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214Is ecosabotage civil disobedience?Philosophy and Geography 4 (1). 2001.According to current definitions of civil disobedience, drawn from the work of John Rawls and Carl Cohen, eco-saboteurs are not civil disobedients because their disobedience is not a form of address and/or does not appeal to the public's sense of justice or human welfare. But this definition also excludes disobedience by a wide range of groups, from labor activists to hunt saboteurs, either because they are obstructionist or because they address moral concerns other than justice or the public we…Read more
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153William James's "the will to believe" and the ethics of self-experimentationTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (2): 229-241. 2006.: William James's "The Will to Believe" has been criticized for offering untenable arguments in support of belief in unvalidated hypotheses. Although James is no longer accused of suggesting we can create belief ex nihilo, critics continue to charge that James's defense of belief in what he called the "religious hypothesis" confuses belief with hypothesis adoption and endorses willful persistence in unvalidated beliefs—not, as he claimed, in pursuit of truth, but merely to avoid the emotional st…Read more
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119Locke on Slavery and Inalienable RightsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1). 1995.Some have argued that Locke's failure to condemn contemporary slavery is best viewed as a personal moral lapse which does not reflect on his political theory. I argue to the contrary
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100Dewey and McDowell on naturalism, values, and second natureJournal of Speculative Philosophy 22 (1). 2008.
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91William James's "The Will to Believe" and the Ethics of Self-experimentationTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (2): 229-241. 2006.William James's 'The Will to Believe" has been criticized for offering untenable arguments in support of belief in unvalidated hypotheses. Although James is no longer accused of sug gesting we can create belief ex nihilo, critics con tinue to charge that James's defense of belief in what he called the "religious hypothesis" con fuses belief with hypothesis adoption and endorses willful persistence in unvalidated beliefs-not, as he claimed, in pursuit of truth, but merely to avoid the …Read more
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76A Defence of Environmental StewardshipEnvironmental Values 21 (3): 297-316. 2012.Public recognition of the fragility of the natural systems on which present and future generations depend has prompted calls for the practice of environmental stewardship —calls widely criticised in the environmental ethics literature. Some argue that stewardship 's historical associations entail that it is inherently sexist, speciesist and/or anthropocentric. Others argue that absent belief in a creator to appoint us as stewards and hold us accountable, talk of 'environmental stewardship ' is e…Read more
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72Hume and the Prince of ThievesHume Studies 34 (1): 3-19. 2008.Hume’s readers love to hate the Sensible Knave. But hating the Knave is like hating a messenger with bad tidings. The message is that there is a gap, on Hume’s account, between our motivations and our obligations to just action. But it isn’t the Knave’s character that is to blame, for the same gap will be found if we turn our attention to alter egos, such as Robin Hood, the benevolent “Prince of Thieves.” Replacing self-interest with benevolence not only does not make the gap go away, it makes i…Read more
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66Hume, Callicott, and the Land Ethic: Prospects and ProblemsJournal of Value Inquiry 43 (2): 201-220. 2009.Aldo Leopold's holistic land ethic principle, ‘‘a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community … wrong when it tends otherwise,’’ has seemed to many philosophers indefensible in light of any of the traditional normative theories of character and conduct that have been central to Western moral theory since the early modern period. J. Baird Callicott has long disputed this assessment, arguing that in fact, Leopold's land ethic is best unders…Read more
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61The Virtues of StewardshipEnvironmental Ethics 21 (4): 411-423. 1999.What virtues do good stewards typically have and can these virtues move people to be good stewards of nature? Why focus on the virtues of stewards rather than on trying to construct and defend morally obligatory rules to govern human behavior? I argue that benevolence and loyalty are crucial for good stewardship and these virtues can and do motivate people to act as good stewards of nature. Moreover,since it is a matter of dispute whether rational considerations can move us to perform a given ac…Read more
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43Dewey's ethical thoughtCornell University Press. 1995.'This book not only revises the interpretation of Dewey's ethics but also has relevance to recent discussions about the possibility of naturalistic, ...
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42Self-Love and Personal Identity in Hume's TreatiseHume Studies 41 (1): 33-55. 2015.In his Advertisement to the incomplete first edition of the Treatise, Hume justifies his decision to publish the first two Books separately on the grounds that “the subjects of the understanding and passions make a compleat chain of reasoning by themselves”.1 The Advertisement to Book 3 qualifies its predecessor slightly, stating that Book 3 is “in some measure independent of the other two and requires not that the reader shou’d enter into all the abstract reasonings contain’d in them”. Precisel…Read more
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41Kant and the Land EthicPhilosophy in the Contemporary World 2 (2): 17-22. 1995.Does Leopold’s land ethic principle represent a break with traditional We stern moral philosophies as some have argued? Or is it instead an extension of traditional Western moral ideas as Leopold believed? I argue that Leopold’s principle is compatible with an ecologically-informed Kantianism.
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39Norton and Passmore on valuing natureJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 20 (4): 353-363. 2007.Norton argues on pragmatic “Deweyan” grounds that we should cease to ask scientists for value neutral definitions of “sustainability,” developed independently of moral and social values, to guide our environmental policy making debates. “Sustainability,” like human “health,” is a normative concept from the start—one that cannot be meaningfully developed by scientists or economists without input by all the stake holders affected. While I endorse Norton’s approach, I question his apparent presumpt…Read more
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36Aesthetics of Nature, Constitutive Goods, and Environmental Conservation: A Defense of Moderate Formalist AestheticsJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (4): 419-428. 2018.Scientific cognitivists argue formalist aesthetics of nature are (i) inadequate for appreciating the full range of nature’s aesthetic values and (ii) too subjective to be useful for defending nature conservation. I argue that (i) is false because moderate formalists can appreciate nature for its performances, not merely objects and vistas. I argue (ii) is false because moderate formalists can argue that appreciation of beauty (including natural beauty) is a constitutive good of human flourishing…Read more
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35How Much Is That Mammoth in the Window?Ethics, Policy and Environment 20 (1): 41-43. 2017.T.J. Kasperbauer’s, ‘Should we Bring Back the Passenger Pigeon? The Ethics of De-extinction’ is a timely contribution to the small but growing literature on the ethical issues facing Conservation B...
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33G. E. Moore and the Revolution in Ethics: A ReappraisalHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 6 (3). 1989.
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31Social Freedom: The Responsibility View (review)Dialogue 37 (4): 858-859. 1998.How should we define liberty or social freedom? Which obstacles constitute constraints? Is poverty one? By what method of conceptual analysis can a definition of social freedom best be generated? These and related questions form the subject matter of Kristjánsson’s interesting critical review of so-called “responsibility” accounts of social freedom. Together with his critical exegesis of rival views, Kristjánnson explains and defends his own “responsibility view.”
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27Frankenfood, or, Fear and Loathing at the Grocery StoreJournal of Philosophical Research 32 (9999): 141-150. 2007.Genetically modified food crops have been called ‘frankenfoods’ since 1992. Although some might dismiss the phenomena as clever marketing by anti-GM groups, of no philosophic interest, its resonance with the general public suggests otherwise. I argue that examination of the intersection of popular conceptions of monsters, nature, and food at which ‘frankenfood’ stands reveals significant and disturbing trends in our relationship to organic nature of interest to moral and social philosophy and to…Read more
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26Environmental virtue ethics - edited by Ronald Sandler & Philip Cafaro (review)Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (1). 2008.
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26Patient Advocacy and Professional Associations: individual and collective responsibilitiesNursing Ethics 12 (3): 296-304. 2005.Professions have traditionally treated advocacy as a collective duty, best assigned to professional associations to perform. In North American nursing, advocacy for issues affecting identifiable patients is assigned instead to their nurses. We argue that nursing associations’ withdrawal from advocacy for patient care issues is detrimental to nurses and patients alike. Most nurses work in large institutions whose internal policies they cannot influence. When these create obstacles to good care, t…Read more
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20Dewey and Moore on the Science of EthicsTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 33 (2). 1997.
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19From Absolute Idealism to Instrumentalism: The Problem of Dewey's Early PhilosophyTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 25 (4). 1989.
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18Chapter 7 Toward a Pragmatic CommunitarianismIn Dewey's Ethical Thought, Cornell University Press. pp. 182-218. 2018.
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18Tom Cochrane, "The Aesthetic Value of the World." (review)Philosophy in Review 43 (3): 11-13. 2023.
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18The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings in Virtue Ethics (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 2006.This collection provides readings from five classic thinkers with importantly distinct approaches to virtue theory, along with five new essays from contemporary thinkers that apply virtue theories to the resolution of practical moral problems. Jennifer Welchman's Introduction discusses the history of virtue theory. A short introduction to each reading highlights the distinctive aspects of the view expressed.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Other Academic Areas |
Aesthetics |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |