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346IntroductionIn Ben Eggleston & Dale E. Miller (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-15. 2014.The introduction (about 6,000 words) to _The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism_, in three sections: utilitarianism’s place in recent and contemporary moral philosophy (including the opinions of critics such as Rawls and Scanlon), a brief history of the view (again, including the opinions of critics, such as Marx and Nietzsche), and an overview of the chapters of the book.
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9A focused framework for emulating modal proof systemsIn Lev Beklemishev, Stéphane Demri & András Máté (eds.), Advances in Modal Logic, Volume 11, Csli Publications. pp. 469-488. 2016.
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20Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet (edited book)Routledge. 2020.Climate change has become the most pressing moral and political problem of our time. Ethical theories help us think clearly and more fully about important moral and political issues. And yet, to date, there have been no books that have brought together a broad range of ethical theories to apply them systematically to the problems of climate change. This volume fills that deep need. Two preliminary chapters--an up-to-date synopsis of climate science and an overview of the ethical issues raised by…Read more
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9Mill on the FamilyIn Christopher Macleod & Dale E. Miller (eds.), A Companion to Mill, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. 2016.In my book J. S. Mill: Moral, Social and Political Thought I explained the absence of a standalone chapter on women's rights by explaining that for Mill no special explanation of why women should have the right to vote, work in the careers of their choice, etc., was needed; they should have these rights for the same reasons as men. The real lacuna, I admitted, was the absence of a chapter on Mill's views on marriage and the family. This chapter remedies that deficiency.
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4Mill's Theory of SanctionsIn Henry West (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism, Wiley-blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains section titled: Definitions The External Sanctions The Internal Sanction Conclusion.
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58 Hooker's Use and Abuse of Reflective EquilibriumIn Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason, Dale E. Miller, D. W. Haslett, Shelly Kagan, Sanford S. Levy, David Lyons, Phillip Montague, Tim Mulgan, Philip Pettit, Madison Powers, Jonathan Riley, William H. Shaw, Michael Smith & Alan Thomas (eds.), Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 156-178. 2000.
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32Internal Sanctions in Mill's Moral Psychology: Dale E. MillerUtilitas 10 (1): 68-82. 1998.Mill's discussion of ‘the internal sanction’ in chapter III of Utilitarianism does not do justice to his understanding of internal sanctions; it omits some important points and obscures others. I offer an account of this portion of his moral psychology of motivation which brings out its subtleties and complexities. I show that he recognizes the importance of internal sanctions as sources of motives to develop and perfect our characters, as well as of motives to do our duty, and I examine in some…Read more
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17“We May Stand Aloof”: Mill’s Natural PenaltiesJournal of the History of Philosophy 60 (3): 453-473. 2022.ARRAY
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51Moral Education and Rule ConsequentialismPhilosophical Quarterly 71 (1): 120-140. 2021.Rule consequentialism holds that an action's moral standing depends on its relation to the moral code whose general adoption would have the best consequences. Heretofore rule consequentialists have understood the notion of a code's being generally adopted in terms of its being generally obeyed or, more commonly, its being generally accepted. I argue that these ways of understanding general adoption lead to unacceptable formulations of the theory. For instance, Brad Hooker, Michael Ridge, and Hol…Read more
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20The Place of “The Liberty of Thought and Discussion” in On LibertyUtilitas 33 (2): 133-149. 2021.I consider whether Mill intends for us to see the arguments that constitute his defense of the “Liberty of Thought and Discussion” in chapter 2 ofOn Libertyas a part of his larger case for the “harm” or “liberty” principle (LP). Several commentators depict this chapter as a digression that interrupts the flow between his introduction of this principle in the first chapter and his exposition and defense of it in the final three. I will argue instead for a reading ofOn Libertyon which chapter 2 is…Read more
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IntroductionIn Ben Eggleston, Dale Miller & David Weinstein (eds.), John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, Oxford University Press. pp. 3-18. 2010.
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28Compunction, Second-Personal Morality, and Moral ReasonsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 719-733. 2018.In The Second-Person Standpoint and subsequent essays, Stephen Darwall develops an account of morality that is “second-personal” in virtue of holding that what we are morally obligated to do is what others can legitimately demand that we do, i.e., what they can hold us accountable for doing through moral reactive attitudes like blame. Similarly, what it would be wrong for us to do is what others can legitimately demand that we abstain from doing. As part of this account, Darwall argues for the p…Read more
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46"Freedom and Resentment" and ConsequentialismJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8 (2): 1-23. 2014.In The Second-Person Standpoint, Stephen Darwall offers an interpretation of P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” according to which the essay advances the thesis that good consequences are the “wrong kind of reason” to justify “practices of punishment and moral responsibility.” Darwall names this thesis “Strawson’s Point.” I argue for a different reading of Strawson, one according to which he holds this thesis only in a qualified way and, more generally, is not the unequivocal critic of co…Read more
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Reluctant Florists, Same-Sex Weddings, and Mill’s Doctrine of LibertyPublic Affairs Quarterly 30 (4): 287-311. 2016.
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1John Stuart Mill’s Moral, Social, and Political PhilosophyIn W. J. Mander (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press. 2014.This chapter offers an overview of some of the most significant aspects of J. S. Mill’s work in moral, social, and political philosophy and presents a balanced picture of the debates between interpreters over how this work should be understood without remaining strictly neutral. On the reading developed herein, Mill’s moral theory comprises a hedonistic theory of value and a rule-utilitarian theory of obligation. While not a ‘virtue ethicist’ per se, he attaches paramount importance to the devel…Read more
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18A Companion to Mill (edited book)John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. 2016.This Companion offers a state-of-the-art survey of the work of John Stuart Mill – one which covers the historical influences on Mill, his theoretical, moral and social philosophy, as well as his relation to contemporary movements. Its contributors include both senior scholars with established expertise in Mill’s thought and new emerging interpreters. Each essay acts as a ‘go-to’ resource for those seeking to understand an aspect of Mill’s thought or to familiarise themselves with the contours of…Read more
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41John Stuart Mill's Civic LiberalismHistory of Political Thought 21 (1): 88-113. 2000.Although it is frequently overlooked, J.S. Mill's political philosophy has a significant civic component; he is a committed believer in the value of active and disinterested participation in public affairs by the citizens of liberal democracies, and he advocates a programme of civic education intended to cultivate public spirit. In the first half of this essay I present a brief but systematic exploration of his thought's civic dimension. In the second half I defend Mill's civic liberalism agains…Read more
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102Actual–Consequence Act Utilitarianism and the Best Possible HumansRatio 16 (1). 2003.After critiquing some earlier attempts (including those of Marcus Singer and Frances Howard–Snyder) to ground objections to actual–consequence act utilitarianism (ACAU) on human cognitive limitations, I present two new objections with this same foundation. Both start with the observation that, because human cognitive abilities are not up to the task of reliably recognizing utility–maximizing actions, any agents who are recognizably human – including the best possible humans, morally speaking – a…Read more
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90Reactive Attitudes and the Hare–Williams Debate: Towards a New Consequentialist Moral PsychologyPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (254): 39-59. 2014.Bernard Williams charges that the moral psychology built into R. M. Hare’s utilitarianism is incoherent in virtue of demanding a bifurcated kind of moral thinking that is possible only for agents who fail to reflect properly on their own practical decision making. I mount a qualified defence of Hare’s view by drawing on the account of the ‘reactive attitudes’ found in P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Against Williams, I argue that the ‘resilience’ of the reactive attitudes ensures that…Read more
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13Mill’s Conception of Pleasure: Meeting West in the MiddleSouthwest Philosophy Review 31 (1): 157-166. 2015.
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Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |