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4438O Lugar das Emoções na Ética e na Metaética (edited book)NEPFil online/Editora da UFPel. 2018.Esta coletânea explora o papel desempenhado pelas emoções na teorização em ética e metaética. Inclui capítulos escritos por pesquisadores do Brasil e de outros países.
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873The wrong answer to an improper question?Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 33. 2010.A philosopher who asks “Why be moral?” is asking a theoretical question about the force of moral reasons or about the normative status of morality. Two questions need to be distinguished. First, assuming that there is a morally preferred way to live or to be, is there any (further) reason to be this way or to act this way? Second, if moral considerations are a source of reasons, why is this, and what is the significance of these reasons? This question asks for a ‘grounding’ of morality. The p…Read more
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778Darwinian skepticism about moral realismPhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 186-206. 2008.No Abstract
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657Why naturalism?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2): 179-200. 2003.My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking naturalism seriously. I do not aim to establish the truth of naturalism nor to answer the various familiar objections to it. But I do aim to motivate naturalism sufficiently that the attempt to deal with the objections will seem worthwhile. I propose that naturalism is best understood as the view that the moral properties are natural in the s…Read more
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642Is Society-Centered Moral Theory a Contemporary Version of Natural Law Theory?Dialogue 48 (1): 19-36. 2009.ABSTRACT: David Braybrooke argues that the core of the natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas survived in the work of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau. Much to my surprise, Braybrooke argues as well that David Copp’s society-centered moral theory is a secular version of this same natural law theory. Braybrooke makes a good case that there is an important idea about morality that is shared by the great philosophers in his group and that this idea is also found in Copp’s work. The idea is captured …Read more
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561Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral RealismSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 1-43. 2001.Moral realism and antirealist-expressivism are of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, a cognitive state of mind; she has or expresses a belief that represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or…Read more
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504Morality and virtue: An assessment of some recent work in virtue ethicsEthics 114 (3): 514-554. 2004.This essay focuses on three recent books on morality and virtue, Michael Slote's 'Morals from Motives', Rosalind Hursthouse's 'On Virtue Ethics', and Philippa Foot's 'Natural Goodness'. Slote proposes an "agent-based" ethical theory according to which the ethical status of acts is derivative from assessments of virtue. Following Foot's lead, Hursthouse aims to vindicate an ethical naturalism that explains human goodness on the basis of views about human nature. Both Hursthouse and Slote take vir…Read more
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504Social glue and norms of socialityPhilosophical Studies 172 (12): 3387-3397. 2015.If we are going to understand morality, it is important to understand the nature of societies. What is fundamental to them? What is the glue that holds them together? What is the role of shared norm acceptance in constituting a society? Michael Bratman’s account of modest sociality in his book, Shared Agency, casts significant light on these issues. Bratman’s account focuses on small-scale interactions, but it is instructive of the kinds of factors that can enter into explaining sociality more g…Read more
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498'Ought' implies 'can' and the derivation of the Principle of Alternate PossibilitiesAnalysis 68 (1): 67-75. 2008.No Abstract
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467Defending the principle of alternate possibilities: Blameworthiness and moral responsibilityNoûs 31 (4): 441-456. 1997.According to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. PAP underlies a familiar argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility with determinism. I argue that Harry Frankfurt's famous argument against PAP is unsuccessful if PAP is interpreted as a principle about blameworthiness. My argument turns on the maxim that "ought implies can" as well as a "finely-nuanced" view of the object of blame. To re…Read more
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443The Oxford handbook of ethical theory (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2006.The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory is a major new reference work in ethical theory consisting of commissioned essays by leading moral philosophers. Ethical theories have always been of central importance to philosophy, and remain so; ethical theory is one of the most active areas of philosophical research and teaching today. Courses in ethics are taught in colleges and universities at all levels, and ethical theory is the organizing principle for all of them. The Handbook is divided into two …Read more
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417Against direction of fit accounts of belief and desireAnalysis 61 (1): 44-53. 2001.The authors argue against direction of fit accounts of the distinction between belief and desire.
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392Introduction: Metaethics and normative ethicsIn The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 3--35. 2006.This chapter begins by explaining the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics. It then introduces the main issues in the two fields and provides a critical overview of the chapters in the volume. In meta-ethics, it focuses on explaining the different kinds of moral realism and anti-realism, including the divine command theory, naturalism, non-naturalism, relativism, nihilism, and non-cognitivism. Quasi-realism illustrates how the distinction between anti-realism and realism can beco…Read more
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309Toward a pluralist and teleological theory of normativityPhilosophical Issues 19 (1): 21-37. 2009.No Abstract
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308The Ring of Gyges: Overridingness and the Unity of ReasonSocial Philosophy and Policy 14 (1): 86-106. 1997.Does morality override self-interest? Or does self-interest override morality? These questions become important in situations where there is conflict between the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest, situations where morality on balance requires an action that is contrary to our self-interest, or where considerations of self-interest on balance call for an action that is forbidden by morality. In situations of this kind, we want to know what we ought simpliciter to do. If one of these …Read more
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264Moral skepticismPhilosophical Studies 62 (3). 1991."Moral skepticism" is the thesis that no moral code or standard is or could be objectively justified. It constitutes as important a challenge to anti-skeptical moral theory as does skepticism about God to theistic philosophies. It expresses intuitive doubts, but it also entails the falsity of a variety of philosophical theories. It entails a denial of moral knowledge and truth, but one could reject it without holding that there is such knowledge or truth. An anti-skeptical theory could be a fami…Read more
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257What kind of a mistake is it to use a slur?Philosophical Studies 172 (4): 1079-1104. 2015.What accounts for the offensive character of pejoratives and slurs, words like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’? Is it due to a semantic feature of the words or to a pragmatic feature of their use? Is it due to a violation of a group’s desires to not be called by certain terms? Is it due to a violation of etiquette? According to one kind of view, pejoratives and the non-pejorative terms with which they are related—the ‘neutral counterpart’ terms—have different meanings or senses, and this explains the offens…Read more
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248Belief, reason, and motivation: Michael Smith's "the moral problem"Ethics 108 (1): 33-54. 1997.
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242The Idea of a Legitimate StatePhilosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1): 3-45. 1999.A legitimate state would have a right to rule. The problem is to understand, first, precisely what this right amounts to, and second, under what conditions a state would have it. According to the traditional account, the legitimacy of a state is to be explained in terms of its subjects’ obligation to obey the law. I argue that this account is inadequate. I propose that the legitimacy of a state would consist in its having a bundle of rights of various kinds, which I specify. Among other thi…Read more
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223Moral Obligation and Moral MotivationCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplement 21 (sup1). 1995.'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers vie…Read more
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220Do we have any justified moral beliefs? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 811-819. 2008.No Abstract
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195What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal TheoryDialogue 23 (2): 249-269. 1984.An account of the ontological nature of collectives would be useful for several reasons. A successful theory would help to show us a route through the thicket of views known as “methodological individualism”. It would have a bearing on the plausibility of legal positivism. It would be relevant to the question whether collectives are capable of acting. The debate about the ontology of collectives is therefore important for such fields as the theory of action, social and political philosophy, the …Read more
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190Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in MetaethicsCambridge University Press. 2007.The central philosophical challenge of metaethics is to account for the normativity of moral judgment without abandoning or seriously compromising moral realism. In Morality in a Natural World, David Copp defends a version of naturalistic moral realism that can accommodate the normativity of morality. Moral naturalism is often thought to face special metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic problems as well as the difficulty in accounting for normativity. In the ten essays included in this vo…Read more
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181Morality, normativity, and societyOxford University Press. 1995.Moral claims not only purport to be true, they also purport to guide our choices. This book presents a new theory of normative judgment, the "standard-based theory," which offers a schematic account of the truth conditions of normative propositions of all kinds, including moral propositions and propositions about reasons. The heart of Copp 's approach to moral propositions is a theory of the circumstances under which corresponding moral standards qualify as justified, the " society -centered the…Read more
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171A Skeptical Challenge to Moral Non-Naturalism and a Defense of Constructivist NaturalismPhilosophical Studies 126 (2): 269-283. 2005.
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171How to avoid begging the question against evolutionary debunking argumentsRatio 32 (4): 231-245. 2019.Evolutionary debunking arguments aim to undercut the epistemological status of our evaluative beliefs on the basis of the genesis of our belief-forming tendencies. This paper addresses the issue whether responses to these arguments must be question-begging. It argues for a pragmatic understanding of question-beggingness, according to which whether an argument is question-begging depends on the argumentative context. After laying out the debunking argument, the paper considers a variety of respon…Read more
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University of California, DavisDepartment of Philosophy
Davis, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |