•  16
    Private law, public right, and the law of unjust enrichment
    Jurisprudence 12 (4): 537-561. 2021.
    Unjust enrichment continues to fascinate and frustrate. While it is clear that unjust enrichment is a form of private law liability distinct from that found in property, contract, or tort, it remai...
  •  30
    Parental Licensing and Discrimination
    In Anca Gheaus, Jurgen De Wispelaere & G. Calder (eds.), Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Childhood and Children, . pp. 202-212. 2018.
    Philosophical theories about parental licensing tend to pay insufficient attention to forms of discrimination that may be inherent in, or result from, a system of parental licensing. By situating these theories in relation to the status quo on parental licensing, we aim to show how many of them reinforce what philosophers have called “biologism”: the privileging of families formed through biological reproduction over families formed in other ways. Much of our discussion focuses on biologism, alt…Read more
  •  129
    A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modem Materialism (review)
    Philosophical Review 114 (1): 125-128. 2005.
    A review of Andrew Melnyk's _A Physicalist Manifesto_ (Cambridge: CUP, 2003).
  •  20
    An Anscombean Reference for ‘I’?
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 18 (3): 343-361. 2018.
    A standard reading of Anscombe’s “The First Person” takes her to argue, via reductio, that ‘I’ must be radically non-referring. Allegedly, she analogizes ‘I’ to the expletive ‘it’ in ‘It is raining’. Hence nothing need be said about Anscombe’s understanding of “the referential functioning of ‘I’”, there being no such thing. We think that this radical reading is incorrect. Given this, a pressing question arises: How does ‘I’ refer for Anscombe, and what sort of thing do users of ‘I’ refer to? We …Read more
  •  39
    Logical Form and the Vernacular Revisited
    Mind and Language 32 (4): 495-522. 2017.
    We revisit a debate initiated some 15 years ago by Ray Elugardo and Robert Stainton about the domain of arguments. Our main result is that arguments are not exclusively sets of linguistic expressions. Instead, as we put it, some non-linguistic items have ‘logical form’. The crucial examples are arguments, both deductive and inductive, made with unembedded words and phrases. … subsentential expressions such as singular terms and predicates… cannot serve as premises or conclusions in inferences.
  •  58
    Corrective Justice, by Ernest J. Weinrib (review)
    Mind 123 (491): 966-970. 2014.
    A review of Ernest Weinrib's _Corrective Justice_.
  •  336
    Review of Katy Barnett, Accounting for Profit for Breach of Contract (review)
    Canadian Business Law Journal 54 99-106. 2013.
    A review of Katy Barnett, Accounting for Profit for Breach of Contract (Hart Publishing, 2012)
  •  56
    Licensing Parents in International Contract Pregnancies
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (2): 178-196. 2015.
    The Hague Conference on Private International Law currently has a Parentage/Surrogacy Project, which evaluates the legal status of children in cross-border situations, including situations involving international contract pregnancy. Should a convention focusing on international contract pregnancy emerge from this project, it will need to be consistent with the Hague convention on Intercountry Adoption. The latter convention prohibits adoptions unless, among other things, ‘the competent authoriti…Read more
  •  173
    A Primer on the distinction between justification and excuse
    Philosophy Compass 4 (1): 172-196. 2009.
    This article is about the distinction between justification and excuse, a distinction which, while familiar, remains controversial. My discussion focuses on three questions. First, what is the distinction? Second, why is it important? And third, what are some areas of inquiry in which the distinction might be philosophically fruitful? I suggest that the distinction has practical and theoretical consequences, and is therefore worth taking seriously; I highlight two philosophical issues in which t…Read more
  •  421
    Review of Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom (review)
    Canadian Journal of Political Science 44 457-458. 2011.
    A review of Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2009)
  •  9
    Why Gametes are not Like Enriched Uranium
    Bioethics 30 (9): 741-750. 2016.
    According to Rivka Weinberg, gametes are like enriched uranium: both are hazardous materials. Exposing human beings to enriched uranium can result in radioactivity and decreased life expectancy, while exposing sperm and ova to each other can result in the creation of needy innocent persons with full moral status. Weinberg argues that when we engage in activities that put our gametes at risk of joining with others and growing into persons, we assume the costs of that risky activity. She calls thi…Read more
  •  39
    Neil Campbell has argued that certain problems with the doctrine of psycho-physical supervenience can be overcome if supervenience is viewed as a relation between predicates rather than as a relation between properties. Campbell suggests that, when properly understood, this predicate version of supervenience "expresses a form of psycho-physical dependence that might be useful to those who wish to argue for a supervenience-based physicalism”. In this note I indicate why I think we ought to resist…Read more
  •  53
    This paper is about the remedy of disgorgement for breach of contract. In it I argue for two conclusions. I first argue that, prima facie at least, disgorgement damages for breach of contract present something of a puzzle. But second, I argue that if we pay close attention to the notion of contractual performance, this puzzle can be resolved in a way that is consistent with principles of corrective justice. In particular, I suggest that even if a contract gives the promisee a right to only the p…Read more
  •  467
    Reconciling the Principled Approach to Hearsay with the Rule of Law
    Supreme Court Law Review 65 (2d): 145-168. 2014.
    My goal in this paper is to argue that the principled approach to hearsay is consistent with the rule of law. I begin by contrasting an instrumental conception of the rule of law with a conception that views the rule of law in primarily normative terms. I then turn my attention to a recent criticism of the Supreme Court of Canada’s principled approach to hearsay and suggest that if Michael Oakeshott’s normative interpretation of the rule of law is adopted, there is no tension between the princip…Read more
  •  492
    Can a Right to Reproduce Justify the Status Quo on Parental Licensing?
    In Richard Vernon, Sarah Hannan & Samantha Brennan (eds.), Permissible Progeny: The Morality of Procreation and Parenting, Oxford University Press. pp. 184-207. 2015.
    The status quo on parental licensing in most Western jurisdictions is that licensing is required in the case of adoption but not in the case of assisted or unassisted biological reproduction. To have a child via adoption, one must fulfill licensing requirements, which, beyond the usual home study, can include mandatory participation in parenting classes. One is exempt from these requirements, however, if one has a child via biological reproduction, including assisted reproduction involving donor…Read more
  •  424
    Temporal Parts And Temporary Intrinsics
    Metaphysica 5 (2): 5-23. 2004.
    In this paper I consider an objection that friends of the Metaphysic of Temporal Parts (MTP) press against other solutions to the problem of temporary intrinsics and turn it against the MTP itself. I do not argue that the MTP must be false, nor do I argue that there are no arguments in favor of the MTP. Rather, the conclusion I draw is conditional: if the MTP provides an adequate response to the problem of temporary intrinsics, then the MTP provides no reason to reject our commonsense view of th…Read more
  •  248
    Mellor on negative properties
    Philosophical Quarterly 48 (193): 523-526. 1998.
    DH Mellor has argued that there can be no negative, disjunctive, or conjunctive properties. This argument has been criticized by Alex Oliver on the grounds that it rests on a contentious identity criterion for facts, but it seems to me that a simpler criticism is available. According to this criticism, the problem with Mellor's argument is that it trades on an ambiguity in the semantics of the phrase "the fact that", according to which "the fact that" can be understood as creating either an inte…Read more
  •  25
    By the Ties of Natural Justice and Equity (review)
    Jurisprudence 4 (1): 138-150. 2013.
    A review of Robert Chambers, Charles Mitchell and James Penner, eds., Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Unjust Enrichment (Oxford University Press, 2009)
  •  257
    Review of Andrew Melnyk, A Physicalist Manifesto (review)
    Philosophical Review 114 (1): 125-128. 2005.
    A review of Andrew Melnyk, A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
  •  51
    A Hague Convention on Contract Pregnancy : Avoiding Ethical Inconsistencies with the Convention on Adoption
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 7 (2): 219-235. 2014.
    In the past, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has shaped how people can become the legal parents of children born in countries other than their own. It did so by creating the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. It is now interested in developing a convention on international contract pregnancy. We discuss in this commentary what such a convention would have to include for it to be ethically consistent with the Convention on Adoption.
  •  62
    Quotation: Compositionality and Innocence without Demonstration
    with Robert J. Stainton
    Critica 37 (110): 3-33. 2005.
    We discuss two kinds of quotation, namely indirect quotation and pure quotation. With respect to each, we have both a negative and a positive plaint. The negative plaint is that the strict Davidsonian treatment of indirect and pure quotation cannot be correct. The positive plaint is an alternative account of how quotation of these two sorts works. /// Discutimos dos tipos de citas, a saber, citas indirectas y citas puras. Hacemos dos planteamientos, uno positivo y otro negativo, con respecto a c…Read more
  •  113
    Conceiving what is not there
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (8): 21-42. 2001.
    In this paper I argue that certain so-called conceivability arguments fail to show that a currently popular version of physicalism in the philosophy of mind is false. Concentrating on an argument due to David Chalmers, I first argue that Chalmers misrepresents the relation between conceivability and possibility. I then argue that the intuition behind the conceivability of so-called zombie worlds can be accounted for without having to suppose that such worlds are genuinely conceivable. I conclude…Read more
  •  65
    Why we ought to be (reasonable) subjectivists about justification
    Criminal Justice Ethics 26 (1): 36-58. 2007.
    My aim in this paper is to argue that justification should not be conceived of in purely objective terms. In arguing for that conclusion I focus in particular on Paul Robinson’s presentation of that position, since it is the most sophisticated defense of the objective account of justification in the literature. My main point will be that the distinction drawn by Robinson between objective and subjective accounts of justification is problematic, and that careful attention to the role played by re…Read more
  •  2409
    Not For the Faint of Heart: Assessing the Status Quo on Adoption and Parental Licensing
    In Francoise Baylis & Carolyn McLeod (eds.), Family Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges, Oxford University Press. pp. 151-167. 2014.
    The process of adopting a child is “not for the faint of heart.” This is what we were told the first time we, as a couple, began this process. Part of the challenge lies in fulfilling the licensing requirements for adoption, which, beyond the usual home study, can include mandatory participation in parenting classes. The question naturally arises for many people who are subjected to these requirements whether they are morally justified. We tackle this question in this paper. In our view, while s…Read more
  •  784
    The property dualism argument against physicalism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 28 223-242. 2003.
    Many contemporary philosophers of mind are concerned to defend a thesis called a posteriori physicalism. This thesis has two parts, one metaphysical, and the other epistemological. The metaphysical part of the thesis—the physicalist part—is the claim that the psychological nature of the actual world is wholly physical. The epistemological part of the thesis—the a posteriori part—is the claim that no a priori connection holds between psychological nature and physical nature. Despite its attractiv…Read more
  •  37
    Normativity, Fairness, and the Problem of Factual Uncertainty
    with Chris Essert
    Osgoode Hall Law Journal 47 (4): 663-693. 2010.
    This article concerns the problem of factual uncertainty in negligence law. We argue that negligence law’s insistence that fair terms of interaction be maintained between individuals—a requirement that typically manifests itself in the need for the plaintiff to prove factual or “but-for” causation—sometimes allows for the imposition of liability in the absence of such proof. In particular, we argue that the but-for requirement can be abandoned in certain situations where multiple defendants have…Read more
  •  107
    Colors as explainers?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (6): 785-786. 2003.
    Byrne & Hilbert argue that colors are reflectance properties of objects. They also claim that a necessary condition for something's being a color is that it causally explain – or be causally implicated in the explanation of – our perceptions of color. I argue that these two positions are in conflict
  •  375
    Review of Douglas Husak, Philosophy of Criminal Law: Selected Essays (review)
    University of Toronto Law Journal 63 (1): 152-158. 2013.
    A review of Douglas Husak, Philosophy of Criminal Law: Selected Essays (Oxford University Press, 2010)
  •  42
    Imagine the following. You have been asked to critically evaluate the criminal process in your home jurisdiction. In particular, you have been asked to determine whether the criminal process currently in place appropriately balances the need to maximize the chances of getting things right—of acquitting the innocent and convicting the guilty—with the need to minimize the chances of getting things wrong—of acquitting the guilty and convicting the innocent. How would you proceed? What rules of evid…Read more