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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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129Ethics without morals: in defence of amoralityRoutledge. 2013.A defense of amorality as both philosophically justified and practicably livable. While in synch with their underlying aim of grounding human existence in a naturalistic metaphysics, this book takes both the new atheism and the mainstream of modern ethical philosophy to task for maintaining a complacent embrace of morality. It advocates instead replacing the language of morality with a language of desire. The book begins with an analysis of what morality is and then argues that the concept is no…Read more
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43Rats and Rationality and othersBioethics Forum. 2007.Various commentaries on the use of animals in biomedical research and related.
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107Animal Abolitionism Meets Moral Abolitionism: Cutting the Gordian Knot of Applied EthicsJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 10 (4): 1-11. 2013.The use of other animals for human purposes is as contentious an issue as one is likely to find in ethics. And this is so not only because there are both passionate defenders and opponents of such use, but also because even among the latter there are adamant and diametric differences about the bases of their opposition. In both disputes, the approach taken tends to be that of applied ethics, by which a position on the issue is derived from a fundamental moral commitment. This commitment in turn …Read more
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59On Due Recognition of Animals Used in ResearchJournal of Animal Ethics 1 (1): 6-8. 2011.The experimental laboratory can be a horror house for rats, monkeys, and other nonhuman animals. Yet their use in this setting is usually reported in a routine manner in publications that discuss the results. These contentions are illustrated with an analysis of the way animal evidence is presented in David J. Linden’s recent book, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God (Harvard University Press, 2007). The article concludes with a call to science aut…Read more
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50A is for Animal: The Animal User’s LexiconBetween the Species 18 (1): 2-26. 2015.In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice, “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Alice questions this license, Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is … which is to be master — that’s all.” The present article offers a lexicon of words that are used by human beings, however unintentionally or ingenuously, to maintain their mastery or prerogatives over other animals. A motivating assumption of the article is …Read more
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80Cheating 101Teaching Philosophy 26 (2): 131-145. 2003.This paper describes a ten-year experiment aimed at stopping cheating in the philosophy classroom. In addition to evaluating a number of common approaches to dealing with cheating in the classroom (e.g. punishing students, preventative measures), the author argues that combating cheating requires fostering a rational appreciation of right conduct while acknowledging that such conduct cannot be policed. One way that this conduct is instilled is through “contract grading”, a type of grading where …Read more
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63When is a fallacy not a fallacy?Metaphilosophy 19 (3‐4): 307-312. 1988.The informal fallacies can be conceived as enthymemes that are formally valid. But, then, what accounts for our sense of their fallaciousness? I explain this in terms of the notion of a warrant.
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368Heaven Can't Wait: A Critique of Current Planetary Defence PolicyIn Jai Galliott (ed.), Commercial Space Exploration: Ethics, Policy and Governance, Ashgate. pp. 71-90. 2015.It is now generally recognized that Earth is at risk of a devastating collision with an asteroid or a comet. Impressive strides in our understanding of this threat have been made in recent decades, and various efforts to deal with it have been undertaken. However, the pace of government action hasn’t kept up with the advance of our knowledge. Despite the daunting dimensions of planetary defense, one intrepid NGO has stepped up to the plate: The B612 Foundation has embarked on a half-billion-doll…Read more
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 |