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770Richard Rorty on the American Left in the Era of TrumpContemporary Pragmatism 15 (2): 194-210. 2018.This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country as an admonishment of so-call…Read more
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620Semiotic Limits to Markets DefendedPhilosophia 50 (1): 217-232. 2021.Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue in recent work that “semiotic” or “symbolic” objections to markets are unsuccessful. I counter-argue that there are indeed some semiotic limits on markets and that anti-commodification theorists are not merely expressing disgust when they disapprove of markets in certain goods on those grounds. One central argument is that, contrary to what Brennan and Jaworski claim, semiotic arguments against markets do not depend fundamentally on meanings that prevail ab…Read more
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512William James and the Metaphilosophy of IndividualismMetaphilosophy 52 (2): 220-233. 2021.This paper argues that an individualist perspective is a crucial element of William James’s metaphilosophical outlook. In broad outline, the individualist argument the paper attributes to James can be characterized like this. Disputes among philosophers about the optimal point of view from which to consider this or that philosophical problem are themselves only adequately adjudicated from an individualist perspective. That is, when it comes to an assortment of important philosophical quest…Read more
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489Raz on Authority and DemocracyDialogue 51 (2): 211-230. 2012.ABSTRACT: I argue that Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority cannot convincingly account for the nature and source of democratic authority. It cannot explain why decisions made democratically are more likely to be sound than decisions made non-democratically, and therefore, why democratic decisions might be understood as constituting moral reasons for action and compliance independently of their instrumental dimensions. My argument is that democratic authority cannot be explained complete…Read more
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385Egalitarians, sufficientarians, and mathematicians: a critical notice of Harry Frankfurt’s On InequalityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2): 145-162. 2016.This critical notice provides an overview of Harry Frankfurt’s On Inequality and assesses whether Frankfurt is right to argue that equality is merely formal and empty. I counter-argue that egalitarianism, properly tweaked and circumscribed, can be defended against Frankfurt’s repudiation. After surveying the main arguments in Frankfurt’s book, I argue that whatever plausibility the ‘doctrine of sufficiency’ defended by Frankfurt may have, it does not strike a fatal blow against egalitarianism. T…Read more
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379On Rorty's Evangelical MetaphilosophyPhilosophy and Rhetoric 44 (2): 150-170. 2011.I have spent 40 years looking for a coherent and convincing way of formulating my worries about what, if anything, philosophy is good for. Richard Rorty had an unusually avid interest in metaphilosophy. Again and again he would return to questions about the practical uses (if any) to which philosophy might be put, about philosophy's role in intellectual culture, about what philosophy is or might become. His answers to these questions were famously negative: philosophy's practical uses are few, i…Read more
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363Equality, luck, and pragmatismJournal of Speculative Philosophy 21 (2). 2007.In this paper I describe how Kant’s idea about the impossibility of moral luck has come to influence, via Rawls, recent writings in egalitarian theory. I argue that this influence has been detrimental for the study of equality. Further, I claim that the major deficiencies of this post-Rawlsian egalitarianism (nicely described by Elizabeth Anderson’s title “luck egalitarianism) are both effectively critiqued and corrected by the understanding of equality and its value located in John Dewey’s wri…Read more
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357Appraising Justice as Larger LoyaltyContemporary Pragmatism 12 (2): 302-316. 2015.This paper critically examines Richard Rorty’s “justice as larger loyalty” proposal. While Rorty is right, I argue, to reject the Kantian idea of a strict bifurcation between justice and loyalty, the former corresponding to reason the latter corresponding to sentiment, my argument is that it is nevertheless a mistake to follow Rorty in conceiving of justice as he recommends we should. This is not an endorsement of the rationalistic Kantian view Rorty rejects. Rather, I argue that there are compe…Read more
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305G.A. Cohen and the Logic of Egalitarian CongruenceSocialist Studies 8 (1): 82-100. 2012.In this article, I argue that G. A. Cohen’s defense of the feminist slogan, “The personal is political”, his argument against Rawls’s restriction of principles of justice to the basic structure of society, depends for its intelligibility on the ability to distinguish—with reasonable but perhaps not perfect precision—between those situations in which what Nancy Rosenblum has called “the logic of congruence” is validly invoked and those in which it is not. More importantly, I suggest that the phil…Read more
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291Book Review: The Practice of Political Theory: Rorty and Continental Thought, by Clayton Chin (review)Political Theory (Review): 009059171983935. 2020.
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281Pragmatist Egalitarianism Revisited: Some Replies to my CriticsContemporary Pragmatism 16 (4): 337-347. 2019.In this article, I reply to some criticisms of my book, Pragmatist Egalitarianism, offered by professors Robert Talisse, Susan Dieleman, and Alexander Livingston. Some of the major themes and questions I address include the following: How are conflicts between different egalitarian ideals best understood and addressed? Does the quest for equality have a fundamental locus, or are the different egalitarian variables I identify in the book, conceptually speaking, on an equal footing? What is the re…Read more
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259How Pure Should Justice Be? Reflections on G. A. Cohen's Rhetorical RescuePhilosophy and Rhetoric 49 (3): 323-342. 2016.In this article I argue for two closely related conclusions: one concerned more narrowly with the internal consistency of G. A. Cohen's theorizing about justice and the unique rhetoric in which it is couched, the other connected to a more sweeping set of recommendations about how theorizing on justice is most promisingly undertaken. First, drawing on a famous insight of G. E. Moore, I argue that although the purity of Cohenian justice provides Cohen a platform from which to put some extremely ch…Read more
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251Kai Nielsen’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Introduction and OverviewIn David Rondel & Alex Sager (eds.), Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, University of Calgary Press. 2012.An overview of Kai Nielsen's philosophy focusing on his contributions to metaphilosophy and a critical theory based on wide reflective equilibrium, global justice, and egalitarianism.
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245The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009, 496 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0674036130 (review)Dialogue 49 (1): 165-168. 2010.
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242Andrew F. Smith, The Deliberative Impulse: Motivating Discourse in Divided Societies (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 180 pages. ISBN: 978-0739146095. Hardback/Paperback: $65/29.95 (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (3): 355-357. 2013.
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233The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey (review)Education and Culture 30 (2): 103-105. 2014.The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society
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217Anti-authoritarianism, Meliorism, and Cultural Politics: On the Deweyan Deposit in Rorty’s Pragmatism.Pragmatism Today 2 (1): 56-67. 2011.
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183Pessimism of the Intellect, Determination of the Will: An Interview with Kai NielsenIn David Rondel & Alex Sager (eds.), Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, . pp. 401-435. 2012.Interview with Kai Nielsen conducted by David Rondel and Alex Sager.
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171Liberalism, Ethnocentrism, and Solidarity: Reflections on RortyJournal of Philosophical Research 34 55-68. 2009.In this paper I defend Richard Rorty against two critics of his moral and political philosophy—Will Kymlicka and Robert Talisse—to whom Rorty himself never responded directly. I argue that Kymlicka misrepresents Rorty’s so-called “ethnocentrism” by giving it a needlessly affirmative reading, and that Talisse, by failing to appreciate the distinction between “making truth claims” and “proposing experiments” misunderstands both Rorty’s use of Darwin and his antifoundational liberalism
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136Pragmatism Turned Inward: Notes on Voparil’s Reconstructing PragmatismTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 58 (4): 341-351. 2023.Abstract:This article raises a series of doubts about Chris Voparil’s reading of Rorty, particularly the claim that what he calls “Rorty’s Pragmatic Maxim” represents what is at the heart of his philosophical vision. Those doubts are tied together with some scattered thoughts about how Voparil describes the affinities between Rorty and William James in chapter 2 of Reconstructing Pragmatism. Voparil is correct to claim that it is James, more than any other figure in the pragmatist tradition, who…Read more
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134Review of G.A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality (review)Review of Metaphysics 64 (1): 137-139. 2010.
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111James on MoralityIn David Howell Evans (ed.), Understanding James, Understanding Modernism, Bloomsbury. pp. 281-282. 2017.
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102After virtue's critique of liberalismIn Tom Angier (ed.), MacIntyre's After Virtue at 40, Cambridge University Press. pp. 69-84. 2023.
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101Review of Alex Zakaras, Individuality and Mass Democracy: Mill, Emerson, and the Burdens of Citizenship. (review)Review of Politics 72 (4): 738-740. 2010.
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78The Moral Psychology of Anxiety (edited book)Moral Psychology of the Emotions. 2024."The Moral Psychology of Anxiety brings a variety of disciplinary perspectives to examine anxiety, providing historical context and incorporating recent advances in philosophical and psychological research on anxiety's nature, causes, and consequences and on its possible benefits, virtuous aspects, and role in human inquiry"--
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49Deweyan Democracy DefendedSouthwest Philosophy Review 28 (1): 197-207. 2012.This paper defends Deweyan democracy against the attack levelled against it by Robert Talisse. The problem with Talisse’s critique, I argue, is that Rawlsian concerns about reasonable pluralism are a propos only for political theories of justice ⎯ for theories, that is, that make definitive pronouncements about, or offer principled limits to, the coercive power of the state ⎯ and Deweyan democracy is not (or is not centrally) a theory of justice in this respect. My argument, in short, is that o…Read more
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38Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen (edited book)University of Calgary Press. 2012.Kai Nielsen is one of Canada’s most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and controversies of our time but throughout has remained a unique voice on the political left. _ Pessimism of the Intellect _presents a thoughtful collect…Read more
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