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183The Problem of Endless Joy: Is Infinite Utility Too Much for Utilitarianism?Utilitas 6 (2): 183-192. 1994.What if human joy went on endlessly? Suppose, for example, that each human generation were followed by another, or that the Western religions are right when they teach that each human being lives eternally after death. If any such possibility is true in the actual world, then an agent might sometimes be so situated that more than one course of action would produce an infinite amount of utility. Deciding whether to have a child born this year rather than next is a situation wherein an agent may f…Read more
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175Being unimpressed with ourselves: Reconceiving humilityPhilosophia 34 (4): 417-435. 2006.I first sketch an account of humility as a character trait in which we are unimpressed with our good, envied, or admired features, achievements, etc., where these lack significant salience for our image of ourselves, because of the greater prominence of our limitations and flaws. I situate this view among several other recent conceptions of humility (also called modesty), dividing them between the inward-directed and outward-directed, distinguish mine from them, pose problems for each alternativ…Read more
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174Health versus harm: Euthanasia and physicians' dutiesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (1). 2007.This essay rebuts Gary Seay's efforts to show that committing euthanasia need not conflict with a physician's professional duties. First, I try to show how his misunderstanding of the correlativity of rights and duties and his discussion of the foundation of moral rights undermine his case. Second, I show aspects of physicians' professional duties that clash with euthanasia, and that attempts to avoid this clash lead to absurdities. For professional duties are best understood as deriving from pr…Read more
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137Racism, Psychology, and Morality: Dialogue with Faucher and MacheryPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (2): 250-268. 2011.I here respond to several points in Faucher and Machery’s vigorous and informative critique of my volitional account of racism (VAR). First, although the authors deem it a form of "implicit racial bias," a mere tendency to associate black people with "negative" concepts falls short of racial "bias" or prejudice in the relevant sense. Second, such an associative disposition need not even be morally objectionable. Third, even for more substantial forms of implicit racial bias such as race-based fe…Read more
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111The intentional and the intendedErkenntnis 33 (2). 1990.The paper defends the thesis that for S to V intentionally is for S to V as (in the way) S intended to. For the normal agent the relevant sort of intention is an intention that one's intention to V generate an instance of one's V-ing along some (usually dimly-conceived) productive path. Such an account allows us to say some actions are intentional to a greater or lesser extent (a desirable option for certain cases of wayward causal chains), preserves the intuitive link between intention and inte…Read more
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109Race as a Social ConstructionThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 115-133. 2019.This paper raises serious problems for the commonly held claim that races are socially constructed. The first section sketches out an approach to our construction of institutional phenomena that, taking Searle’s general approach, restricts social construction proper to cases where we adopt rules that bind relevant parties to treat things of a type in certain ways, thus constituting important roles in, and parts of, our social lives. I argue this conception, construction-by-rules, helps distingui…Read more
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89Book ReviewsLawrence Blum,. “I’m Not a Racist, but …”: The Moral Quandary of Race.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. 272. $52.50 ; $19.95 (review)Ethics 118 (2): 332-337. 2008.
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74Anscombe's Three Theses Revisited: Rethinking the Foundations of Medical EthicsChristian Bioethics 14 (2): 123-140. 2008.At the start of her vigorously argued and classic article, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” G. E. M. Anscombe stated three focal theses. First, that philosophers of the time needed to dispense with investigation into talk of what is morally right, wrong; permissible, forbidden, required; and of moral obligation or duty, what we morally ought to do. Second, there was no adequate philosophical psychology then available of the sort needed for doing good moral philosophy. Third, the differences among the …Read more
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61Sin and Suffering in a Catholic Understanding of Medical EthicsChristian Bioethics 12 (2): 165-186. 2006.Drawing chiefly on recent sources, in Part One I sketch an untraditional way of articulating what I claim to be central elements of traditional Catholic morality, treating it as based in virtues, focused on the recipients (“patients”) of our attention and concern, and centered in certain person-to-person role-relationships. I show the limited and derivative places of “natural law,” and therefore of sin, within that framework. I also sketch out some possible implications for medical ethics of thi…Read more
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57Lies and the Vices of Self-DeceptionFaith and Philosophy 15 (4): 514-537. 1998.This essay applies to the morality of lying and other deception a sketch of a kind of virtues-based, input-driven, role-centered, patient-focused, ethical theory. Among the questions treated are: What is wrong with lying? Is it always and intrinsically immoral? Can it be correct, as some have vigorously maintained, that lying is morally wrong in some circumstances where other forms of deliberate dissimulation are not? If so, how can that be? And how can it be that lying to someone is immoral whe…Read more
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57On the irreducibility of the willSynthese 86 (3). 1991.This paper criticizes the thesis that intending to do something is reducible to some combination of beliefs and desires. Against Audi's recent formulation of such a view I offer as counterexample a case wherein an agent who wants and expects to V has not yet decided whether to V and hence does not yet intend to. I try to show that whereas belief that one will V is not necessary for intending to V, as illustrated in cases of desperate attempts to V, one cannot intend to V without preferring to V …Read more
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56A Volitional Account of Racist Beliefs, Contamination, and ObjectsProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 92 59-85. 2018.Prof. Alberto Urquidez, in an important recent article that appears in different form in his book, Redefining Racism, offers an informed, sustained, careful, multi-pronged, and sometimes original critique of the volitional analysis of racism, which I have proposed in a series of articles over the past two dozen years. Here I expand and improve VAR’s analysis of paternalistic racists and their beliefs, clarify its ‘infection’-model’s explanation of racism’s spread and variety, and lay out what it…Read more
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40The Game Between a Biased Reviewer and His EditorScience and Engineering Ethics 25 (1): 265-283. 2019.This paper shows that, for a large range of parameters, the journal editor prefers to delegate the choice to review the manuscript to the biased referee. If the peer review process is informative and the review reports are costly for the reviewers, even biased referees with extreme scientific preferences may choose to become informed about the manuscript’s quality. On the contrary, if the review process is potentially informative but the reviewer reports are not costly for the referees, the bias…Read more
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39Identity confusionsPhilosophy and Social Criticism 32 (7): 839-862. 2006.This article responds to logical and social theses proposed by Professor José Medina in discussing the relativity of identity. In exploring the metaphor of family resemblance, the author argues that its causal mechanism is biological, not social; particular features of being a woman, or of belonging to a racial or ethnic group, cannot be reduced to social constructions. The article skeptically discusses the supposed importance of sex, race, and ethnicity to a person’s individual identity, and su…Read more
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32Humanae Vitae (review)Review of Metaphysics 45 (4): 883-884. 1992.Janet Smith has written an important, imposing, and ambitious book. In what began life as a translation of, and commentary on, Paul VI's controversial 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, those two elements now form but two of the book's four appendices.
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30Virtue Ethics in Social TheoryAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 60 (4): 329-340. 2023.Tommie Shelby has offered an influential, carefully stated, and well-argued set of objections to any volitional analysis of racism (VAR) as consisting centrally in certain forms of race-based disregard. Here I hope to defend aspects of VAR by analyzing, evaluating, and sometimes countering several of his major contentions, which have stood unchallenged in the literature over more than two decades. First, I sketch and respond to his Methodological objection to VAR, which criticizes VAR's reliance…Read more
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28From Neighbor-Love to Utilitarianism, and BackProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89 1-32. 2015.Contrasting loving our neighbors with utilitarians’ demand to maximize good reveals important metatheoretic structures and dynamics that I call virtues- basing, input drive, role centering, and patient focus. First, love (good will) is a virtue; such virtues are foundational to both moral obligations and the impersonally valuable. Second, part of loving is acting lovingly. Whether and how I act lovingly, and how loving it is, is a matter of motivation; this input-driven account contrasts with hi…Read more
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24SPEECH IN HOMER - Beck Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic. Pp. xii + 256. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Cased, US$55. ISBN: 978-0-292-73880-5 (review)The Classical Review 64 (1): 12-14. 2014.
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23Interpersonal VirtuesProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 31-60. 1997.
Areas of Interest
19th Century Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |