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3Inferring Character from Reasoning: The Example of EuthyphroAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 45 (1). 2008.None
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15European and American PhilosophersIn Robert L. Arrington (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophers, Wiley-blackwell. 1991.Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categ…Read more
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7Psychological eudaimonism and the natural desire for the good: Comments on Rachana Kamtekar's Plato's Moral PsychologyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1): 234-239. 2021.
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1Apparent Goods: A Discussion of Jessica Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent GoodOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 46 353-381. 2014.
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5Review of Plato, M. C. howatson (ed., Trans.), Frisbee C. C. Sheffield (ed.), The Symposium (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (7). 2009.
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3Disputing socratic principles: Character and argument in the “polus episode” of the gorgiasArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 84 (3): 245-272. 2002.
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Misperceptions of Aristotle: His Alleged Responses to the SkepticDissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1993.I argue that many standard interpretations of Aristotle suffer from what Cora Diamond calls "the metaphysical spirit". The metaphysical spirit lays down requirements for a given subject in advance of actual investigation; it already knows how ethics, say, or epistemology, must be conducted and what problems must be addressed. Standard readings of Aristotle focus on certain assumptions based not so much on Aristotle's texts as on "metaphysical" assumptions about the nature of the philosophical pr…Read more
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6Conditional irony in the Socratic dialoguesClassical Quarterly 49 (02): 456-. 1999.Socratic irony is potentially fertile ground for exegetical abuse. It can seem to offer an interpreter the chance to dismiss any claim which conflicts with his account of Socratic Philosophy merely by crying ‘irony’. If abused in this way, Socratic irony can quickly become a convenient receptacle for everything inimical to an interpretation. Much recent scholarship rightly reacts against this and devotes itself to explaining how Socrates actually means everything he says, at least everything of …Read more
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39Reality, What Matters and The MatrixIn Christopher Grau (ed.), Philosophers Explore the Matrix, Oxford University Press. pp. 98--114. 2005.
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4Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (review)Philosophical Review 113 (2): 269-271. 2004.The middle chapter, “Reading Epictetus,” consists of two discourses translated in full, with a demonstration of how Epictetus employs the stylistic techniques described earlier. The body of the book divides into two sets of chapters, 1–4 and 6–9. The first set treats Epictetus’s life, his intellectual and cultural context, and the transmission, structure, style, and overall content of his work. Epictetus, like Socrates, wrote nothing. His student Arrian composed a lengthy treatise entitled Disco…Read more
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23The Role of Good Upbringing in Aristotle’s EthicsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (4): 771-797. 1996.It is argued that a proper appreciation of the passages in the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle requires the student of ethics to be well brought up implies that the Ethics is not attempting to justify the objective correctness of its substantive conception of happiness to someone who does not already appreciate its distinctive value. Reflection on the import of the good-upbringing restriction can lead us to see that Aristotle's conception of ethical objectivity is not only radically different…Read more
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2Perception, Knowledge, and the Sceptic in AristotleOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14 83-131. 1996.
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10Conditional irony in the Socratic dialoguesClassical Quarterly 49 (2): 456-472. 1999.Socratic irony is potentially fertile ground for exegetical abuse. It can seem to offer an interpreter the chance to dismiss any claim which conflicts with his account of Socratic Philosophy merely by crying ‘irony’. If abused in this way, Socratic irony can quickly become a convenient receptacle for everything inimical to an interpretation. Much recent scholarship rightly reacts against this and devotes itself to explaining how Socrates actually means everything he says, at least everything of …Read more
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2Socratic ironyIn John Bussanich & Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), The Bloomsbury companion to Socrates, Continuum. 2013.
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7Aiming at Virtue in PlatoCambridge University Press. 2008.This study of Plato's ethics focuses on the concept of virtue. Based on detailed readings of the most prominent Platonic dialogues on virtue, it argues that there is a central yet previously unnoticed conceptual distinction in Plato between the idea of virtue as the supreme aim of one's actions and the determination of which action-tokens or -types are virtuous. Appreciating the 'aiming/determining distinction' provides detailed and mutually consistent readings of the most well-known Platonic di…Read more
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8Virtue and argument in Aristotle's ethicsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 94 (1): 37-78. 2007.
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11Platonic Virtue: An Alternative ApproachPhilosophy Compass 9 (9): 605-614. 2014.I begin by describing certain central features of a prominent Anglophone approach to Platonic virtue over the last few decades. I then present an alternative way of thinking about virtue in Plato that shifts central concern away from moral psychology and questions about virtue's relationship to happiness. The approach I defend focuses on virtue, both as a supreme aim of a person's actions and as something whose nature needs to be determined
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13Colloquium 5: Theoretical Nous And Its Objects In AristotleProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 28 (1): 161-180. 2013.This paper argues for a novel reading of the nature of theoretical nous and its objects, focusing on Aristotle's account in De Anima III.4. It is argued that theoretical nous is not best conceived in this context as a faculty, but as understanding. Moreover the nature of that understanding varies depending on its object's relationship to matter.
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6Moral Motivation: A History (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2016.Moral Motivation presents a history of the concept of moral motivation. The book consists of ten chapters by eminent scholars in the history of philosophy, covering Plato, Aristotle, later Peripatetic philosophy, medieval philosophy, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and the consequentialist tradition. In addition, four interdisciplinary "Reflections" discuss how the topic of moral motivation arises in epic poetry, Cicero, early opera, and Theodore Dreiser. Most contemporary philosop…Read more
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13Aristotle on PerceptionPhilosophical Review 108 (2): 282. 1999.This is an important book for the specialist in Aristotelian natural science and philosophy of mind. While its overall aims are more sweeping—to show how the account of perception is an application of the explanatory method of the Physics and to argue that Aristotle’s resulting method of explaining mental activity has substantive advantages over contemporary accounts in philosophy of mind —much of its most successful argument is a sustained and detailed attack on a position made famous by Myles …Read more
New York City, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |