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75College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues That Affect You (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2016.College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues That Affect You is a collection of brief, engaging, and accessible readings on issues that directly affect—and matter to—today's college students. Ideal for courses in college ethics or introductory ethics, College Ethics can be used as either a main text or a supplementary reader.
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75You Can't Buy Your Way Out of VeganismBetween the Species 19 (1). 2016.Let’s make three assumptions. First, we shouldn’t support factory farms. Second, if animal-friendly agriculture lives up to its name—that is, if animals live good lives (largely free of pain, able to engage in species-specific behaviors, etc.) and are slaughtered in a way that minimizes suffering—then there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing them for food. Third, animal-friendly agriculture does, in fact, live up to its name. Given these assumptions, it might seem difficult to criticize…Read more
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64C. I. Lewis and the Benacerraf problemEpisteme 15 (2): 154-165. 2018.Realists about modality offer an attractive semantics for modal discourse in terms of possible worlds, but standard accounts of the worlds—as properties, propositions, or causally-isolated concreta—invoke entities with which we can’t interact. If realism is true, how can we know anything about modal matters? Let's call this "the Benacerraf Problem." I suggest that C. I. Lewis has an intriguing answer to it. Given that we’re willing to disentangle some of Lewis’s insights from his phenomenalism, …Read more
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57Boycotting and Public MourningRes Publica 26 (1): 89-102. 2019.Some people feel that they should boycott Israel or their local anti-LGBTQ bakery, despite it being difficult to establish these obligations based on standard consequentialist or deontic considerations. I develop a framework on which such self-reports are accurate: I propose that we see some boycotting as akin to a public mourning practice, such as the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva. Mourning practices are complex and socially recognized ways of honoring the dead, as well as expressing and di…Read more
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57In Defence of Backyard ChickensJournal of Applied Philosophy 36 (1): 108-123. 2017.Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can…Read more
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56Nonideal Ethics and Arguments against Eating AnimalsEnvironmental Values 28 (4): 429-448. 2019.Arguments for veganism don’t make many vegans, or even many who think they ought to be vegans, at least when they’re written by philosophers. Others — such as the one by Jonathan Safran Foer — seem to do a bit better. Why? To answer this question, I sketch a theory of ordinary moral argumentation that highlights the importance of meaning-based considerations in arguing that people ought to act in ways that deviate from normal expectations for behaviour. In particular, I outline an eclectic theor…Read more
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54Lance Rips's Lines of Thought: Central Concepts in Cognitive Psychology (review)Philosophical Psychology 27 (3): 445-449. 2014.(2014). Lines of thought: Central concepts in cognitive psychology. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 445-449. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2012.732338
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50Facsimiles of FleshJournal of Applied Philosophy 34 (4): 489-497. 2017.Ed Gein was a serial killer, grave robber, and body snatcher who made a lampshade from human skin. Now consider the detective who found that lampshade. Let's suppose that he would never want to own it; however, he does find that he wants a synthetic one just like it – a perfect replica. We assume that there is something morally problematic about the detective having such a replica. We then argue that, given as much, we can reach the surprising conclusion that it's morally problematic to consume …Read more
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49Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments about the Ethics of Eating (review)Philosophical Review 126 (2): 295-300. 2017.
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42Modal Justification via TheoriesSpringer. 2017.This monograph articulates and defends a theory-based epistemology of modality (TEM). According to TEM, someone justifiably believe an interesting modal claim if and only if (a) she justifiably believes a theory according to which that claim is true, (b) she believes that claim on the basis of that theory, and (c) she has no defeaters for her belief in that claim. The book has two parts. In the first, the author motivates TEM, sets out the view in detail, and defends it against a number of objec…Read more
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40Is Abolitionism Guilty of Racism? A Reply to Cordeiro-RodriguesJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (3): 295-306. 2018.Gary Francione is an abolitionist: he maintains that we ought to abolish the institutions and practices that support the exploitation of animals. He also believes that veganism is the “moral baseline” — that is, he thinks it’s morally required of nearly everyone in the developed world, and many beyond it. Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues claims that abolitionism is guilty of racism, albeit “racism without racists.” I contend that his arguments for this conclusion aren’t successful.
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40Moral Bioenhancement Probably Won’t Improve Things for AnimalsTopoi 38 (1): 141-151. 2019.Persson and Savulescu are advocates for moral bioenhancement—i.e., using drug treatments and genetic engineering to enhance our core moral dispositions. Among other things, they suggest that moral bioenhancement would improve how we treat animals. My goal here is to argue that we have little reason to think that moral bioenhancement will help in this regard. What’s more, it may make things worse. This is because there are cognitive mechanisms that lead us to discount animal interests relative to…Read more
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40Modal Empiricism: Objection, Reply, ProposalIn Bob Fischer & Felipe Leon (eds.), Modal Epistemology After Rationalism, Springer. pp. 263-280. 2016.According to modal empiricism, our justification for believing possibility and necessity claims is a posteriori. That is, experience does not merely play an enabling role in modal justification; it isn’t simply that experience explains how, say, we acquire the relevant concepts. Rather, the view is that modal claims answer to the tribunal of experience in roughly the way that claims about quarks and quails answer to it. One serious objection to modal empiricism is the problem of empirical conser…Read more
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40Shelly Kagan, "How to Count Animals, More or Less." Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 39 (4): 180-182. 2019.
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39Wild Fish and Expected UtilityBangladesh Journal of Bioethics 8 (1): 1-6. 2017.Its difficult to process the number of fish killed annually by the fishing industry. Nevertheless, governments are encouraging people to eat even more fishsee, e.g., the USDA dietary guidelinesand although animal advocates certainly dont concur with this advice, they generally havent prioritized fish in their lobbying efforts. Given the influence of utilitarianism on animal advocacy, the odds are good that this is motivated by an expected utility calculation. For those concerned about fish, is t…Read more
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36Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics (edited book)Routledge. 2019.There isn’t one conversation about animal ethics. Instead, there are several important ones that are scattered across many disciplines. This volume both surveys the field of animal ethics and draws professional philosophers, graduate students, and undergraduates more deeply into the discussions that are happening outside of philosophy departments. To that end, the volume contains more nonphilosophers than philosophers, explicitly inviting scholars from other fields—such as animal science, ecolog…Read more
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36New Waves in Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Yujin Nagasawa and Erik J. Wielenberg (review)Heythrop Journal 50 (5): 908-910. 2009.
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35Animal Rights and Incredulous StaresBetween the Species 20 (1). 2017.Based on the claim that animals have rights, Tom Regan ultimately endorses some radical conclusions: we ought to be vegans; it’s wrong to wear leather; we shouldn’t care about conserving species, but about respecting the rights of individual animals; etc. For many, these conclusions are unbelievable, and incredulous stares abound. Incredulous stares are not arguments, but they do force us to consider whether it might be reasonable for some people to reject Regan’s conclusions based on their cons…Read more
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34Should Global Conservation Initiatives Prioritize Phylogenetic Diversity?Philosophia 50 (5): 2283-2302. 2021.Some recent conservation proposals – including the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) EDGE of Existence programme – have focused on the value of protecting species with high evolutionary distinctiveness, a dimension of biodiversity conservation that’s not been much emphasized in conservation practice. In this paper we critically examine this strategy, investigating whether there are good reasons for prioritizing evolutionarily distinctive species, and the phylogenetic diversity to which they c…Read more
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34How Lewis Can Meet the Integration ChallengeJournal of Philosophical Research 44 129-144. 2019.We show that Lewis’s modal realism, and his serviceability-based argument for it, cohere with his epistemological contextualism. Modal realism explains why serviceability-based reasoning in metaphysics might be reliable, while Lewis’s contextualism explains why Lewis can properly ignore the possibility that serviceability isn’t reliable, at least when doing metaphysics. This is because Lewis’s contextualism includes a commitment to a kind of pragmatic encroachment, so that whether a subject know…Read more
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33What Do We Owe Other Animals?: A DebateLittle Debates about Big Questions. 2023.Jauernig defends the view that all living beings are of equal moral worth and are owed compassion, on account of which we are also obligated to adopt a vegan diet. Fischer denies that we have an obligation to become vegans, and argues for the position that humans morally matter more than all other living creatures.
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29Salvaging Serviceability in MetaphysicsSouthwest Philosophy Review 30 (1): 105-115. 2014.We aren’t particularly sympathetic to modal realism (MR). Still, it isn’t clear to us that David Lewis argues for it in the wrong way. “The hypothesis is serviceable,” he says, “and that is a reason to think that it is true” (1986, p. 3). Let’s grant him the first claim: MR is serviceable, which is to say that it allows us “to reduce the diversity of notions we must accept as primitive, and thereby to improve the unity and economy of the theory that is our professional concern – total theory, th…Read more
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29How to Reply to Some Ethical Objections to EntomophagyAnnals of the Entomological Society of America 112 (6). 2019.Some people have moral objections to insect consumption. After explaining the philosophical motivations for such objections, I discuss three of them, suggesting potential replies. The first is that insect consumption ignores the precautionary principle, which we can gloss here as “Don’t know, don’t farm.” In other words, while there might be evidence that insects are not conscious, we do not know that they are not; so, we should not take the moral risk associated with killing them en masse. The …Read more
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27Animal Ethics: A Contemporary IntroductionRoutledge. 2021.There are many introductions to the animal ethics literature. There aren't many introductions to the practice of doing animal ethics. Bob Fischer's Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction fills that gap, offering an accessible model of how animal ethics can be done today. The book takes up classic issues, such as the ethics of eating meat and experimenting on animals, but tackles them in an empirically informed and nuanced way. It also covers a range of relatively neglected issues in animal e…Read more
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26Knowledge of God (Blackwell Great Debates in Philosophy). By Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley (review)Heythrop Journal 50 (3): 513-515. 2009.
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25In Defence of Backyard ChickensJournal of Applied Philosophy 36 (1): 108-123. 2017.Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can…Read more
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23Theology in Search of Foundations. By Randal Rauser. Pp. vii, 313, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, £60.00 (review)Heythrop Journal 55 (1): 152-153. 2014.
Rochester, NY, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Animal Ethics |
Well-Being |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Moral Psychology |
Normative Ethics |