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529The doctrine of internal reasonsJournal of Value Inquiry 34 (4): 507-516. 2000.According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarded as too simple on the grounds that there are adverse conditions, such as massive confusion, in which d…Read more
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663Ethics, evolution and the a priori: Ross on Spencer and the French SociologistsIn Michael Ruse & Robert J. Richards (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, Cambridge University Press. 2017.In this chapter I critically discuss the dismissal of the philosophical significance of facts about human evolution and historical development in the work of W. D Ross. I address Ross’s views about the philosophical significance of the emerging human sciences of his time in two of his main works, namely The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics. I argue that the debate between Ross and his chosen interlocutors (Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Lucien Levy-Bruhl) shows striking simi…Read more
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20Review of Alan Millar, Understanding People: Normativity and Rationalizing Explanation (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.
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618Moral realism, normative reasons, and rational intelligibilityErkenntnis 57 (1): 47-69. 2002.This paper concerns a prima facie tension between the claims that (a) agents have normative reasons obtaining in virtue of the nature of the options that confront them, and (b) there is a non-trivial connection between the grounds of normative reasons and the upshots of sound practical reasoning. Joint commitment to these claims is shown to give rise to a dilemma. I argue that the dilemma is avoidable on a response dependent account of normative reasons accommodating both (a) and (b) by yielding…Read more
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11From Genes to EugenicsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (4): 589-600. 2001.
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153Who cares where you come from? cultivating virtues of indifferenceIn Tabitha Freeman Susanna Graham & Fatemeh Ebtehaj Martin Richards (eds.), Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction: families, origins and identities, Cambridge University Press. pp. 97-112. 2014.Book synopsis: Assisted reproduction challenges and reinforces traditional understandings of family, kinship and identity. Sperm, egg and embryo donation and surrogacy raise questions about relatedness for parents, children and others involved in creating and raising a child. How socially, morally or psychologically significant is a genetic link between a donor-conceived child and their donor? What should children born through assisted reproduction be told about their origins? Does it matter if …Read more
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3024Benefit, disability and the non-identity problemIn Nafsika Athanassoulis (ed.), Philosophical reflections on medical ethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2005.
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2302The Companions in Guilt StrategyIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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820A Distinction Without a Difference? Good Advice for Moral Error TheoristsRatio 26 (3): 373-390. 2013.This paper explores the prospects of different forms of moral error theory. It is argued that only a suitably local error theory would make good sense of the fact that it is possible to give and receive genuinely good moral advice
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404Revisionary dispositionalism and practical reasonThe Journal of Ethics 4 (3): 173-190. 2000.This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.
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61I—Hallvard Lillehammer: Moral Testimony, Moral Virtue, and the Value of AutonomyAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 88 (1): 111-127. 2014.According to some, taking moral testimony is a potentially decent way to exercise one's moral agency. According to others, it amounts to a failure to live up to minimal standards of moral worth. What's the issue? Is it conceptual or empirical? Is it epistemological or moral? Is there a ‘puzzle’ of moral testimony; or are there many, or none? I argue that there is no distinctive puzzle of moral testimony. The question of its legitimacy is as much a moral or political as an epistemological questio…Read more
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1128Davidson on value and objectivityDialectica 61 (2). 2007.According to one version of objectivism about value, ethical and other evaluative claims have a fixed truth-value independently of who makes them or the society in which they happen to live (c.f. Davidson 2004, 42). Subjectivists about value deny this claim. According to subjectivism so understood, ethical and other evaluative claims have no fixed truth-value, either because their truth-value is dependent on who makes them, or because they have no truth-value at all
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832The Epistemology of Ethical IntuitionsPhilosophy 86 (2): 175-200. 2011.Intuitions are widely assumed to play an important evidential role in ethical inquiry. In this paper I critically discuss a recently influential claim that the epistemological credentials of ethical intuitions are undermined by their causal pedigree and functional role. I argue that this claim is exaggerated. In the course of doing so I argue that the challenge to ethical intuitions embodied in this claim should be understood not only as a narrowly epistemological challenge, but also as a substa…Read more
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633Projection, indeterminacy and moral skepticismIn Diego E. Machuca (ed.), Moral Skepticism: New Essays, Routledge. 2018.According to moral error theory, morality is something invented, constructed or made; but mistakenly presents itself to us as if it were an independent object of discovery. According to moral constructivism, morality is something invented, constructed or made. In this paper I argue that constructivism is both compatible with, and in certain cases explanatory of, some of the allegedly mistaken commitments to which arguments for moral skepticism appeal. I focus on two particular allegations that a…Read more
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66Review of Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defense (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (5). 2004.
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261Minding your own business? Understanding indifference as a virtuePhilosophical Perspectives 28 (1): 111-126. 2014.Indifference is sometimes described as a virtue. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically acceptable forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either more or less dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of their object.
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23(Hard ernst) corrigendum Van Brakel, J., philosophy of chemistry (u. klein)Erkenntnis 57 (1): 91-122. 2002.It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on…Read more
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180Who is my neighbour? Understanding indifference as a vicePhilosophy 89 (4): 559-579. 2014.Indifference is often described as a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically problematic forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either more or less dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of their object.
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1663The Nature and Ethics of IndifferenceThe Journal of Ethics 21 (1): 17-35. 2017.Indifference is sometimes said to be a virtue. Perhaps more frequently it is said to be a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper presents a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically significant forms of indifference in terms of how subjects of indifference are variously related to their objects in different circumstances; and how an indifferent orientation can be either more or …Read more
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1453Smith on moral fetishismAnalysis 57 (3). 1997.In his book The Moral Problem and in a recent issue of this journal, Michael Smith claims to refute any theory which construes the relationship between moral judgements and motivation as contingent and rationally optional. Smith’s argument fails. In showing how it fails, I shall make three claims. First, a concern for what is right, where this is read de dicto, does not amount to moral fetishism. Second, it is not always morally preferable to care about what is right, where this is read de re. T…Read more
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765Autonomy, Value and the First PersonIn Lubomira Radoilska (ed.), Autonomy and Mental Disorder, Oxford University Press. 2012.This paper explores the claim that someone can reasonably consider themselves to be under a duty to respect the autonomy of a person who does not have the capacities normally associated with substantial self-governance.
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124Review. From metaphysics to ethics: A defence of conceptual analysisBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (1): 169-173. 1999.
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1160Moral error theoryProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (2). 2004.The paper explores the consequences of adopting a moral error theory targeted at the notion of reasonable convergence. I examine the prospects of two ways of combining acceptance of such a theory with continued acceptance of moral judgements in some form. On the first model, moral judgements are accepted as a pragmatically intelligible fiction. On the second model, moral judgements are made relative to a framework of assumptions with no claim to reasonable convergence on their behalf. I argue th…Read more
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423Facts, Ends, and Normative ReasonsThe Journal of Ethics 14 (1): 17-26. 2010.This paper is about the relationship between two widely accepted and apparently conflicting claims about how we should understand the notion of ‘reason giving’ invoked in theorising about reasons for action. According to the first claim, reasons are given by facts about the situation of agents. According to the second claim, reasons are given by ends. I argue that the apparent conflict between these two claims is less deep than is generally recognised.
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485The Idea of a Normative ReasonIn Peter Schaber & Rafael Hüntelmann (eds.), Grundlagen der Ethik, De Gruyter. pp. 41--65. 2003.Recent work in English speaking moral philosophy has seen the rise to prominence of the idea of a normative reason1. By ‘normative reasons’ I mean the reasons agents appeal to in making rational claims on each other. Normative reasons are good reasons on which agents ought to act, even if they are not actually motivated accordingly2. To this extent, normative reasons are distinguishable from the motivating reasons agents appeal to in reason explanations. Even agents who fail to act on their norm…Read more
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475Who needs bioethicists?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (1): 131-144. 2003.Recent years have seen the emergence of a new brand of moral philosopher. Straddling the gap between academia on the one hand, and the world of law, medicine, and politics on the other, bioethicists have appeared, offering advice on ethical issues to a wider public than the philosophy classroom. Some bioethicists, like Peter Singer, have achieved wide notoriety in the public realm with provocative arguments that challenge widely held beliefs about the relative moral status of animals, human foet…Read more
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628Smile when you’re winning: how to become a Cambridge pragmatistIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.The aim of this paper is to trace the development of a particular current of thought known under the label ‘pragmatism’ in the last part of the Twentieth century and the beginning of the Twenty-first. I address three questions about this current of thought. First, what is its actual historical development? Second, does it constitute a single, coherent, philosophical outlook? Third, in what form, if any, does it constitute an attractive philosophical outlook. In the course of addressing these q…Read more
Hallvard Lillehammer
Birkbeck College, University Of London
Birkbeck, University of London
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Birkbeck College, University Of LondonDepartment Of PhilosophyProfessor
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Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |