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31Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big QuestionsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.
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The primacy of the passionsIn Anna Bergqvist & Robert Cowan (eds.), Evaluative Perception, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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28Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.
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4Naturalism without TearsIn Jussi Suikkanen & John Cottingham (eds.), Essays on Derek Parfit's On what matters, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.
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Science, ethics and observationIn Havi Carel & Darian Meacham (eds.), Phenomenology and Naturalism: Examining the Relationship Between Human Experience and Nature, Cambridge University Press. 2013.
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3Ethics without errorsIn Bart Streumer (ed.), Irrealism in Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. 2014.I argue against the claim that we should adopt a moral error theory. The intelligibility of our moral practice need offer no questionable metaphysical hostages to fortune. The two most credible policy recommendations that might follow from moral error theory, abolitionism and prescriptive fictionalism, are not very credible.
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52Michael Smith: The Moral Problem (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (1): 125-126. 1994.
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59I—James Lenman: What is Moral Inquiry?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1): 63-81. 2007.
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65Uggles and Muggles: Wedgwood on normative thought and justification (review)Philosophical Studies 151 (3). 2010.
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35Why I have no plans to retire: In defence of moderate professional complacencyRatio 20 (2): 241-246. 2007.Smilansky argues that realistic assumptions justify the conclusion that far more members of a given service profession than we might previously have supposed would best serve that profession by leaving it. I argue that on more realistic assumptions no such conclusion is forthcoming.
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72Science, Ethics and ObservationRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 72 261-274. 2013.This paper examines the idea that ethics might be understood as a domain of straightforwardly empirical inquiry with reference to two of its defenders. Sam Harris has recently urged that ethics is simply the scientific study of welfare and how best to maximize it. That is of course to presuppose the truth of utilitarianism, something Harris considers too obvious to be sensibly contested. Richard Boyd's more nuanced and thoughtful position takes the truth of the ethical theory he favours to be de…Read more
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188Utilitarianism and obviousnessUtilitas 16 (3): 322-325. 2004.This article seeks to diagnose a serious defect in a highly influential supposed counterexample to utilitarianism: Bernard Williams's case of Jim and the Indians. Discussing this, Williams argues that, according to utilitarianism, it is obviously right to say that Jim should kill an Indian. But as this is not obviously right, Williams takes the example to furnish a forceful counterexample to utilitarianism. I note here that the force of the supposed counterexample is in fact very doubtful as the…Read more
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65Slaves of the Passions. By Mark Schroeder. (Oxford UP, 2007. Pp. 224. Price US$85.00.)Philosophical Quarterly 63 (251): 384-387. 2013.
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513The Saucer of mud, The Kudzu vine and the uxorious cheetah: Against neo-Aristotelian naturalism in metaethicsEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1 (2): 37-50. 2005.Let me say something, to begin with, about wanting weird stuff. Stuff like saucers of mud. The example, famously, is from Anscombe’s Intention (Anscombe Anscombe 957)) where she is, in effect, defending a version of the old scholastic maxim, Omne appetitum appetitur sub specie boni. If your Latin is rusty like mine, what that says is just that every appetite – for better congruence with modern discussions, let’s say every desire – desires under the aspect of the good, or in the wording made curr…Read more
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86Reasons without humansAnalysis 77 (3): 586-595. 2017.1. Brian Hedden, in this impressively learned and ingenious, if somewhat maddening book,1 1 defends a view he calls Time-slice Rationality, a view comprising two central claims. They are: Synchronicity : All requirements of rationality are synchronic. Impartiality : In determining how you rationally ought to be at a time, your beliefs about what attitudes you have at other times play the same role as your beliefs about what attitudes other people have.
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410Reasons for action: Justification vs. explanationStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.Modern philosophical literature distinguishes between explanatory reasons and justifying reasons. The former are reasons we appeal to in attempting to explain actions and attitudes. The latter are reasons we appeal to in attempting to justify them.
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69”Review of Terence Cuneo„ The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6). 2008.
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19Preferences in their PlaceEnvironmental Values 9 (4): 431-451. 2000.In at least some of their forms, Cost-Benefit techniques for the evaluation of environmental projects and policies treat the preferences of citizens as the sole determinants of the value of outcomes. There are two salient ways in which this supposition might be defended. The first is metaethical and appeals to considerations about how we must understand talk of environmental and other values. The second is political and appeals to considerations about democratic legitimacy and the proper aims of…Read more
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14Realism and idealism in the theory of valueDissertation, St. Andrews. 1995.This thesis defends an account of value which emphasizes the central place occupied by experiences among the objects of evaluation, a point that is particularly stark in the case of aesthetic value, to which a chapter is devoted that adumbrates the wider understanding of value subsequently defended. More generally it is argued that values do not transcend the attitudes and institutions in which they are embodied. They nonetheless enjoy in virtue of their structuring by norms of consistency, stab…Read more
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26Review of Allan Gibbard, Reconciling Our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (9). 2009.
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95On the alleged shallowness of compatibilism: A critical study of Saul Smilansky: Free will and illusionIyyun 51 (January): 63-79. 2002.The millionaire’s idle, talentless and self-centered daughter inherits a large sum of money that she does not really deserve. The victim of kidnapping rots in a cell in 1980s Beirut in a captivity that springs not from any wrong he has done but from his ill-fortune in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hard-working, brilliant and self-denying Nobel Prize-winning scientist receives a large cheque for his extraordinarily productive labours. The murderer spends decades in jail for the …Read more
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20Review of Terry Horgan, mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (3). 2007.