternative that is typically ignored. Poor management and bad press have certainly contributed to lack of interest in this philosophical product. However, when it comes to philosophical questions about ju…Read more
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639Cognitivist expressivismIn Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 255--298. 2006.
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206Prolegomena to a future phenomenology of moralsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1): 115-131. 2008.Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality …Read more
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9444Decision Procedures, Moral Criteria, and the Problem of Relevant Descriptions in Kant's EthicsIn B. Sharon Byrd, Joachim Hruschka & Jan C. Joerdan (eds.), Jahrbuck fur Recht und Ethik (Annual for Law and Ethics), Duncker Und Humblot. 1994.I argue that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative is best interpreted as a test or decision procedure of moral rightness and not as a criterion intended to explain the deontic status of actions. Rather, the Humanity formulation is best interpreted as a moral criterion. I also argue that because the role of a moral criterion is to explain, and thus specify what makes an action right or wrong, Kant's Humanity formulation yields a theory of relevant descriptions
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3Mandelbaum on moral phenomenology and moral realismIn Ian Verstegen (ed.), Maurice Mandelbaum and American critical realism, Routledge. pp. 105. 2010.
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21Contrastivism, Relevance Contextualism, and Meta‐SkepticismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 802-810. 2008.
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106The moral significance of gratitude in Kant's ethicsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 49 (4): 295-320. 2011.In this essay, we examine the grounds, nature and content, status, acquisition and role, and justification of gratitude in Kant's ethical system, making use of student notes from Kant's lectures on ethics. We are especially interested in questions about the significance of gratitude in Kant's ethics. We examine Kant's claim that gratitude is a sacred duty, because it cannot be discharged, and explain how this claim is consistent with his insistence that “ought” implies “can.” We argue that for K…Read more
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1Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume I (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics is an annual forum for new work in normative ethical theory. Leading philosophers present original contributions to our understanding of a wide range of moral issues and positions, from analysis of competing approaches to normative ethics to questions of how we should act and live well. OSNE will be an essential resource for scholars and students working in moral philosophy.
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52What's wrong with Paul Moser's intuitionistic foundationalismPhilosophical Studies 56 (2). 1989.
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102Morality without foundations: a defense of ethical contextualismOxford University Press. 1999.In this book Timmons defends a metaethical view that exploits certain contextualist themes in philosophy of language and epistemology. He advances what he calls assertoric non-descriptivism, a view that employs semantic contextualism in giving an account of moral discourse. This view, which like traditional non-descriptivist views stresses the practical, action-guiding function of moral thought and discourse, also allows that moral sentences, as typically used, make genuine assertions. Timmons t…Read more
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145Expressivism and contrary-forming negationPhilosophical Issues 19 (1): 92-112. 2009.No Abstract
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100What Does the Frame Problem Tell us About Moral Normativity?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (1): 25-51. 2009.Within cognitive science, mental processing is often construed as computation over mental representations—i.e., as the manipulation and transformation of mental representations in accordance with rules of the kind expressible in the form of a computer program. This foundational approach has encountered a long-standing, persistently recalcitrant, problem often called the frame problem; it is sometimes called the relevance problem. In this paper we describe the frame problem and certain of its app…Read more
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54Kant’s Metaphysics of Ethics: Interpretive Essays (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2002.This is the only book devoted entirely to The Metaphysics of Morals and is not just a landmark in Kant studies but also a significant contribution to contemporary moral and political philosophy.
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16The Kantian Mind (edited book)Routledge. 2024.The Kantian Mind is an outstanding guide and reference source to Kant's thought and essential reading for all students and scholars of Kant and contemporary Kantian thought.
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98Morality without Moral FactsIn James Lawrence Dreier (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 6--220. 2006.
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1Moorean Moral PhenomenologyIn Susana Nuccetelli & Gary Seay (eds.), Themes From G. E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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1Review of Thomas E. Hill: Dignity and practical reason in Kant's moral theory (review)Ethics 104 (2): 398-400. 1994.
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Reflections on the "paradox" of supererogationIn Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Moral obligation, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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69Moral knowledge?: new readings in moral epistemology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1996.In Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology, editors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons bring together eleven specially commissioned essays by distinguished moral philosophers exploring the nature and possibility of moral knowledge. Each essay represents a major position within the exciting field of moral epistemology in which a proponent of the position presents and defends his or her view and locates it vis-a-vis competing views. The authors include established philosophers s…Read more
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277Copping out on moral twin earthSynthese 124 (1-2): 139-152. 2000.In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.
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554Troubles on moral twin earth: Moral queerness revivedSynthese 92 (2). 1992.J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relation…Read more
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22Ideal Code, Real World (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (1): 240-244. 2004.In Ideal Code, Real World, Brad Hooker attempts to breathe new life into rule-consequentialism, a view which, particularly in its utilitarian guise, was intensively explored in the 1950s and 1960s. But as Hooker points out, as the problems with the view compounded, it became generally thought of as a ‘tried and untrue’ approach to moral theory. It is commonly believed for instance that any coherent version of R-C, when fully fleshed out, will be extensionally equivalent to its act-consequentiali…Read more
Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Epistemology |
Normative Ethics |