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61A Review of Bernard Gert’s Common Morality: Deciding What to Do (review)Teaching Ethics 7 (1): 57-61. 2006.
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154Roger Crisp distinguishes a positive and a negative aspect of the buck-passing account of goodness (BPA), and argues that the positive account should be dropped in order to avoid certain problems, in particular, that it implies eliminativism about value. This eliminativism involves what I call an ontological claim, the claim that there is no real property of goodness, and an error theory, the claim that all value talk is false. I argue first that the positive aspect of the BPA is necessary to ex…Read more
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61I defend the buck-passing account of value from Dancy's critique.
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ProfessorIn Russ Shafer Landau (ed.), Oxford Studes in Meta Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 28-44. 2016.
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63Ethical Intuitionism: Re-Evaluations (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2002.Ethical Intuitionism was the dominant moral theory in Britain for much of the 18th, 19th and the first third of the twentieth century. However, during the middle decades of the twentieth century ethical intuitionism came to be regarded as utterly untenable. It was thought to be either empty, or metaphysically and epistemologically extravagant, or both. This hostility led to a neglect of the central intuitionist texts, and encouraged the growth of a caricature of intuitionism that could easily be…Read more
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84The Right and the Good (edited book)Clarendon Press. 2002.The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the great scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understa…Read more
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80In Moniker Betzler, Kant ’s Virtue Ethics,
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51Rational intuitionismIn Roger Crisp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 337-357. 2012.In this paper I give a critical overview of the views of the main Rational Intuitionists from 18th to 20th century.
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38Eliminativism about Derivative Prima Facie DutiesIn Thomas Hurka (ed.), Underivative duty: British moral philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing, Oxford University Press. 2011.Ross divides prima facie duties into derivative and foundational ones, but seems to understand the notion of a derivative prima facie duty in two very different ways. Sometimes he understands them in a non-eliminativist way. According to this understanding, basic prima facie duties ground distinct derivative ones. According to the eliminativist understanding, basic duties do not ground distinct derivative duties, but replace them. On the eliminativist view, discovering that a prima facie duty is…Read more
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193Scanlon, permissions, and redundancy: Response to McNaughton and RawlingAnalysis 63 (4). 2003.According to one formulation of Scanlon’s contractualist principle, certain acts are wrong if they are permitted by principles that are reasonably rejectable because they permit such acts. According to the redundancy objection, if a principle is reasonably rejectable because it permits actions which have feature F, such actions are wrong simply in virtue of having F and not because their having F makes principles permitting them reasonably rejectable. Consequently Scanlon’s contractualist princi…Read more
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3Pleasure and Reflection in Ross's IntuitionismIn Phillip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism: Re-Evaluations, Oxford University Press. pp. 113-36. 2002.
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49Kant and Contemporary EthicsKantian Review 2 1-13. 1998.It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Kant has influenced contemporary ethics. Whether or not one is sympathetic to his moral theory, one cannot ignore it, or the various ethical theories which draw their inspiration from it. Debates which have centred on Kantian themes include debates about whether moral requirements are categorical imperatives, whether they have an overriding authority, whether the various moral judgements we make can be codified, the role of duty in moral motivati…Read more
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79Why externalism is not a problem for ethical intuitionistsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1). 1999.Ethical intuitionists are often criticised on the ground that their view makes it possible for an agent to believe that she ought to ? whilst lacking any motive to ?-that is, on the ground that it involves, or implies a form of externalism. I begin by distinguishing this form of externalism (what I call 'belief externalism') from two other forms of ethical externalism-moral externalism, and reasons externalism. I then consider various reasons why one might think that ethical intuitionism is defe…Read more
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318Can Hooker's rule-consequentialist principle justify Ross's prima facie duties?Mind 106 (424): 751-758. 1997.
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30Review of Brian Hutchinson, G. E. Moore's Ethical Theory: Resistance and Reconciliation (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (9). 2002.
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L Siep's Praktische Philosophie Im Deutschen Idealismus (review)Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 34 50-52. 1996.
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18Ethical choiceIn John Shand (ed.), Central Issues of Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 219-230. 2009.
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2084The buck-passing account of value involves a positive and a negative claim. The positive claim is that to be good is to have reasons for a pro-attitude. The negative claim is that goodness itself is not a reason for a pro-attitude. Unlike Scanlon, Parfit rejects the negative claim. He maintains that goodness is reason-providing, but that the reason provided is not an additional reason, additional, that is, to the reason provided by the good-making property. I consider various ways in which this …Read more
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Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman and Christine Korsgaard , Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John RawlsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 6 (3): 468. 1998.