•  16
    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
  •  8
    Mill on the Family
    In 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.
  •  2
    Mill's Theory of Sanctions
    In 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.
  •  2
    8 Hooker's Use and Abuse of Reflective Equilibrium
    In 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.
  •  5
    No Title available: Book Reviews (review)
    Utilitas 12 (2): 241-243. 2000.
  •  82
    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
  •  10
    “We May Stand Aloof”: Mill’s Natural Penalties
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (3): 453-473. 2022.
    ARRAY
  •  24
    A Letter from the Editor
    Utilitas 34 (2): 119-119. 2022.
  •  12
    One Meat-Eater’s Modus Ponens..
    Southwest Philosophy Review 20 (2): 175-177. 2004.
  •  43
    Moral Education and Rule Consequentialism
    Philosophical 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
  •  16
    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
  • Introduction
    with Ben Eggleston
    In Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller & David Weinstein (eds.), John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life. pp. 3-18. 2011.
  •  18
    A Letter from the Editor
    Utilitas 31 (1): 1-2. 2019.
  •  27
    Compunction, Second-Personal Morality, and Moral Reasons
    Ethical 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
  •  28
    "Freedom and Resentment" and Consequentialism
    Journal 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
  •  38
    One Meat-Eater’s Modus Ponens..
    Southwest Philosophy Review 20 (2): 175-177. 2004.
  •  36
    A Letter from the Editor
    Utilitas 29 (1): 1-2. 2017.
  •  38
    Mill's Misleading Moral Mathematics
    Southwest Philosophy Review 24 (1): 153-161. 2008.
  •  13
    India House Utilitarianism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 23 (1): 39-47. 2007.
  •  15
    A 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
  •  39
    John Stuart Mill's Civic Liberalism
    History 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
  •  41
    Axiological actualism and the converse intuition
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1). 2003.
    In 'Axiological Actualism' Josh Parsons argues that 'axiological actualism', which is 'the doctrine that ethical theory should refrain from assigning levels of welfare, or preference orderings, or anything of the sort to merely possible people', lends plausibility to 'the converse intuition'. This is the proposition that 'the welfare a person would have, were they actual, can give us a reason not to bring that person into existence'. I show that Parsons's argument delivers less than he promises.…Read more
  •  37
    In “’But It Would Be Wrong,’” Stephen Darwall advances a mixed view regarding “deontic buck-passing.” He holds that a wrong action’s “wrong-making features” are our reasons for reactive attitudes like blame; with respect to these reasons, the action’s wrongness “passes the buck” to these features. Yet the action’s being wrong is itself an additional reason for the agent not to do the action, Darwall contends, a “second-personal” moral reason. So with respect to reasons for action, the buck doesn…Read more
  •  75
    On Millgram on mill
    Utilitas 16 (1): 96-108. 2004.
    In a recent article in Ethics, Elijah Millgram presents a novel reconstruction of J. S. Mill's ‘proof’ of the principle of utility. Millgram's larger purpose is to critique instrumentalist approaches to practical reasoning. His reading of the proof makes Mill out to be an instrumentalist, and Millgram thinks that the ultimate failure of Mill's argument usefully illustrates an inconsistency inherent in instrumentalism. Yet Millgram's interpretation of the proof does not succeed. Mill is not an in…Read more
  • John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (review)
    Philosophy in Review 19 447-451. 1999.
  •  80
    Brown on Mill’s moral theory: A critical response
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 9 (1): 47-66. 2010.
    In this article, I argue that the reading of Mill that D.G. Brown presents in ‘Mill’s Moral Theory: Ongoing Revisionism’ is inconsistent with several key passages in Mill’s writings. I also show that a rule-utilitarian interpretation that is very close to the one developed by David Lyons is able to account for these passages without difficulty
  •  39
    John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2010.
    The 'Art of Life' is John Stuart Mill's name for his account of practical reason. In this volume, eleven leading scholars elucidate this fundamental, but widely neglected, element of Mill's thought. Mill divides the Art of Life into three 'departments': 'Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Æsthetics'. In the volume's first section, Rex Martin, David Weinstein, Ben Eggleston, and Dale E. Miller investigate the relation between the departments of morality and prudence. Their papers ask whether Mill …Read more
  •  4
    Terminating Employees for Their Political Speech
    Business and Society Review 109 (2): 225-243. 2004.