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6Counterpoints in cancer: The somatic mutation theory under attackBioessays 33 (5): 313-314. 2011.
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12The job of ‘ethics committees’Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (7): 481-487. 2018.What should authorities establish as the job of ethics committees and review boards? Two answers are: review of proposals for consistency with the duly established and applicable code and review of proposals for ethical acceptability. The present paper argues that these two jobs come apart in principle and in practice. On grounds of practicality, publicity and separation of powers, it argues that the relevant authorities do better to establish code-consistency review and not ethics-consistency r…Read more
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15Kant and the historical turn: Philosophy as critical interpretation - by Karl AmeriksPhilosophical Books 49 (2): 149-150. 2008.
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6In this bold and innovative new work, A.W. Moore poses the question of whether it is possible for ethical thinking to be grounded in pure reason. In order to understand and answer this question, he takes a refreshing and challenging look at Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. Identifying three Kantian Themes – morality, freedom and religion – and presenting variations on each of these themes in turn, Moore concedes that there are difficulties with the Kantian view that morality can be governe…Read more
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88A note on Kant's first antinomyPhilosophical Quarterly 42 (169): 480-485. 1992.An interpretation of Kant's first antinomy is defended whereby both its thesis and its antithesis depend on a common basic principle that Kant endorses, namely that there cannot be an ‘infinite contingency’, by which is meant a contingent fact about how an infinite region of space or time is occupied. The greatest problem with this interpretation is that Kant explicitly declines to apply counterparts of the temporal arguments in the antinomy to the world’s future, even though, if the interpretat…Read more
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7Your Numbers Might Be Strong, but You Still Need Strength in NumbersBioessays 41 (8): 1900109. 2019.
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4We Must Use Less: A Year of Climate Crisis, a Glimpse of Hope, but not in Mere TechnologyBioessays 41 (12): 1900214. 2019.
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65Welfarism in moral theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (4). 1996.We take welfarism in moral theory to be the claim that the well-being of individuals matters and is the only consideration that fundamentally matters, from a moral point of view. We argue that criticisms of welfarism due to G.E. Moore, Donald Regan, Charles Taylor and Amartya Sen all fail. The final section of our paper is a critical survey of the problems which remain for welfarists in moral theory
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5The social contract of peer review revisited and reinforced: An idea to reduce the strain for reviewersBioessays 37 (5): 465-467. 2015.
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1Trading off accountability against professional survival? Or the consequences of Pareto's principle…Bioessays 38 (7): 587-587. 2016.
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100Transcendental idealism in Wittgenstein, and theories of meaningPhilosophical Quarterly 35 (139): 134-155. 1985.This essay involves exploration of certain repercussions of Bernard Williams’ view that there is, in Wittgenstein’s later work, a transcendental idealism akin to that found in the Tractatus—sharing with it the feature that it cannot be satisfactorily stated. It is argued that, if Williams is right, then Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning; for such a theory would force us to try to state the idealism. In a postscript written for the reprint of the …Read more
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1The evolution of photoreception and vision: Or the blind watchmaker gone mad?Bioessays 39 (7): 1700094. 2017.
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2Science is not just for research: More questions must be posed to the public …Bioessays 39 (10): 1700160. 2017.
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2Return to Freud! Research on memes is needed to counter global crisesBioessays 42 (12): 2000283. 2020.
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3Predatory Preprint Servers Join Predatory Journals in the Paper Mill Industry…Bioessays 42 (11): 2000259. 2020.
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5Peroxisomes: A small step from mitochondria but a giant leap for eukaryotesBioessays 37 (2): 113-113. 2015.
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1On the state of scientific English and how to improve it – Part 9Bioessays 37 (8): 831-831. 2015.
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8On the state of scientific English and how to improve it – Part 7: Separating key concepts and qualificationsBioessays 36 (9): 809-809. 2014.
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1On the state of scientific English and how to improve it – Part 10: There's no ‘drama’ in objective scienceBioessays 37 (10): 1039-1039. 2015.
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2Make the Best of the Crisis Whilst it Lasts: Time to Think Like Never Before…Bioessays 42 (10): 2000239. 2020.
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20Kantian humility: Our ignorance of things in themselvesPhilosophical Review 110 (1): 117-120. 2001.Kant once wrote, “Many historians of philosophy... let the philosophers speak mere nonsense.... They cannot see beyond what the philosophers actually said to what they really meant to say.’ Rae Langton begins her book with this quotation. She concludes it, after a final pithy summary of the position that she attributes to Kant, with the comment, “That, it seems to me, is what Kant said, and meant to say”. In between are some two hundred pages of admirably clear, tightly argued exegesis, suppleme…Read more
Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |