•  139
    Learning and intentionality
    Journal of Philosophy of Education 5 (1). 1971.
  •  13
    Ancient Egyptian metaethics: maat as moral realism
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-21. forthcoming.
    In this paper, I develop an interpretation of ancient Egyptian ethics that foregrounds its metaethical foundations. In particular, I argue that the fundamental ethical concept employed, that of maat (often translated as ‘truth', ‘justice', or ‘right order'), should be understood as expressing a form of robust moral realism. This view is in direct opposition to the only sustained treatment of the metaethics of maat in the secondary literature, DeLapp (“The Metaethics of Maat”), who argues that an…Read more
  •  3
    Identity
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004.
  •  65
    Scepticism About Neo-Aristotelian Essences
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 80 (4): 885-904. 2024.
    Many philosophers today accept the broadly Aristotelian view that one can explain de re necessary properties by invoking essence. These ‘Neo-Aristotelian essentialists’ hold that a property F is an essential property of x iff specifying F gives a correct answer to the Aristotelian ‘what is x?’ question. We are sceptical. According to neo-Aristotelian essentialists, essential properties are not themselves de re modal properties, but they are supposed to explain why things have their de re modal p…Read more
  •  7
    Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Leafning, by Ken Bain (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 44 (3): 372-375. 2021.
  •  93
    Exclusivists interpret the ‘or’ of English (and other natural languages) exclusively, but may wish to introduce an inclusive sense of disjunction. A common natu.
  •  141
    Perry Hendricks has recently argued that endorsing the divine hiddenness objection to the existence of God ‘eliminates’ or ‘does away with’ all de jure objections to theism. So, he says, anyone who endorses the divine hiddenness objection must ‘reject’ any de jure objection. ‘And this,’ he says, ‘means that the argument from divine hiddenness is costly for atheists’. However, although Hendricks's argument is an interesting one, it does not establish any of these things, at least on any natural u…Read more
  • On Moral Status
    with Simo Vehmas
    In Simo Vehmas & Reetta Mietola (eds.), Narrowed Lives: Meaning, Moral Value, and Profound Intellectual Disability, . pp. 185-212. 2021.
  •  145
    In his book Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Williamson argues that the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate should be abandoned as hopelessly unclear and that we should get on with the clearer contingentism‐necessitism debate. We think that Williamson’s pessimism is not warranted by the brief arguments he gives. In this paper, we explain why and provide a clear formulation of the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate.
  •  133
    Relativism and the foundations of philosophy – Stephen Hales
    Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234): 170-173. 2009.
    No Abstract.
  •  140
    ABSTRACT In this article I reply to Thomas Schramme's argument that there are no good reasons for the prohibition of severe forms of voluntary non‐therapeutic body modification. I argue that on paternalistic assumptions there is, in fact, a perfectly good reason.
  •  190
    A new look at Berkeley's idealism
    Heythrop Journal 50 (2): 189-194. 2009.
    In this note I firstly give a formulation of Berkeleyean Idealism in modern anti‐realist terms. Secondly, I supply a reading of Berkeley that serves to do three things: 1. It makes clear that the formulation of the position in modern terms is acceptable. 2. It offers a revealing insight into the reasons why Berkeley accepted the position. 3. It allows us to see that these reasons are, in fact, bad ones.
  •  203
    To be fair
    Analysis 74 (1): 47-57. 2014.
    In this article I present a theory of what it is to be fair. I take my cue from Broome’s well known 1990 account of fairness. Broome’s basic thesis is that fairness is the proportional satisfaction of claims, and with this I am in at least partial agreement. But neither Broome nor anyone else (so far as I know) has laid down a theory of precisely what one must do in order to be fair. The theory offered here does just this.
  •  93
    The Repeatability Argument Poses No New Threat for Bundle Theorists: A Reply to Benocci
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (4): 826-830. 2020.
    Matteo Benocci [AJP, 2018] has presented a new argument, the Repeatability Argument, against any version of the Bundle Theory that includes a commitment to the principle that concrete particulars constituted by exactly the same universals are identical. In this discussion note, I argue that the Repeatability Argument fails because defenders of the Bundle Theory can reject one of its key steps on principled grounds. I thus conclude that Benocci provides Bundle Theorists with no new threat.
  •  148
    In this paper I argue against Mark Jago’s recent suggestion that ordinary knowers can move from knowledge of essence to knowledge of metaphysical necessity.
  •  65
    Must Antiques Be Technically Excellent? A Rejoinder to Killin: Discussion
    with Darrin Baines
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77 (1): 83-85. 2019.
    In “What Is an Antique?” (2016), we argued that the concept of an antique is an adjectival concept: it does not pick out a kind of object, but rather appli.
  •  164
    Moral Development in Early Childhood Is Key for Moral Enhancement
    with Markus Christen and Darcia Narvaez
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (4): 25-26. 2012.
  •  1635
    Profound Intellectual Disability and the Bestowment View of Moral Status
    with Simo Vehmas
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26 (3): 505-516. 2017.
    This article engages with debates concerning the moral worth of human beings with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMDs). Some argue that those with such disabilities are morally less valuable than so-called normal human beings, whereas others argue that all human beings have equal moral value and so each group of humans ought to be treated with equal concern. We will argue in favor of a reconciliatory view that takes points from opposing camps in the debates about the moral wor…Read more
  •  818
    When Do Persons Die?: Indeterminacy, Death, and Referential Eligibility
    Journal of Value Inquiry 52 (2): 153-167. 2018.
    The topic of this paper is the general thesis that the death of the human organism is what constitutes the death of a person. All admit that when the death of a human organism occurs, in some form or another, this normally does result in the death of a person. But, some maintain, organismic death is not the same thing as personal death. Why? Because, they maintain, despite the fact that persons are associated with a human organism (‘their organism’), they are not identical with their organism, a…Read more
  •  239
    Lewisian quidditism, humility, and diffidence
    Philosophical Studies 173 (11): 3081-3099. 2016.
    In ‘Ramseyan Humility’ Lewis presents the Permutation Argument for quidditism. As he presents it the argument is simple enough, but once one digs beneath its surface, and attempts to understand it in strictly Lewisian terms, difficulties arise. The fundamental difficulty is that, as he presents it, the argument only seems to be sound if one rejects views that Lewis explicitly holds. One aim of this paper is to clarify the argument to show that one can make sense of it in strictly Lewisian terms.…Read more
  •  2
    In this paper I argue that if a completed neuroscience of consciousness is to be attained, we must give the synchronic and diachronic application conditions for brain states and phenomenal states. I argue that, due to the temporal nature of our experiences, such states must be viewed as being temporally extended events, and illustrate how to give such application conditions using examples of other temporally extended events. However, I also raise some difficulties for the project of giving appli…Read more
  •  74
    This article seeks to conceptualize global counterterror actor types by examining the designated terrorist organizations lists of six countries; the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Russia, and China. It is argued that these countries should be placed into one of three distinct categories: Trendsetters, Trend Followers, and Individual Players. Being able to classify countries according to these categories is important for global policymakers. It raises awareness of the diffe…Read more
  •  130
    In a recent paper we argued that a Moorean strategy can be employed to justify our continuing to believe the following proposition, even in the presence of philosophical views that entail it is false, without any philosophical argument against those views, and without any positive philosophical argument in its favour: -/- H>A: Humans have an equal moral status that is higher than the moral status of non-human animals. -/- The basic idea is that our confidence in the truth of this proposition is …Read more
  •  64
    Brain Neoplasm and Strict Identity
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 1 (3): 10-11. 2010.
  •  185
    Porpora offers an a priori argument for the conclusion that there are infinitely many thoughts that it is physically possible for us to think. That there should be such an a priori argument is astonishing enough. That the argument should be simple enough to teach to a first-year undergraduate class in about 20 min, as Porpora’s is, is more astonishing still. Porpora’s main target is Max Tegmark’s recent argument for the claim that if current physics is right, then there are mental duplicates of …Read more
  •  79
  •  466
    Identity
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.
    Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the…Read more
  •  175
    What Is an Antique?
    with Darrin Baines
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (1): 75-86. 2016.
    Antiques are undoubtedly objects worthy of aesthetic appreciation, but do they have a distinctive aesthetic value in virtue of being antiques? In this article we give an account of what it is to be an antique that gives the thesis that they do have a distinctive aesthetic value a chance of being true and suggests what that distinctive value consists in. After introducing our topic in Section I, in Section II we develop and defend the Adjectival Thesis: the thesis that the concept of being an ant…Read more