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230Henry Sidgwick's Practical Ethics: A DefenseUtilitas 18 (3): 199-217. 2006.Henry Sidgwick's Practical Ethics offers a novel approach to practical moral issues. In this article, I defend Sidgwick's approach against recent objections advanced by Sissela Bok, Karen Hanson, Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael Davis. In the first section, I provide some context within which to situate Sidgwick's view. In the second, I outline the main features of Sidgwick's methodology and the powerful rationale that lies behind it. I emphasize elements of the view that help to defend it, not…Read more
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3924Utilitarianism, Welfare, ChildrenIn Alexander Bagattini & Colin Macleod (eds.), The Nature of Children's Well-Being: Theory and Practice, Springer. pp. 85-103. 2014.Utilitarianism is the view according to which the only basic requirement of morality is to maximize net aggregate welfare. This position has implications for the ethics of creating and rearing children. Most discussions of these implications focus either on the ethics of procreation and in particular on how many and whom it is right to create, or on whether utilitarianism permits the kind of partiality that child rearing requires. Despite its importance to creating and raising children, there ar…Read more
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945On Sidgwick's Demise: A Reply to Professor DeighUtilitas 22 (1): 70-77. 2010.In ‘Sidgwick’s Epistemology’, John Deigh argues that Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’. In this article I dispute these claims.
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6485Bioethics in Canada (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.This is the table of contents of and introduction to a textbook entitled Bioethics in Canada. It is designed mainly for use in Canada. Of the 51 articles that it contains, 26 are written by Canadians.
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328Review of Andrew Irvine and John Russell (eds.), In the Agora: The Public Face of Canadian Philosophy (review)The University of Toronto Quarterly 80 (1): 244-245. 2011.This is a critical review of In the Agora: The Public Face of Canadian Philosophy. It argues that this book does not adequately represent the public face of Canadian philosophy, though it contains some first-rate contributions.
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688Review of Fred Feldman, What is This Thing Called Happiness? (review)Philosophical Quarterly 63 (251): 395-398. 2013.A critical review of Fred Feldman's What is This Thing Called Happiness? which includes a partial defence of the life satisfaction theory of happiness.
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503Review of J. B. Schneewind, Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy (review)Mind 126 (503): 949-954. 2017.This is a critical review of J. B. Schneewind's Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy.
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545IntuitionismIn J. E. Crimmins & D. C. Long (eds.), Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2013.An opinionated encyclopedia entry detailing and evaluating the utilitarian engagement with intuitionism.
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1583Utilitarian Practical Ethics: Sidgwick and SingerIn Placido Bucolo, Roger Crisp & Bart Schultz (eds.), Henry Sidgwick: Ethics, Psychics, and Politics, Catania: University of Catania Press. 2011.It is often argued that Henry Sidgwick is a conservative about moral matters, while Peter Singer is a radical. Both are exponents of a utilitarian account of morality but they use it to very different effect. I think this way of viewing the two is mistaken or, at the very least, overstated. Sidgwick is less conservative than has been suggested and Singer is less radical than he initially seems. To illustrate my point, I will rely on what each has to say about the moral demands of suffering and d…Read more
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959Ideal UtilitarianismIn J. E. Crimmins & D. C. Long (eds.), Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2013.An opinionated encyclopedia entry on ideal utilitarianism in which various arguments for the view are discussed and evaluated.
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729Ross, William David (1877-1971)In James Crimmins (ed.), Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2013.A short encyclopedia article devoted to W. D. Ross.
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1174Singer, Peter (1946-)In Michael Gibbons (ed.), Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 3454-3455. 2014.A short encyclopedia article on Peter Singer which discusses his views on the obligations that the global wealthy have to the global poor and on our obligations to non-human animals.
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1019Children's Well-Being: A Philosophical AnalysisIn Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge. pp. 366-377. 2015.A philosophical discussion of children's well-being in which various existing views of well-being are discussed to determine their implications for children's well-being and a variety of views of children's well-being are considered and evaluated.
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1236Review of Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Volume III: From Kant To Rawls (review)Philosophical Review 124 (2): 279-286. 2015.This is a critical review of Terence Irwin's The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Volume III: From Kant to Rawls. Among other things, the review remarks on the book's treatment of utilitarianism and on its lack of discussion of work in feminist ethics in the twentieth century.
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1798Rashdall, Hastings (1858-1924)In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 4325-4329. 2013.An opinionated encyclopedia entry on Hastings Rashdall, in which several worries about his case for ideal utilitarianism are raised.
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353Review of Roger Crisp, The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2016.This is a critical review of Roger Crisp's The Cosmos of Duty. The review praises the book but, among other things, takes issue with some of Crisp's criticisms of Sidgwick's view that resolution of the free will problem is of limited significance to ethics and with Crisp's claim that in Methods III.xiii Sidgwick defends an axiom of prudence that undergirds rational egoism.
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320Symposium on David Phillips's Sidgwickian Ethics: IntroductionRevue d'Etudes Benthamiennes 12. 2013.This is a brief introduction to a symposium on David Phillips's Sidgwickian Ethics.
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8535Ideal Utilitarianism: Rashdall and MooreIn Thomas Hurka (ed.), Underivative duty: British moral philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing, Oxford University Press. pp. 45-65. 2011.Ideal utilitarianism states that the only fundamental requirement of morality is to promote a plurality of intrinsic goods. This paper critically evaluates Hastings Rashdall’s arguments for ideal utilitarianism, while comparing them with G. E. Moore’s arguments. Section I outlines Rashdall’s ethical outlook. Section II considers two different arguments that he provides for its theory of rightness. Section III discusses his defence of a pluralist theory of value. Section IV argues that Rashdall m…Read more
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125William David RossStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.Presents and argues for a novel interpretation of Ross's distinctive contribution to moral theory and meta-ethics.
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759On Henry Sidgwick’s “My Station and Its Duties”Ethics 125 (1): 586-591. 2014.This is a retrospective essay on Henry Sidgwick's "My Station and Its Duties" written to mark the 125th anniversary of Ethics. It engages with Sidgwick's remarks on the kind of ethical expertise that the moral philosopher possesses and on his approach to practical ethics generally.
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82Review of Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save (review)The Globe and Mail. 2009.This is a review of Peter Singer The Life You Can Save. The author argues that the book is excellent and sees Singer at his best
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824Sidgwick’s Argument for Utilitarianism and his Moral Epistemology: A Reply to David PhillipsRevue d'Etudes Benthamiennes 12. 2013.David Phillips’s Sidgwickian Ethics is a penetrating contribution to the scholarly and philosophical understanding of Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. This note focuses on Phillips’s understanding of (aspects of) Sidgwick’s argument for utilitarianism and the moral epistemology to which he subscribes. In § I, I briefly outline the basic features of the argument that Sidgwick provides for utilitarianism, noting some disagreements with Phillips along the way. In § II, I raise some objection…Read more
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1539E. F. Carritt (1876-1964)In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.E. F. Carritt (1876-1964) was educated at and taught in Oxford University. He made substantial contributions both to aesthetics and to moral philosophy. The focus of this entry is his work in moral philosophy. His most notable works in this field are The Theory of Morals (1928) and Ethical and Political Thinking (1947). Carritt developed views in metaethics and in normative ethics. In meta-ethics he defends a cognitivist, non-naturalist moral realism and was among the first to respond to A. J. A…Read more
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117Schultz's SidgwickUtilitas 19 (1): 91-103. 2007.Bart Schultz’s Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Sidgwick. In this article, I direct my attention for the most part to one aspect of what Schultz says about Sidgwick’s masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, as well as to what he does not say about Sidgwick’s illuminating but neglected work Practical Ethics. This article is divided into three sections. In the first, I argue that there is a problem with Schultz’s endorsement of the view that Sidgwi…Read more
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679Henry Sidgwick, 1838-1900In J. Mander & A. P. F. Sell (eds.), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophers, Thoemmes Press. 2002.Dictionary entry written on Henry Sidgwick, which surveys the main features of his moral framework.
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