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9From Neighbor-Love to Utilitarianism, and BackProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89 1-32. 2015.Contrasting loving our neighbors with utilitarians’ demand to maximize good reveals important metatheoretic structures and dynamics that I call virtues- basing, input drive, role centering, and patient focus. First, love (good will) is a virtue; such virtues are foundational to both moral obligations and the impersonally valuable. Second, part of loving is acting lovingly. Whether and how I act lovingly, and how loving it is, is a matter of motivation; this input-driven account contrasts with hi…Read more
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22Being unimpressed with ourselves: Reconceiving humilityPhilosophia 34 (4): 417-435. 2006.I first sketch an account of humility as a character trait in which we are unimpressed with our good, envied, or admired features, achievements, etc., where these lack significant salience for our image of ourselves, because of the greater prominence of our limitations and flaws. I situate this view among several other recent conceptions of humility (also called modesty), dividing them between the inward-directed and outward-directed, distinguish mine from them, pose problems for each alternativ…Read more
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8Book ReviewsLawrence Blum,. “I’m Not a Racist, but …”: The Moral Quandary of Race.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. 272. $52.50 ; $19.95 (review)Ethics 118 (2): 332-337. 2008.
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9Anscombe's Three Theses Revisited: Rethinking the Foundations of Medical EthicsChristian Bioethics 14 (2): 123-140. 2008.At the start of her vigorously argued and classic article, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” G. E. M. Anscombe stated three focal theses. First, that philosophers of the time needed to dispense with investigation into talk of what is morally right, wrong; permissible, forbidden, required; and of moral obligation or duty, what we morally ought to do. Second, there was no adequate philosophical psychology then available of the sort needed for doing good moral philosophy. Third, the differences among the …Read more
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8Family of Bistable Attractors Contained in an Unstable Dissipative Switching System Associated to a SNLFComplexity 2018 1-9. 2018.
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7Identity confusionsPhilosophy and Social Criticism 32 (7): 839-862. 2006.This article responds to logical and social theses proposed by Professor José Medina in discussing the relativity of identity. In exploring the metaphor of family resemblance, the author argues that its causal mechanism is biological, not social; particular features of being a woman, or of belonging to a racial or ethnic group, cannot be reduced to social constructions. The article skeptically discusses the supposed importance of sex, race, and ethnicity to a person’s individual identity, and su…Read more
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5Sin and Suffering in a Catholic Understanding of Medical EthicsChristian Bioethics 12 (2): 165-186. 2006.Drawing chiefly on recent sources, in Part One I sketch an untraditional way of articulating what I claim to be central elements of traditional Catholic morality, treating it as based in virtues, focused on the recipients (“patients”) of our attention and concern, and centered in certain person-to-person role-relationships. I show the limited and derivative places of “natural law,” and therefore of sin, within that framework. I also sketch out some possible implications for medical ethics of thi…Read more
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59A Volitional Account of Racist Beliefs, Contamination, and ObjectsProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 92 59-85. 2018.Prof. Alberto Urquidez, in an important recent article that appears in different form in his book, Redefining Racism, offers an informed, sustained, careful, multi-pronged, and sometimes original critique of the volitional analysis of racism, which I have proposed in a series of articles over the past two dozen years. Here I expand and improve VAR’s analysis of paternalistic racists and their beliefs, clarify its ‘infection’-model’s explanation of racism’s spread and variety, and lay out what it…Read more
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116Race as a Social ConstructionThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 115-133. 2019.This paper raises serious problems for the commonly held claim that races are socially constructed. The first section sketches out an approach to our construction of institutional phenomena that, taking Searle’s general approach, restricts social construction proper to cases where we adopt rules that bind relevant parties to treat things of a type in certain ways, thus constituting important roles in, and parts of, our social lives. I argue this conception, construction-by-rules, helps distingui…Read more
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22. Death of the (Hand)maiden: Contemporary Philosophy in Faith and ReasonLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 2 (3). 1999.
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68. A Note on Religious Assent and DissentLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 4 (2). 2001.
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165. White Nights of the Soul: Chritopher Nolan's Insomnia and the Renewal of Moral Reflection in FilmLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 9 (4). 2006.
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13The Game Between a Biased Reviewer and His EditorScience and Engineering Ethics 25 (1): 265-283. 2019.This paper shows that, for a large range of parameters, the journal editor prefers to delegate the choice to review the manuscript to the biased referee. If the peer review process is informative and the review reports are costly for the reviewers, even biased referees with extreme scientific preferences may choose to become informed about the manuscript’s quality. On the contrary, if the review process is potentially informative but the reviewer reports are not costly for the referees, the bias…Read more
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22Health versus harm: Euthanasia and physicians' dutiesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (1). 2007.This essay rebuts Gary Seay's efforts to show that committing euthanasia need not conflict with a physician's professional duties. First, I try to show how his misunderstanding of the correlativity of rights and duties and his discussion of the foundation of moral rights undermine his case. Second, I show aspects of physicians' professional duties that clash with euthanasia, and that attempts to avoid this clash lead to absurdities. For professional duties are best understood as deriving from pr…Read more
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115. Are Some People Better Off Dead? A ReflectionLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 2 (1). 1999.