• Creating a New History for Future Generations
    Environmental Values 6 2247-248. 1997.
  • The Biophilia Hypothesis (review)
    Environmental Values 4 (2): 187-188. 1995.
  •  16
    Divide et impera?
    with Alison Johnson
    Environmental Values 15 (2). 2006.
    Instead of an editorial, in this issue of Environmental Values the publishers have been invited to comment on a local environmental issue that currently looms large in our Scottish island backyard. Divided from mainland Scotland by fifty miles of sea, the Outer Hebrides are a peripheral part of the already peripheral Scottish Highlands - a region of low production, and high demands on thinly spread national services. Fifteen years ago our economic salvation was to be the creation of the largest …Read more
  •  474
    Since Jacques Derrida’s 1989 essay “Force of Law: the Mystical Foundations of Authority,” Carl Schmitt has been a perennial subject of Derrida’s political critique. I will argue that Derrida’s concept of auto-immunity is uniquely applicable to Derrida’s interpretation of Schmitt’s political philosophy. Therefore, my argument will consist of two interrelated but equally divergent parts; the digressive structure will attempt to mimic Derrida’s complex style of weaving opposed concepts into a coher…Read more
  •  8
    Guest Editorial
    with Alison
    Environmental Values 5 (2): 95-96. 1996.
  • Booknotes
    Environmental Values 3 (1): 91-92. 1994.
  • Booknotes
    Environmental Values 3 (2): 188-188. 1994.
  •  57
    Don’t bring it on: the case against cheerleading as a collegiate sport
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 40 (2): 255-277. 2013.
    The 2010 Quinnipiac cheerleading case raises interesting questions about the nature of both cheerleading and sport, as well as about the moral character of each. In this paper we explore some of those questions, and argue that no form of college cheerleading currently in existence deserves, from a moral point of view, to be recognized as a sport for Title IX purposes. To reach that conclusion, we evaluate cheerleading using a quasi-legal argument based on the NCAA’s definition of sport and concl…Read more
  • Insufficient Reason: An Interpretation and Critique of Kant's Categorical Imperative
    Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2001.
    Kant's moral theory, along with Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics, is one of the three leading moral theories in contemporary Western moral philosophy. I argue in this dissertation, however, that Kant's moral theory suffers from deeper flaws than its proponents have acknowledged---flaws that render it untenable. But a great deal of interpretative argument must be done before this critique can be compelling, since every critique rests on interpretative presuppositions that are liable to be questio…Read more
  •  90
    Kant's empirical hedonism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (1). 2005.
    : According to the long orthodox interpretation of Kant's theory of motivation, Kant recognized only two fundamental types of motives: moral motives and egoistic, hedonistic motives. Seeking to defend Kant against the ensuing charges of psychological simplism, Andrews Reath formulated a forceful and seminal repudiation of this interpretation in his 1989 essay “Hedonism, Heteronomy and Kant's Principle of Happiness.” The current paper aims to show that Reath's popular exegetical alternative is un…Read more
  •  235
    An apology for the “New Atheism”
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (1): 5-28. 2013.
    In recent years, a series of bestselling atheist manifestos by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens has thrust the topic of the rationality of religion into the public discourse. Christian moderates of an intellectual bent and even some agnostics and atheists have taken umbrage and lashed back. In this paper I defend the New Atheists against three common charges: that their critiques of religion commit basic logical fallacies (such as straw man, false dichotomy, or hasty general…Read more