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126Book Review: Acts amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Structure of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 16 (2): 96-101. 2003.
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115Tim the terrorist: We have Tim the terrorist in custody, and we know that he knows where the bomb is that his group have secretly planted somewhere in central London, and we know that if we torture him hard enough he will reliably tell us where it is in time for us to defuse it, and we know that there is no other way of getting him to tell us, and we know that if we don't defuse it the bomb will kill thousands of innocent people. So: what to do?
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110Transgender and adoption: An analogyThink 20 (59): 25-30. 2021.Maybe we should think of it like this: trans women/men are to women/men as adoptive parents are to parents. There are disanalogies of course, and the morality of adoption is a large issue in itself which I can't do full justice to here. Still, the analogies are, I think, important and instructive.
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109Why Ethics is HardJournal of Moral Philosophy 11 (4): 704-726. 2014.I argue that one central resource for ethical thinking, seriously under-explored in contemporary anglophone philosophy, is moral phenomenology, the exploration of the texture and quality of moral experience. Perhaps a barrier that has prevented people from using this resource is that it’s hard to talk about experience. But such knowledge can be communicated, e.g. by poetry and drama. In having such experiences, either in real life or at second-hand through art, we can gain moral knowledge, rathe…Read more
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108Plato on knowledge in the theaetetusStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article
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106Reviews self-constitution: Agency, identity, and integrity . By Christine M. Korsgaard. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2009, pp. XIV+230, £45.00 (review)Philosophy 85 (3): 424-432. 2010.
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106Book Reviews : The Question of Christian Ethics by Ralph McInerny. Washington: Catholic University of America Press (London: Eurospan). 1993. 74pp. pb. 9.95 (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 8 (1): 128-131. 1995.
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104Utopias and the Art of the PossibleAnalyse & Kritik 30 (1): 179-203. 2008.I begin this paper by examining what MacIntyre has to tell us about radical disagreements: how they have arisen, and how to deal with them, within a polity. I conclude by radically disagreeing with Macintyre: I shall suggest that he offers no credible alternative to liberalism’s account of radical disagreements and how to deal with them. To put it dilemmatically: insofar as what MacIntyre says is credible, it is not an alternative to liberalism; insofar as he presents a genuine alternative to li…Read more
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102Jonathan Kvanvig: The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (review)Faith and Philosophy 24 (4): 475-479. 2007.
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99The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays (edited book)Palgrave Macmillan. 2009.How much can morality demand of well-off Westerners as a response to the plight of the poor and starving in the rest of the world, or in response to environmental crises? Is it wrong to put your friends and family first? And what do the answers to these questions tell us about the nature of morality? This collection of eleven new essays from some of the world's leading moral philosophers brings the reader to the cutting edge of this contemporary ethical debate. With essays from Kantians, utilita…Read more
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91Values and virtues: Aristotelianism in contemporary ethics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2006.After 25 centuries, Aristotle's influence on our society's moral thinking remains profound and he continues to be a very important contributor to contemporary debates in philosophical ethics. This collection showcases some of the best new writing on the Aristotelian notion of virtue of character, which remains central to much of the most interesting work in ethical theory.
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90'The Good Man is the Measure of All Things': Objectivity without World-Centredness in Aristotle's Moral EpistemologyIn Christopher Gill (ed.), Virtue, norms, and objectivity: issues in ancient and modern ethics, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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90I compare the two main readings of the argument against Protagorean relativism that 'Socrates' presents at Theaetetus 170-171, argue against both of them, and present a third alternative reading
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82The incompleat projectivist: How to be an objectivist and an attitudinistPhilosophical Quarterly 48 (190): 50-66. 1998.What is at stake in the dispute between moral objectivism and subjectivism is how we are to give a rational grounding to ethical first principles or basic commitments. The search is for an explanation of what if anything makes any commitments good. Subjectivisms such as Blackburn's quasi‐realism can give any set of commitments no ‘rational grounding’ in this sense except in considerations about internal consistency. But this is inadequate. Internal consistency is not sufficient for ethical ratio…Read more
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80Infinity Goes Up On Trial: Must Immortality Be Meaningless?European Journal of Philosophy 17 (1): 30-44. 2009.Critically debates the distinction of different types of boredom and its impact on Williams’s argument, as well as the question of why personal identity should be threatened by eternally having new ground projects.
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76Why God is Not a Consequentialist: T. D. J. CHAPPELLReligious Studies 29 (2): 239-243. 1993.Can there be a moral philosophy which combines Christianity and consequentialism? John Stuart Mill himself claimed that these positions were, at the least, not mutually exclusive, and quite possibly even congenial to one another; and some recent work by Christian philosophers in America has resurrected this claim. But there is a simple argument to show that consequentialism and orthodox Christianity are not so much as jointly assertible
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72Improving Nature? The Science and Ethics of Genetic Engineering (review)Journal of Medical Ethics 23 (5): 329-331. 1997.
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72Review: The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value (review)Mind 116 (463): 743-746. 2007.
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69Personal identity, r-relatedness, and the empty question argumentPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 88-92. 1995.
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68Introducing EpiphaniesZeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie 2 (1): 95-121. 2019.I propose a programme of research in ethical philosophy, into the peak-experiences or wow-moments that I, following James Joyce and others, call epiphanies. As a first pass, I characterize an epiphany as an (1) overwhelming (2) existentially significant manifestation of (3) value, (4) often sudden and surprising, (5) which feels like it “comes from outside” – it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver – which (6) teaches us something new, which (7) “takes us out of ourselv…Read more
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66Philosophy as a humanistic discipline – by Bernard Williamsthe sense of the past – by Bernard WilliamsPhilosophical Investigations 32 (4): 360-371. 2009.The article reviews two books by Bernard Williams including "Philosophy As a Humanistic Discipline" and "The Sense of the Past."
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66Knowing What to Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in EthicsOxford University Press. 2013.Timothy Chappell develops a picture of what philosophical ethics can be like, once set aside from conventional moral theory. His question is 'How are we to know what to do?', and the answer he defends is 'By developing our moral imaginations'--a key part of human excellence, which plays many roles in our practical and evaluative lives
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64Sex selection for non-medical reasons: Advisory Report of the Standing Committee on Medical Ethics and Health Law of the Health Council of the NetherlandsJournal of Medical Ethics 23 (2): 120-121. 1997.
Areas of Interest
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Normative Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |