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764The composition of reasonsSynthese 191 (5): 779-800. 2013.How do reasons combine? How is it that several reasons taken together can have a combined weight which exceeds the weight of any one alone? I propose an answer in mereological terms: reasons combine by composing a further, complex reason of which they are parts. Their combined weight is the weight of their combination. I develop a mereological framework, and use this to investigate some structural views about reasons, the main two being "Atomism" and "Holism". Atomism is the view that atomic rea…Read more
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228Priority or sufficiency …or both?Economics and Philosophy 21 (2): 199-220. 2005.Prioritarianism is the view that we ought to give priority to benefiting those who are worse off. Sufficientism, on the other hand, is the view that we ought to give priority to benefiting those who are not sufficiently well off. This paper concerns the relative merits of these two views; in particular, it examines an argument advanced by Roger Crisp to the effect that sufficientism is the superior of the two. My aim is to show that Crisp's argument is unsound. While I concede his objections aga…Read more
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131I can't make you worship meRatio 18 (2). 2005.This paper argues that Divine Command Theory is inconsistent with the veiw, held by many theists, that we have a moral obligation to worship God.
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104Aggregation and Self-SacrificeEthics 132 (3): 730-735. 2022.Should harms to different individuals be aggregated? Moderate views answer yes and no. Aggregation is appropriate in some but not all cases. Such views need to determine a threshold at which aggregation switches from appropriate to inappropriate. Alex Voorhoeve proposes a method for determining this threshold which links other-regarding and self-regarding ethics. This proposal, however, implies a spurious correlation between favoring aggregation and egoism.
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63Postmodernism for historiansPearson/Longman. 2005.Explaining the emergence of the concept in history and how it looks at the past, this title is a guide to the meanings of postmodernism, showing its origins and ...
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60Moral Mathematics: an interview with Campbell BrownLse Philosophy Blog. 2016.Campbell Brown is one of the most recent additions to our faculty. We thought we’d welcome him to the Department with some questions.
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60The tetrahedron as an archetype for the concept of change in the I ChingJournal of Chinese Philosophy 9 (2): 159-168. 1982.
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59Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, "Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World"Philosophy of Music Education Review 13 (2): 208-210. 2005.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”Christine A. BrownI was recently asked to settle a friendly debate between two college graduates. The first, my daughter's boyfriend, argued that someone with talent and motivation could become as creative a composer without formal musical training as with it. The other, my daughter, vigorously countered that while someone might compose we…Read more
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45Cerebral lateralisation, “social constraints,” and coordinated anti-predator responsesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (4): 591-592. 2005.Lateralisation is traditionally viewed by neuroscientists and comparative psychologists from the perspective of the individual; however, for many animals lateralisation evolved in the context of group living. Here I discuss the implications of individual lateralisation within the context of the group from an evolutionary ecology perspective, with particular reference to coordinated anti-predator behaviour.
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40In Dialogue: Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm,?Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World?Philosophy of Music Education Review 13 (2): 208-210. 2005.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”Christine A. BrownI was recently asked to settle a friendly debate between two college graduates. The first, my daughter's boyfriend, argued that someone with talent and motivation could become as creative a composer without formal musical training as with it. The other, my daughter, vigorously countered that while someone might compose we…Read more
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35The Impact of Retraction on Citation NetworksScience and Engineering Ethics 21 (1): 127-137. 2015.Article retraction in research is rising, yet retracted articles continue to be cited at a disturbing rate. This paper presents an analysis of recent retraction patterns, with a unique emphasis on the role author self-cites play, to assist the scientific community in creating counter-strategies. This was accomplished by examining the following: A categorization of retracted articles more complete than previously published work. The relationship between citation counts and after-retraction self-c…Read more
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35Inner truth and the origin of the Yarrow stalk oracleJournal of Chinese Philosophy 9 (2): 197-210. 1982.
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32Explorations of lung cancer stigma for female long‐term survivorsNursing Inquiry 20 (4): 352-362. 2013.Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women, accompanied by greater psychological distress than other cancers. There is minimal but increasing awareness of the impact of lung cancer stigma (LCS) on patient outcomes. LCS is associated with increased symptom burden and decreased quality of life. The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of female long‐term lung cancer survivors in the context of LCS and examine how participants discursively adhere to or reject stigmatiz…Read more
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32The Imposition of Form: Studies in Narrative Representation and Knowledge (review)Philosophy and Literature 13 (2): 396-397. 1989.
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28Cross-age effects on forensic face constructionFrontiers in Psychology 6 150026. 2015.The own-age bias (OAB) refers to recognition memory being more accurate for people of our own-age than other-age groups (e.g., Wright and Stroud, 2002). This paper investigated whether the OAB effect is present during construction of human faces (also known as facial composites, often for forensic/police use). In doing so, it adds to our understanding of factors influencing both facial memory across the life span as well as performance of facial composites. Participant-witnesses were grouped int…Read more
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25Europe Comes to Mr Milton's Door, and Other Kinds of VisitationThe European Legacy 17 (3). 2012.Using various meanings of ?visit? and ?friend? this essay freely explores connections between Milton's cultivation of fame in Europe, leading to reports in the early lives of visits of scholarly foreigners to his door, and the extraordinary concentration on scenarios of human and divine visitation in the late poems. Social, political and religious strands are followed, from humanist self-presentation in the sonnets through to prophetic isolation in the late poems. Codes of friendship are rehears…Read more
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23The First American SublimeIn Timothy M. Costelloe (ed.), The sublime: from antiquity to the present, Cambridge University Press. 2012.
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22Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making, Henrik Andersson and Anders Herlitz (ed.). Routledge, 2022, viii+269 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 1-6. forthcoming.
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18The Story of the Mordaunt Letter-book of 1660 in the Rylands Library: The Eloquence of IncompletionBulletin of the John Rylands Library 94 (2): 51-71. 2018.This article gives new information on the so-called Letter-book of John, Viscount Mordaunt beyond that in RHS Camden Series LXIX, identifies the likely scribe, and dates the transcription to late 1660. It shows how the large format book was created to record the heroic role played by Mordaunt and his wife Elizabeth in the achievement of Restoration, and how the unfinished state of the textual project adds to our knowledge of the social and political difficulties experienced by Mordaunt, a client…Read more
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18Contemporary clay and museum culture: ceramics in the expanded field (edited book)Routledge. 2016.This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of ex…Read more
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17Special Educational Needs: a Contextualised PerspectiveBritish Journal of Educational Studies 58 (3): 267-284. 2010.The paper examines variations in the extent of special education needs (SEN) in different socio-economic contexts, drawing on data from 46 English primary schools. It examines the implications of variations in SEN for individual pupils and for school organisation and processes. It reviews funding allocations for SEN and what they mean for the provision of support in different settings
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17Applied Christian Ethics: Foundations, Economic Justice, and Politics (edited book)Lexington Books. 2014.Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues
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16Strategic Trust BuildingProceedings of the International Association for Business and Society 16 243-246. 2005.This paper examines the linguistic strategies used by tobacco industry executives in public speeches made pre and post two important events in tobacco industry history to assess the trust building efforts of Philip Morris.
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16The Utility of KnowledgeErkenntnis 77 (2): 155-165. 2012.Recent epistemology has introduced a new criterion of adequacy for analyses of knowledge: such an analysis, to be adequate, must be compatible with the common view that knowledge is better than true belief. One account which is widely thought to fail this test is reliabilism, according to which, roughly, knowledge is true belief formed by reliable process. Reliabilism fails, so the argument goes, because of the "swamping problem". In brief, provided a belief is true, we do not care whether or no…Read more
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15Can God Know what Time it is? A Working PaperQuaerens Deum 3 (1). 2017.Many thinkers hold the following five propositions are inconsistent: The dynamic theory of time is correct God is atemporal God knows tensed facts Free human actions are possible God interacts responsively with humans This working paper uses the discussion in Four Views: God and Time as a starting-point and moves towards explaining how these propositions are consistent.
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13Construct Validity of the Sensory Profile Interoception Scale: Measuring Sensory Processing in Everyday LifeFrontiers in Psychology 13. 2022.Scholars and providers are coming to realize that one’s ability to notice and respond to internal body sensations contributes to an overall sense of wellbeing. Research has demonstrated a relationship between interoceptive awareness and anxiety, for example. Currently, however, tools for evaluating one’s interoception lack the conceptual foundation and clarity necessary to identify everyday behaviors that specifically reflect interoceptive awareness. Unlike existing interoceptive measures, the S…Read more
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Queen's University, BelfastRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |