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10Butler's ethicsIn Roger Crisp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2013.This chapter analyses Butler's ethical theories, which are found primarily in Fifteen Sermons and A Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue. It covers his notions of superiority and authority, the supremacy of conscience, virtue, benevolence, and self-love.
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11Can Scanlon avoid redundancy by passing the buck?Analysis 63 (4). 2003.Scanlon suggests a buck-passing account of goodness. To say that something is good is not to give a reason to, say, favour it; rather it is to say that there are such reasons. When it comes to wrongness, however, Scanlon rejects a buck-passing account: to say that j ing is wrong is, on his view, to give a sufficient moral reason not to j. Philip Stratton-Lake 2003 argues that Scanlon can evade a redundancy objection against his (Scanlon’s) view of wrongness by adopting a buck-passing account of …Read more
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16The making/evidential reason distinctionAnalysis 71 (1): 100-102. 2011.Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star have made the following interesting proposal concerning the relation between practical reasons and evidence : Necessarily: A fact F is a reason for you to φ iff F is evidence that you ought to φ We're not sure about this. Although moving from left to right might be OK, the converse is problematic. For example, the fact that your reliable friend told you that you have overriding moral reason to φ is …
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26In defence of unconditional forgivenessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (1). 2003.In this paper, the principal objections to unconditional forgiveness are canvassed, primarily that it fails to take wrongdoing seriously enough, and that it displays a lack of self-respect. It is argued that these objections stem from a mistaken understanding of what forgiveness actually involves, including the erroneous view that forgiveness involves some degree of condoning of the offence, and is incompatible with blaming the offender or punishing him. Two positive reasons for endorsing uncond…Read more
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6Duty, rationality, and practical reasonsIn Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 110--131. 2004.McNaughton and Rawling present a view on which practical reasons are facts, such as the fact that the rubbish bin is full. This is a non-normative fact, but it is a reason for you to do something, namely take the rubbish out. They see rationality as a matter of consistency. And they see duty as neither purely a matter of rationality nor of practical reason: on the one hand, the rational sociopath is immoral; but, on the other, morality does not require that we always act on the weightiest moral …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |