•  130
    Hierarchy and Heterarchy in Ross's Theories of the Right and the Good
    In Robert Audi & David Phillips (eds.), The Moral Philosophy of W. D. Ross, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    In both The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics, W. D. Ross maintains that any amount of the non-instrumental value of virtue outweighs any amount of the non-instrumental value of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The chapter raises two challenges to the status that Ross accords the value of virtue relative to the value of pleasure (pain). First, it argues that Ross fails to provide a good argument for thinking that virtue is always better than pleasure and that it is in any case impl…Read more
  •  265
    Sidgwick on Free Will and Ethics
    In Maximilian Kiener (ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of responsibility, Routledge. pp. 82-94. 2023.
    In The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick maintains that resolution of the free will problem is of “limited” importance to ethics and to practical reasoning. Despite the view’s uniqueness, surprisingly little sustained attention has been paid to Sidgwick’s view. This chapter tries to remedy this situation. Part one clarifies Sidgwick’s argument for the claim that resolving the free will controversy is of only limited importance to ethics. Part two examines and tries to deflect objections to Sidgw…Read more
  •  214
    Transformative Choice and Decision-Making Capacity
    Law Quarterly Review 139 (4): 654-680. 2023.
    This article is about the information relevant to decision-making capacity in refusal of life-prolonging medical treatment cases. We examine the degree to which the phenomenology of the options available to the agent—what the relevant states of affairs will feel like for them—forms part of the capacity-relevant information in the law of England and Wales, and how this informational basis varies across adolescent and adult medical treatment cases. We identify an important doctrinal phenomenon. In…Read more
  •  59
    Review of Dale Jamieson (Ed.), Singer and his Critics (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4). 2001.
    This is a review of Singer and His Critics edited by Dale Jamieson. It argues that the volume is important. The essay by Colin McGinn is heavily criticized.
  •  74
    Review of R. M. Hare, Sorting out Ethics (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4): 583-585. 2001.
    This is a short review of R.M. Hare's Sorting Out Ethics. It critically evaluates Hare's universal prescriptivism.
  •  7
    Review of Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (review)
    Philosophy in Review 19 (5): 350-351. 1999.
  •  197
    Review of David Phillips, Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics: A Guide (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2022.
    This is a review of David Phillips, Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics: A Guide.
  •  182
    Children's Prudential Value
    In Christopher Wareham (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing, Cambridge University Press. pp. 38-53. 2022.
    Until recently, the nature of children’s well-being or prudential value remained all but unexplored in the literature on well-being. There now exists a small but growing body of work on the topic. In this chapter, I focus on a cluster of under-explored issues relating to children’s well-being. I investigate, in specific, three distinct (and to my mind puzzling) positions about it, namely, that children’s lives cannot on the whole go well or poorly for them, prudentially speaking; that the prude…Read more
  •  419
    Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20 (3): 221-247. 2021.
    Adolescents are routinely treated differently to adults, even when they possess similar capacities. In this article, we explore the justification for one case of differential treatment of adolescents. We attempt to make philosophical sense of the concurrent consents doctrine in law: adolescents found to have decision-making capacity have the power to consent to—and thereby, all else being equal, permit—their own medical treatment, but they lack the power always to refuse treatment and so render …Read more
  •  292
    Should we delay covid-19 vaccination in children?
    British Medical Journal 374 (8300): 96-97. 2021.
    The net benefit of vaccinating children is unclear, and vulnerable people worldwide should be prioritised instead, say Dominic Wilkinson, Ilora Finlay, and Andrew J Pollard. But Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton argue that covid-19 vaccines have been approved for some children and that children should not be disadvantaged because of policy choices that impede global vaccination
  •  930
    Mandating Vaccination
    In Meredith Celene Schwartz (ed.), The Ethics of Pandemics, Broadview Press. pp. 131-134. 2020.
    A short piece exploring some arguments for mandating vaccination for Covid-19.
  •  477
    Sidgwick claimed Kant as one of his moral philosophical masters. This did not prevent Sidgwick from registering pointed criticisms of most of Kant’s main claims in ethics. This paper explores the practical ethics of Sidgwick and Kant. In § I, I outline the element of Kant’s theoretical ethics that Sidgwick endorsed. In §§ II and III, I outline and adjudicate some of their sharpest disagreements in practical ethics, on the permissibility of lying and on the demands of beneficence. In § IV, I argu…Read more
  •  576
    Achievement and Enhancement
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3): 322-338. 2020.
    We engage with the nature and the value of achievement through a critical examination of an argument according to which biomedical “enhancement” of our capacities is impermissible because enhancing ourselves in this way would threaten our achievements. We call this the argument against enhancement from achievement. We assess three versions of it, each admitting to a strong or a weak reading. We argue that strong readings fail, and that weak readings, while in some cases successful in showing tha…Read more
  •  1258
    Bioethics in Canada, second edition (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    This is the second edition of the textbook Bioethics in Canada. It is the most up to date bioethics textbook on the Canadian market. Twenty-nine of its 54 contributions are by Canadians. All the chapters carried over from the first edition are revised in full (especially the chapters on obligations to the global poor, on medical assistance in dying, and on public health). It comprises *new* chapters on emerging genetic technologies and on indigenous peoples' health. It contains *new* case s…Read more
  •  455
    Henry Sidgwick taught G.E. Moore as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. Moore found Sidgwick’s personality less than attractive and his lectures “rather dull”. Still, philosophically speaking, Moore absorbed a great deal from Sidgwick. In the Preface to the Trinity College Prize Fellowship dissertation that he submitted in 1898, just two years after graduation, he wrote “For my ethical views it will be obvious how much I owe to Prof. Sidgwick.” Later, in Principia Ethica, Moore …Read more
  •  584
    Review of Robert Myers, Self-Governance and Cooperation (review)
    Utilitas 14 (1): 128-130. 2002.
    A critical review of Robert Myers Self-Governance and Cooperation
  •  301
    Review of Glenn McGee (Ed.), Pragmatic Bioethics (review)
    Philosophy in Review 20 (5): 365-367. 2000.
    Critical review of Glenn McGee, ed., Pragmatic Bioethics.
  •  395
    Review of Bart Schultz, Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe: An Intellectual Biography (review)
    Philosophy in Review 25 (3): 231-234. 2005.
    A critical review of Bart Schultz, Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe
  •  601
    Children and Well-Being
    In Anca Gheaus, Gideon Calder & Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children, Routledge. pp. 90-100. 2018.
    Children are routinely treated paternalistically. There are good reasons for this. Children are quite vulnerable. They are ill-equipped to meet their most basic needs, due, in part, to deficiencies in practical and theoretical reasoning and in executing their wishes. Children’s motivations and perceptions are often not congruent with their best interests. Consequently, raising children involves facilitating their best interests synchronically and diachronically. In practice, this requires caregi…Read more
  •  1529
    Utilitarian Practical Ethics: Sidgwick and Singer
    In Placido Bucolo, Roger Crisp & Bart Schultz (eds.), Henry Sidgwick: Ethics, Psychics, and Politics, Catania: University of Catania Press. 2011.
    It is often argued that Henry Sidgwick is a conservative about moral matters, while Peter Singer is a radical. Both are exponents of a utilitarian account of morality but they use it to very different effect. I think this way of viewing the two is mistaken or, at the very least, overstated. Sidgwick is less conservative than has been suggested and Singer is less radical than he initially seems. To illustrate my point, I will rely on what each has to say about the moral demands of suffering and d…Read more
  •  854
    Ideal Utilitarianism
    In J. E. Crimmins & D. C. Long (eds.), Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2013.
    An opinionated encyclopedia entry on ideal utilitarianism in which various arguments for the view are discussed and evaluated.
  •  690
    Ross, William David (1877-1971)
    In James Crimmins (ed.), Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2013.
    A short encyclopedia article devoted to W. D. Ross.
  •  1103
    Singer, Peter (1946-)
    In Michael Gibbons (ed.), Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 3454-3455. 2014.
    A short encyclopedia article on Peter Singer which discusses his views on the obligations that the global wealthy have to the global poor and on our obligations to non-human animals.
  •  964
    A philosophical discussion of children's well-being in which various existing views of well-being are discussed to determine their implications for children's well-being and a variety of views of children's well-being are considered and evaluated.
  •  1146
    This is a critical review of Terence Irwin's The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Volume III: From Kant to Rawls. Among other things, the review remarks on the book's treatment of utilitarianism and on its lack of discussion of work in feminist ethics in the twentieth century.
  •  1735
    Rashdall, Hastings (1858-1924)
    In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 4325-4329. 2013.
    An opinionated encyclopedia entry on Hastings Rashdall, in which several worries about his case for ideal utilitarianism are raised.
  •  311
    This is a critical review of Roger Crisp's The Cosmos of Duty. The review praises the book but, among other things, takes issue with some of Crisp's criticisms of Sidgwick's view that resolution of the free will problem is of limited significance to ethics and with Crisp's claim that in Methods III.xiii Sidgwick defends an axiom of prudence that undergirds rational egoism.