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Dispassion and the Ethical Life: An Investigation of Causal and Conceptual Connections Among Belief, Desire, Emotion, and the GoodDissertation, The University of Connecticut. 1982.This dissertation considers some normative and meta-ethical implications of a theory of emotion. In Chapter 2 emotion is argued to be belief plus strong desire. The 'strong desire' qualifier is defended against the more exclusively cognitive theories of William Lyons and Robert Solomon. Chapter 3 provides an explication of the 'dispassion thesis', which is the main thesis to be defended in this dissertation. The dispassion thesis states that dispassion, or the absence of emotion, is good; put di…Read more
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14Dispassion and the Ethical LifeIn Roger Ames, Robert C. Solomon & Joel Marks (eds.), Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, Suny Press. pp. 139. 1995.
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31Emotion East and West: Introduction to a Comparative PhilosophyPhilosophy East and West 41 (1). 1991.
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110Innocent and Innocuous: The Case Against Animal ResearchBetween the Species (10): 98-117. 2010.Animal research is a challenging issue for the animal advocate because of what, besides animal well-being, is considered to be at stake, namely, human health. This article seeks to vindicate the antivivisectionist position. The standard defense of animal research as promoting the overwhelming good of human health is refuted on both factual and logical, or normative-theoretical, grounds. The author then attempts to clinch the case by arguing that animal research violates a deontic principle. Howe…Read more
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85A planet by any other name: An exercise in astro-metaphysicsThink 5 (14): 103-106. 2007.Joel Marks discusses the philosophical aspects of a question recently in the news: is Pluto a planet, or not?
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63Activism as Integrity (review)Philosophy Now (67): 44-45. 2008.Review of Lee Hall's book, Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror. Ostensibly about tactics in the animal rights movement, the book is in fact a manifesto for thinking about nonhuman animals in a wholly different way from what we have become accustomed to. The review focuses on the welfare/rights debate in the animal movement.
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67Accept No Substitutes: The Ethics of AlternativesHastings Center Report 42 (s1). 2012.It is common to argue that animal experimentation is justified by its essential contribution to the advancement of medical science. But note that this argument actually contains two premises: an empirical claim that animal experimentation is essential to the advancement of medical science and an ethical claim that if research is essential to the advancement of medical science, then it is justified. Both claims are open to challenge, but in the logic of the case, only one of them needs to be show…Read more
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114The Ways of Desire: New Essays in Philosophical Psychology on the Concept of Wanting (edited book)Transaction Publishers. 1986.Collection of original essays on the theory of desire by Robert Audi, Annette Baier, Wayne Davis, Ronald de Sousa, Robert Gordon, O.H. Green, Joel Marks, Dennis Stampe, Mitchell Staude, Michael Stocker, and C.C.W. Taylor.
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103Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist CritiqueLexington Books. 2009.Ought Implies Kant defends Kantianism via a critical examination of consequentialism. The latter is shown to be untenable on epistemic grounds; meanwhile, the charge that Kantianism is really consequentialism in disguise is refuted. The book also presents a novel interpretation of Kantianism as according direct duties owed to other animals.
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33Live Free or Die (review)Animal Law 17 (1): 243-250. 2010.In On Their Own Terms (Darien, CT: Nectar Bat Press, 2010), Lee Hall articulates a theory that wild animals, due to their autonomous nature, are endowed with rights, but domesticated animals lack rights because they are not autonomous. Hall then argues that the rights of wild animals require that humans let them alone, and that, despite the fact that domestic animals lack rights, humans are required to take care of them because it is humans who brought them into existence. While sympathetic to H…Read more
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43Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire: An Alternative to MoralityPalgrave Macmillan. 2016.This book challenges the widespread assumption that the ethical life and society must be moral in any objective sense. In his previous works, Marks has rejected both the existence of such a morality and the need to maintain verbal, attitudinal, practical, and institutional remnants of belief in it. This book develops these ideas further, with emphasis on constructing a positive alternative. Calling it “desirism”, Marks illustrates what life and the world would be like if we lived in accordance w…Read more
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APA Eastern Division
New Haven, CT, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |