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1Feminist EthicsCambridge University Press. 2024.Feminist Ethics provides an overview of feminist contributions to normative ethics, moral psychology, and metaethics. It argues that through their criticisms of traditional ethics and proposals for changes, feminists are advancing 'robust agency,' an account of ideal moral and rational agency that promises to give us better responses than those given in traditional ethics to problems in ethics, including how we know our duties, the kind of persons we should strive to become, and why we should ac…Read more
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14"Nagging" Questions: Feminist Ethics in Everyday Life (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1995.In this anthology of new and classic articles, fifteen noted feminist philosophers explore contemporary ethical issues that uniquely affect the lives of women. These issues in applied ethics include autonomy, responsibility, sexual harassment, women in the military, new technologies for reproduction, surrogate motherhood, pornography, abortion, nonfeminist women and others. Whether generated by old social standards or intensified by recent technology, these dilemmas all pose persistent, 'nagging…Read more
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18On Being a Fan and on Fanhood and Its Implications for Defeating the Moral ScepticDialogue 61 (2): 347-368. 2022.RésuméJ'emploie la notion de partisannerie, telle qu'elle est employée dans le domaine des sports (fanhood), pour m'opposer à la thèse de la dépendance de David Gauthier, selon laquelle s'il est rationnellement requis d'adopter une disposition, les actes qui l'expriment sont eux aussi rationnellement requis. J’établis d'abord que la partisannerie est un engagement assez similaire à un engagement moral. Je soutiens ensuite que, parce que la véritable partisannerie se caractérise par des comportem…Read more
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29Deformed desires and informed desire testsHypatia 20 (4): 109-126. 2000.: The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional "informed desire" tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal wort…Read more
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26The Rationality of Dispositions and the Rationality of Actions: The Interdependency ThesisDialogue 44 (3): 439-468. 2005.ABSTRACTI defend the Interdependency Thesis, according to which rational evaluations of dispositions and actions are made in light of each other. I invoke a model of rationality that relies on various levels of consistency existing between an agent's reasons for adopting a moral disposition, the argument for the moral theory she endorses, her desires, disposition, and choice to be a moral person as reflected in the maxim she adopts. The Interdependency Thesis shows that we do not need to demonst…Read more
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12Out From the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2012.Out from the Shadows showcases the work of 18 analytical feminists from a variety of traditional areas of philosophy: social and political philosophy, normative ethics, virtue theory, metaethics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The collection is unique both in its focus on analytical feminism and in its breadth across the subdisciplines within philosophy. The book highlights successful uses of concepts and approaches from traditional philosophy, and …Read more
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5Moral luck and partialist theoriesJournal of Value Inquiry 30 (1-2): 213-227. 1996.I argue that partialist theories that require us to give special weight to the desires, needs, and interests of ourselves or our social group, are national. I depend this impartialist principle: if the only difference between two persons to some property, where having the property to dependent on luck, morality's demanding that we disfavor either person because the person has this property, to national
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15Right-wing women: Causes, choices, and blaming the victimJournal of Social Philosophy 24 (3): 40-61. 1993.
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12The Employer-Employee Relationship and the Right to KnowBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 3 (1): 45-58. 1983.
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42Deformed Desires and Informed Desire TestsHypatia 20 (4): 109-126. 2000.The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional “informed desire” tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.
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3The Rationality of Dispositions and the Rationality of Actions: The Interdependency ThesisDialogue 44 (3): 439-468. 2005.ABSTRACTI defend the Interdependency Thesis, according to which rational evaluations of dispositions and actions are made in light of each other. I invoke a model of rationality that relies on various levels of consistency existing between an agent's reasons for adopting a moral disposition, the argument for the moral theory she endorses, her desires, disposition, and choice to be a moral person as reflected in the maxim she adopts. The Interdependency Thesis shows that we do not need to demonst…Read more
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8Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.This collection showcases the work of 18 analytical feminists from a variety of traditional areas of philosophy. It highlights successful uses of concepts and approaches from traditional philosophy, and illustrates the contributions that feminist approaches have made and could make to the analysis of issues in key areas of traditional philosophy, while also demonstrating that traditional philosophy ignores feminist insights and feminist critiques of traditional philosophy at its own peril.
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8Moral Understandings (review)Dialogue 39 (1): 208-212. 2000.In Moral Understandings, Margaret Urban Walker presents merely a template for a moral theory that is expressive-collaborative, culturally situated, and practice-based. It is expressive-collaborative because it reflects the responsibilities we have to each other, and is the product of agreement. It is culturally situated because it speaks to different responsibilities we have that are grounded in gender, race, class, and so on. And it is practice-based because its content is determined by actual …Read more
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6The Deferential Wife Revisited: Agency and Moral ResponsibilityHypatia 25 (2). 2010.This paper rejects two main arguments for absolving the deferential wife and victims of deprived circumstances from responsibility or hlame for their servility: for Susan Wolf, circumstances can determine their reasons and acts, and for Sarah Buss, circumstances can give them excusing reasons for their acts. The paper argues that circumstances can give them justifying reasons to act in ways defending their intrin-sic worth when their acts can be legitimately interpreted as a protest against an a…Read more
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64Teaching in the New Climate of ConservatismTeaching Philosophy 30 (2): 139-148. 2007.This paper (1) summarizes the main points of the papers in the volume which demonstrate some of the ways that academic freedom is at odds with recent conservative attacks on the professoriate; (2) argues that some of the conservative attacks from students on faculty are at base a failure to acknowledge their equal personhood, but treat them as inferior beings and thus elicit harmful psychological reactions similar to those found in victims of racist slurs; and (3) examines possible solutions, in…Read more
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9Review of Cheshire Calhoun (ed.), Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (12). 2004.
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29Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and MenAnne Minas Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1993, xiv + 545 pp (review)Dialogue 35 (2): 412-416. 1996.
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4David Schmidtz, Rational Choice and Moral Agency Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 16 (2): 135-140. 1996.
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12The self-interest based contractarian response to the why-be-moral skepticSouthern Journal of Philosophy 28 (3): 427-447. 1990.I examine the self-interest based contractarian's attempt to answer the question, "Why be moral?" In order to defeat the skeptic who accepts reasons of self-interest only, contractarians must show that the best theory of practical reasons includes moral reasons. They must show that it is rational to act morally even when doing so conflicts with self-interest. ;I examine theories offered by Hobbes, Baier, and Grice, and show they fail to defeat skepticism. Hobbes' theory gives no special weight t…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Action |