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145Reading Plato’s TheaetetusHackett Pub. Co.. 2004.Timothy Chappell’s new translation of the Theaetetus is presented here in short sections of text, each preceded by a summary of the argument and followed by his philosophical commentary on it. Introductory remarks discuss Plato and his works, his use of dialogue, the structure of the Theaetetus, and alternative interpretations of the work as a whole. A glossary and bibliography are provided
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653Moral perceptionPhilosophy 83 (4): 421-437. 2008.I develop an account of moral perception which is able to deal well with familiar naturalistic non-realist complaints about ontological extravagance and ‘queerness’. I show how this account can also ground a cogent response to familiar objections presented by Simon Blackburn and J.L. Mackie. The familiar realist's problem about relativism, however, remains.
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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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395Ethics Beyond Moral TheoryPhilosophical Investigations 32 (3): 206-243. 2009.I develop an anti-theory view of ethics. Moral theory (Kantian, utilitarian, virtue ethical, etc.) is the dominant approach to ethics among academic philosophers. But moral theory's hunt for a single Master Factor (utility, universalisability, virtue . . .) is implausibly systematising and reductionist. Perhaps scientism drives the approach? But good science always insists on respect for the data, even messy data: I criticise Singer's remarks on infanticide as a clear instance of moral theory fa…Read more
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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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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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268Knowledge of PersonsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (4): 3--28. 2013.What is knowledge of persons, and what is knowing persons like? my answer combines Wittgenstein’s epistemology with levinas’s phenomenology. It says that our knowledge of persons is a hinge proposition for us. And it says that what this knowledge consists in is the experience that levinas calls ”the face to face’: direct and unmediated encounter between persons. As levinas says, for there to be persons at all there has, first, to be a relationship, language, and this same encounter: ”the face to…Read more
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3834Varieties of Knowledge in Plato and AristotleTopoi 31 (2): 175-190. 2012.I develop the relatively familiar idea of a variety of forms of knowledge —not just propositional knowledge but also knowledge -how and experiential knowledge —and show how this variety can be used to make interesting sense of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy, and in particular their ethics. I then add to this threefold analysis of knowledge a less familiar fourth variety, objectual knowledge, and suggest that this is also interesting and important in the understanding of Plato and Aristotle
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26DominionRatio 16 (3). 2003.I distinguish two claims about human ‘dominion’ over nature: (1) Humans have the right to supervise, manage, and direct the rest of nature; (2) Humans have a special value, superior to the rest of nature. I discuss some ways of rejecting either or both claims, and point to some surprising consequences of such rejections. Then I compare the ways in which Aristotelianism and sentientism might try to keep hold of both claims. This produces two surprising and unwelcome results for sentientism, and o…Read more
Areas of Interest
1 more
Normative Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |