•  40
    Self, Society and Kantian Impersonality
    The Monist 74 (1): 30-42. 1991.
    What view of the person must prevail in a society that claims to be just? There is supposed to be a Kantian answer to this question, according to which people must regard themselves and their fellows as free, equal and capable to acting rationally. In A Theory of Justice Rawls tries to give content to the idea of free, equal and rational persons, but in such a way, according to certain critics, that social relations between these figures appear impoverished. Sandel, for example, has described a …Read more
  •  35
    Preventive Policing, Surveillance, and European Counter-Terrorism
    Criminal Justice Ethics 30 (1): 1-22. 2011.
    A European Union counter-terrorism strategy was devised in 2005.1 Of its four strands—prevent, pursue, protect, and respond—only two have a direct connection with policing. Perhaps surprisingly, th...
  •  33
    Power and surveillance
    The Philosophers' Magazine 63 65-71. 2013.
  •  9
    The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes
    with Noel Malcolm
    Philosophical Quarterly 45 (181): 521. 1995.
  • An article focusing on Hobbes and Gassendi
  •  131
    Robot carers, ethics, and older people
    with Heather Draper
    Ethics and Information Technology 16 (3): 183-195. 2014.
    This paper offers an ethical framework for the development of robots as home companions that are intended to address the isolation and reduced physical functioning of frail older people with capacity, especially those living alone in a noninstitutional setting. Our ethical framework gives autonomy priority in a list of purposes served by assistive technology in general, and carebots in particular. It first introduces the notion of “presence” and draws a distinction between humanoid multi-functio…Read more
  •  43
    The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 1996.
    It was as a political thinker that Thomas Hobbes first came to prominence, and it is as a political theorist that he is most studied today. Yet the range of his writings extends well beyond morals and politics. Hobbes had distinctive views in metaphysics and epistemology, and wrote about such subjects as history, law, and religion. He also produced full-scale treatises in physics, optics, and geometry. All of these areas are covered in this Companion, most in considerable detail. The volume also…Read more
  •  2
    On saying no to history of philosophy
    In Tom Sorell & Graham Alan John Rogers (eds.), Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
    History of philosophy can be useful and relevant as philosophy even when philosophy is thought to be the solution of ahistorically formulated problems.
  •  36
    Morality, consumerism and the internal market in health care
    Journal of Medical Ethics 23 (2): 71-76. 1997.
    Unlike the managerially oriented reforms that have brought auditing and accounting into such prominence in the UK National Health Service (NHS), and which seem alien to the culture of the caring professions, consumerist reforms may seem to complement moves towards the acceptance of wide definitions of health, and towards increasing patient autonomy. The empowerment favoured by those who support patient autonomy sounds like the sort of empowerment that is sometimes associated with the patient's c…Read more
  •  3
    `Modern' philosophy in the West is said to have begun with Bacon and Descartes. Their methodological and metaphysical writings, in conjunction with the discoveries that marked the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, are supposed to have interred both Aristotelian and scholastic science and the philosophy that supported it. But did the new or `modern' philosophy effect a complete break with what preceded it? Were Bacon and Descartes untainted by scholastic influences? The theme of this boo…Read more
  •  144
    SCIENTISM AND 'SCIENTIFIC EMPIRICISM' WHAT IS SCIENTISM? Scientism is the belief that science, especially natural science, is much the most valuable part of ...
  •  47
    Morality and Emergency
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (1): 21-37. 2003.
    Agents sometimes feel free to resort to underhand or brutal measures in coping with an emergency. Because emergencies seem to relax moral inhibitions as well as carrying the risk of great loss of life or injury, it may seem morally urgent to prevent them or curtail them as far as possible. I discuss some cases of private emergency that go against this suggestion. Prevention seems morally urgent primarily in the case of public emergencies. But these are the responsibility of defensibly partisan a…Read more
  •  19
    Organized Crime and Preventive Justice
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1): 137-153. 2018.
    By comparison with the prevention of terrorism, the prevention of acts of organized crime might be thought easier to conceptualize precisely and less controversial to legislate against and police. This impression is correct up to a point, because it is possible to arrive at some general characteristics of organized crime, and because legislation against it is not obviously bedeviled by the risk of violating civil or political rights, as in the case of terrorism. But there is a significant residu…Read more
  •  46
  •  72
    I shall argue that where a coercive public health policy is backed by a clear medical consensus, appropriately reconsidered in the light of claims of doubters, there is sometimes a moral obligation on the part of the public to defer to the experts. The argument will be geared to the continuing controversy in the UK over the safety of the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine. vaccine
  •  6
    The normative and the explanatory in Hobbes's political philosophy
    Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 1. 2004.
    Tom Sorell modifies an interpretation he presented in his book, Hobbes (1986) . He continues to maintain that Hobbesian natural philosophy and Hobbesian civil philosophy are methodologically quite distinct, as well as distinct in subject-matter. But it is misleading to put this by saying that civil philosophy is normative and natural philosophy is explanatory, as if civil philosophy itself weren’t supposed to be explanatory. Civil philosophy can be explanatory in the sense of specifying normativ…Read more
  • The Burdensome Freedom of Sovereigns
    In Tom Sorell & Luc Foisneau (eds.), Leviathan After 350 Years, Clarendon Press. 2004.
    The freedom of A Hobbesian sovereign is limited by the freedom of other sovereigns but is otherwise extremely extensive. The other side of the coin of this wide latitude, however, are the huge responsibilities and practical challenges of seeing to the good of the people. This involves both the compulsion of obedience and the permission of enterprise on the part of the many. It also calls for equity in the application of law. Overall, the burdensomeness of sovereignty probably vastly outweighs th…Read more
  •  7
    Moral Theory and Anomaly
    Mind 110 (438): 562-565. 2001.
  •  26
    Online Grooming and Preventive Justice
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 11 (4): 705-724. 2017.
    In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act criminalizes the act of meeting a child—someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be pursued in this paper is whether grooming—I confine myself to online grooming—is justly criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, but there are …Read more
  •  25
    Les usages que fait Hobbes de l’état de nature sont souvent mal compris par les philosophes anglo-américains contemporains, y compris par des commentateurs distingués comme Gauthier et Hampton. À la différence de Gauthier, je soutiens que Hobbes ne se soucie nullement de naturaliser le fondement de la motivation morale, et je conteste l’interprétation de Hampton qui considère que le contractualisme hobbesien a plus de pertinence pour nous aujourd’hui que le contractualisme kantien. Il existe cer…Read more
  •  10
    Hobbes's UnAristotelian Political Rhetoric
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 23 (2). 1990.
    A review of those areas in which Hobbes breaks with Aristotle on the nature and uses of rhetoric.
  •  30
    Harman's paradox
    Mind 90 (360): 557-575. 1981.
    Harman has devised examples which suggest that not only justified true belief, but also knowledge, can co-exist with defeating evidence. Briefly, further evidence can be evidence against what one knows. If that is right, the presence or absence of defeating evidence cannot make the difference between non-knowledge and knowledge. So defeasibilism seems to fail-provided there is such a thing as knowing a truth there is further evidence against. And about that there is an air of paradox. Is it tru…Read more
  •  19
    Moral Theory and Anomaly
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2000.
    _Moral Theory and Anomaly_ considers and rejects the claim that moral theory is too utopian to apply properly to worldly pursuits like political office holding and business, and too patriarchal and speciesist to generate a theory of justice applicable to women and the non-human natural world
  •  2
    Leviathan After 350 Years (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2004.
    This collection marks the 350th anniversary of the publication of Leviathan with a collection of original papers by the leading Hobbes scholars in the world.
  •  18
    Hobbes's persuasive civil science
    Philosophical Quarterly 40 (160): 342-351. 1990.
    This article concentrates on Hobbes's inference from the passions to the inevitability of war in the state of nature, asking how this could be expected to persuade. The inference gets some support from experience but also from its position in a certain kind of science.
  •  11
    11. Hobbes on Obedience to God and Man
    In Otfried Höffe (ed.), Thomas Hobbes: De Cive, De Gruyter. pp. 161-174. 2018.
    This is a detailed exposition and discussion of chapter 15 of Hobbes's De cive.
  •  47
    Morality and emergency
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (1). 2003.
    Agents sometimes feel free to resort to underhand or brutal measures in coping with an emergency. Because emergencies seem to relax moral inhibitions as well as carrying the risk of great loss of life or injury, it may seem morally urgent to prevent them or curtail them as far as possible. I discuss some cases of private emergency that go against this suggestion. Prevention seems morally urgent primarily in the case of public emergencies. But these are the responsibility of defensibly partisan a…Read more
  •  6
    International business ethics
    with John Hendry
    In Alan R. Malachowski (ed.), Business Ethics: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Routledge. pp. 3--5. 2001.
    This is a reprinted excerpt from Sorell and Hendry, Business Ethics (Butterworth Heinemann, 1994)
  •  3
    Hobbes on Trade, Consumption and International Order
    The Monist 89 (2): 245-258. 2006.
    This paper considers Hobbes's idea that the international order is a permanent war zone, and relates it to the possibility and necessity of international trade, the dangers of certain kinds of imports, and the risks to states of trading companies.